The story of Nadia Ghulam, who disguised herself as a man to survive ten years among the Taliban

He was 6 years old when a bomb fell on his home in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing his brother, taking down his father, putting his mother in a wheelchair and distorting his face.

Because the Taliban does not allow doctors to treat women, it took her many cries of pain to finally get hospital treatment. Six months of hospitalization and 14 operations failed to remove all of the scars from her face. However, there were worse ones, which are less visible and will never go away.

Her name is Nadia Ghulam and, for ten years, this girl pretended to be Zelmai, the brother who had already died to save his family in the midst of the civil war in Afghanistan. With the Taliban in power, a house destroyed, and no man goes to work, Nadia Ghulam disguised herself as a man to work and survive in a country where women are not even allowed to walk the streets alone, even though they are literally covered from head to toe.

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Nadia Ghulam, let’s remember that name. We will be hearing from her again very soon as she may be called to be the Malala Yousafzai of Afghan women. She is also a writer, like Malala, who, even as a child, challenged the Pakistani regime by demanding the right of women to study. A few years later, Malala would be the youngest woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Woman among the Taliban

“I decided to wear men’s clothes for a day. I thought it would only be for one day, tomorrow things will change. I will be Nadia again and I will continue with my life. For 10 years I had to live like a man, work like a man … I lost my identity. I lost part of my childhood, all my adolescence … “, said in an interview with Euronews.

After pretending to be Zelmai for a decade, a window opened and Nadia Ghulam was able to leave her country. The Association for Human Rights in Afghanistan (ASDHA) offered to restore her identity by finding adoptive parents in Barcelona. “My mom and dad couldn’t come… he’s still in bad shape and my mom can’t walk. When I told them that I had the option to take them out, my mother said ‘leave me because they can’t do anything to me’ “she remembers today, surprised by her naivety at the time.

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Shortly after, in 2010, the world will know his first autobiographical novel, The secret of my turban, written in collaboration with Agnès Rotger, already translated into six languages ​​and soon in theaters. Then posted Stories that healed me (2014), and The first star of the evening (2016). At the same time, he studied Catalan, computer science, increased his participation in NGOs and gave TED conferences. Today Nadia Ghulam is a fighter for women’s rights in Afghanistan.

“I think the Taliban got worse. They learned to lie. Before, they were so ignorant that everything they did, they did in public, without hiding. Currently, in Kabul, they are looking for families, women and people who worked for the previous government or who collaborated with an international organization or with the press. All these people they disappear one by one. And they keep saying ‘we didn’t do anything’. Because they learned to lie“, says Nadia.

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While the world looks with dismay at the photos arriving from Kabul, the Afghan writer sent a tweet to Spanish President Pedro Sánchez. He asked her to include six members of his family, all women, on the list of evacuees they would rescue from Afghanistan. And he said yes. Hard to believe, for Nadia Ghulam, this battle has only just begun.

“I was able to save six lives and give them a better future because these girls will be able to study, go to university and be free. For me, my family is not just the people who come … but all the women from Afghanistan. And if they don’t go well, I won’t be well. Now I want to fight for their life, for their freedom. I cannot be silent. I can’t stay here and forget about these other women because I identify with his pain. This pain is in me. In my physical and psychological scars. And I won’t forget that. “

mm / ds