It’s August 2021. Imagine being a woman in Kabul – a woman who loves words, who loves to write. Who keeps in touch with fellow women writers on WhatsApp as the Taliban advances, seizing city after city, until, with shocking rapidity, they’re in Kabul itself …
A woman like Marie (not her real name), who worked with a German NGO, and remembers how: “One of the girls left a message saying that the Taliban had started a house-to-house search, so it would be best to destroy any documents showing that we had worked with foreign organisations. This message was like a sledgehammer. We spent the day putting all our family’s books and papers in a bucket for my father to set fire to. As each sheet was burning, I felt as if a part of me was burning. For my survival, I have to destroy with my own hands the things that I value the most.”
Or like Zainab, who describes how she “boiled some water and added a little dishwashing liquid. I go through my notebooks and manuscripts one by one and soak them … My father told me that the ashes of all these books cannot be hidden, but if you soak them in foamy water and then wash them like clothes, no trace of your writings will be left. Now that the Taliban are here, my words are just a pile of rubbish.”
