Learning Hidden from the Taliban: Kabul’s Secret School for Girls

The Taliban have largely excluded girls from school in Afghanistan. In Kabul, a woman secretly teaches girls from the neighborhood – accompanied by hope and fear.

Somewhere outside, in the west of Kabul, at a quarter to six in the morning, Nazanin describes the way through the last dusty alleys over the phone. Meter-high walls to the right and left, a gate suddenly springs open on one of them.

Behind it lies a shady backyard with a raised terrace covered by an opaque tarpaulin – Nazanin’s little secret school. “Teaching is very dangerous – for me, but also for my students. Of course also for my family, which is why I was pretty scared at the beginning,” she says. “We’re very cautious. But we don’t know what’s to come. But even if it’s dangerous, we can’t just give up on our dreams.”

Lessons five days a week

Gradually, the young dreamers trundle in. In front of the tarpaulin, they slip off their shoes and step into their secret classroom: “I’m afraid of the Taliban when I come here,” says Zainab. “But when I’m here in the classroom, I’m so happy.” Actually, Zainab would now be in the seventh grade. Nazanin teaches girls between the ages of 13 and 16, every weekday from six in the morning.

Today the girls are taking a chemistry test, it’s dead quiet in the room. The girls squat far apart on the carpet so that no one can copy. Then they draw lines with book covers on their slips of paper and get started.

Kathera is the first to finish, she would already be in the eighth grade. “The Taliban lived in the mountains for years. It’s depressing to see how they treat the people here, especially the girls,” says Kathera. “They have a completely patriarchal world view. Not only do they no longer let us go to school, they don’t let their own girls either.”

Taliban want “Islamic environment”

The Taliban say they must create an “Islamic environment” before schools can reopen. Girls should neither be taught by teachers nor be in a class with boys. Most children in Afghanistan have already studied separately according to gender.

In March, for the new Afghan school year, the Taliban announced that girls would actually be allowed to go back to school. Thousands got ready in the morning, packed their backpacks and put on their uniforms. But at the last minute, the Taliban backtracked and the girls had to go home. Countless dreams and hopes had been shattered.

That’s when Nazanin decided to do something: “When I see the girls writing here and they look so happy: It gives me so much hope that they too will have a future. And that helps me to keep going. The energy of these girls kind of rubs off on me too.”

The teacher Nazanin and her young neighbors don’t want to give up just yet. The girls talk about their career aspirations: pilot, public prosecutor, reporter. All professions that they are currently unable to practice under the Taliban regime. But every time the girls look at the blackboard, they see a picture right next to it that Nazanin hung there. It reads in colorful letters: “Hope, Dream and Faith.”