A Stranger to the Word ‘Freedom’

Freedom is a term which stands for feminism, justice, secularism, diversity of liberties such as thought, pen, occupation and so on. However, you only can seek for this word in advanced and developing right-minded territories’s lexicons. Countries that are conversing about far more important issues, including science enhancements, technology intensification rate, roaming to outer space, but here we are striving on unscientific and even illogical personal points with a couple of ignoramus, dogmatic people by the name of Talib.

In my home land, besides not having these vital factors of development, we are deprived of our basic rights – the right to education, clothing, and work. Governors themselves are not educated so how do we expect them to allow us to attend academic places and receive education and work? We can not select our attires – the most basic personal choices, we should not leave the home without a male escort and even sometimes we are hit by horse whip in that case as well. 

Being an Afghanistani girl means dreaming of playing the role of a Sleeping Beauty in your sweet life – only because you cannot survive among a group of beastly fellows. Living a forced lifestyle as a girl who once had tremendous dreams, but who will die without ever seeing them fulfilled. It means you cannot attend school, university, or courses. Why? Because you are a girl – and a girl, they say, must only learn housekeeping. It means being forced into an arranged marriage with a man as old as your father or grandfather.

Freedom is a strange word for Afghanistani Girls, so never look for this in an Afghanistani Girl dictionary. A girl that has no choice in her own life span is a foreigner to this word. The next time you hear the term freedom, please imagine the condition an Afghanistani girl lives in, then ask her what freedom means.

To recap, unlike other regions of this earth, my country is experiencing the blackest eras specifically for girls. We are essentially frustrated from the most basic rights and a stranger to the word freedom.

– Fatima

Letter received from our students participating in our Mentorship program. Name and text altered for protection of our students and for grammatical changes.