STORIES THAT CROSSED BORDERS WITH US

There are moments when I realize that leaving Afghanistan did not mean leaving it behind.

I live now in the Netherlands, surrounded by quiet streets, bicycles, rain, calm beaches, and a blue sky that changes with the seasons. I have learned to build a life here, to speak in another language, to find comfort in a place that was once completely foreign to me. And yet, sometimes a book, a photograph, a familiar word, or even the smell of something cooking in a distant kitchen can open a door I thought I had closed long ago.

Reading these stories, I did not feel that I was reading about other women. I felt as though I was meeting parts of myself I had forgotten how to name.

Our lives have been scattered across borders, but our memories have not. We carry Afghanistan in ways that cannot be seen on a passport: in the silences we inherited from our mothers, in the education we fought to hold on to, in the dreams we postponed, and in the grief of watching a country we love become a place we can no longer safely call home.

Perhaps exile is not simply the distance between one country and another. Perhaps it is the space between who we were and who we were forced to become.

And still, we remain.

We write. We remember. We tell our stories.

Maybe this is our quietest form of resistance: refusing to let the lives of Afghan women disappear simply because the world has grown accustomed to their suffering.

From the Netherlands, I look back at Afghanistan and realize that I am still carrying a piece of that land inside me. Not only its pain, but also its courage, its tenderness, its women, and the stubborn hope that somehow survived everything.

We may have crossed the border.
But the stories crossed with us.

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«نترس، آخند دندان ندارد؛ نمی‌تواند گوشت و پوست ما را بخورد…»

“Don’t be afraid, the Akhund has no teeth; he cannot eat our flesh and skin…”

He did not eat our bones. But he consumed something far more precious—our souls, our future, our very lives.

«آخند بند تنبانش را جمع می‌كند. او اما كرخت و شُل بدون تنبان همچنان روى بالشت افتاده است.»

“The Akhund gathers his trousers. She, however, remains lying on the pillow, numb and limp, still stripped of her pants.”

This was not simply the story of one woman. It spoke of the lives of thousands of women across Afghanistan—their sacrifices, their losses, and the dark paths they have been forced to walk.

«مادرم بعد از اينكه يونيفورم مكتبم را خيرات داد، قديفهء سفيد يونيفورمم را بر دهان سطل ماند و دو كيلو ماست رويش درون سطل ريخت، بعد چهارگوشه‌اش را گره كرد و آن را بر شاخهء درخت آويخت تا چكه درست كند.
وقتى به قديفه‌ام نگاه كردم كه از آن قطره قطره زرداب مى‌چكيد و مورچه‌ها از شاخهء درخت بر گره‌اش مى‌دويدند، به نظرم آمد كه قديفه گريه مى‌كند.»

“After giving away my school uniform as charity, my mother placed its white scarf over the mouth of a bucket and poured two kilograms of yogurt onto it. She then tied its four corners together and hung it from a tree branch to drain and make strained yogurt.

Looking at my scarf as yellow whey dripped from it drop by drop, with ants scurrying over its knot from the branch, it seemed to me as though the scarf itself was weeping.”

When I closed the book, I stared out of my bedroom window in Rotterdam. The evening sky was orange and pink, and as I looked at it, I suddenly remembered Sezen Aksu’s song Biliyorsun. I played it:

Sende benim kadar geçekleri göruyorsun
Beraber olaamyız, benim gibi biliyorsun
bir başka dunyanın insasınısın yavrucağız
Sen kendi dünyanın toprağında buyuyorsun…

For a moment, the distance between that story and my own life seemed to disappear. The women in those pages were no longer strangers.