Writer: Zahra Tarshi
Zahra Tarshi, the founder of the Khane Khorshid(The Sun house) Kindergarten in Kabul, has written the story of the fall of the republic and its consequences for the Nimrokh.
Part One:
I think I am dead, I’m done, I’m just dragging my corpse to different places. The body becomes so heavy when the soul is separated from the body. I can no longer pull my own corpse. I can no longer breathe, it is 1 a.m. I look out the window of the room in fear. The lamps of all the houses are on. The city is bright.
But no one is happy. There is no difference between day and night. No one can sleep well. Everything turned overnight. Everyone is shocked. No one has believed it yet. Maybe no one dares to believe. How is it possible to sleep at night and wake up in the morning and see that without any coup, the government of the republic has fallen and the flag of the Islamic Emirate has been raised? The President of the country preferred to flee and, according to him, did not even have enough time to take off his sandals and put on his boots, but he had time to transfer millions of dollars. It is so hard when you know that your homeland has been sold, and even harder when you can do nothing but watch. You can not even accept it because they say: our homeland is like our mother.
Sometimes I feel like it’s all a nightmare. A bitter nightmare that when you wake up you do not feel well all day. I wish it was just a nightmare. I wish it was a lie. It has been 22 years since the Taliban was gone. For the past 22 years, although there was no security, there was freedom, there was little hope. Life without hope is a gradual death. For the past 22 years, however, the Taliban have never been deactivated and committed suicide which bloodshed to many innocent people. For the past 22 years, however, there has been no justice and the government has been cruel. But at least there was freedom of speech and thought. At least it was you who chose how to think where and how to live. How to dress. The victory of the Islamic Emirate over the Republic means the victory of ignorance over oppression.
Over the past month, the Taliban have been waging conquests (fighting and killing people) in other cities in Afghanistan, and in some cities, the sound of a single bullet has not been heard, just like in Kabul! Just like the capital! Although the Taliban have been fighting security forces and civilians in Afghanistan’s major cities for the past month, people were still saying that the Taliban can’t seize the capital. With the fall of the provinces and districts, many people had taken refuge in Kabul to save their lives, and hundreds of displaced people had taken refuge in Kabul’s parks.
As the number of displaced people increased, the people of Kabul in those days were working hard to help them, and everyone was helping as much as they could. Public pressure .on the government also led to the opening of mosque gates as shelters for the displaced. They took refuge in Kabul. To Kabul that itself had no shelter.
12 days have passed since that sinister day. The day Kabul was broken and painful Kabul fell to the Taliban without any fighting, bloodshed, or any resistance from the country’s security forces. No one defended Kabul. So lonely Kabul was left. A Kabul whose body is injured.
It was Sunday, August 15th. People went to work as usual in the early morning, and daily life went on as usual. As usual, I got ready and went to kindergarten. Everything was normal. Like other days, how much I miss those normal days now. As noon approached, news of the Taliban approaching Kabul became popular. A city was in turmoil. Kabul panicked without seeing a Taliban soldier. People were all walking at high speeds. In the streets, you thought they had a car race.
Everyone was talking about the arrival of the Taliban. Everyone was talking, but no one believed it. On that day, unlike other days, all the kindergarten students came to Khane Khorshid. I did not know how to tell the staff, especially the coaches, to get the kids ready to go home without them noticing. My throat was sore. I was afraid to cry when talking to the Khane Khorshid coaches and to convey my feelings of weakness and frustration to them.
Khane Khorshid(The Sun house)! It was a house for kids. Three years ago, I established the Khane Khorshid Kindergarten with a world of beautiful dreams.
At that time, about sixty thousand dollars had been spent on the establishment of this kindergarten, and this amount seemed very strange and irrational in my country to establish a kindergarten. In Afghanistan, kindergartens were places only to take care of children, and the educational aspect of kindergartens was not considered at all. If there was an education in a limited number of kindergartens, it was not appropriate with the age of the children, and exactly all the subjects that were taught in the first grade of the school were taught in the same kindergartens. Kindergartens had a low prestige, and every woman who could not find work anywhere else chose to work as a kindergarten teacher reluctantly.
I was the mother of two daughters at that time. Zoha and Mehrsa. The concern of raising my two daughters motivated me to establish a standard kindergarten. I always thought to myself that maybe many working mothers like me are always worried about their children when they are at work. Sometimes this worry was accompanied by a pang of conscience. feel guilty! The feeling that I’m not a good mother and I do not know how kindergarten teachers treat my child now. Women who did not want to stay at home and limit themselves to home and on the other hand were mothers and could not shirk their responsibilities to their child. They had to choose one. Either they became housewives forever or they worked in the community and always lived with feelings of worry and remorse.
I knew the mentality of the people of the community well. But I understood the importance of childhood as a period of the foundation of human personality, and that is why in 2018 I established the Khane Khorshid Kindergarten with the Montessori International Method. I tried to give prestige to kindergartens. My first attempt was to build a good team. A team that works together like family members. I do not know right or wrong, but I have always believed that in this world there is no guaranteed relationship but only members of a family who love each other with good and bad. It has always been that way for me. I was not a good girl for my father from the point of view of Afghan society.
Because a good girl in our society was a girl who believed she was second-class. A good girl was a girl who was shy and never wanted more than what they wanted. A good girl is a girl for whom others make decisions and she accepts the decisions of the elders without any opposition. But my father was different. He loved me with all my bad deeds. That’s why I started the name of the kindergarten with the word “home”. The word home made me feel safe. The house was not beautiful without a family. Family means those who love each other with all their faults. The members of the Khane Khorshid were a family. As much as they understood the seriousness of their work, they were just as close and kind to each other.
That’s the key to the success of the Khane Khorshid. There was a family in this house where the children practiced together with formal education, kindness, and how to live together. In a short time, the Khane Khorshid had become well_known and a model for other kindergartens, which was not easy. For three years, the whole family put all their thoughts, minds, and energy into this work day and night, and built the bricks of this house. The Khane Khorshid was not just a business for me. It was love. The hope was to continue. Motivation to try harder. I could not have imagined that with the arrival of the Taliban, I would have to close the gates of this house forever, and I was the reason. Because I was a woman. This was a great sin in the Taliban ideology. A woman who wants to be present.
A woman who appears on the television screen without hiding her face and talks about raising children instead of sitting at home and raising her children. I swallowed my sore. As soon as I entered the vestibule of the Khane Khorshid, one of the coaches quickly ran towards me and hugged me. At that moment, I felt how much I wanted to hug someone and say that I was scared. The coach said: “Thank you, Ms. Tarshi, for coming. I am very scared.” She cried from the bottom of her heart. I could not stop my tears. I could not. I said: Everything will be fine. Everything is fine. But I did not trust myself. The members of the Khane Khorshid were all confused. I told myself that nothing had happened yet. Maybe all this is just a rumor. It is impossible that the Taliban to enter Kabul and the army does not resist.
How much I wanted this hope to come true. I went to my office. I asked everyone to come to the office. I said: Look, my dears! Nothing is clear. Maybe the arrival of the Taliban is just a rumor. The Taliban can not enter Kabul without war. We should not lose ourselves for the sake of children. If children see our disarray, they may be shocked. We do not want to harm children. I asked the administrative staff to contact the families and ask them to come to the kindergarten to deliver their children and say that we could not transport the children to their homes by the kindergarten bus due to traffic congestion and security risk. I also asked the coaches to take the children to the playground, play music, and let the children play and have fun, and prepare the children’s belongings for going home, and must not talk about the Taliban or falling and fighting to the children.
I also posted a voice message in the WhatsApp Kindergarten group, where the children’s parents were all members. I recorded my voice messages several times, and each time I tried not to reflect the vibration of my voice and my sore throat in our words so as not to add to their anxiety. I created this group three years ago. In addition to being equipped with CCTV cameras inside and outside all classrooms, we filmed the activities of the children every day, and our office colleagues sent a video report to the WhatsApp group every day. This may not seem sophisticated at all in an educational environment, but with a negative background of kindergartens in Afghanistan, a lack of trust, and a negative mentality, I understood that as a good motherthat we need to make sure that mothers relax during their formal work when they see a picture of their child. We did this for all three years to build trust, but we believed that the child’s behavior and attachment to the Khane Khorshid were the results of our team.
My driver entered the office. I was disturbed by the look on his face. He asked me to return home quickly. Even his expression had changed. When I saw so much concern in his eyes, I realized that the situation outside was worse than before. He said: Ms, president, please off all your female colleagues. We stay here. He meant male colleagues. I wanted to resist, but I felt that maybe my decision would endanger their lives, so I accepted. My parents worked with me in running the kindergarten.
My parents were there that day and they asked me to go home and said: Be sure we stay to deliver the last student in the kindergarten. I had learned responsibility from them and I had no doubts. But I could not go. I could not satisfy my heart. Again in the WhatsApp group of families, I sent a voice message and said that I am in the kindergarten until the last child is delivered and they can be sure.
When I saw fear and sadness in the eyes of women. I said: It is ok, my dear, you go, but please wear a mask and try to cover your face with scarves and take care of yourselves.
When they left, everyone was crying and saying: We know we can never work again. It was as if I had lost the words. I did not know what to say. I wanted to shout and wake up from this bad dream. When all the female employees left, I could not leave there. Because without a doubt, children were more frightened when they saw that there was no other woman because the majority of the members of the Khane Khorshid were women, and I always believed that children understood and felt much more than we adults think. My mother and I stayed in kindergarten with other male colleagues until the children’s parents came one by one and took their children with them. The horror and worry in their eyes made my throat heavier every moment and kindergarten became quite unlike other days. When the last kid left I cried.
I felt that this was the last working day of the Khane Khorshid and that the gate of this house would be closed forever. My knees were shaking and I could not stand. I came back home. Along the way, I looked at the frightened faces of the people. It was as if this nightmare was becoming a reality. I was shocked. Absolutely shocked. I looked this way and that, looking for the military youths. Soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the safety of the people of this land. No troops were seen in the city. What happened? Is it possible everything changes in a few hours and life completely change? I got home. Zoha and Mehrsa were scared. The babysitter was panicked and asked me if she can go? I have stayed so that Zoha and Mehrsa are not alone.
I said: Yes, thank you, go sooner and do not get in the car, just walk and inform me when you arrive. Zoha and Mehrsa did not know what had happened. Did I know myself? I was confused and scared like them. Zoha was seven years old and Mehrsa was four years old. For the first time in my life, I wished I had never been a mother, wished I had never decided to bring them into this world. I wish I had never decided to work in my own country. I wish I had left this country long before. Zoha had just entered the first grade of school. I still remember the first-grade memories of my school, and every mother frames these sweet memories on the wall of her child’s room. But I wish my daughter would never, ever remember the memories of the first grade of her school.
Translated by; Jahan Raha