One day while I was going home from school I noticed a tall man with a long beard walking behind me. The next day, when the same man followed me, I became suspicious of him. Why was he staring at me as if I had done something wrong? On the third day, he walked toward me and stopped me. My body was shaking with fear. He said, “I will kill you if I see you going to school and leaving your home without a burqa.” I couldn’t say even one word to him. He ran away and disappeared into a side street.

I was shocked by his warning and weeping when I got home. My mother asked, “What happened to my angel, why is she crying?” I told my parents what happened. They consoled me and told me not to lose hope for getting an education.

I had struggled since starting school in Kandahar after my family returned from Pakistan when I was in the seventh grade. We had lived in Pakistan for 15 years during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. When I first went to school in Kandahar, I didn’t know anything about the Pashtu language. When I took the Pashtu book in my hand for the first time, I tried to read the name of the book. The book was called “Pashtu,” but I read it “Panbathu” because in my native language of Dari “sh” is pronounced “nb.” Afterward, I spent days and nights learning Pashtu so I could get my usual high grades.

When I was in ninth grade, I studied English and computers after school. Every day I returned home from school alone because my classmates had already left; they were not interested in studying the English language. The girls studying in Kandahar schools didn’t believe they should complete their education; they believed by the eighth or tenth grade, they should get married and be a slave for their in-laws. They got these ideas from their families.

When we first moved back to Afghanistan, I was curious to learn about the situation for women—their cultural, environmental, and educational status. But when we arrived in the hot, dusty weather of Kandahar, I found myself in a totally different world. I didn’t see any women without burqas or men without long beards.

After the day the old man threatened me, my father picked me up from school and took me home on his way to work. A month later, after my father dropped me at home, a man stopped my father’s car and commanded him to leave Kandahar and his job. If he refused, the man said, he would be killed.

My father informed the police, but they didn’t investigate. Days passed, my father continued his job, and I continued studying until one day en route to the office, a red Corolla suddenly rushed toward my father. Two people with weapons came out of the car and stopped him. “This is the final warning for you to stop your children from going to school and working with foreigners,” the men said. “We will give you one last chance and one last day in Kandahar. If you appear here tomorrow, it will be your last day of life.” As we had no chance to live in Kandahar, we packed that night and left Kandahar early the following morning.

Now I am in my twenties and am studying independently. I put all of my concentration into my work. I don’t know about the rest of my life—whether I will be permitted to complete my studies or will be a housekeeper for my in-laws—but I do know that life is beautiful and smiling when we have the freedom to live on our own.

According to Islam, getting an education is a basic right for every man and woman. Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that mostly Afghan women are not allowed to get an education, and the control of our lives is often in the hands of men. I wonder why women bow in front of all this stupidity in male-dominated countries like Afghanistan.

By Anonymous

Photo: Kate Holt / Corbis

Tonight I see a dark sky, shiny stars, and green plants. Everywhere seems quiet and peaceful, but my heart is crying for my destiny. My wishes have been burned to ashes.

My parents shocked me earlier today when during dinner they began discussing my marriage to a man who is about ten years older than me. I tried to defend myself by telling them, “I want to complete my studies.”

My mother replied, “Who told you not to study? You can continue your studies after your marriage. However, you will not need to because this man is very rich. Everything you require is available for you in his home, so stop arguing. This is our final decision. You have to marry him.”

My father called the man for tea. He arrived 20 minutes later with his family. The engagement ceremony was scheduled for a week later. It shocked and completely depressed me, and when I saw him my eyes were filled with tears, but I couldn’t do anything. He is not a bad guy; he respects my feelings, but I never wished to marry a man I didn’t love. It is my destiny. My life changed to a dark shade in one night.

My dream was to complete my studies, become an educated woman, be a well known person, support my family, and be on my own. When I presented my essay about my dreams in front of the class at school today my teacher praised me and encouraged me to write more. She said, “My daughter, try harder in your studies and I am sure you will have a bright future.”

I was so happy and excited to hear these words from my teacher, but tonight my destiny took me onto a totally different path, and all of my wishes perished. Although life is like a beautiful butterfly, being forced into marriage changed it into hell. I am feeling like I am a bird with no wings.

I am stuck between these two paths and don’t know what to decide. If I reject this marriage, I will lose my family. But if I accept this marriage, I will have dug a grave for all of my wishes. Without those dreams my life is meaningless; therefore sometimes I think the only way is to end my life. But the pitiful fact that there are many other women suffering from similar conditions, while currently I am taking my breaths, drags me back and provokes me to fight. The ultimate way is not suicide, but together we have to make Afghan people realize that women are not a property for sale or slaves whose purpose is to do housework.

I wonder why women have to stand a step behind the men, why we have to do everything our husbands and families say. What is the Afghan woman’s sin that we have to tolerate all these social problems?

Is there anyone to stop this senseless system, so that Afghan women don’t suffer anymore from these cruelties? Is there anyone who can give us our rights, our independence? Is there anyone who can make Afghan men realize that if there were no women then no one would be living in this world?

We women must have the right to make our life’s decisions. Our purpose is not to be slaves and produce children; but as Afghan women, we belong to and are living in a restrictive society with many oppressive traditions. We have to tolerate many harrowing situations and be patient with every cruelty. We have to be silent when others make the wrong decision for us—forcing us into marriage, not allowing us to get an education, not allowing us to work or spread our voice.

Although we feel that the world is intolerable, we have to be patient and live in fear.

By Anonymous

AFP/Getty Images

I could hear the neighbor guy insulting my Mom as they were arguing outside our apartment. “You bitch… stupid motherf****er…” Suddenly, I heard something fall down. I ran out and saw my mother on the ground, half conscious. The neighbor guy was still hitting her. I pushed him off, but he hit me in the face with his fist. My mother’s nose was bleeding; one eye was shut. My 13-year-old brother, Almas, was crying. I did not know what to do.

Finally, the neighbor’s wife managed to pull the guy downstairs into their home. We took my mom inside. Her nose seemed broken and blood was coming out like water. When she felt a little better she went to the police station near our apartment to complain about that neighbor guy.

We live in an apartment in a nice neighborhood with mostly good neighbors. But we had this neighbor who was very arrogant and scurrilous. Outside he was well mannered but at home he was someone else. We often heard him insulting his old mother and telling her really bad things.

This all started because of something small and worthless. When the lock of the main door was broken, my younger brother used to put an iron rod behind the main garage door to keep it closed so that no one can steal the motorcycle, cart, and his bicycle. This was going on for almost a week and my younger brother was like a doorkeeper to other apartment neighbors, opening the door for them and closing it after them.

One day this neighbor Ahmad came inside, and he did not put the iron behind the door. My little brother told my mom and she went outside and asked Ahmad why didn’t he put that rod behind the door? Would he take the responsibility if something is lost?

As soon as she said this Ahmad opened his mouth and closed his eyes and started saying insults that my mom in her 35 years of life had not heard from a man. She got really mad and threw her sandal at him, but it missed him, and then he ran upstairs and started beating her.

First, she went to complain at the nearby police station. Then she went to the hospital for stitches in her nose. Her left eye was purple and swollen. As she was going through this process, my other brother, Edris, came home and saw us with red eyes, crying. He asked us what happened and we told him.

He ran downstairs and knocked on Ahmad’s door before I could stop him. As soon as Ahmad opened the door, before my brother Edris could even open his mouth Ahmad pulled him inside. Then his father-in-law held my brother and Ahmad started hitting him all over, two against one. When my brother came upstairs, his face was red and his eye was swollen. He was not crying, but I knew that they beat him a lot.

Later that night, my mom came home and saw my brother in that condition. It was the worst day in my life.

My beautiful mom was beaten by a naamah’ram, a stranger. In Islam, men are two kinds for women: one is mahram. Mahram men are like father, brother, uncle, husband. But other men are naamah’ram, which means they cannot see us like mahram men can and of course they cannot touch us in any way. And my brother Edris was beaten by two guys. It was a mournful night for all of us.

After that night, the court process started. Imagine a single woman who wants to fight for her right in a country like Afghanistan and does not know about the process and there is no one to guide her correctly. Both my mom and my brother filled out complaints against Ahmad. It was clearly violence against a woman, but because he was a man no one in the court even allowed my mom to talk and defend her rights.

In the court, they treated my mom as the criminal and Ahmad as the victim. During that time the police put Ahmad in jail, but only for one night because he bribed the responsible people.  The court fined Ahmad a small amount of money, but my mom was not satisfied. She requested another court, but this one also fined him a small amount of money and that was it.

My mom went to every place she thought could help. She went to the Human Rights Commission, but no one helped. During all this process, my mother changed. She lost four kilos in one month, but worse than that, she was depressed.

She did not give up. Her goal was to see him in jail for at least six months. She even went to Kabul to the Supreme Court, but when they looked at her case, they told her nothing more can be done because the medical records she had were not strong enough. There was not any mention of the stitches. She came back home without being able to gain her rights.

Since then, she has changed. She still is the strongest person I have ever known in my life, but after that event she got depressed and whenever something comes up and reminds her of those days, tears fall down from her beautiful eyes. But she does not show it to us. I hope that as time goes by she forgets it little by little. I know that she does not allow such an event to weaken her. But I hope Allah makes it easier for her to forget such horrible memory.

By Anonymous

Photo – REUTERS/Caren Firouz

One day I had a bad feeling that something was wrong and I didn’t want to go to my office, but I went anyway. There I saw three people waiting for me, a woman and two men. I knew only one of them, a male colleague with whom I had once traveled to Panjshir Province for work. I apologized for making them wait, but wondered why they were there.

One of the men said they were waiting because they wanted to take me to Char Asiab. I had no idea where that was. “I can’t go without telling my family,” I said. They said it would be quick, but still I had to let my family know. I called my mother. She did not want me to go and said I didn’t have permission. However, they insisted I visit their project centers to write success stories, so I had no choice. I called my mother again to tell her I was going. She was very upset, but she could not help it.

On the way, I asked my colleagues about Char Asiab. They said it was a district of Kabul about seven miles south of the city. It took us two hours to get to the city of Char Asiab. It didn’t feel like it was part of Kabul Province because people dressed, walked, and talked differently. There was no downtown, only a few homes scattered around. Some were empty and half-broken. There were no livable homes. My male colleague in the front seat ordered us to cover properly for the sake of everyone’s security. I was shocked to hear this, because I thought we were still in a part of Kabul, where it wasn’t an issue.

We females had to cover ourselves with only our eyes showing. We visited tailoring centers, where I found girls of different ages trying to learn to support their families. Most were not going to school because their families didn’t permit this. We visited other centers that specialized in carpentry skills, motorcycle repair skills, bead work, and other such work. We interviewed women and took pictures. Everyone had problems to share, but we didn’t have any solutions for their problems.

When we were in the car going towards our last destination before returning to Kabul, my male colleague in the front seat, said: “Everyone keep looking around to make sure there are no Talib.”

“Talib? Why Talib?” I was shocked. “Isn’t this part of Kabul? How come there are Taliban here?”

He said they had been stopped three times in the past by cars full of Taliban, and there was the chance it would happen again. Everyone was scared and cautious. The woman with me in the back seat was mumbling some words of the Qur’an. I didn’t know what was going on. Where were we heading? I was scared about what would happen if the Taliban found out I am a college student in New York. Would they kill me?

Then we passed the area where there was a risk of meeting the Taliban. We uncovered our faces and thanked God. But it was not over. A car covered with mud was behind us. The men in the front seat shouted at us, saying: “Cover your faces. Here comes the Taliban.” We covered our faces immediately and they ordered us not to look back. The driver slowed and finally stopped, since the Taliban’s car stopped in front of ours. My colleague and the driver went out to talk to them. I could see three men coming out of the white Corolla in front of us. Two Talibs were wearing white long shirts and the other wore black. They all had turbans and long beards. I couldn’t really see properly, since my face was covered with a thick black scarf. I wore a big hijab and looked like a married woman.

After 15 minutes, the driver and my colleagues came back. One of them smiled and smiled and looked back at us, saying that we were safe. The other woman asked, “Were they really Talibs?”

“Yes, they were Taliban and we told them we have a pregnant woman in the car and we are taking her to a midwife in the nearby village,” was the reply.

I knew he meant me and I laughed to myself. The other woman is very slim and I am a chubby girl. Everyone in the car started laughing. My male colleague said the Taliban were not going to check to see if I really was pregnant.

“We’re not going to the other center,” he said. “Instead we are going to have our late lunch at one of the houses in the village because the Taliban might be following us. The son of this family works with us. Therefore, it’s safer to be here for at least an hour or two.” We stayed for an hour and a half and then traveled back to Kabul.

People think the Taliban are only in southern provinces of Afghanistan, but they are wrong. I saw Taliban near Kabul in June. It was shocking to see and hear them so close to the capital. I never thought I would be left alive if caught by the Taliban. But I was, and I am very thankful it is over.

By Anonymous

AP photo

Editor’s note: One of our longtime writers agreed to share her story, but only anonymously since few people in her life now know about her past.

I was sixteen years old, attending school and thinking about my future goals to be either a doctor or a journalist. I knew nothing of life, and I had no thought of marrying. One day my uncle, who is a doctor, came to our house and said, “You should not study, because you are a girl. You should get married.” I thought it was a joke because my uncle is a doctor and knew the value of education. I come from an educated family; almost all my relatives were educated. I was polite and said nothing. I got him tea, and then went to do my homework.

The next day, several relatives arrived at our house. I was not aware at first of what was going on, but then I understand they were at my home to buy me. I was such a pretty toy, a pretty toy to play with. The family that was proposing the marriage was discussing my cost with my father. At that time, I did not know I had any right to say I was not for sale.

Finally, they sold me for 6,000 US dollars. This is when my life problems started. My fiancé was uneducated and he forbade me to go to school. After one year, when I was seventeen, my husband divorced me, but I was already pregnant.

My baby arrived prematurely. The night he was born, I nearly died. It was a very bad night. All the doctors were working to save me and my child. My body was in a lot of pain, and I had no information about becoming a mother. When the midwife handed me my newborn, I remember she said, “You are still a child. Why do you want to give birth to another child?”

After the birth, my ex-husband took my son and left me with nothing. Here again, I did not have information. What should I do? I didn’t know. There was nobody to tell me, “It’s your right to take care of your own child.” Again, my family played with me.

After one year, I began to work and started my new life. I understood the things that were done to me were completely wrong. But I didn’t fully feel my anger. I worked in my province for four years. Then I decided to continue my education, and I asked my office to transfer me to another province, because in my province it was not possible for me to study.

I moved and began school. And one day, our teacher was giving a lecture about psychology. He was talking about marriage and he said that in Afghanistan, some parents do not think about the health of their daughters; they try to get them started on married life early, so girls who are sixteen years old get pregnant, and in this way they become ill or even lose their lives, and the life of the children is also difficult, often filled with illness, when they are born to a mother so young.

In my class, nobody knows about my past. I have told them nothing because it is Afghanistan and if they knew what happened, they would not respect me. If they knew, I would have to suffer as I did in my home province, where they called me “the divorced woman.” But during this lesson, I went back into my past and thought about what had happened to me when I was a child and knew nothing.

When I think about it now, I get too angry. At one point, I felt hatred toward my family because they had treated my life like a pretty toy. I was without information, but the elders had to know I was not ready to get married. They played with me and my life, and I had to respect their decisions even when those decisions were against my own future.

I wanted to fight their choices for me, but I was without knowledge, and so the problems from my past life remain with me until today. But now, I have a dream to start a program for women to let them know about these problems. I want to save other women. I hope those who read this story would help me continue on this job to teach young girls in the far-away districts of Afghanistan about their rights. I want all women to come with me and support me in this goal.

By Anonymous

photo by Nomadic f-stops

I live in fear. Because I married the man of my choice instead of my cousin, when a knock comes at the door my husband and I don’t dare answer. When we leave the house, we only hope we can return in the evening. Covering my face with a black veil, avoiding contact with my friends, hiding myself in public makes me feel alone and mad. I am fifty years older inside than I am on the calendar, and so very tired of the war in my life.

Current life is a cancer for me: when I take care of one problem, another grows. When that problem is a bit solved, the other is waiting. The biggest problem is my uncle, father of my cousin, who is a storm of torment in my life. He continues to follow and remind me that he is there for revenge. I guard myself when away from home. I must work to take care of my life. My husband earns only $30 a month.

My mom is another concern. She left the country out of fear of my uncle. She needs an urgent operation, but due to my own problems, I couldn’t afford to pay for that. Her harsh pain has been beyond her tolerance and she has wanted to end her life.

My in-laws are worried for our safety. If anything should happen to my husband, I would be to blame. My brother-in-law is reacting as a new uncle. He thinks I am a cheap woman who deceived his brother. He says I must make peace with my uncle or else stay at home and never go out. He told us to leave our current house and live with them instead. I agreed; otherwise, I fear he would contact my uncle and give me up to him.

I respect my in-laws because my husband is a kind man. He never cares what others say about me. He consoles me, is patient with my problems, and gives me hope that we will find a solution. But my in-laws think I am a highflying woman, a selfish, ignorant lady who values only her own desires and disrespects her family by marrying without permission. I have to have a baby; it is a question of must. To obey my in-laws, I would love to have a child; I would love to bring a change in my life, but I don’t want my children to have to share my destiny. I can’t bear to think my uncle might kill us and continue enmity against my children because I didn’t marry his son.

I can’t share my personal situation with legal officials because my uncle has connections and the winner is always the one with more money to bribe. If we were to leave for a neighboring country, we wouldn’t be able to afford life. I can’t share what is going on with my closest friends because they blame me for forgetting I am a woman and choosing my own husband, ignoring the customs. I am proud of my strengths, and that I stood up against everything. But I am destroyed inside; my soul is hardened. And I think my critics are right. I must deal with the cost of losing my poor mom. I bought my freedom, yet I can’t breathe. I bought my freedom, but not my happiness.

My husband reads the stories of famous men to me at night and he recalls my own energy. I am waiting for the day when I can get my master’s degree, and then open a school of ideology and teach our people to respect human rights so that the next, next, next, next, and next generations won’t have our destiny.

It is childish and silly, but every morning I open my notebook and list new desires, hopes, and plans for my unknown tomorrow.

By Anonymous

I Am For Sale, Part I

I Am For Sale, Part II

Editor’s note: This is an update from one of our regular writers about the worsening security situation south of Kabul. For her safety, we run this anonymously.

You say you want to help me but I am living in a situation where you cannot help me. All of my province is full of Talibs. Two days ago, two brothers were killed because the Taliban said they worked with the government. They were our relatives. One had two children, and the other left a pregnant wife. No one can talk, and all men wear beards.

Weddings are silent because no one can play music. I go to my office, and I love to go to work every day, but when the security is bad, Dad insults me, and tells me not to go. Mom hates my job. Only my brother supports my working, but he is not with us; the Taliban warned my brother not to come here anymore and so he can’t dare to come. When he comes home, it is in the middle of the dark night, and it is hard.

You say you want to help me, but I tell you you cannot help me. I come to Kabul to use the Internet, but my family doesn’t like me to come to Kabul. I would love to go to college but my family doesn’t agree.

I see the cows can go out, but I am a girl and cannot go out. If I go, Talibs will kill me, and no one will ask why.

By Anonymous

(AP Photo/Rahmatullah Naikzad)