A Bitter Fate; This Is Not an Illness, It Is a Wound.

Paula Hawkins puts it beautifully: “The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like the roots of a tree that emerge from the surrounding soil; you have to pull yourself out through the cracks. Sometimes the holes in our lives become deeper and darker than before. Sometimes you even reach the point where you feel like giving up on life. In the midst of despair and darkness, a little hope can transform your life. These words may seem easy to read, but writing them is a courageous seal placed upon all the pages of the past.

Every day of mine was made up of repetitive routines. I would wake up very early in the morning. Since then, I have slept less at night and worked more; sometimes I do not even sleep for half an hour at night. After performing the morning prayer, I would get ready to go to my course. After a twenty-minute walk, I would reach the course, where the basics were taught.

When I used to walk through the streets and alleyways of Kabul with my mother, all I could think about was passing the 1404 entrance examination; a year that felt like a dream to me and for which I had made so many plans. Everything melted away in the blink of an eye and was buried in the holes of my life. If I were to lift the curtain on these years of my life, all I would have is my own encouragement. At the course, I would begin my mornings surrounded by the bright faces of so many girls, and they gave me the energy to keep moving forward.

Some of the girls played volleyball in the courtyard; they had left behind the battlefield and violence, and only smiles had become the language of their lives and faces. Others sat watching and cheering on the teamwork of the players. Once I entered the course building, it felt like another strange world; all the girls had books in their hands and were reviewing their lessons. One studied mathematics to solve and shape her destiny, another chemistry to separate war from peace through the lines of education, another literature so she could one day publish the magazines of her dreams and aspirations, and another physics as she mapped out the axes of her life.

Time passed incredibly fast. We studied together from six in the morning until nine, living beneath the roof of dreams and life. After class, on the way home with a group of my friends, stories about change and the future became our main topics. At that time, we were all hungry and had little energy left to continue talking, but our outlook on the future made us eager to keep the conversation going. When I arrived home, I had to do housework and study alongside it. But most of my time was spent sewing clothes for hire. I needed enough money to continue my education. As noon approached, my heart became more excited than ever.

Sometimes I had lunch, and sometimes I did not. I would put on my school uniform and set off toward school. Life was strangely complicated; I walked from home to the road that connected to the main road in western Kabul. Cars and rickshaws also traveled along this road, but I did not have enough money, and I wanted to save what I had. Halfway there, the sunlight burned my face and heated the road. Still, I had no choice but to keep going for the sake of my education. Once I reached the main road, I continued the rest of the journey by public minibus.

Sometimes I arrived at school early, and sometimes late. Sometimes the vehicle drove fast, and sometimes slowly, but it always carried me toward my destination. Sometimes I spent forty minutes and sometimes thirty minutes in the vehicle, surrounded by different people. After getting off, I entered the school alley and continued walking with a smile. In the alley I walked through, some girls with bright faces talked to one another, sometimes in groups and sometimes in pairs. Some entered the school grounds alone.

Life passed in a strange way. After going through the security check and walking down the corridor, we reached our assigned classroom. There, the world felt vast. When we entered the classroom, after greeting one another and exchanging pleasantries, we sat in our assigned places. The classroom was anything but ordinary; we always had an excuse to laugh, and sometimes we even created our own opportunities to laugh. When school ended, two to five public minibuses would always leave, packed with girls. Twelve of my classmates and I would travel home together in one minibus. The road we traveled was not an ordinary road, and ours was not an ordinary life; yet time passed so quickly. From that day on, smiles and conversations became part of my daily routine.

The classroom was filled with laughter. Our teachers were humorous too. They were teachers who did not want the second half of humanity—women and girls—to feel hurt or unhappy. They did not want students to listen to lessons in class with a lump in their throats. They did not want girls who were about to graduate and take a step toward the university entrance examination and higher education to lose their motivation to learn because of poverty and hardship. They were teachers who carried sorrow but gave smiles as gifts. Alongside teaching school subjects, they also taught us lessons about life and success. There were nearly 80 of us in one classroom; girls who are still alive, but the classroom itself is dead.

When a classroom dies, the future of hundreds of girls and boys, and even the future of an entire society, is put at risk. Those classrooms still stand where they always did, but the girls who once studied in them now face different destinies: hopeless, confused, and without a clear future. Even so, hopelessness solves nothing. I, too, had been hopeless and lost, with no reason to look toward tomorrow. I had reached the point of thinking that perhaps the end of my life should come right then. But something pulled me out of that pit of darkness and despair.

Those were difficult days, but they passed. I know even harder days lie ahead. We all struggle with difficulties, and we will overcome them. I have told myself thousands of times: for the sake of the future that lies ahead of you, start moving. Run, fall, get back up, laugh, cry, get tired, rest, shed tears, feel sad, and even start a war! But get back up, dust off your dirty knees, smile, and begin again. Fight until you reach the future you deserve.