46 The Times Magazinearzia, 14, was at school when she
heard the news. “I didn’t believe
it,” she says in her near-perfect
English. “We knew the Taliban
had taken over other cities;
I never thought they would reach
Kabul so quickly.” But when
she went home that evening her
elder sister, Najma, 28, who had
just tried and failed to withdraw
her life savings from the bank, confirmed it.
Najma, old enough to remember the last
brutal era of Taliban rule in the late Nineties- the public stonings, the beheadings, the
severing of hands – knew they would have to
leave immediately. Not only were the family
ethnic Hazaran (infidels in the eyes of the
Taliban), Marzia was known via YouTube as a
talented singer, a grave offence under sharia.
“The first thing we did was burn all our
documents,” Marzia continues, absently picking
at the edge of her chador. “We even burnt all
my father’s clothes, because even though he
had passed away, he was known to have worked
with westerners.” Within 48 hours, with just
one small backpack apiece, the family had left
their home in western Kabul for good. “I didn’t
even have time to say goodbye to my friends,”
she says, her ashen, preternaturally adult
composure suddenly faltering at the memory.
We are sitting in a bleak, high-ceilinged room
in a safe house on the outskirts of Islamabad,
Pakistan, the dusty afternoon sun streaming
through a cracked window. In one corner, at
right angles, are two tattered, pancake-thin
mattresses; in the middle of the floor, there’s
hot tea in glasses and a bowl of hard caramels
to use, Afghan-style, as a sweetener.
Marzia is part of a 179-strong community
of schoolgirls, human rights activists and
advocates of female education who collectively
made the perilous overland journey between
Afghanistan and Pakistan last August. Like
most of the girls, she had been a pupil of
Marefat, a school that my mother, Frances
D’Souza, co-founded in 2002 in a poverty-
stricken district of western Kabul after the end
of the last Taliban occupation. The brainchild
of Aziz Royesh, whose dream had always
been to teach his fellow Hazaras the
tenets of democracy, Marefat started out
as a bombed-out, roofless shelter with just
30 pupils. By the time Kabul fell in August
2021, it had 4,000 pupils, more than half of
whom were girls. Many of them would go on
to university in the UK and the US.
It was in 2009 when I first visited.
(Reluctantly, because my beat back then
as a writer for Vogue was more handbags
and hairdressers than war zones.) Instantly
beguiled by Royesh’s irrepressible optimism
and the bold curiosity of the girls, I wrote
about it for this magazine as soon as I came
back, compelled to spread the message of
hope. Having always regarded my mum’s work
(heading up human rights organisations such
as Article 19, the International Relief and
Development Institute and so forth) with
studied disinterest, something had clicked
for me on that first visit. I suddenly got why
she did what she did. Or rather, the elastic
band I’d pulled on so hard over the years to
separate myself from her and her worthiness
slackened. What I am trying to say is that, if it
weren’t for my mum, I wouldn’t be here. It is
almost as though I owe it to her, campaigning
to help get these girls to safety. The baton, as
it were, has been passed on.
The “mission” to help the girls escape
took shape last June when Royesh emailed
to say he was in trouble. Only weeks earlier,
a neighbouring school in Dashti Barchi, astone’s throw from Marefat, had been bombed,
brutally massacring more than 100 Hazaran
pupils, most of whom were girls. The Taliban
had started sending him detailed death
threats, promising that he and his family
were next. If Marefat wanted to stay standing,
clearly Royesh, who had become such a
prominent figure not just in the community
but around the world, had to leave. Did
I know anyone who could help?
In the interim, his eldest son, Abuzar,
whom I’d first met when he was a shy
teenager at Marefat, but who was now a tech
entrepreneur in Palo Alto, had consulted his
fellow Stanford graduate and entrepreneur,
Justin Hefter, to see if he had any ideas.
Abuzar also contacted his friend Jeff Stern,
the author of the New York Times bestseller
The Last Thousand, about Marefat. He was in
touch too my friend, the author Bella Pollen,
who first visited Kabul with me in 2014 and
has been a firm supporter ever since.
After we all got on that first Zoom call
together, four more people joined: Abuzar’s
wife, the journalist Tahera Hedayati; Afghan
documentary-maker Mohammad Behroozian
and his wife, Manizhe, a women’s rights
advocate, both based in Chicago; and Jennifer
Selendy, a friend of Abuzar’s who headed
her own law firm in New York. Thus the
30 Birds Foundation, as we called ourselves,
was formed, and we joined the scramble of
NGOs, alt-right buccaneers and disparate
rookie groups like ourselves to “extract” as
many desperate Afghans out of the country
as we could.
Royesh and his family (thanks mostly to
Hefter and Stern’s contacts in the US State
Department and a group of former Marines)
made it out of Kabul on a US airlift to Qatar
in early September last year (they are now
resettled in Washington DC). But what about
the girls and their families?M
‘WHEN THE TALIBAN
ARRIVED, WE BURNT ALL
OUR DOCUMENTS. WE
DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO
SAY GOODBYE TO FRIENDS’
A protest demanding the Taliban authorities
reopen schools for girls, Kabul, March 26PREVIOUS SPREAD: GETTY IMAGES. THIS SPREAD: GETTY IMAGES, DANIAL SHAHAn armed Taliban patrol in Kabul