By :Zahra Aslampoor, sister of Anisa Aslampoor who was killed in the attack
When the date for the Kankor University Entrance exam was announced, I saw hope on Anisa’s smiling face. She was only a few steps away from her biggest dream.
I said to myself, this is a girl that all my family will be proud of. Maybe she will be a salve for the calloused hands of our father who has worked day and night all his life so that his children can live comfortably with pride.
My father believed we were about to have the third doctor in our family. We all loved Anisa, an angel in our home, immensely. Even the youngest of our family, Komail, paid special attention to her. We all wanted to support our angel.
In recent weeks, Anisa was talking about her brilliant results in the mock exams every day. Two weeks before the bombing, she said to me, “Guess, how much I have scored?” When I asked how much, 335 marks out of 360,” she replied. That grade allowed her to enter the medical faculty of Kabul university.
Lately, she’d been having some stomach problems. She would go to the library early in the morning without breakfast, and she would come and eat her breakfast and lunch together at 5:00PM when she was done with her tuition course. But two weeks before the blast, she was so healthy that you didn’t think she was suffering from anything.
Just two days before the attack (Wednesday), she had gone to Zainab Kobra school for biometrics. When she returned home she spoke with our brother Rahmat with pride about the fight for education. “Know the value of our school,” she said. “The foundations of that school were built from the blood of our martyrs.”
The night before her test exam at Kaaj education centre, Anisa asked our father to wake her early in the morning. She didn’t want to miss the test. Early the next morning I heard my father.
“Anisa, my daughter! Wake up so you don’t miss the test.” Then my father went to recite the Qur’an, which was held on Friday mornings at the house of one of our relatives. As Anisa wanted to be on time, she began to hurry. I prepared some morning tea for her and she ate it. I was on my way back from the bakery when I saw Anisa leaving the house and walking towards me in the alley. She was dressed head to toe – her clothes, scarf, and shoes – were all black.
As we crossed paths, Anisa turned to me and smiled. Maybe I am the happiest person in my home who was the one to see Anisa’s last smile.
Around 7.00AM in the morning, my mother and I were having morning tea when we heard the huge explosion. My mother was instantly worried. But I consoled her that it might not be an important issue.
But now I think my mother had somehow felt her dearest daughter had been torn to pieces. Tears had filled up in her eyes and she sat down on the dirt with a long sigh.
I called my father on the phone. He said, there was an explosion in Kaaj tuition center. I understood then what terrible misfortune awaited us because that is where Anisa was doing her exam. My father was one of the first to arrive at Kaaj, but there was no trace of Anisa. He looked for her among the dead and wounded. Nothing. Then he looked for her at the hospitals.
He went to Mohammad Ali Jinnah Hospital. But at the entrance gate, he was met with horrible treatment by the Islamic Emirate forces. “I even threw myself at the feet of the troops begging them to please let me go inside. They didn’t allow me,” my father told me.
When he was finally permitted to enter the hospital, he looked at each of the wounded and the dead bodies that had been brought there one by one, but still, there was no trace of Anisa. I don’t know how my father didn’t see Anisa’s body. Maybe he just desperately didn’t want his daughter to be there.
My mother usually cannot walk for more than five minutes. But that day she walked the streets and searched Alemi and Imam Zaman hospitals in the west of Kabul. But Anisa was nowhere to be found.
But eventually, my mother found her. She recognized Anisa from her headscarf and the watch and earrings that she had bought for Anisa.
Anisa was finally found. But her soul had left to heaven a long time before. I fainted when I heard the news. When I regained consciousness, I was standing by Anisa’s blood-soaked corpse. I saw that even after her death, she looked peaceful, a faint smile on her face. She was sleeping freely and magnificently. It was as if she had achieved all her dreams.
Why did Anisa look so heroic? Because even with her death, she wanted to say that no one can prevent the blossoming of a generation through suicide bombs and explosions. Maybe Anisa was confident that her peers will not let the flag of wisdom fall to the ground. She knew that science and knowledge have flowed in the veins of the heroines of this generation.
Yes, that was an impressive message of Anisa.
My sisters! Let’s not let the death of my martyred sister Anisa and all the daughters of Kaaj be in vain. Let’s not allow the enemies of knowledge to achieve their dark goals.
May God give us strength!
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