Whispers in the Desert: The Unfinished Story of a Woman in Exile

Narrator: Anonymous
Edited and Compiled by: Hamia Naderi

I had spent good days at the Ministry of Education. The hand that slid over the papers in the office and the sentences I wrote in my own large handwriting gave me a sense of worth. At that time, my mother (Kulthum) was not well in Kabul, and I had seen her name on the list of heart patients at the hospital. My life flowed between the office room in Kabul and my mother’s sickbed at home — and I drew love from both.

But when the day of Kabul’s fall came, everything changed. Women like me, who had been sitting behind government desks, were suddenly sent back to our homes. They said no female employee would be allowed to work until further notice. In the blink of an eye, my world became narrow, and my feminine identity collapsed under the weight of patriarchal decisions.

My mother’s condition worsened by the day, and I knew nothing but to pray and weep. Neighbors said there were doctors in Iran who treated patients well, but I had already heard the cries of Afghan people many times. On the nights I tucked the blanket around my mother and wiped away my tears, I decided to embark on a long journey with her to find a good doctor in Iran. My heart was restless, but my mother needed me more than ever.

In the cold winter air at the border, my mother and I walked with a load of hope and fear. I understood Persian, but the people’s accents were strange to my mother. Iran was a beautiful country, but its laws and its climate were not kind to us. My mother cried from the pain during her treatment, and I was lost in the crowd of Tehran — exhausted from not being able to ease her wounds.

I found work; it was little, hard, and invisible. Like most Afghan women, I turned to grueling jobs: making tea in a textile factory and cleaning a house at night to cover my mother’s hospital bills. My feet turned red and blistered, my hands covered in black tea stains, yet no one said “thank you” — as if our work didn’t even exist in the eyes of the officials. Despite all the hardships, I prayed constantly for my mother to live to see a day of healing. But the end of our story was heartbreaking.

My mother took her final breaths in a Tehran hospital. I sat by her bed, holding her trembling hands. My tears could no longer find their way to her eyes, and I felt her strange presence moment by moment. I softly called her name and told her, “Be patient,” but her pain was crushing me. After years of struggle, my mother quietly collapsed; she was the hero of my life, but in the eyes of a world that once spoke of justice and then turned a blind eye to our suffering, even her breathing went unnoticed.

After my mother’s death, I was left alone — a crumpled shadow among a mass of migrants. I stayed in a small rented house, worried each day about the next deportation. One dawn, officers with harsh faces knocked on our door and took us one by one into a minibus. I tried to reason with them, to speak, but no door to dialogue opened, and no one responded. In silence, I returned to Afghanistan with the others.

But Afghanistan was no longer the warm, familiar land it used to be. When they dropped me off at the city gate in a truck, silence took the place of any welcome. Inside, I kept asking myself: “What is my name when no one remembers me? Where is the place of a female employee when her worth is unseen?” Those grand human rights organizations that always spoke of peace and justice had sold their honor in practice, and I heard no voice from anywhere saying, “We understand the pain of a suffering refugee.”

I was no longer an employee; just the name of a woman who knew there was no place for her. All the women of my homeland stared at a dark, closed horizon. Forced confinement at home was not even supported by the men’s voices anymore. But still, there is a voice within me — a voice that whispers in the desert of loneliness with a sip of hope: “You are not finished yet.” I have not determined the end of my story, but I know that just believing I can continue is proof of a seed that will one day sprout in my heart.