By Azada
Fatima Amini is so determined in her interests that her online fans have dubbed her Dokhtar-e-Bahar – Daughter of Spring, or Spring Girl. The term evokes her excelling despite the odds, like springtime shoots post winter pushing through soil and stones.
The eight-year-old’s fame has grown from videos on social media of her odd pairing of talents – poetry and skateboarding, neither of which have come to her easily.
She first discovered skateboarding at six years old. Two years on, the relentless Taliban restrictions on girls and women have meant Fatima practices outside less and her family is more fearful than ever.
These days she waits until the busy streets near her home in West Kabul are deserted so she can practice skating far from prying eyes.
“Every time I decide to practice, my family opposes it. For example, they say, ‘Where will you practice? There’s no place to practice. Which alley have you found that’s not blocked?’” Fatima says.
“Those words sometimes give me negative energy, but still, I haven’t given up on practicing.”
Fatima began teaching herself flips and kicks on a skateboard by watching YouTube videos.
“My family didn’t pay attention to my interest,” she says, shrugging it off as normal fare for the seventh child in an eight-daughter family.
“Usually in a family with many daughters in Afghanistan, parents don’t pay much attention to their education. Similarly, when I started skateboarding, I didn’t receive any reaction. I just always practiced by myself.
“I fell to the ground several times, and my hands and feet got injured. Practicing without any master instructor was difficult for me, but still, I continued practicing at home every day.”
A neighbor gave her a pair of his old sneakers to help protect her feet.
“I had to have skate shoes for practice. [My parents] couldn’t buy me shoes, so I wore the neighbor kid’s shoes, which were much bigger than my feet,” Fatima says.
Skills stifled under a growing fear of the Taliban
There was a time when Fatima could have had skateboarding classes that were offered to girls of all ages in Kabul. But after the Taliban seized power of the country in 2021 they banned all women’s sport, both professional and recreational.
Fatima has taught herself more than six skateboarding tricks, but since cutting back on practice outside her home, it has become harder to train. Until last winter, an older sister would often accompany her when she went outside, but since the Taliban started arbitrarily detaining girls, they no longer go out as much.
“After the Taliban started imprisoning girls, I haven’t gone [outside] to practice with my sisters anymore. Since then, on some days like Fridays, I will go to practice with my father, but I don’t feel safe,” Fatima says.
At the start of 2024, the Taliban began a campaign of randomly detaining women and girls they saw in streets under the pretext of an “improper hijab”. Many of those detained have reported being severely mistreated and abused, and their families have had to pay extortionate amounts of money to have them released.
The U.S. Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls, and Human Rights Rina Amiri posted on X (formerly Twitter) that some women and girls who were detained by the Taliban for clothing offences have been so traumatized that they’ve resorted to self-harm and suicide since their release.
A poetic champion at four years old
Lucky for Fatima, her other passion is a skill she can hone at home. Filling her bedroom walls are more than 30 certificates of achievement for poetry recitation.
She started reading poetry at the age of four. The first time she competed in a poetry competition, she was four-and-a-half. Initially, organisers said she couldn’t enter due to her age, but once she had demonstrated her prowess, she was allowed to enter.
She recited a poem by poet Habib Beheshti called Tahamol kon watan een dard, darman mishawad rozi – Endure, homeland, this pain; Someday it will be cured. To everyone’s amazement, she won first place out of around 200 participants.
“It was my first time stepping onto the stage. I was stressed, and I didn’t expect to win,” she says.
“When they announced the result, it was shocking for myself and my family. I couldn’t believe that out of two hundred participants, I would come first.”
Since that day, Fatima has stood in pole position on the podium many times for her poetry recitation.
In 2021, she was awarded the title of the best reciter by the Positive Life Empowerment Organization from around 300 participants. And she has achieved the title of the best reciter of the year by Jahan Danish Academy from 200 participants. In 2022, she was named in the top ten reciters from 1,000 students at her school.
A family ponders how to support Fatima
Fatima’s sister Kobra, 24, says her sister’s remarkable success has changed everyone’s perception of her and the dynamic in her family.
“We are eight sisters – we don’t have any brothers. Usually, in Afghanistan, having many daughters in a family means there’s some distance between parents and daughters, as parents often don’t pay as much attention to daughters,” Kobra says.
“But when Fatima became famous, she also became the focus of our family’s attention.”
Fatima is now in grade 5 and can recite over five hundred poems. She says her poetry is mostly patriotic, and she loves Afghanistan. But she is concerned for her path ahead if she remains in the country.
After she finishes sixth grade, she will no longer be allowed to attend school. Under Taliban rules, all education for girls above grade six have been banned.
Even when Fatima was in second grade, she felt the impact of the Taliban’s closure of high schools.
“The day I heard that schools were closed to girls above the sixth grade, I was in the second grade, and I could still go to school. But I was very upset and cried to myself. I never thought schools would remain closed for so many.”
Kobra says her family is considering sending Fatima abroad because they recognize that even with Fatima’s resilience, she is likely to end up confined to a house like most Afghan women if she stays in Afghanistan.
Fatima launched her fame with the lines “Endure, homeland, this pain; someday it will be cured”. However, as deeply connected as she feels to Afghanistan, she too understands that her chances of living out her life enduring Taliban rules is not a life.
“My dreams, I think, will just turn into an unrealistic fantasy,” Fatima says.
