Editor’s note: When the American attacks on the Taliban began in 2001 our writer was a child and her family sought safety in a village where they lived with six families in one house, with a yard and wall around them. Later, they fled to a Pakistan refugee camp.

The weather was rainy. My body shivered violently, but I couldn’t move my hands.
The whole place had an incredible stillness.
Streets were hazy, and my eyes searched through the mist.
I chose my steps carefully.
I heard a voice and felt led to it, a whimper of a child looking at me.
Her eyes were like bright stars, but behind the light was fear and grief.
I peered deeply at her to uncover her secrets—when I moved closer,
I found that her whole body was shaking and her feet were bare.
She stood in the still, dark street.

She reminds me of my childhood.
Of a time that I sat in a big enclosure, a closed yard.
I didn’t have the right to play with my friends.
At every sound of a bomb that rang in my ears, I ran to my mother’s arms.
This dreadful sound became the song of my life that separated me from the world.
Every time I tried to get out of the enclosure I couldn’t.
I tried to see outside the wall of our home, but I was scared.
Even my dreams were not my own. Every night I dreamed that someone wanted to
take my father from us, and he is the closest person to me.
But among all these nightmares, a beautiful woman appeared, saying,
“My daughter, this is life. “
I would hide myself in the green trees and grass.
My mother tried to calm me with sweet words, but during that time, among the bombs,
I was crying and incapable of seeing everyone around.

I was a child, an Afghan girl who will always fight the difficulties of those years.
Yes! I saw children in doorways, waiting for their mothers who were dying,
who would never come home.
I am a witness to a young boy who died, a mother’s only child.
I told myself, “I am a refugee child outside my country,
I don’t have the right to make choices, I must live poorly.”
I cried behind closed doors; my cold bed was full of teardrops.
My mother sat next to me and said, “We will again have the right to hope for our country
and for our lives. We will again wear new clothes in our country.”
But I can see that even in this green and beautiful world, girls still do not have many rights.

By Hila

AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq

World is a small word
From the eyes of my burqa
There is no geography
I can’t see my right,
Nor can I turn to my left
Hot in the summer, cold in the winter.

Wearing a burqa, I wear a tent
That hides my beauty
My mouth is blind
I have to eat my voice
My hands are locked in a cage
Sentenced to move or shake.
My legs too ashamed to walk
My long burqa sweeps the dust
I don’t know who I am under the tent
My heavy burqa,
You can’t see my pen
Nor my paper.

Under the burqa
I am an Afghan woman writer
Searching for a house of freedom.

By Norwan

My sweet sweet
Chocolate-flavored days
Of playing everywhere
Running like horses, jumping like deer
Drawing the sun in the mud
Counting the stars at night
My childhood, my cute days
Come again, hug me again
Just like the time mum did

Childhood!
I love to see your face
Forget the burdens of the world
Play with the kids
Think about if mum is awake
If she will comb my hair with her fingers

I laugh and play by myself
Then I cry:
Mummy!
Where is my cradle?
I am tired of this world

By Norwan

Photo by Robert Romano

I love you like a butterfly loves a candle,
Like a bird who wants to fly free in the sky
And a fish who wishes to swim in the river;
I love you as much as a thirsty, hungry person who wants drink and food  
as much as a dry country likes rain,
and as much as there is a soul in my body.
My eyes long to see you, my lips can’t wait
to kiss you, my hands reach out  to touch you.

Dear lovely Mother, you gave me a comfortable life
full of happiness, wishes and  love. When I felt cold,
you kept me warm in your cottony bosom
You gave me your delicious, sweet milk for my thirst
When sad, you made me happy, when I was sick, you healed me
with hard work and prayer, and whenever I was lost,
you offered me good advice showing the way.

You sat next to me when I was scared,
your shining wings lighting my bedside.
I want to offer you everything   
Let me use the dust on your feet instead of kohl on my eyes
Allow me to wash them with my tears and dry them with my hair
Let me look at your beautiful face full of luster
And sit near you while you sleep in beauty.
I would destroy the sun if it disturbs your rest.  
Let me fly to the sky and bring back shining stars
for you.

By Farahnaz

Come on, come on, little boy
hurry up, pick up your toy
Look out the window,
our sun is happy. Smile,
look at the mountain’s red face
The trees down there, shy,
look at nature, little boy
Life is lovely, enjoy
Come on, come on, little boy
hurry up, pick up your toy.

By Norwan

AP Photo/Altaf Qadri

The place I would wish to go more than anyplace in the world
is the city where my Grandma now lives,
Hamburg, Germany.

That would be my paradise.
I wish I had wings to fly there and stay just for a few seconds,
see my Grandma, and hold her hands tight for the last time.

I would tell her how much she means to me,
how I have always needed her,
that she is a blessing to me
and how much I love her.

I would beg her to stay,
not to leave me,
to hold my hands
smile for me as she always does,
share her pain with me.

Dear God, I am thankful for your
giving me such a grandmother.

By Yalda

Photo: St. Michaelis, Hamburg

Father!
I didn’t know you were wise
or who you were working so hard for.
I understood later.
I think now of all the pain
in your heart.

Ah! My father!
You live in this world
with dejected, sleepless eyes.
A tired body.
Hands, hardened and wounded,

warm, but not soft.
You always lived for us!
When I didn’t have comforts,
you never stopped working, nights, days.
Your world filled with hopes for me.

Your faith in my future
was the gift you brought from your homeland.
Ah, how I longed to see
a smile from your heart.
But life never let you.

By Zahra A.

Photo: Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images

Every day I sleep
In a garden of purple flowers
It is like the sky rained roses
when I sleep at night.
My ceiling of tulips,
How I enjoy the smell,
falling asleep well,
picking flowers,
one for Mommy,
one for Daddy.

By Norwan

My baby!
My little cutie
My sweetie parrot

You gave me a new life
A happy look
With you I paint hope
On the dress of sorrows
I can’t explain it in words
But I know there is
The beginning of a new
Love story between
Me and you.

You are healing me
In the time I needed you
You arrived
In the right moment
Life hugged me with kindness
My parrot! With you
I fly in the mountains of happiness.

My pains will be the old story of legends
I will capture all the nicest poems,
Write all my love lyrics,
Not censor my love.
My parrot! With you happiness promises
To stay with me, live with me.

It is true love I feel, my baby
With my eyes I promise you
Never a house of rain
When I look at your honey eyes
I forget tears
I forget fears.
My son,
My little parrot.

By Norwan

Photo by Jaime Mungia/Jhpiego

My eyes are the creator of myths.
Every day and every night they appear
My hopes, my dreams
A beautiful land of sunshine and a sapphire sea,
filled with happiness and power,
and an angel in the sunshine waving to the sea.

My hands aspire to create, but I stay silent
as the high hopes bombard my mind.
I dream of seeing my land among the garland
And of walking in a garden full of wreaths.
I am not strange, I am not an oddity! I am from the story of The Afghan Girl, the one I created,
the tired old scene with women and children in the land of Afghan that stole my smile.
Every day my poor feelings are hurt. I become cold and hard.
Ridiculed for feeling, for dreaming. As if this is something impossible?

I don’t know in which language I can say I am an Afghan girl. My hands are steel. My feet are
     steel, too hard even for thorns to pierce me. With which voice can I shout,
I cannot bear the tiredness, silence and tears!
Where is my voice? I cannot look at a barefoot, bewildered child in the wreckage of my land
     anymore. I must find for myself how to raise my voice, how to smile with my high hopes.

Have Afghan people no empathy? I shall not give in like others. I am an Afghan Girl with a
     vision, like many who want freedom I am a combatant, a champion who will fight for her
     land, for her people, the children.
I will fight for all we lost in a storm. I want them back
And will get them by the power of my pen and knowledge.

By Hila

AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen