The librarian who defied the Taliban

Wahida Amiri worked as an ordinary librarian before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last August. But when the militants started to strip ladies of their rights, the lady became one of the leading voices against them. She told the particular BBC’s Sodaba Haidare how protesting towards Taliban rule resulted in her arrest plus why she decided to leave her country.

The Taliban stated I was a spy. That I had assisted start an violent uprising against them. Which i went onto the streets and protested just to get fame. “Go home and cook”, said one of them.

But the truth is, I only wanted one thing: the same rights for Afghan women. The right to visit school, to work, to become heard. Is that excessive to ask for?

The day they will came to arrest all of us, an eerie stop had fallen more than Kabul. In latest days a number of women who had protested against the Taliban had been taken, so we had been moved to a secure house.

Within the last few months since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, I had been a strong and very pleased woman, marching with the streets to protest against them. We looked them in the eye and mentioned: “you can’t deal with me like a second class citizen. I’m a woman and Now i’m your equal. inch Now, I’m hiding in this unknown location, not knowing my criminal offense but wondering when they’ll come for me.

Suddenly, tires came screeching and broke to some halt outside the constructing. I couldn’t count the number of cars or even soldiers. It appeared they had come ready to arrest a whole community and not just a few ladies marching to live openly in their own country.

When they barged into the room, in the center of all my friends’ shouts and panic I possibly could hear them say: “Have you got Wahida Amiri, have you found her? Where is she? ” I thought: “this is it. It’s over, I’m going to die. ”

Before the tragic day of 15 August 2021, I was a regular woman. I had managed to graduate with a law degree and now at 33 years old I leaped a library in the heart of Kabul.

The library was my happy place where everyone was welcome, especially women. Sometimes we discussed topics like feminism over chai sabzi , the traditional Afghan green tea with cardamom. Afghanistan wasn’t perfect, yet we had freedom.

I cared significantly about books mainly because up until the age of 20 I couldn’t examine myself.

I had just started college when the Taliban first rolled into Afghanistan, waving their monochrome flags. The year has been 1996.

Certainly one of their first purchases was to close schools for girls.

All our relatives fled to Panjshir, a mountainous valley in the north plus our original home. But my father chose to stay and after my mother died, he remarried. The years that followed had been extremely painful.

We moved to Pakistan where all of the chores and obligations in the house fell on my shoulders. I actually cooked, cleaned plus scrubbed the floors all day long. I thought this would be my life. Then came September 11, i b?rjan p? tv?tusentalet.

I watched the fall of the twin systems on TV. It wasn’t until much later on that I properly learned about 9/11 and exactly how much that time changed the lives of ordinary Afghans like us. Before long we waved farewell to Pakistan. The particular Taliban had been defeated and it was secure to go home — we’d never become refugees again and I’d never return here, that’s the things i thought.

I used to be 15 when we shifted back to Kabul and am saw how various life was now that the Taliban were not in charge – women were going to school, women could function. But not much changed for me. To my family keeping the house clean and serving guests was more useful than my education – so I carried on running a house until my cousin allowed me to enrol back in a school a few five years later.

The letters in the books were formed strangely – the words looked back at my face blankly. I took exams plus scrubbed floors in your own home at the same time. And every period I failed I might try again and again, till I passed.

When by a few miracle I got recognized into university to study law, I was still a shy and timid girl — until a woman arrived to my life. Her title was Virginia Woolf. Her manifesto was obviously a Room of One’s Very own. I felt like I had been reborn. The guide of this important The english language author taught me everything I should have known a long time ago. The greater I read, the more I realised that I was a strong woman with my own thoughts.

On an incredibly hot day in Aug, the nightmare I had formed lived through once returned to my lifestyle. The Taliban drove into Kabul waving the same black and white red flags.

Only now it wasn’t 1996, it was 2021. And am wasn’t a child. I actually wasn’t uneducated. I had developed gone through hell to construct a life, and am wasn’t going to hand it over to them just like that.

I was relieved after i found other females had the same ideas. We knew the potential risks of defying the particular Taliban but we all said “let’s protest”. We came up with the name for our team: Spontaneous Movement associated with Fighting Women of Afghanistan.

At this point the particular Taliban had already shown their accurate colours. They backtracked on their promise to allow women to return to work and shut educational institutions for girls once again. They will announced their brand new “government” and there is not a single girl in it.

In those first times, as we marched at the streets for our rights, the Taliban cornered us. They terminated teargas at all of us, and shots up – they actually beat some of the women. Then they banned protests altogether.

Most of the women decided not to carry on, it was too risky. But they couldn’t cease me.

I actually continued organising protests. The night before each one I couldn’t sleep. I’d be restless and scared. I would keep thinking “tomorrow will be the last day time of my life”.

In Afghanistan, arresting a woman is equivalent to ruining her status. There’s a general presumption that she’s been raped and in the Afghan society, it is the worst kind of pity a woman will have.

That day in February 2022, when the Taliban stormed into the safe house to arrest all of us, we were ordered to hand in our phones. I actually couldn’t breathe. “What’s next? ” I believed. “Will they eliminate me? Gang rape me? Torture myself? ” I seemed I had a body but my spirit had left myself.

We were put in their pickup trucks and taken to the Ministry of Interior Matters. We passed a lengthy hallway with a reddish carpet and had been led to a small space that used to be the particular ministry’s nursery, though it didn’t look like one. No paintings, no toys, just a couple of national flags of Afghanistan piled up in the corner and a giant map of the country on the wall. We’d be kept on this place for the following 19 days.

The day after our arrest, one of the Taliban pushed the door open and stormed in. He was tall and had a darkish expression. His eyes scanned the room so when he found me he shouted abusive words – he said I was “dirty” and “impure”. “You’ve been insulting the [Islamic] Emirate for the past 6 months. Who are you collaborating with? ”

We told him: “no one, I’m doing the work all on my own. ” Then he handed us a pen and part of paper and said “You’re a secret agent. Write down the name of all of your collaborators. ”

Since I was from Panjshir, a province reputed for resisting against the Taliban, they thought I had been being supported by the National Resistant Front side, an armed group that is fighting them in the north.

The days that implemented were slow. One by one the other women had been released, but not me personally. Then one day they brought in a camera and told those of us outstanding that they were likely to ask us questions and we were to solution them looking at the particular lens.

When we demanded to know the actual recording was to get, they said it was only a formality and will be kept in the ministry’s archives. We were informed to say our titles, which province we were from and who had been helping us. By force they produced us say Afghan activists abroad told us to protest.

We didn’t know at the time but this would give people the impression that we marched to become famous and be evacuated through Afghanistan.

Shortly after, they released the forced confessions towards the media. In a small TELEVISION in the hallway all of us saw the video becoming played by Tolo News, one of the largest TV stations within Afghanistan.

All of us broke down crying. Today everyone knew i was taken by the Taliban. They didn’t rape us, but in the eyes of many people they had. Now everybody thought we protested just to get help to depart Afghanistan.

Two days after the compelled confessions they said i was free to go. It came with a price, although – we had to promise not to protest again.

Kabul has been cold, the roads were empty.

Along the way home, my eldest brother couldn’t end scolding me. “What were you thinking, Wahida? Did you actually think you could accept the Taliban down? You will absolutely just one woman. ” I was ashamed. I had fashioned lost everything. The job, my independence and now the meaning associated with my life if I didn’t want to protest anymore.

One day I read an anonymous interview with another female protestor who said the particular Taliban had beaten us while we were in their custody. They will hadn’t. My family begged me to depart Kabul as they were worried the Taliban would be angered with the article and arrive for us again.

So , two months right after my release We packed a small bag of clothes plus some of my favourite books, including A Room on the Own, and mentioned goodbye to my motherland.

I left home on the crack of daybreak and once again ended up in Pakistan.

I left the whole family. We left my bookshelves. I left the particular library. The last period I was there was the 14th of Aug, one day before the fall of Kabul. I sometimes wonder what happened to those books — are they still there?

I was the librarian in my earlier life, now I are a refugee.

I live with a number of other households in Pakistan. I actually stare at my publications but I have no the energy to search the pages. Personally i think trapped like Constantly dream or escape to another reality, even if it’s just for a flash.

The women still in my country are being silenced with many scared of opposing the Taliban openly. I navigate to the park to clear my head but the thought of my people doesn’t depart me. I miss my home, my loved ones and my cat.

The only thing that gives me just a little joy and reminds me of home is an Afghan cafe nearby.

These days I actually spend a lot of time in the local library, trying to place some words collectively about the women who else protested. About our lives and how much these people changed because of the Taliban.

I really hope what I’m composing could one day turn into a book. I want females around the world to know Afghan women didn’t just give up, they struggled and when they were silenced and defeated they rose again, in a single form or another.

I spend more of my time speaking to Afghan women worldwide – from Philippines to the US – organising a global movement against the Taliban.

My aim would be to make sure the international local community never recognise them as an official federal government. I want them to put pressure on the group to reopen educational institutions, to let the girls learn, to let us live openly in our own nation.

I’ve squandered too much time not being able to learn. To this day there are certain words I still cannot pronounce the way I ought to. I don’t wish the same for the future decades of my nation.

Photos by Munazza Anwaar and Musa Yawari.

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