The Afghan woman who pretended to be a man to survive the Taliban

At 8 years old Nadia ghulam He thought the word war was something distant, some sort of legend that adults told about a distant past that would never be repeated in Afghanistan, until A bomb fell on his house and it changed everything for the world.

The fire and the impact of the explosion destroyed their home and they left her in a coma and on the verge of death. He spent the next two years roaming hospitals, but it was only the beginning of hell that he took his brother’s life, killed in action, and ruined what was left of her father suffers from a mental illness due to post-traumatic stress disorder.

When he recovered, he found a different country where women could no longer work, study or even go out on the streets as before. The oppressive regime of the Taliban had marked especially those of their gender and in return his family circle was too dejected to react.

So it’s Nadia who, just be a girl, assumed that only she could help her loved ones move forward and the solution came in disguise: “I had to dress as a man for ten years to help my family.”.

“Since there were no men at home who worked, I dressed as a boy so that I could work”, he told the Spanish newspaper Niusdiario, recalling those dramatic days which are now again a reality in his country. “I thought it would be someday and that the next day things would change, but that day turned into a decade. I worked in construction, in a workshop and whatever job came out of it. “

She pretended to be his brother, even if it was not an easy thing: she risked her life every time she went out to earn money, if she was discovered the punishment would be the death penalty, surely with public stoning, but she had no choice: “I had to do this so that I could put a piece of bread in my mouth and feed my family”, he added in an interview with CNN.

Today, with 36 years, of which the last 15 spent in Barcelona, ​​he fights from abroad to spread the reality in Afghanistan and still trying to help her family from this endless nightmare that started in her childhood.

He came to Spain thanks to the Association for Human Rights in Afghanistan but his the family could never leave from Kabul. The difference is that this time the chances of survival are very low: “They have nowhere to go, this time they can’t escape.”

“At other times, we spent two years in a refugee camp on the border with Pakistan,” Nadia recalled to the site. “But this time it’s different. At her age, my mom can hardly walk anymore.”

Throughout your stay in Europe Nadia has become a benchmark for human rights in her country. He wrote three books (translated into 14 languages) in which he recounted the miseries suffered by his people, but Now he fears that all this fighting for peace will make his family a target of the Taliban regime..

This is why he spends frantic days during which he regularly contacts the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to request asylum for his parents. “We are afraid that they will take the girls or that they will take it with my family. They know that I am a very active person in Catalonia, I have published three books translated into 14 languages ​​and my family is in danger. “

His family resides in Kabul, where the Taliban and other groups roam armed everywhere. “They go into houses and search them, and even steal. There is a lot of insecurity and we Afghans are very afraid of the civil war. “

In this context, the risk to his family is very high: “They have nowhere to go, this time they can’t escape. In previous wars, we spent two years in a refugee camp on the border with Pakistan. But this time it’s different. With her age, my mother can hardly walk anymore. “

“They limited Kabul so that people could easily surrender to the Taliban. They have no water, they cut off the electricity. They don’t let the news get in, they don’t let the food in. Kabul has become a huge refugee camp. The people who fled to this city find nothing but hunger, violence and theft. You can’t go outside because outside are the biggest monsters that are swarming the city. “

How do you contact your family? “I bought a cell phone online and sent it to them, and they charge it where they can because there is no electricity. And they can’t watch TV, but they know what’s going on because of what people are saying. “

The torture of being a woman in Afghanistan

“In my family, there are several women, with what that implies in my country, and I have the responsibility to help them. Women are more at risk in Afghanistan because the Taliban, when they enter, the first thing they do is pursue them. For them, the woman ceases to be a human being and becomes a bargaining chip “, Nadia said.

“I have been in psychiatric therapy for many years to be able to survive this war trauma, something that has become torture for me. When I see news, every video … I feel the tears of my sister, my cousin, my family “, she closed moved.

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