It was 4:15am once I arrived on the gate of the passport workplace. The climate was chilly and it was nonetheless darkish.
There was already a line of girls who had come earlier than me. Some had been sleeping underneath a blanket, others had been simply sitting or standing. I stood within the line and requested one girl how lengthy she had been ready for. She advised me she and her members of the family had arrived at 1am.
I might perceive why they’d come that early. I had heard that it could get very crowded on the passport workplace and if you don’t come early, you’ll be on the finish of the road.
Quickly one other household joined the road behind me: a mom with three ladies. We began chatting. The mom, Zarghona, advised me her three daughters couldn’t go to high school any extra after the Taliban ban on secondary schooling for women. The eldest was imagined to be in grade 12, the center one – in grade 10 and the youngest – in grade seven.
The mom advised me that they had been making an attempt to go away Afghanistan for an additional nation the place her daughters might get an schooling. She advised me that they’d initially deliberate to go to Pakistan however after the Pakistani authorities began to expel Afghan refugees, they determined to go to Iran.
She was a sort and outgoing girl; she even invited me to hitch her and her daughters underneath their blanket to remain heat.
As daybreak started to interrupt, I began to see the faces of the ladies who had been gathering within the lengthy line. I might see many alternative girls: faculty lecturers and college professors, wealthy and poor, younger and previous.
As we waited, it began to rain.
At 8:30am, the passport workplace staff arrived which instantly triggered a commotion. Impulsively, the road broke as the ladies rushed to the gate and the gang someway moved me farther away.
I had no phrase of criticism and didn’t really feel upset with these girls. I knew they had been determined and they’d do something to get their passports.
After the preliminary chaos, the road took form once more and I stood ready once more, though a lot farther from the gate than I had initially been.
As I waited, I began chatting with Fahima, a younger widow. She had misplaced her husband a few years in the past and had moved along with her 14-year-old daughter to stay along with her mom. Then final yr, her mom left along with her brother to go stay in Iran. Fahima and her daughter couldn’t be part of them as a result of they didn’t have any passports and it takes a very long time to get these paperwork.
Having nowhere to go, she needed to transfer in along with her sister and her household. She advised me she feared being recognized as a widow with a younger daughter and the 2 being compelled to marry Taliban fighters. On prime of that, she felt she was a burden to her sister.
“I feel deeply embarrassed every time my sister makes food and my daughter and I eat. But there is no job to do to have an income,” Fahima stated
So she determined to go away and search a protected haven the place she and her daughter can be free to work and research. “As soon as we get our passports, we will leave for another country where my daughter and I can live and breathe,” she advised me.
After standing in line for a lot of hours, I lastly was capable of move the gate. I advised one of many staff who was a Taliban member what I wanted to do on the passport workplace and he responded that I wanted a burqa with the intention to enter the constructing and do the paperwork.
I virtually cried. I used to be sporting a hijab and a masks. Why was that not “modest enough” to do my paperwork? I rushed residence the place I came upon that we didn’t have any burqas, so my brother went to a relative’s home to borrow one.
I donned the borrowed burqa and rushed to the submit workplace however by the point I arrived, the workplace was closing and the staff had been leaving.
This expertise got here to my thoughts, as this yr’s Worldwide Girls’s Day approached. I believed concerning the determined girls I noticed on the passport workplace and questioned, what do Afghan girls should rejoice on March 8? What’s there to remain in Afghanistan for?
For the reason that Taliban regained energy in 2021, they’ve regularly and systematically discriminated in opposition to, humiliated, criminalised and denied girls and ladies their rights. Half of the Afghan inhabitants are girls and ladies; this implies half of the individuals within the nation would not have equal rights. UN consultants are calling it “gender apartheid”.
It is rather troublesome for each Afghan mom and father to observe the struggling of their daughters as they’re being disadvantaged of schooling, an earnings and a future. It’s painful to see their rising trauma and psychological well being issues as they’re faraway from society, are now not capable of socialise and are compelled be keep at residence, out of worry of arrest for “improper hijab” or another new offense.
The life underneath this regime is now not bearable. Girls and ladies really feel they stay in a national jail. There isn’t any hope that issues will change for the higher.
That’s the reason the passport workplace was crowded and has been crowded for a lot of months now. The ladies of Afghanistan need to go away as a result of they don’t see any future for themselves or for his or her daughters on this nation.
As we mark Worldwide Girls’s Day, maybe a pertinent query to ponder is, what occurs to a rustic when its girls go away?
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.