An Afghan lady discovers her own voice

23 June 2023 – Guest article by Salil

This simply beautiful post speaks for itself. It is reproduced more or less as received – with only punctuation added, spelling corrected, and most minimal editing. I hope that Salil will write more and perhaps eventually under her real name which has been verified but withheld  for her protection.

In the name of God who owns the world and knows all our hearts:

Today, after 12 years, I want to write something again. It is about myself but I don’t know where I should start.  I get excited and  I must do it as I promised to one of my best friends that I will write my bio.  So I just want to write it like a story. It is the story of an Afghan lady with a lot of problems who can stand on her own feet and fight for her rights that God and law gave her.

I am writing about that lady who has a lot of wishes and wants to shine like the sun in the day and the moon at night. This lady is from Afghanistan, an ancient land with 5000-year-old traditions. She is born in 1996 in an enlightened and educated family in the heart of Afghanistan, in lovely Kabul.

But , three months after her birth, her country is captured by the Taliban for the first time and her family faces a lot of problems. But with a lot of wishes, they try to grow their daughter.

After five years when her country reaches freedom, she starts her primary education in 2001. She loves to study and read different books. She loves to have communication with different types of people with different customs and traditions. Fortunately, she completes primary and secondary education with award of the second-best top student in the school with a 98.8 percentage mark.

Her interest is first in mathematics and then literature. But due to lack of job opportunities in literature, she decides to start higher education at the level of Bachelor in engineering of food technologies. Again she does her best to complete and finish the education with great scores and good fortune.

However, during her education, several times she faces challenges, humiliations and insults. Because people always tell her that this field is for males not for females and you cannot do this and you should not educate in engineering fields.

But she wishes to be an engineer and no one understands her and ignores her hopes. But she faces up to them and, in the end,  shows the result that females can do male tasks if they want and proves that anything is possible.

And when she is in the last semester of education, she finds a job in the UN as an intern. She is lucky to find a good job in a very short time and, meanwhile, she deals with the insulting words of the people because in this country people don’t have a clear mindset about a girl who works in such organisations.

She always does her best to be stronger and braver because she knows her own hopes and wishes; and it should be noted that she does all these with support of her parents. They give her hope and stand with her like a mountain, and she is always grateful to them. Because without their support it is impossible to deal alone.

After 5 years of working in UN with different contracts and different units, she receives a fixed term employee contract in supply chain in her interested field. When she starts to work in the UN, the main purpose is humanitarian aid. She fixes her goal to help her people who are dealing with a lot of challenges, like economic issues, non-employment  and other problems that her country faces with direct impact on her people.

Those problems affect her hard as she knows that she can’t do anything for them.  But she always prays for freedom, that freedom to make her people secure in all fields.

That lady is a pure Afghan lady that loves her country and everyday fights for its freedoms. I know that one day we will get back to our freedoms and know that nothing is impossible if we want.

I have a lot to write  and say about my own history but I want to be short.  Also, I should mention that I had left writing but one of my best friends inspired me to start again with a short bio of myself. Thank you, dear. You are amazing and believe me because until now no one had told me about writing and no one told me that I can write. I totally forgot my talent and it was hidden but now I feel different.

I am Salil. Thank you for reading.