For Noriah

I wish you knew that a girl was thinking of you at midnight. Her mind was so filled with your name, your voice, and your masculine figure that she had no choice but to take refuge in words. I wish you knew how hard it is to write about you. My mind is crowded with thoughts circling around you, so tightly woven together that even recognizing them let alone expressing them is difficult for me.  

Coincidentally, I had just finished reading an Afghan novel. After closing it, I thought it was cliché: a girl fleeing her home to escape a forced marriage, hiding a large part of her identity her gender in order to survive in society.  

I had heard such stories many times before. They seemed cliché, almost exhausting. But when I saw you, I was shaken. I wished this letter were so personal that its only reader would be you, so you could feel what I felt both now and then, when I heard you repeat over and over: “I had no choice, I had no choice.” That was when I asked myself: how does truth become cliché?  

I don’t know what to call you a hero? These days I use words with great caution. But I can call you brave. When I imagine your presence in a patriarchal society, your masculine appearance, and then place myself in your position, God knows how uneasy I become.  

Many say you are a courageous girl who worked honorably and fought like a man. They say you are honorable because you worked in men’s clothing and…  

I wonder if they realize how dishonorable those so‑called “intellectuals” become when they hide behind such words, behaving in clichés. And you are certainly unaware were simultaneously fighting clichés and living them. A girl who, out of poverty, enters society dressed as a man that is a cliche. A girl who lives as a man and once again portrays manhood as honorable that is another cliché, cliché squared. Yet you also fought against the cliché that femininity is confined to long hair, domesticity, and the hidden corners of a home.  

What symbol we make of you depends on our own perspective. I see men who today call you a symbol of honorable living “like a man.” That you lived the cliché, fought the cliché, and became a symbol of cliché beliefs is confusing. But what is certain is that you transformed the very meaning of cliché. We must be careful when we use that word. We must think, search, and reflect on what happens when truths become clichés. For me, this is a dead end of thought.  

Beyond these clichés, let us look at those who seem to succeed in their own way. Just as they exploit women in countless forms, they strip womanhood from a woman. Easily, with scorn and mockery, they searched for traces of femininity in you with a flashlight. And in doing so, they killed the woman in you. I truly no longer know. It is beyond me to reveal what other meanings lie behind this. On one side, there are those who force a woman to bury her womanhood and feel power in men’s clothing. On the other, there are those who, whether deliberately or ignorantly, use this opportunity to glorify honor and masculinity. And still others who see a woman in men’s clothing as honorable.  

We must place our hands on our conscience. We must stop these symbols and symbol‑making. We must not forget that you repeated many times: “I had no choice.” Perhaps you do not know what a heavy blow that phrase struck against everything we call civilization. You do not know what memories it awakened in me. I faced a bitter tragedy that was my own life, our life.  

Once again, I realized I had been lost in an illusion my small, imaginary world. Forgive us, who cruelly forget that a ten‑year‑old girl spent three years out there. God knows what she saw, what she heard, and where she finally went.  

In any case, I want to salute your resilience, patience, and courage as a girl, and to the warm land of your birthplace.  

One among the thousands like you.