By Sina (pseudonym)
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.
When Afghanistan’s government collapsed, a panic seemed to descend on the city. Suddenly, you rarely saw a girl on the street or a man wearing business pants and collared shirts. Men began leaving their beards to grow. Everything had changed in an instant. Even the beauty of the city and the appearance of its people changed. It seemed to me even the minarets of Herat were bent and misshapen.
Soon after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, my classmate and I were on our way to the TV station on a motorbike. We’d made the trip many times before, but that day felt entirely different.
As soon as we turned past the minarets of Herat towards the crossroads of Tank-e-Malawi, my heart began to tremble, but I kept telling myself I had nothing to worry about. “The Taliban have nothing to do with you. You are a student,” I was telling myself. “You have not done anything wrong to be worried.”
When we passed the crossroads, I saw some Talibs with weapons in their hands standing on the side of the street in front of the Kabul-Herat transport station. Their hair was long and dark, their clothes looked streaked with dust and grime. They were watching the traffic pass by.
The road to the TV station felt longer than usual. There seems to be a heaviness in heart of the city, reflecting the heart of its people.
Before the Taliban captured Herat, my classmate and I would talk as we travelled the route between Jibril town and the TV office. That day, however, no words were exchanged between us. It was as if our tongues have been cut out.
A Talib on the side of the street raised his hand to stop our motorcycle. My heart began to race. My face burned and my mouth felt dry. I was terrified.
As soon as I got off the motorcycle, the Talib searched me and asked for my ID card. I suddenly remembered the pictures of the bruised bodies of the Etiala Roz newspaper reporters. They had been detained by the Taliban in Kabul and beaten to the point of almost dying. The image in my mind of their bloodied faces and injured bodies made me wonder whether journalism was considered a crime by the Taliban. Why would it be? But if not, why were they beaten so horrifically? These questions and a thousand more came to my mind. I have not yet found answers to them.
At that moment, with the Talib searching us, I was afraid my classmate and I would be arrested or beaten for being journalism students. To calm myself, I kept telling myself that I am not a criminal, “You are a student and that’s it. Don’t worry, you are not an important enough person to worry.”
The Talib, still brandishing his gun in one hand, searched me and my classmate’s documents and after seeing the motorcycle registration instructed us to go. We both got back on the motorcycle and went. After riding a few minutes in silence, we finally reached the gate of the office.
Posted on the wall, next to the bell, was a piece of paper headed with the words ‘Islamic Emirate’ and the Taliban flag. Under that was written, “This TV office has been searched by the forces of the Islamic Emirate, and no soldier has the right to search again without permission.” At the bottom of the paper, it was signed and stamped with Mawlawi’s name.
We rang the bell and the guard looked at us through the small peephole in the gate. “You came back?” He said as he opened the gate.
The usually busy multi-storey building felt empty. We walked into the office and noticed the TV transmitters were off. Many colleagues were present in the office, but everyone was busy on their phones. As soon as the news manager caught sight of me and my classmate, he turned to the others laughing, and said, “Look at these two! They are back again!” Then he turned to us, “You didn’t go to Kabul to get on a plane and leave the country?”
We did not reply to him. We didn’t know what to say. We both went to our usual seats and sat at the computer. Nearby the desks of our two female colleagues were empty. I later contacted them. They said they’d been told not to come. “The news director said the Taliban came to the office yesterday and said women are not allowed to work on TV until further notice.”
The network manager’s desk was also empty. He had fled with another one of our colleagues to Kabul in the hopes of making an evacuation flight. That day in the office, except for these few words when we arrived, no more conversations were exchanged between us. Of course, there were emails and conversations between the reporters and the manager. But that day, of our TV colleagues, no one paid attention to the two interns. They did not involve us, and everyone was focused on writing and sending emails to foreign organizations in the hope of being evacuated. I will never forget the heavy atmosphere in the office that day,l. It was eerie. And it was hard for me to believe.
I could never have believed that the friendly atmosphere and office banter of just a few days earlier could so swiftly disappear. It switched as drastically as the clothes on people’s backs. It was hard for me and my classmate to bear the 180 degree change in everyone.
We left the office that day without signing out and approving our papers as we usually would. We traveled back towards the township, again in silence. Herat was horrible that day. The streets were full of scared, angry people. The air was thick with stress. People were horrible to each other in ways that I didn’t expect.
That day when the Taliban took power, not only did Afghanistan’s political system and security forces collapse, the very fabric of Afghanistan collapsed with them. Relationships fractured. A friend became a stranger. All bonds gradually broke.
With the arrival of the Taliban and the fall of the republic, everything fell. It could be seen everywhere and in everyone.
I don’t know how we have endured these two dark years. Somehow, in us still lives hope. We lost everything and yet we still dream of salvation. Perhaps it is as the Hazrat Hafez{ a well-known Persian poet}wrote upon the arrival of the morning, “Oh heart, be patient and submissive to grief, that the end of this evening there is morning, and this night may become dawn.”
