I was meant to come with my family, but it turned out my family couldn’t come. Then I had a chance to come alone, and it was really difficult for me to decide. Should I come or not? I knew that if I came here, it would be hard for me. Because I’m just a nineteen-year-old girl. No one with me. No boy, no man, no girl, no woman. No one. You have no one to care for you. You should be the man yourself. But all men — all people — think that if a girl travels by herself, she’s a bad girl. And I knew that most people would think that I’m a bad girl because I came by myself.

So it was not an easy decision. But I thought, If I remain in Afghanistan and do not do anything, just stay at home, I will die. Because it’s really hard to do nothing. If you have a lot of dreams, literally you will die. So even though I knew no one would care for me and maybe a lot of things would happen to me, I decided to come by myself.

I remember I told my mom, “Mom, I want to go.” And my mom said, “No, no, my girl, it’s hard. It’s really hard. This is America, you know. It’s not Iran, Pakistan.” But I told my mom, “I know, but what else can I do?” It’s the hardest moment. I can’t survive here and it’s hard to be ready to die. I told my mom, “If I die here or die in another country in pursuit of my dreams, it’s better to die in pursuit of my dreams than to be at home.” Then my mom, because my mom believes in me, agreed. If I stay at home and don’t go out of my room, maybe, literally, I would die. So my mom said, “Okay, my girl, go and pursue your dreams. I will support you.”

So I left, and did experience a lot of bad things. No one was with me. And in the airport, all of the people were men. And I was just only one girl with no one. So, I was terrified of everything. But my heart was saying, You shouldn’t cry. You should be strong. Because you don’t have anyone in your life now. Except God. I said, Okay, that’s it. I will be strong. I will not cry.

Seeing your people in hardship and pain, it’s so terrible. And what I saw at the airport — at one moment it reminded me of a zombie movie. Zombies that are just running, running. They’re just thinking about themselves. It was like this. All the people were just running. I was just thinking, What’s going on? It’s like a movie. I couldn’t imagine anything like this, you know? It was unbelievable. I was heartbroken. How can I express it for you? It’s really hard. It’s really painful to see your people, your country, collapse. It’s really hard.

These bad people are still in Afghanistan. Though, I don’t want to say they are bad — they’re only bad because they are illiterate. They don’t think that women should have rights — that women can survive by themselves. It was hard to see your country like that.

Traveling by myself, I saw all the people looking at me like a guilty person. I felt so bad. I even heard someone say, “She’s a bad girl. How would she dare come by herself.” But I did nothing. I just said, Maryam, be strong, don’t care. Don’t care about anyone, don’t care. Some men talked to me, but to try to be with me, acting like they wanted to support me — but not in a good way. They had their own purpose, you know? All the boys, all the men were like this. If they were helping me, they wanted something from me. This is real. But I got through the airport, and flew to Qatar.

In Qatar, I was with one family, a good family. But because they were somewhat strict, they thought, How could she come by herself, with no family? Some of them even thought that I ran out of my house without telling anyone, without telling my mom, my dad. They thought that I was a bad person. That I came here just to go to America. No one was thinking that I might have a lot of dreams and a lot of things to do. But I was not going to be explain to them why I should do this, why I should not do that. I just didn’t care about what anyone thought.