Mazar-e-Sharif: When Narges and his brothers were finally allowed to return to school last month, they were preparing for a new world outside their home.
Following their mother’s tin, each layered in black dress, black abaya, hijab and niqab, and face masks.
A few minutes later, overcome with anxiety, Hadiya’s younger sister, 16, fainted before leaving home.
When Hadiya went outside and saw a Talib for the first time, tears flowed on his face.
However, girls consider themselves lucky.
At Mazar-e-Sharif, a commercial center in northern Afghanistan, the Taliban has let middle age girls and high back to the classroom, even as in all countries most have been forced to stay at home.
Under pressure from foreign governments and international aid groups, Taliban officials insist that everything will be different for girls and women since the last time the militants came to power, and that some form of education for them would be permitted, including postgraduate and postgraduate programs.
Some secondary and middle schools have been allowed to reopen for girls in the north, where women have long played a more prominent role in the community than in the south of the Taliban.
But many parents and teachers still have doubts that the move means new government, which has so far made women out of the government and most of the work faced by the public, will rule differently than before.
“They can open school, but they indirectly try to destroy women’s education,” Shakila said, Narges and Mrs.
Hadiya.
Already in Mazar-e-Sharif, the condition for returning girls is so tight so that many are only for education at all.
The new rules that separate classes and teachers based on gender have worsen the shortage of teachers who are severe and threaten to eliminate higher education opportunities for girls.
Many parents make their daughter go home, afraid to send them to school with armed Talib lining the streets.
Others no longer see the value of educating girls who will graduate to countries where employment opportunities for women seem to disappear overnight.
The Taliban has not clearly stated why some girls were allowed to return, but not others.
But recent policy decisions, such as excluding women from the top government position and closing the ministry of female affairs, has sent a clear message to Afghan women: even if they can get education, their role in society will be limited.