Each day the rule of the Taliban continues, the conditions for girls and women become more inhumane. Commentary on Afghanistan has talked of life returning to normal and the situation becoming more settled, even as the experience of women and girls in the country grows only more unbearable.

I started an internship with a journalism classmate at one of Herat’s TV stations in August 2021. We had barely begun when the city, and then the country, fell to the Taliban.

In the history of human societies, there has been oppression of women. But none so systemic with their complete exclusion from society like what is happening in Afghanistan.

In our geography, being a woman is equivalent to suffering. A woman in every form has woven her web of grief. Being a mother, however, multiplies every pain. A woman who becomes a mother, along with other female sorrows, also suffers the pain of motherhood.