You escaped Kabul, you had a pretty horrific path
from your home to the airport,
through the Taliban on a flight where you ended up in Kyiv.
It was really a scary experience of being
lashed by the Taliban,
being treated by the Taliban and being sexually harassed, right, by,
by a person.
Can you talk about the danger you felt when you were there and why you felt like
you had to, why you had to leave on August 19th?
I think me,
like thousands of other Afghan women who got out of the country because of
safety issues and those who are still trapped and try to find way to survive,
but there are reports of women getting missed, abducted, being forced,
getting married to the Taliban.
What's it like to be forced to cover up as a, as a young woman?
These are really basic human rights that both men and women should have, right?
But in Afghanistan,
excluding women from the society and from their rights,
it's, it's really difficult.
Is there a media still left in Afghanistan?
Would you be allowed to work if you were in Afghanistan?
I think I would be in,
either I would be ending up in prison or I would be
somewhere being tortured by the Taliban. I could not end up staying at how,
at my house or being hiding from one place to another. There are,
there are many women working at the, at their basement to
let the world know what's going on or what's going on in
Afghanistan.
They were claiming to be the new Taliban and that it was gonna be different and
girls could go to school and, you know, does that make you angry?
That some people believe that? You know, even in our own government?
I think only Afghans could understand that the Taliban never changed.
Why do they have these restrictions on women? What, what,
what informs that for them?
It's in nowhere, it's nowhere in religion.
At least I can say it's nowhere in Islam,
saying that women should cover from head to toe. Women should,
women should stay at home, not getting an education,
not getting access to their basic rights,
not to go to work and not see, not to, not to speak to men, right?
I think Taliban,
the basic or the simple thing that I believe and the Taliban know
themselves is that they are afraid of women
empowerment.
Do you wanna go back to Afghanistan?
There is no point for me to go back to Afghanistan because I cannot do anything
right now inside the country. But I think if I can,
if I work outside the country, I can accomplish more.
What do you miss about Afghanistan?
I miss my room. I miss the places that I would,
I would say the cafes that I would end up with my friends,
despite the insecurity that was going on back in Afghanistan,
but
I was not afraid of taking every single chance that I had to
spend my time with my friends and enjoy my life.
I did not deserve to go through, to go through that trauma, right?
It's gonna stay with me for the rest of my life.
But so far it hasn't been, it has, it has not helped me,
and I think it won't help me until I've reached a point that I can do something
against the Taliban. I can,
I can raise the voices of women out there and I can see people in my country
not suffering so much.
So your family was, was there.
They were able to get to Kyiv and then now they're in Canada safely.
So your mother, father, brother,
and your baby sister Mobina who's two and a half?
Yeah.
So I think a lot about you and, and how your life has changed,
but I think a lot about Mobina and how her life has changed. How has,
what's her life gonna be like now compared to what it was going to be?
You know,
sometimes when I speak to my mom and we think about if we would not adopt
Mobina, I think she would end up
maybe not even alive unfortunately in Afghanistan.
She is one of the biggest,
biggest achievement or biggest, I would say,
gift that we received from God. She can say hi. She says bye.
She says mom.
These are the sweetest words that she learned so far.
It's been almost two months, two and a half months,
or maybe three months that she,
that they reach to Canada and she learned those words and
she's so sweet. I think she gonna have,
now that she's in a very safe country, I think we siblings,
including my parents,
we are gonna put our lives out there to make sure that she gonna have the
brightest future.
She can go to school. She can wear what she wants, that your parents allow.
She has the freedom.
Yeah. She's got freedom.