By Behzad Sadiq
“My little Islah was quiet today, she looked very disappointed,” Khatiz Nawruz says sadly.
“It was the last exam of her sixth grade. I congratulated her that she would now be a seventh-grade student. She said angrily, ‘Today I said goodbye to all my classmates, there is no more school for us or the next class.’”
In warm provinces like Kandahar, final exams start on the first day of the third month of the solar year and end on the 20th (May 22 to June 10). Going to a higher grade is usually a happy event. But this year dozens of girls have come home in tears.
Islah told Rukhshana Media she wanted to become a doctor. But the last day of the sixth-grade exam at school was a bitter moment.
“Most of our classmates were crying, they were all upset,” she said. “We can no longer study. On the last day, the principal told us, ‘don’t come to school anymore, just come to get the result’.”
Her family planned a celebration for their daughter’s graduation. But when they saw Islah’s desperate return from school, they realized that she saw nothing to celebrate.
Khatiz Nawruz, a school teacher, was busy watering the garden when Islah came home. “When she entered the house, I took out my cell phone to take pictures and celebrate. But she was very sad and upset. I told myself that maybe she had a fight with someone in the class. But when I talked with her, she said that she can’t go to school anymore and that today she said goodbye to her classmates. She said that inside the class, all her classmates were crying.”
Khatiz Nawruz fears there is no longer hope for a bright future for his 13-year-old daughter Islah.
In the first days of their return to power, the Taliban banned girls above the sixth grade from going to school. Despite promises, there is no sign of girls’ schools reopening. The Taliban Department of Education in Kandahar won’t say how many girls have graduated from sixth grade this year.
Islah’s father says that his other two daughters have also been barred from school. They were in seventh grade when the Taliban took over Afghanistan. He had named them “Shwana” (education) and “Tolana” (society) to express his deep love for their education. “If it wasn’t for the Taliban, they would have finished the ninth grade this year,” he adds.
The Taliban’s restriction on girls’ education has left many families disappointed and disheartened.
Zainab Mohammadi, 28, is an English Literature graduate from Kandahar University. She has been a teacher in a girls’ school in Kandahar for three years.
“One student was in third grade and didn’t come to school for a week. I asked her sister, who was my student in the second grade, what had happened. She said, ‘My father said it doesn’t matter if you study, there is not much difference between sixth and third grades, don’t go to school anymore’.”
Zainab persuaded the father to let her return. But now that she has finished the third grade, it is not clear if her father will allow her to continue.
Ms. Mohammadi tried to help another student, a talented 13-year-old, to continue past sixth grade. “We all decided Fereshta should keep coming to school and any teachers with time would give her lessons. But after a few months, a group of Taliban came to our school and said they had heard we were teaching girls above sixth grade. They said, ‘This is against our order’. Our principal got scared and told Fereshta not to come back until the Taliban give permission.”
Engineer Ezzatullah, 40, a resident of the 11th district of Kandahar city, says his 13-year-old daughter Kayenat asked him, “Dad, why is our seventh grade closed? Today, the headmaster said, ‘Don’t come to school anymore’.”
He says after years of living and working here he has become fatalistic. “I told my daughter, God willing, the schools will open again. But I don’t know what the future holds.”
