My name is Tahera. I am fifteen years old.
Right now, I live in Pakistan. But my story began in Kabul.
Kabul was never peaceful, but it was alive. We measured the distance between joy and danger by the sound of explosions we often heard. Snow, cold days, our coal heater, kites, our muddy shoes, blue spring sky, school, loads of homework, sweets we often bought, are what I vividly have of Kabul. But I remember more.
I was one of the girls sitting somewhere in the middle rows, trying to read the blackboard through a wall of shoulders.The chalk dust was like powdered snow. It covered and coloured our teacher’s hand. Our hands were always cold. Our hearts always warm. I never had too many friends, I still do not. I was the observer, the coach, and obviously, I didn’t play. We were busy talking about next year exams, our grades, Eid clothes, summer holidays, that Kabul fell.
The city shrank overnight. Everything changed.
Girls were told to stay home, to stay quiet, to stay small.
But we didn’t. We couldn’t. It wasn’t acceptable. It was March, 2022, I was on my first day of school on seventh grade. Office had told that we could come. I wore my uniform, still new from last year. Proud and happy, went to school. A guy shouted: “Hadn’t you graguated?”
Laughter, more laughter. My head felt numb, I couldn’t say anything. My mind couldn’t proceed.
Laughter again.
In our studies, we were always ahead of them, but that day, for the first time, I felt, I was being pushed to the periphery. Gender. Discrimination. Graduated. Grade sixth. Uniform.
Later that day, a teacher came to the door of our classroom. She was our English teacher, Miss Zahra. She told girls to come only. In the corridor, she told us not to wear uniform anymore. She advised us to wear long and dark colours and have full hijabs. Afterwards, when I entered the classroom, I felt embarrassed. I felt my hands were burning. Anger. Frustration. Uniform.
That year, we went to school anyway, secretly.
We wore long black dresses to hide our notebooks beneath the fabric when needed. When their men came for surprise checks to our school, one look from the teacher meant run. And so we did. Jumping from walls, landing badly. Sliding through windows, knees bruised. Hearts racing, yet laughing. One that was equal to death, of sadness, of helplessness, of discrimination. We ran like thieves in big bazaars who stole wallets and bags.
One afternoon in autumn,I came home from school and saw our home as it was, yet it wasn’t the same. Nothing had changed, carpets, dishes, but our clothes were packed. That kind of silence has a weight you never forget.
That night, our car moved down Darulaman Road. The city I loved disappeared behind us bit by bit.
I pressed my face to the cold window and cried without making a sound in the dark.
By morning, I had a new identity: Refugee.
We came to Pakistan illegally. Not to break rules, but to keep the unbreakable: education.
Here, I studied again, quietly building a new life from the ruins of the old one, building a new person, from the pieces of an old one.
Here, with some friends, we began to teach women, literacy classes on the floor of a hardly borrowed room. When a woman writes her name for the first time, she tastes freedom. She understands that she is someone. Not invisible. Not forgotten. Someone. I know this very well.
That is what education does. It pulls us back into the light.
But now, schools for refugee children are closed in Pakistan.
And once again the doors to the future are being locked.
But, I don’t want to see my younger sister cry for her school, I don’t want any child to jump from walls the way I did. I don’t want the world to tell them that their dreams must hide.
I don’t want any person to carry the same fear inside.
I don’t want a single child, a single woman, to lose their voice before they learn to use it.
Education is not a luxury. It is not a favor. It is a right. A birthright, as natural as breathing, as necessary as light.
When a school closes, the world doesn’t hear the sound it makes.
But I hear it.
Because somewhere in Pakistan, a little girl is tracing the alphabet on her hand, terrified she might forget it soon.
If one classroom stays open, hope stays open.
If one girl keeps learning, the world keeps turning.
Let us keep those doors open. Let us give pens to write, to rewrite.
My story, our story is not finished.
And the stubborn flame of education, the one that has survived war, borders, and bans, will not go out now.
With courage that refuses silence,
-Tahera K.
Guest Writer
Girl Museum