Testimony submitted to the Senate record for the late Senator Graham and Senator Shaheen’s potential hearing on Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan.
My name is HJ and I am from Afghanistan. I arrived in the United States in July 2024. I currently live with my host parents in Massachusetts. My younger sister joined me in the United States last year and also lives with my host family. I came to the United States to complete my high school education because I was denied my right to education under the Taliban regime. After three years of studying in secret in Afghanistan, with the help of the non-profit Afghan Scouts Relief Fund, I came to the United States. Traveling abroad was the only way I could pursue my dreams of completing my education so that I could build a better life for myself.
In 2021, during my midterm exams in school, the Taliban came back to power in Afghanistan. I remember it vividly. We were getting ready to go to school when my cousin called from downtown Kabul and told us that Taliban soldiers were everywhere. I didn’t believe her at the time. Everyone had said that the Taliban couldn’t take Kabul, the capital, which was so big. But in the end, it seemed like Kabul was the easiest place for the Taliban to take.
I listened to the news all day. Everyone was worried about their lives. We heard from people that the Taliban were kidnapping girls from the streets and their houses, and doing terrible things to them. I remember that I had an important exam that day, but I couldn’t take it because the school was closed.
I cried for a whole week and begged my parents to leave Afghanistan, but it wasn’t possible at the time. After a few days, we went back to school. We got our report cards, and I remember my sisters and I got excellent grades on the exams we took. But after we got our report cards, the teachers told the girls that the Taliban had said we couldn’t go to school anymore. I was so upset. Words can’t express how I felt. I loved going to school and everything was taken away from me. That day, all our friends at school gathered together and we all cried and said goodbye.
Life under the Taliban was dark and with very little joy. There was no school. There was no celebration. There was only death and violence. At one point, the Taliban started searching people’s homes. Before the Taliban came to power, I was still a child, and my whole life was ahead of me. After that, suddenly I had to grow up. I couldn’t be a child anymore. I knew I had to be more serious about my life. The very day after they took over Afghanistan, I started thinking about how I could continue going to school. In Afghanistan, I had no right to do anything; I wasn’t even supposed to leave the house without a male member of my family. I couldn’t work, and I couldn’t go to school. I had no rights at all. For three years, I did everything I could to continue learning English, hoping to find an opportunity to study abroad.
Afghan girls who try to attend school in any way are also targeted by the Taliban. The Taliban have made it illegal for girls to go to school after the sixth grade. There are still some educational centers in Kabul that secretly teach girls. Some of them may still exist, but their number is decreasing day by day. In the weeks after Kabul was taken, my sister and I were still going to one of the centers where we used to study. I had taken an exam and got a very high score. I was so excited about the high score that I went to the educational center to talk to one of the teachers about my good score. Right after we arrived, another teacher came into the room and told us to leave the center immediately because the Taliban were coming. I remember that it was cold that day and I was wearing a long winter coat, but I knew that it was not enough to appease the Taliban. It was still early days after the capture of Kabul, and all the girls were still adjusting to this new life under the Taliban. I remember running out of the center as fast as we could and hiding. In the distance, we saw the Taliban enter the center. We hid with a few other girls who were our friends. We saw them enter the center and then waited for them to leave.
The next day again, I don’t think we realized how serious the situation was at that moment. We tried to go for a walk in our neighborhood and saw the Taliban arresting girls for no reason. We ran away and went to our uncle’s house. We were lucky that day, but a lot of girls were arrested in our area. The Taliban continued to arrest them for days and days. After that, no girl could go out. If we had to leave the house for any reason, another family member would come with us to make sure we were safe. We were essentially imprisoned in our own home.
After all these happened, I started applying to international schools, including Berkshire Waldorf High School, and I got accepted. When I was applying for my US student visa and my Pakistani visa, I contacted the Afghan Scouts Relief Fund. One of my teachers knew the agency and introduced me to them. On June 20, 2024, I said goodbye to my family and my country. I began my long journey to the United States. I spent a total of 1 month in Pakistan when my student visa was issued on July 11, 2024, and I went to the United States shortly after.
I arrived in San Francisco on July 30, 2024, and started attending Waldorf Berkshire High School in September 2024. Throughout the school year, I took many classes that I loved, including philosophy, calculus, and history through architecture, where I built a life-size model of the famous Blue Mosque in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. I also participated in school activities that would never have been possible in Afghanistan. As part of my school, I was awarded a scholarship to participate in a local youth ski program. I love my school and am so grateful for the opportunity it gave me to learn and live in peace. Now, I am applying to colleges in the United States and want to study pre-law to be able to secure human rights for others and advocate for women’s rights, one day. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to study and experience all these amazing things and I hope to continue to use these valuable opportunities to exercise basic human rights for myself and other Afghan women. I hope that one day it is possible for other Afghan women to come here and pursue their dream of getting educated and having a bright future with rights and freedom.