In 1998, when Orzala Ashraf Nemat returned to Kabul at age 20, the city looked nothing like the one she left a decade earlier during the Afghan civil war. She was 11 when her family fled Kabul for Peshawar.When she returned, she found When she returned, she f girls didn't go to school.
Nemat saw desperation in the eyes of friends and family who were afraid their girls would remain illiterate. "All because the Taliban had this stupid rule that girls couldn't go to school, nobody was willing to teach them, "she recalls.
Barely out of school herself, Nemat defied the Taliban to set up underground schools for girls. The recent massacre of 132 school children in Peshawar by Pakistan's Tehreeke-Taliban has left her grief-stricken. "No words do I find that can explain how I feel about such a heinous attack on humanity," says Nemat, who has a special tie with Peshawar. "A new `me' was bor n in the refugee camps," she says, adding that her ideas for change were also born in the city.
People were so terrified of Taliban's fanaticism that when Nemat began setting up schools for girls in Afghanistan 15 years ago, high-profile NGOs refused to help her. She finally drew support from friends she grew up with in the Afghan refugee camps of Pakistan. They roped in Afghan teachers who had taught them a decade ago.
The first of her schools began in 1999 in the guest room of a teacher's house; girls would hide their math and Persian books under re ligious books in case the Taliban spotted them. Only once, in 2001, were they in danger of being caught. Two women grew suspicious on seeing Nemat photographing a class, and thought the school was a foreign-funded NGO promoting Christianity .
They reported the class to the Taliban. While the teacher and her husband were ar rested, they managed to bribe their way out of jail. The Taliban regime ended the same year, after which Nemat's organization became a registered NGO.
For Nemat, the struggle for an education has always been personal. She missed school during her first year in Peshawar. She later moved to Quetta, which had a school for Afghan refugees. "Our teachers were doctors and engi neers who were com mitted to teaching refu gees," says Nemat.
Back in Peshawar for high school, she desperately sought to learn English, pouring over grammar books and foreign radio news channels. But she couldn't speak the lan guage until she chanced upon "this amazing teacher, with an excellent accent," a Pakistani Pashtun with the Peace Corps.
She later returned to her refugee camp as a guide and translator. Founder of 'Humanitarian Assistance to the Women and Children of Afghanistan,' Ne mat recently finished a PhD on local governance in Af ghanistan. While in Afghani stan's Nangarhar province for some fieldwork for her PhD, she discovered that the girl assisting her was once a student of her Taliban-era neighbourhood schools. "She was a student at Nangarhar's Education University," says Nemat with pride.
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