The daily English lessons that Shabana attends are the highlight of her day. Taking the bus in Kabul to the private course with her friends, chatting and laughing with them, learning something new for one hour each day - it’s a brief respite from the emptiness that has engulfed her life since the Taliban took over Afghanistan.
In another country, Shabana* would have been graduating from high school next year, pursuing her dream to get a business degree. In Afghanistan, she and all teenage girls have been barred from formal education for three years.
Now even the small joys that were making life bearable are fraught with fear after a new law was announced saying if a woman is outside her home, even her voice must not be heard.
I kinda don’t get it. If someone would oppress me like that, I’d pack my shit and fuckin walked away. Till I reach the country’s border. It’s anyways all in the mountains.
Wake up early, take your stuff, and walk in any direction. Who’s gonna find you?
I feel like you are neither fully appreciating the scope of the control exerted over them nor the scale of the distances and hostility of terrain. I understand the sentiment, but what you’re suggesting is essentially tantamount to suicide. That may itself have merit, but call it what it is.
To add to that it’s not like there’s any place where they’d be welcome, the state of humanity in 2024 is pretty fucked.