By: Zakiya Akhlaqi
I was just seven when I lost my father. He was a member of former government’s forces in Wardak where he was killed in clashes with the Taliban in 2008.
I was in my first year in school, and I had learned to write my parent’s names. I waited passionately for my father to return home, so I write his name and gift it to him. But he couldn’t made it alive. His lifeless body was brought into our house. He was dead.
It was the first storm that struck our family. I was too young to understand the difficulties my young mother and I would face in the coming years.
Marrying the brother’s widow is an unpleasant but accepted tradition in Afghanistan. One and a half years after my father’s death, my mother married his brother-in-law as his second wife.
The problems between my mother and my uncle’s first wife forced us to leave our home in Bamyan and move to Kabul where we lived for over a decade.
My uncle and stepfather abandoned us in Kabul where he would come to visit us now and then. He spent most of his time with his first wife and children in Bamyan. He didn’t or couldn’t pay us enough money to cover our family expenses. My mother and I had to work to support ourselves financially. We both weaved carpet at home.
I spent one half of the day behind the carpet weaving loom, and the other half in school.
Every day was a struggle for twelve years until I graduated from high school. I spent mornings knotting on the warps of the carpet and studied in the afternoons and nights. My mother and I had to make enough money to eat and pay for my school expenses.
I worked hard in school and got good grades. I overcame every challenge until I graduated.
In 2021, I took the national university entrance exam, and I got a high score. I was accepted at Kabul Medical University, hoping to become a doctor and serve my country.
Then the Taliban returned to power. And for the second time in my life, I lost something important to me, something I worked hard to achieve.
I lost the hope of becoming a doctor and fled to Iran where my mother and I live as refugees like hundreds of thousands of Afghans who left the country in the past seven months.
