A12 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19, 2022 EZ RE A
BY LOVEDAY MORRIS AND RUBY MELLENIn Afghanistan, women who had been
active in public life have hunkered down in
hiding. With the economy tanking, dreams of
running businesses and getting degrees have
been replaced with the daily struggle to
survive.
Restrictions permeate nearly every aspect of
women’s lives, despite Taliban promises to
protect their rights.
Secondary schools remain closed for girls
and women.
Their faces are disappearing from public
life. Some didn’t even wait for Taliban orders to
act. In August, at one hair salon in Kabul,
photos of women on window posters were
blacked over in advance to avoid attracting the
militants’ attention. In November, women
were banned from appearing in television
dramas.
Last month, taxi drivers were told not to
accept women wishing to travel more than
45 miles without a male chaperone. But in a
time of fear and uncertainty, some have faced
problems walking alone even for short distanc-
es in their neighborhoods.
The Washington Post interviewed four
women over the past four months through
weekly phone calls and regular WhatsApp
messages. They shared photos and videos of
their lives, which informed the illustrations in
this story.
The women are all Shiite, a group long
persecuted by the Taliban. As urban, minority
women who grew up in the past two decades
they had some of the most to gain, with
opportunities opening up in education and
work. Now that the Taliban is back, they may
have the most to lose.
This story is based on the women’s person-
al accounts, which echo wider reporting on
Taliban controls since regaining power.
Three of the women, Sajida, K and Pahlawan,
live in Kabul; Aliya, a university lecturer, was
in the country’s north. They spoke on the
condition that only an initial, nickname or
first name be used because of fears for their
safety.A
fter the Taliban took power, some women
tried to push back. A week after the
northern city of Mazar-e Sharif fell, Aliya,
a 27-year-old university lecturer, felt her past
life slipping away.
“I am waiting, staring at the ceiling, waiting
for what will be decided for us,” she said.
She had applied for the U.S. green card
lottery when she was studying in Iran in 2019.
When she won a year later, her feelings were
mixed. With it came the promise of more
freedom, but she felt an urge to teach women in
her home country.
That in itself now felt like an act of resistance.
“I must be here,” she said. “I want to say: I’m
here, I’m active.”
In early September, the university where she
worked circulated rules for returning to classes
from the Ministry of Education for the “Islamic
Emirate of Afghanistan” — the name used by
the Taliban for the country when it was previ-
ously in power, from 1996 to the 2001 U.S.-led
invasion.
“All students and staff are required to ob-
serve the religious hijab,” the circular said. “It
should be black in color.”“I go to university because I
do not want the rights of these
students to be lost. Otherwise
I would not be able to wake
up every day from the despair
and depression.”
Aliya, 27An example sent alongside showed a long,
black abaya more typical of that worn in the
Persian Gulf, with a head and face covering,
black socks and gloves.
Aliya balked.
She decided to push the boundaries and wear
her normal style, which is religiously conserva-
tive, but colorful. She said administrators sent
her home to change.
And while she returned to teaching, she said
her students did not. Some had left, some were
too frightened.I
n Kabul, Pahlawan and her friends were
mobilizing protests against the Taliban. It
started on Facebook, Telegram and Whats-
App.
“I wanted to be involved in a peaceful
protest,” said Pahlawan, 27, a poet and photog-
raphy student. She didn’t tell her parents that
she was going to the first one. The Taliban, she
recalled, used tear gas, but there were no
beatings. Her confidence grew.
On Sept. 8, she went again, even though her
father had asked her not to.
The Taliban took out pieces of rubber hose to
beat away the crowd, she recounted the next
day. When she dropped her cellphone and bent
to pick it up, she said, one member of the
Taliban lashed her across her back.
Her father forbade her from going to any
more protests. They became less frequent any-
way.K
heard of her neighbors being robbed by
armed men. Her aunt whispered of peo-
ple she knew taken in the dark and never
seen again. Her uncle said a severed head
appeared in the gutter outside his house. They
told her they believed the man had worked for
the former government.
“I haven’t gone out because of the fear,” K s aid
in September, a month after the Taliban had
taken power. A younger woman with no male
family members in Kabul, she thought if she
went outside alone, she would become an
instant target. “If we need groceries, my mom
will go out to buy those.”
Before the Taliban took over, K worked as a
kindergarten teacher and for the former gov-
ernment’s Ministry of Interior Affairs. She
would go to dinner parties and lift weights at
the gym. Now unable to work, she waited at
home afraid, hoping to one day join her brother
and his family, who are in the United States
under a special immigrant visa.
One day in October, she said she saw two men
taken from her neighbor’s house. “They weren’t
even working with the government,” she said.
“But they were Hazaras,” referring to the ethnic
Shiite group.
The women followed by The Washington
Post all feared a return to the old days of
targeting linked to their faith. K, Sajida and
Pahlawan are also from the Hazara minority
group, long persecuted by the Taliban, while
Aliya is from the tiny Sadat minority, which has
suffered similar discrimination.
“I don’t think there’s a s afe place for Shiite
people in Afghanistan anymore,” K said after a“I don’t have a gun to go to
war, but I have my voice.”
Pahlawan, 20“I am worried that someone
will report me. If the Taliban
comes and takes me, I have no
man to defend or protect me.”
K, 32Portraits of fear and loss
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROSHI ROUZBEHANI
The Washington Post interviewed four women under Taliban rule in Afghanistan o ver the past four months through weekly phone calls and regular WhatsApp messages.
They shared photos and videos of their lives, which informed the illustrations in this story. For a more immersive, animated reading e xperience, visit wapo.st/afghan-womenbombing in mid-October that killed dozens of
worshipers at Shiite mosques in the cities of
Kandahar and Kunduz. The attack in Kunduz
was claimed by the Islamic State.
A terrorist attack in Kabul killed her father
when she was a child. But she said she has never
felt more in danger or trapped.
“All the doors are closed on Afghans,” she
said.O
n Aug. 16, the last day of classes at the
American University of Afghanistan, s tu-
dents received an email: Sessions would
be canceled as Taliban militants had entered
Kabul.
“I am as worried about all of you as I am
about my own family,” a p rofessor wrote to
Sajiida and other students in an email, which
she shared with The Post. “Please take care of
yourself while we go through this unexpected
change.”
Sajida, 23, had expected to receive her diplo-
ma. She wanted to get her master’s degree
abroad and one day become an Afghan business
executive.
“Now my dream in Afghanistan is to stay
alive,” she said. “My family and my safety is
important for me.”
Sajida said she spends most of her time at
home, preparing dinner as her brothers go off
to school each day. She was able to continue
working for a nongovernmental organization
that helps pregnant women receive education
and care.
In November, desperate for some return to
normalcy, Sajida took a risk and went into the
office. It felt comforting to return to her
workspace again. But not everything was back
to normal. Her father came with her as an
escort.
“I am afraid to travel alone,” she said.
Pahlawan spent the days knitting and laying
out tomatoes to dry on the roof.
K took to gardening.
K, who lives at home with her mother, found
the monotony unbearable.
“I feel trapped,” she said one October day. “I
don’t have much to do at home.”
She said she and her mother listened to the
radio and watched television, but their favorite
soap opera from Turkey was no longer avail-
able.T
he music that had once filled Afghan
cities, blaring from ice-cream shops and
restaurants, was gone.
Pahlawan’s days had once been full: teaching
illiterate women in the mornings and studying
in the afternoons. She also worked at a r adio
station. But her independence had been
erased.
Her fears were realized one day in November
when she was out with her mother. They were
out without a male escort, known as a mahram.
A pickup truck stopped in front of them, she
recalled in tearful voice notes on the day, and in
later phone calls.
“What are you doing here?” she remembered“Our freedom has become
very limited, especially
working women.”
Sajida, 23“Before, across the whole
city, music could be heard ...
but yesterday there wasn’t
any music.”
Aliya, 27the Taliban gunman asking. She said her mom
had high blood pressure and needed to walk.
“What is your job?” another asked.
She froze. She had a mask on, but had spoken
on television at the protests.
One of the men was getting closer to
Pahlawan and her mother raised the bottle of
water in her hand to hit him away. But he hit
her mother in the face first, with a purple
bruise rising instantly. Her mother begged the
men to forgive them, she said, with the
Taliban responding: “This should be the last
time you roam around without a mahram. Get
lost.”
Pahlawan’s f ather had never been complete-
ly supportive of her goals in life. He wanted her
to keep her head down and give up on
photography and journalism. They argued
more. Her emails to foreign embassies have led
nowhere.
“Unfortunately, I’m not so good,” she sobbed
into the phone. She busied herself trying to
raise money for projects to help increasingly
destitute families in her neighborhood.
Sajida had similar feelings of despair.
“I am lost. I have lost my motivation and
energy I had before,” she said. “Now, I just think
of peace and security.”F
or Aliya, an appointment for an interview
at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Paki-
stan, pinged through her inbox in late
September.
She made it across the border, but as she
escaped she said she felt numb. She cried for
her family, and her country. With a U.S. visa
eventually in hand, she finally made it on a
plane to San Francisco to stay with family
friends near Sacramento.
“I finally arrived after a journey full of
weariness and pain in a place where I always
wished to be,” she said.
It’s only when she hears the news from home
that the sadness creeps back.
For the women in Kabul, the situation is
worsening as winter sets in. Food has become
more scarce and heat more expensive. Pahla-
wan said her family’s savings are running out.
They have cut back on meals and buy less bread,
because it’s too expensive. From her window, K
watches people burn plastic and old boots
because they don’t have fuel. “People have
gotten sick from it,” she said.
The days ahead now seem a reminder of lost
dreams.About this story
The reporting in this story is based on the
women’s personal accounts. Reporters Loveday
Morris and Ruby Mellen stayed in touch with
the women over four months with weekly
phone calls and regular WhatsApp messages.
The illustrations in this piece are based on
photos and videos shared by them. Some of the
women used nicknames or initials out of fear
for their safety.“There is no war right now in
Afghanistan, but worse than
the war is the tyranny.”
K, 32“I finally arrived after a
journey full of weariness and
pain in a place where I
always wished to be.”
Aliya, 27