Yalda walking to the stage for receiving her MA from Kabul University.
Yalda
یلدا
(USA)
“Make sure that you contribute to the development of the country. That country is ours. Afghanistan is ours and we all have an obligation to contribute to its development. So, contribute however you wish, but do it with honesty and to the best of your ability.”
Q1: What is a single memory or story you remember from your Afghanistan?
Life in Kabul is different from anywhere else in the world. I have been to many other places, but I have missed Kabul since the day I left. I have friends there, I have relatives there, I had established a small nest of my own there.
One important memory is the day that I graduated from my master’s program—the day of the graduation ceremony. As a child, I dreamed of studying at Kabul University. My sister was enrolled when I was a kid, and my aunt went there, so I always wished that someday I would go too. It didn’t happen right away—not until I was thirty-eight. I joined the master’s program at Kabul University in 2017, finished my last exam in December 2018, and attended my graduation ceremony in June 2019.
That day, I can tell you, I wasn’t on Earth—I was flying—because my dream was coming true. I was a valedictorian and gave a speech at the ceremony. I remember nobody from my family could attend. My kids were traveling to India, my mom was not there, and my father had passed away. But there were three other people who accompanied me: Ramin my best, best friend; my cousin Farangis, who was visiting Afghanistan from Canada; and my friend who I call Dadash, meaning brother, who was also photographing the ceremony. That day was very special for me. I will never forget it, and the memory heightens the beauty of Kabul in my mind.
Q2: Tell us the exact moment you decided to leave Afghanistan.
On the morning of August 15, I went to the bank, to the Karte Char branch close to my home. I walked there and saw a lot of people rushing around, and I didn’t understand why. Then I took a taxi to Shahr-e Naw. Again, people were rushing around in front of the branch, and there were no taxis available, and the bank employee only gave me a portion of my money. I couldn’t process all of this at the time. I didn’t understand why this was happening.
When I came out of the bank, it was around 12 PM. With the shortage of taxis and everything, I decided to walk to avoid the traffic. I had barely walked ten minutes when shootings began. I was on the street and I thought to myself, Everything is gone now. What happened? People were rushing here and there, and people were calling me, “Get back home! The Taliban is here.” I got home but not without difficulty. It took me maybe two hours to reach home.
When I entered, Khatera was standing and looking at me with a scared expression. She said, “Madar-jan, the Taliban are here.” I said, “No, not yet.” Because I was confident the Taliban would not enter the city this easily or this quickly. Just two days ago, I had talked to a friend involved in politics and he said, “No, the U.S. will not leave or let the Taliban enter the capital, at least within the next six months.” I wasn’t prepared for the Taliban to take control of the city this soon.
Time passed, and in the afternoon, around two-thirty or three, we heard that President Ghani had escaped, and the Taliban were everywhere. It was a moment of desperation. I thought, Did we lose everything? Is everything gone by now? The twenty years of struggle that we had, the hopes that we had, the dreams that we had for our lives, for our future. Every day I thought that tomorrow would be better, tomorrow would be better, but everything was gone. I remember I didn’t sleep that whole night.
On August 16, Dorcas called me—a fellow feminist who was involved in my evacuation. She said it was time to go to the airport. My daughters and I went to the airport, but we didn’t get on a flight that day.
How did we make the decision to leave the country? I knew that if the Taliban was taking control of the city, we would be helped and evacuated because of all my risk factors as a single mom, as a Hazara, as a woman who had promoted women’s rights, who had worked for the U.S. government, for the government of Afghanistan—everything about my life made me a person at severe risk.
Making the decision to leave wasn’t easy. I was trying to stay strong. But then when Dorcas said I had to leave, I went to take a shower and under the water, I cried, I screamed. I told myself, I have to leave now. Though it didn’t happen that day, as I said. From the airport, we went directly to my uncle’s home in order to stay safe.
On August 18, we went to the Kabul airport again. We had to spend eight and a half hours in front of the airport, among a crowd of people running over us, with guns going off... That was a difficult time in the trip because I was putting my daughters’ lives at risk. The whole time I was standing in front of them so that if one of the bullets had to hit a body, it would be mine and not my daughters’.
Finally, we were able to enter the airport. We spent two days there, and then on August 20 we got on one of the military planes. We went to Kuwait and then Bahrain, spent two days in Bahrain, and then finally, we arrived in the U.S.
The worst parts of the trip—one was the eight and a half hours that we spent outside of the airport. The second was watching my daughters sleeping on the ground in the Kabul airport, amid all the garbage and the dirt and everything. I had always provided them with the best bed, the best mattress, clean blankets, and everything, so that they could enjoy sleeping. But here they had to sleep on the ground and use their backpacks as pillows. Looking at that, it was very difficult. I will never forget it.
Yalda's MA graduation speech in Kabul.
Q3: What is something important that you brought with you? Or what is something you wanted to bring but could not?
Leaving my country and home, what should I take and why should I take it? Everything was already gone. Bringing something as a souvenir or a cultural object would only remind me of the pain that I had gone through. So I deliberately didn’t take anything. I actually didn’t have anything because on August 15, I realized that nothing left was mine.
So on the eighteenth, when I was leaving home, I didn’t want to take anything. The only things I thought would be helpful to keep were my documents—my identification documents, my education documents. I put them in a backpack.
I also have a full suitcase of memories from Afghanistan. That’s what I have brought with me, my documents and my memories.
Q4: If you could send a message that could be heard in thirty years, what would it be?
As a woman who has endured a lot of hardship—domestic violence, sexual harassment on the street and in the workplace—and who has been deprived of my rights as a mother and a woman, I did all that I could to make Afghanistan a good place for women. I was committed to this. I was determined to promote women’s rights. Afghan women deserve a better life, and I was working for this, but I couldn’t succeed. When I say I couldn’t succeed, though, it wasn’t because I didn’t want it enough—it wasn’t because I failed. It was because the country fell to the Taliban and collapsed. They cut our mission short, our dreams and hopes for the women of Afghanistan.
So, if you are listening to me now: Make sure you contribute to the development of the country. That country is ours, Afghanistan is ours, and we all have an obligation to contribute to its development. Do whatever you want, but act with honesty and to the best of your abilities. If you don’t succeed, like what happened to us, when we couldn’t see the result of our work, then no one can say anything against you. I at least have peace of mind—the knowledge that I worked, that I struggled, but they didn’t let us finish. So again, my advice is to work hard for our country.
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روایت بعدی
“When I remember my mom, I realize I can’t give up. I must be strong and go forward to pursue my dreams.”