By Salik
Humaira Shafayi, a student
We would sit a mock exam every Friday to prepare for the university entrance exam. Like any other Friday, we went to the Kaaj education center at 6.00am. We got the test papers and were busy discussing the questions. I was sitting with Shabnam, Zahra, and Marzia on a bench in the third row on the right side of the classroom. We were supposed to have the test and then do a seminar on what field we might choose to study.
I had just finished the mathematics section of the exam when we heard gunfire outside the classroom. I don’t know what time it was.
I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think of anything. After all, a girl who has not heard gunfire this close her whole life must be afraid and shocked. One of the girls called out, “Calm down, don’t scream, keep your heads under the bench!” I crouched under the bench and pressed my hands tightly to my ears so that I could not hear the sounds.
But moments later, I heard a terrible sound. It silenced the screams of all my classmates forever. A sound that shattered their hearts and souls and all their hopes and dreams.
When the bomb happened, the girls who were sitting on the same bench with me, Shabnam, Zahra, and Marzia, all three of them died. I was the witness to all of them dying. As I stayed hiding under the chair, their blood was pouring on my head and face and all over my body. I could hear their moaning, crying, and screaming. I sometimes wonder if those moans and cries and screams were not because their bodies were torn apart, but because their dreams were torn apart. Dreams that they had lived for a lifetime, that they had struggled and studied day and night for.
Someone pulled the bench from above me. I stood up and was screaming from the bottom of my heart and looking for Shabnam. I wanted to know if they were alive or not. I was hoping that they were alive. Maybe they had gone out of the classroom or like me, they were hiding under a bench, but no.
The scene around me at that moment was terrifying. There were the bodies of my classmates in the dirt and blood everywhere. Friends with whom I was joking with just moments ago, but now I can’t recognize them. Everyone was drowning in their own blood.
As I was leaving the classroom, I felt something under my feet. I looked down and saw it was a severed leg cut off from the knee. It was the leg of my classmate who was sitting next to Shabnam.
These days I am trying to make my friends’ dreams come true both for myself and for my friends who died. I have promised this to my friends. The only thing that makes me study and try harder is their sweet memories. They had high thoughts and dreamed big and had ambitious spirits.
Although girls are banned from going to school and university and they are not allowed to sit the university entrance exam, I must say that no power can take the pen from our hands. If they cut off our hands, we will write with our blood.
Najibullah Najib, a teacher
I was in the classroom of the second branch at the Kaaj education center. At around 7:15 in the morning, I got a call. I don’t normally answer calls in the classroom, I don’t know why I answered that day. It was one of my students and without any greeting or introduction, he told me that there had been an explosion in the classroom of the first branch. I was shocked. I couldn’t say anything. I kept silent for a while and just looked at the students in my classroom who were all staring at me in shock.
I was afraid that a similar incident could happen here. I sent everyone home. I immediately came to the first branch with Mokhtar Moddaber, the principal of the center, and came across a heartbreaking scene. It was really scary and heavy. One side of the classroom wall had collapsed, and half of the ceiling had come down. The students that we had promised a day earlier to celebrate together if they are included in the list of the ten best university entrance exams, I saw with my own eyes covered in dirt and blood.
I wanted to do something, pull out the wounded or carry the bodies to the car, but I didn’t have the ability. Some students came and said, Teacher, you should not be here, it is dangerous. Then a girl came and said in a hurry that the teacher, Ummul Banin was among the dead. My soul became numb. I couldn’t move, I didn’t believe that my sister was among the dead. I went to see if it was really Banin or someone else, but whoever I saw, I didn’t recognize my sister in all the dirt and blood. I told the staff member in charge of the canteen to go and see if it was Ummul Banin or not. He left and after what seemed like a few seconds he came back and said, “Banin is also dead.”
Ummul Banin, Marzia, Zahra, Fatima and other students were all my sisters. I loved everyone. On that day, I saw about 60 of my sisters in dirt and blood. I saw that their bodies and souls had been shattered, and their dreams had flown.
After this bloodshed, we had completely lost hope. But a mobilization group was formed and the students came to the center again and even helped us to rebuild and repair it. Students who had graduated from the center years ago came to work and helped fix the wall and ceiling of the classroom.
This movement of all the university and school students and people motivated us and gave us the strength to try harder and that’s how we got the center back on its feet. Now that one year has passed since that heartbreaking event, our classes are more vibrant than ever.
Mohammad Reza Ahmadi, father of Zahra Ahmadi who died in the blast
Zahra was Mohammad Reza’s oldest of four daughters. She was a mother to an only son who has just turned five years old.
It was about 9:00am in the morning. Marzia’s brother, another victim of the Kaaj incident, called to tell me that there was an explosion in the center.
Both Marzia and Zahra have been killed.
My ears became deaf when I heard his words. I heard nothing more. I immediately went to the center. I searched for her everywhere but I could not find her. I went to Watan Hospital, but she was not there as well. I went to Mohammad Ali Jinnah Hospital, but she was not there. I knocked on every door I could until 1:00pm in the afternoon, but I could not find Zahra. Until I went to the forensic morgue.
The morgue was full of corpses. Finally, I recognized her from her shoes and half of her face. Half of Zahra’s face was full of shrapnel. Her head was cracked, and her brain was shattered.
