They were about to write their final exams and graduate. Then the Taliban banned them.
This story first appeared in Zan Times
By Freshta Ghani
Everything was fine until 10 minutes before 9 p.m on Tuesday, December 20. Shabana* and her mother were having tea at home when Ahmad, Shabana’s older brother, returned from prayers at the mosque with a troubled face, obviously trying to hold back his anger. As their mother asks what happened, Ahmad turns to Shabana and says, “They said in the mosque that the Taliban has decreed that female students will not be able to study after this and the gates of universities will be closed to them.”
Shabana can’t believe her brother’s words. With hands that are shaking with fear, she takes their mother’s phone and tunes into a local radio station. “This news is a lie, I’m sure,” she thinks to herself.
The first item read by the radio announcer at 9 p.m. is the new edict from the Taliban prohibiting education of female university students until further notice. Her eyes tear up. She knows what “until further notice” means. Just as schoolgirls have waited for more than 450 days for a “further notice” that never comes, now female university students will wait “until further notice,” knowing the gates are never going to be reopened to them.
Shabana is so angry that she cannot sleep. “My whole body was burning with grief,” she recounts to Zan Times in an interview. “I do not understand what to do. I would just walk around the room or hold my head and cry.”
Shabana, 23, and her family live in a village in Samangan province where there is no water or electricity. She spent the last four years studying every night under the light of candles and sometimes mobile phones. She was hopeful about the future and thought that she would be able to alleviate her family’s problems after graduating university and finding a job.
Her father died when Shabana was still in the third grade. Her mother worked in people’s houses doing laundry in order to pay family expenses and send her children to school and university. Some days, she had to take Shabana so that they could complete the work together. “My hands were freezing from washing clothest, but we tolerated everything in order to pay for household expenses and our education,” Shabana says.
Shabana did not even have money for transportation and walked to the university, which was more than two kilometers away from their house. Often she went hungry all day because she did not have money to buy food while at the university. “My friends bought themselves lunch but I told them that I ate food at home. When I was walking home, my legs were weak from hunger,” she explains.
Shabana says that the university had given her hope for a better future: “I was very happy. I planned to get a good job as soon as I graduated from university. I would change my family’s situation and after that I will study for a master’s degree.”
Despite all the difficulties, Shabana had only had two final exams remaining, which she was supposed to take this week. Then she’d have completed her four-year degree. But the Taliban edict reduced all those years of nightly efforts to zero.
Even though Shabana went to the university on Wednesday, December 21, for her exams, the Taliban refused her entry. “We told the Taliban, ‘Just let us pass these two exams, then make us stay at home again,’” she explains. “They said, ‘Go away. You are not allowed to be inside the university even for a moment.’ At that moment, I thought that I would suddenly fall from the last stairs.”
Now she cries as she looks at her books and notes, saying that she does not know what to do.
Shabana’s situation is one being faced by female university students across Afghanistan. Since the Taliban announced their decree on Tuesday, December 20, many female students have suffered mental anguish.
Sadaf* is a 24-year-old student in her final semester of journalism at Jawzjan University. She was only three exams away from graduation and handing in her monograph. Like Shabana, she also went to university on Wednesday in an attempt to finish her exams and receive her bachelor’s degree. But officials refused to allow her to enter the university. “The Taliban sent all the girls outside the gates of the university and said that this is the decree of the Emirate and no girl should enter the university,” she explains.
It was a struggle for Sadaf, who is also a mother, to attend university for four years. “Despite my sleepless nights and my daughter’s restlessness, I studied and made it this far with great efforts, but now everything is multiplied by zero,” she says.
Sadaf says she had come to terms with all of the Taliban’s restrictions, even wearing the mandatory hijab, and was determined to get her bachelor’s degree and start a career as a journalist. “I didn’t think that universities would be closed to girls. I was always worried about where I would work after finishing university and whether the Taliban would allow me to work in the media,” she says.
Now, Sadaj and Shabana and every female university student in Afghanistan are facing futures without education, futures without degrees or possibly even futures without careers. Yet again, the Taliban appear determined to close every avenue by which women can take part in society.
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees.