Transcriber: Kelly Clarke Reviewer: Denise RQ
Can you remember when you were 9 years old?
What were you thinking? What were your dreams?
What were you goals and responsibilities that you had?
When I was 9 years old
I was dreaming
about having the possibility to go outside and play with my friends.
To be able to actually go to school.
But that opportunity was taken away from me.
Afghanistan is a patriarchal society
where women are secondary
and their ideas were not taken into account.
In 1919, when Afghanistan got its independence,
the government tried to implement a lot of reforms
that would actually change that
and give a lot of possibilities for women
to go and become someone better.
In 1978, the Communists came into power
and they instituted a lot of reforms
that helped Afghani women to go to college,
to go to schools, and get formal education.
I was born in 1988, and at that time,
Afghanistan was a much different country.
It was modernised.
The city was built,
the universities and schools were built,
and a lot of people had a chance
to live a life of freedom.
Afghani women could go to schools.
They could choose a partner for themselves,
they could go to work as an architect, as a teacher, or a doctor.
Or go work in the factories.
This is my family, my father,
and my mother, and my twin sisters.
My father was a Professor at the university; my mom as well.
My father graduated with Bachelors and Masters degrees
in Electrical Engineering.
My mother was one of the five architects
in Afghanistan at the time.
She was also part
of a women's rights organization
that was helping women gain their rights
to be able to actually go, and study,
and progress their careers.
These are my sisters.
The twins are on the right; this is my aunt, as well.
As you can notice,
both of the these pictures were blurry and not clear.
These were the only photos that survived from the time we were in Afghanistan.
All the other pictures were destroyed by the Taliban.
A little bit of history about Afghanistan:
when the communist regime fell, the Mujahideen came into power.
Mujahideen means
the one who is engaged in jihad,
where jihad means a holy war.
And they wanted to have a lot of sharia law
and a lot of islamic laws
instituted into the government.
So they came, but there were two or few other groups,
where they were fighting with each other
and they couldn't actually agree which group was going to be in power.
So they started fighting with each other,
and it became a civil war which was continuing for years.
And the Taliban used this to take over Afghanistan.
So the Taliban came into power in Afghanistan in 1996.
And the meaning of Taliban is student of religion.
They reformed a lot of sharia law
and ruled according to the laws of sharia.
One of the things was
that they did not allow women to go outside.
Women were submissive. They could not go to school.
They couldn't go outside.
I remember when I was small,
my parents had to whiten the windows
so that nobody could see inside of the house and we couldn't see outside
because women were living in that house.
My mother had to wear a burqa. She had to stay at home.
She couldn't go outside. We couldn't go outside.
And my father couldn't teach
and that was one of the things he wanted to do.
The other thing that we had to do when we went outside
was that my mom had to go with my father.
Because women did not have the right
to go outside without male supervision.
So that is why they had to do that.
As you can see in the picture, there are four women with a little boy.
As you can imagine that is ridiculous
because those women have experience
whereas that little boy has none,
or a small amount of experience.
The other thing my parents didn't agree with
was that girls turning 9
were being forced into marriage with older men.
That was unacceptable for my father.
He wanted to have us grow up in a society
where we could have our own possibilities,
our own way of living and have freedom.
That is why he decided it was not a country for us to live.
That brings me to our travel to the Czech Republic.
One day, all of our furniture slowly disappear from our house:
the television, the couches,
all the very important things we had in the house
started disappearing slowly.
One night my mum woke us up and gave us a little pill.
She said, "We are going on a field trip,
have this pill so you do not feel sick
and can sleep on the way.
When we reach somewhere, it is going to be an amazing place.
We traveled, and it took us 13 days.
I don't remember a lot of the things as I was sleeping most of the time.
I remember small things
like walking through the forest
and it was very funny for us
because my sister fell down into the river,
and we couldn't stop laughing.
Even though it was night, and everyone was trying to calm us down,
we couldn't stop laughing because she fell down.
Now, that I am thinking about it,
it doesn't seem like a funny story anymore.
It took us 13 days to reach the Czech Republic.
My parents really liked the nature and the whole city.
We were in the centre of Prague where the smugglers had left us.
My parents were saying, "This is an amazing country. Let's stay here."
So they decided to stay in Czech Republic,
and this is how we got into a refugee camp.
So we got into a refugee camp,
and the first camp is a quarantine
where we had to be tested for a lot of diseases and other things.
We were there for about two weeks;
and after that, we went to another camp
and from there we went to this refugee camp
which was segregated from the whole community of the town.
We were in the middle of the forest. We didn't have anything.
We stayed there for a year and a half.
After a year and a half, we got our asylum,
and we moved to Prague where we started a Czech school.
In Czech school we experienced a lot of discrimination
and lack of understanding from the people.
They never tried to ask us
where are we from or how did we get here.
They just assumed that we are from Afghanistan,
that we are part of the Taliban, we are part of Osama Bin Laden's organization.
Especially after 9/11.
However, that changed, as well.
My father got an opportunity to work for Radio Free Europe
where he got a benefit for us to go to the International School of Prague
From there I graduated and had an opportunity
to go to an amazing college in Grinnell, Iowa.
This is a photo of us in the Grinnell Iowa magazine
where they interviewed us for our story which was published.
I graduated from Grinnell in 2013
with a Bachelors degree in Biochemistry and Russian.
All of my sisters graduated from college.
Basically, we had an opportunity to fulfil
all the dreams and hopes that my parents had for us.
That takes me back
to asking those questions.
Can you remember when you were 9 years old what were your dreams?
What were your hopes?
What where you thinking?
I was hoping that I would have an opportunity to go to school,
and have an amazing opportunity to graduate from a good college
and become a teacher or become a biochemist.
That opportunity came true.
Now it is time for us to ask
how many other 9 year old refugee girls
are hoping for that?
Thank you.
(Applause)