August 15: An ill-fated date

Whenever I think about this day, I always wonder how a single day could change the lives of so many people. August 15, which corresponds to 24 Asad in the Afghan calendar, is not just a date on the calendar for me; it is a day after which so many things were never the same again.

August 15, 2021, was the day the Taliban entered Kabul and the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan collapsed.

That day felt like a dream. When we woke up from it, we realized that everything had changed. It was as if we had traveled from one world to another—or perhaps gone twenty years back in time. The world we had built for ourselves before that day, along with all its dreams and plans, suddenly no longer felt the same.

I had been preparing for the university entrance exam, the Kankor, for a year. My goal was that once I finished twelfth grade, I would not have to wait an entire year to prepare for the exam. I wanted to take the Kankor as soon as I received my twelfth-grade diploma so that I would not waste my time. That was why my days were extremely busy. I went to school in the morning, then attended mathematics classes after school, followed by English classes, and alongside all of that, I was also learning tailoring. I had a specific plan for almost every day, and I knew what I needed to do to achieve what I wanted.

Back then, perhaps I thought that all those classes, studying, and exhaustion were simply part of my ordinary life. I did not know that one day those simple things would become memories for me—memories of days when I believed my future was as bright as daylight and that I would achieve all of those dreams.

But after August 15, everything was different. Nothing was the same anymore.

The school, courses, studies, and all the activities that had once filled my days were gone. Even going up to the rooftop became difficult for me; I no longer had any reason to leave the house.

I imagined that anyone who left the house might be taken away by the Taliban.

At night, there was so much gunfire. My mother, afraid that a bullet might hit our house, made all of us sleep separately in different corners of the house.

I do not know what all that nightly shooting was about, but it was terrifying. Every night, I would tell myself, “God knows which poor, unfortunate person has fallen into the hands of the Taliban this time.”

I even felt sorry for the thieves who were publicly hanged by the Taliban in the city center. I did not know whether they were guilty or not, but seeing such punishment was horrifying to me.

The days passed one after another. It was not only me; many women and girls like me were struggling with their own fears and thoughts—thoughts that were turning into reality every day.

It was like the magic lamp in fairy tales, but with one difference: the magic lamp turns wishes into reality, while for the women of Afghanistan, one by one, our fears and darkest thoughts were becoming reality.

The fear of forced marriages became a reality, and many girls in my homeland were forced, at such a young age, to wear the clothes of marriage and enter a battle from which there was no way back. As our elders used to say, “A girl enters her husband’s house dressed in white and leaves it in a shroud.”

Perhaps this sentence was an ordinary belief for previous generations, but for me, it always raised a question: Why always girls? Why should a girl’s fate always be decided by others?

That was one of the questions that kept circling in my mind during those days. Another question that constantly troubled me was: What will happen to our future? Will we no longer have any bright future? Will the next generation also be deprived of education and literacy? Should we give up our dreams and our right to live simply because we are women?

These questions occupied my mind more and more every day. But they had no simple answers. In fact, they had no answers at all.

Until that day, all my plans had been centered around what I would do after finishing twelfth grade. It was a simple and straightforward plan. Honestly, I had no second plan because I believed everything would go according to plan without any problems. I could never have imagined that one day all my dreams and goals would be reduced to dust.

And when I realized that I no longer had the opportunity to carry out those plans, I no longer knew what to do.

All the plans I had made no longer had the same meaning. I was still the same person. I still had the same dreams, but the path to reaching them was no longer clear.

Those days, I was not the only one whose plans and dreams had changed. Many Afghan girls and women could no longer make decisions about their own lives the way they wanted to. Some had to leave their education unfinished, some lost their jobs, and others were forced to accept circumstances they had never chosen for themselves.

When I put all of these things together, I realize that August 15 was not merely the day a government collapsed. For many of us, it was the day our lives changed in a profound way, and many of the plans we had made for our futures were no longer possible.

Now, five years have passed since that day. When I think about August 15, I still remember those days when so many things in our lives changed. Perhaps that is why August 15 is an ill-fated date for me—a date that, every time I think of it, reminds me of the dreams and plans that were left unfinished.