Fahimeh Nouri
This story is not only mine; it is the voice of thousands of silent girls from my homeland.
Four years have passed since a catastrophic fall, and I still cannot accept the reality. Every day, I am reminded of the closed doors, the hopes that were killed, and the human rights that were denied to me.
I asked myself why no one raised their voice. It seemed as if the city had become a city of the dead, and the sound of life was lost. Today, our cries have become so faint that perhaps even God cannot hear them.
They say time heals all wounds. But for me, time is yet another wound; with each passing moment, the pain deepens, and what little happiness remains drains from me.
My dreams, my teenage years, the simple moments of laughter with friends—they are all trapped in darkness. The “shoulds” and “if onlys” press down on my life like weights.
My room is covered with motivational phrases: “Be strong,” “Your thoughts shape your reality,” “Your subconscious builds your world”…
Yet none of them can provide comfort. The dream of freedom and equality has been with me since childhood; now, only a shadow of it remains.
The broken mirror in my room reflects my exhaustion and alienation. I do not know who I am, where this world is going, or where I belong. My teenage years have passed between daydreams and tears, memories buried before they could even form.
It is midnight; the air is cold and dry, and the window looks out into darkness. Perhaps someone else is awake, carrying a pain similar to mine. It is nearly impossible to describe a wound that has penetrated to the very bone.
I think of the days when we shared our dreams with our friends—dreams that kept us alive even in darkness. But now, no girl’s condition is better than mine. It is absurd that simply because of being a girl, one faces a life so monstrous.
My endurance is spent. My spine is bent, my knees are broken. Dreams buried in hearts have turned to ashes—neither I, nor other girls, nor Afghans… and the paradise that should have been mine has been denied.
Yet I still want to live—on my own terms, with a life built from my dreams. I am tired of rules and prohibitions, of waking each day in the same place for years, of absolute darkness and ignorance.
I do not wish to grow wings, nor to fly. I only want to be human—alive, a girl whose hair plays with the wind, whose laughter reaches from afar, soaring; a human one with the world, neither butterfly nor bird… just her and life.
Other springs will come. Perhaps the next generation of our girls will return to school and university, carrying lighter dreams. But there will be no news of me; either I am dead, or my passion has been buried by their hands.
