Dark clouds have enveloped everything. It feels as if bullets and missiles are raining from the sky. My ears can no longer distinguish any other sound amidst the cacophony. Everyone is fleeing, but the destination is unclear. Some have rushed towards the metal birds (planes); the streams of water are now filled with blood. My eyes see not cars, but corpses, as if zombies have overtaken the world. I open my eyes and once again, it’s a nightmare!
My forehead is drenched in sweat. My body is trembling. I don’t know when these nightmares will cease. For three years, they have stolen sleep from my eyes.
This dream is pure reality that has slowly turned into a nightmare—untimely nightmares that escort me to the brink of death every night. For a long time now, these nightmares have become my nightly companions. During the day, I am silent, and at night, I am bound by this true nightmare. Hearing the sounds of phantom cries, which I find difficult to distinguish between sleep and wakefulness, I get out of bed. I wipe my sweaty forehead and follow the frequency of the crying outside; yes! I had guessed correctly—it was my sister’s voice.
My unfortunate sister, trembling from the force of her sobs. Harsh and unsettling thoughts raced through my mind as I hurried to her. With a voice that seemed to rise from the depths of a well, filled with fear and anxiety, I asked her what had happened. With eyes sadder than ever, amidst her sobs, she said she had submitted a blank exam paper.
And I, unable to even ask her why, because I know the reason for her actions. My unfortunate sister does not want to graduate from sixth grade so soon. She still wants to go to school, to learn, and she hasn’t yet let go of her love for school. The fear of never going back to school and not seeing her classmates again has consumed her like a parasite. I completely understand how this pain gnaws at her being.
As I saw her, I momentarily returned to the past, to the days when I was sitting in a university classroom. I still remember that fateful day, the day when one of our professors entered the class along with our principal. I can still recall their sorrowful and mournful gaze. They wouldn’t lift their heads from the ground, as if they had committed a crime as grave as murder. Our principal avoided making eye contact with us, as if he feared what might happen if our eyes met. It was clear he had been crying, but he seemed unwilling to reveal the lingering lump in his throat. In a voice we had never heard before, he told us, “Due to an order we have received, you can no longer attend university and…” I never heard the rest of his words that day. As far as I remember, I felt as if someone had wrapped their hands around my throat and was trying to cut it with a dull knife. In that moment, even my breaths were not helping me; all I could hear was the sound of my classmates crying. Their wails still echo in my ears like the tolling of a death bell that has long been ringing. That day, I brought my half-dead body home.
With my sister’s voice, I return from the past to a present that bears no resemblance to life. My sister calls my name and asks how I am. With pain and tears still tracing her cheeks, she asks if I remember today. I tell her, “How can a person forget the day their soul died?”
Today marks three years since the fall of Afghanistan. Today is exactly the day when misfortune was inscribed upon our fate. It’s the day we stopped wishing and started praying for death.
It has been three years since my notebooks gathered dust, my pens wrote not a single word, and the lessons I struggled for months to learn have faded from memory. In these three years, I have lost everything I had; sometimes I think we all became ill overnight. Our spirits and minds are no longer healthy. I wish there were a psychologist to whom we could express the pains and lumps in our throats—the words that are slowly consuming our souls and bending our backs.
I no longer feel alive; in these three years, I have died and come back to life a thousand times. If I were to forgive the whole world, I would never forgive those who caused me to be deprived of education, who made me feel worthless, separated me from society, and deprived me of my human rights. They have taken away rights that are mine and inflicted pains upon me during this time that can never be compensated.
Author: MahNoor Roshan
