The Closure of Schools and the Beginning of Online Classes

My name is Mariam Amiri. I have just turned seventeen, and this year I am studying at an online school. The day I will never forget was August 15, 2021, a Sunday, at 11:05 a.m.; it was the last time I sat at my mathematics desk with my classmates in my school uniform and stared at the blackboard. I studied at one of the private schools in Kabul. It had better facilities, but our board was black and wooden. With chalk, we wrote life’s problems and mathematical equations on it. That day marked the end of one chapter of my life and the beginning of another that no one had expected. After that day, my life and the lives of millions of other girls in my country changed. Each of us was thrown in a different direction, as though the winds of fate had carried us toward unknown paths. But I did not lose my way or my goal; my goal was education, which remained like a lamp constantly lighting my path.

The year 1404 arrived, and it has been the fourth year since I have been away from school and formal in-person education, but I have always continued my studies online. During these four years, I faced circumstances that sometimes pushed me to the edge of despair; I missed my friends, felt alone in a world that was changing rapidly, and experienced pain and sorrow that sometimes became so heavy that I felt like a walking dead person—without purpose and without energy. But amid that darkness, there were also moments when I felt filled with strength, as though a force was bursting from within me and pushing me forward. That strength was my love of learning and my hope for the future, which never went out inside me.

Sometimes I would stare at old photographs from school and cry. Memories would replay in my mind like a film: the days when my friends and I ran around the schoolyard, the sound of laughter filling the classroom walls, and even those difficult moments during exams that now seemed sweet to me. Sometimes I would rewrite lines from my memories, but each time, doing so led me into an emotional dead end. I wrote about my school memories more than ten times, and each time I tried in different ways to erase them from my mind, because whenever I thought about them, I felt trapped in the past, and that made me hopeless and sad.

These three years passed as though three centuries had gone by. Online classes were not free of problems either; my biggest challenge was the cost of internet access, which was very expensive for me and my family. This is not only my problem; it is also a problem for other girls. Another challenge was the weak internet connection. These difficulties sometimes made me cry, but I had no solution because our home is surrounded on all four sides by six-story apartment buildings and even taller structures that reduce the internet signal.

When I joined an online school last September, a wing opened within me, allowing me to fly toward my dreams and goals. The online school became a small source of relief for me. For someone like me who has been deprived of all her basic rights, online school was an opportunity to grow and become stronger. At first, it was somewhat difficult, but after some time, I was able to adapt to the circumstances.

Being away from school and education had created a sense of uncertainty in me about school, but after six months of online classes, I was able to find myself again in the position of a female student. Those were difficult days; I completed school projects and homework. But the whole process refreshed my memories of school—the days when we did not study and instead annoyed our teachers by asking questions. We would sometimes refuse the academic responsibilities assigned to us. But during this period, I learned to be responsible, take my homework seriously, and challenge myself.

I did everything I could to read and write. The result of those efforts was the publication of my first book. On November 12 of last year, my book was launched. At the book launch ceremony, I found myself surrounded by friends, girls, and women writers. My book is titled *An Ending for Another Beginning*. This is a phrase that carries deep meaning for girls my age. For those of us whose bridge to education has been broken, we have found other ways to learn and have begun new journeys in different places and in different ways.

Today, after a long time, I feel alive again. I owe this feeling to the online school where I have been studying. This is a place where I can pursue my dreams again, a place where physical boundaries no longer limit me. Online classes are windows into a new world where knowledge and learning never stop. I am no longer that hopeless and sad girl; I am a girl who, with every new lesson, every page I read, and every word I write, moves closer to herself and to her future.

The fall of the government and the sudden changes in my life taught me great lessons. I learned that even in the darkest moments, we must never lose hope. I learned that life does not always go the way we plan, but that does not mean the journey has ended. Rather, it is an opportunity to find new paths and discover abilities that we may never have known were hidden within us. Every word I learn and every lesson I study is a step toward a brighter future; a future in which no girl will be deprived of education because of her gender. A future in which education is everyone’s right, and no one can take that right away from anyone.

I am Maryam Amiri, and this is my story; a story of falling and rising, a story of despair and hope, a story of struggle and victory. And I know this is only the beginning of the journey. A journey at the end of which being a girl in a society like Afghanistan will not be a crime. A journey that I began with many of my friends toward a society in which no woman or girl is deprived of her basic rights.

In the hope of the day of freedom, we will all move forward together on the path of education. Of course, this path comes at a great cost, but it is a cost worth paying. We must give everything we have, even our very lives—the center of all our strength—to this journey.