Our Dreams Should Not Die

My throat is heavy with emotion; I am being judged simply for being a girl in Afghanistan. I am not alone—millions of other girls have experienced the same bitter reality. But in this piece, I want to write about the hero of my life: myself. I want to write about what I, as a girl, have endured and how I still want to achieve my dreams. It is painful that being a girl in today’s world can feel like a crime, especially in the country where I live.

Looking back at the memories of my friends and classmates brings an even deeper pain and gives meaning to this sentence: We were twenty students in one class; out of those twenty, only Maryam and her dreams remain. Three of my friends died by suicide after the fall of the government; one was taken by the Taliban, while two others were forced into marriage. They no longer saw a way to continue living and were driven to end their lives.

Most of my friends were forced into underage and unwanted marriages at the ages of fifteen and sixteen, and they now have children. We are the same age, but they no longer had a choice. Some fled to neighboring countries; some returned, while others are struggling with uncertain futures. Are they alive or dead? Asleep or awake? Healthy or sick? Do they have clothes to wear or not? I have no news of them.

We were girls who had made so many plans for this year, the year we were supposed to enter university, but everything was reduced to ashes. When I thought about the shattered fate of my friends, I promised my dreams that I would reach them. I continued my education and fought through every circumstance.

Throughout these four years, I cared for my dreams like a mother caring for her child. I protected them. I nurtured them and watched them grow. Now that I live in Afghanistan, every restriction and limitation has been imposed on my education and my dreams, but I did not surrender. I turned deprivation and restrictions into stepping stones toward opportunity. I grew, and the challenges became milestones in my growth. But what difference is there between me and the girls living outside Afghanistan? They are the same age as me, yet I am in Afghanistan while they live in more privileged circumstances. Every girl has big dreams. Mine have fallen into a place where saving them requires extraordinary determination.

Beyond that, I have decided to support girls and women so that they do not experience the pain I have endured and do not have to walk the difficult and exhausting path I have walked. Girls who reach my age should be able to study, live, and pursue their dreams without facing these challenges. Being Maryam, and being a girl in Afghanistan, is incredibly difficult. If the government had not changed, I would have entered university this year. I would not have experienced all this pain over the past four years. The plans for my graduation celebration would not have remained merely an idea in my mind. I would not have lost my friends. I could even have held a grand book-launch celebration with my friends and given them copies of my book.

When I was selected among the top fifty of the year, no one supported me in traveling to Thailand to receive my award and introduce myself to the world, even though the organizing institution was covering forty percent of my travel expenses. When I made it into the top ten, the achievement felt like a dream to me, and I thought that afterward I would finally be able to continue my education. But it did not happen. If I had been in a developed country or another country with better opportunities, I would have received support from the government itself. Instead, I had to hide everything to keep myself and my family safe, even though I had received the “Change Leader of the Year” award—an achievement I could have celebrated proudly.

When I received the British Women’s Empowerment Award from the British Council of the Millennium, I was forced to keep it only to myself and hide my identity from the world, fearing that it might create problems and put my life at risk. There are thousands of realities in Afghanistan that no one knows about because the regime in my country does not want girls. Thousands of pains have found a home in my heart, but my dreams have kept me alive until today. Every time difficulties came rushing toward me, I told myself, “Your dreams must not die.” They must not die today either. Poverty and the death of dreams carry a profound pain.

I am in Afghanistan, a place that feels like a deep, dark well. I dream that not only Maryam, but all girls, can climb out of this black hole. Over these four years, if educational institutions outside Afghanistan had not imposed such strict standards on Afghan girls, many of them could have continued their education. If even one girl is accepted by these institutions each year, we can prevent the genocide of our dreams and the destruction of girls’ lives. This is the practical solution that comes to my mind. Let us join hands and help rescue girls from these suffocating circumstances.

At such a young age, my concern is for everyone, not only myself. We must not allow our dreams to be destroyed. For everything I have gone through during this journey, I want to say that the hero of my life has been Maryam, because I endured the difficult days alone. I remained patient. I wiped away my own tears with my own hands. I was the one who firmly lifted my bent knees and stood again, telling myself: “Keep your determination high. Get back up, and never surrender.”

With such a hero within me, I am happy. I will never lose the hero of my life, because that hero lives within me.