THE HIDDEN HERO

When asked to picture a hero, we usually imagine a powerful man with strong arms, perhaps a comic book or movie hero like Batman or Spider-Man. However, I know a hero who doesn’t have big arms, is deprived of her human rights, and can’t fight. A woman who is not allowed to show her face. Our world does not consider her a hero; she herself does not believe she’s a hero, but I do. A tired, sad, and nameless hero who exists in a land called Afghanistan.

This is the story of little Nazia, a hidden hero in Afghanistan who had accepted an erroneous notion and implanted it in her life. She had accepted that she was inferior, that she had neither a right to an education nor a right to choose for herself. She had accepted that she couldn’t be smarter than, or even as smart as, a boy. Little Nazia believed these falsehoods, keeping her mind from flying in the sky of dreams.

In the spring of 2016, when I was in sixth grade, the security in Kunduz Province was very bad because of the Taliban. Kunduz had turned from a residential area into a battlefield, leading hundreds of people to become homeless and to migrate to Kabul. Among them were Zalmay and his big family, who lived in a tent on a patch of ground attached to a school. Zalmay was a skinny old man with a black-and-white beard from the nomads of the Pashtun people. His job was to guard the school twenty-four hours a day, and this income provided just enough to feed his family, but they lived a poor life; they didn’t care about how they dressed and didn’t practice personal hygiene because they didn’t have easy access to sanitary facilities. For this reason, no one approached them at school, and the students, being young and ignorant, mocked them. Selfishly, in order not to alienate my friends, I also avoided the immigrant family. But life soon made clear to me that outward appearances don’t always accurately reflect the truth within.

It was hot, the sunlight scorching the ground of Kabul. I was in the schoolyard when I saw a girl in dirty clothes carrying a basket of food. She was wearing a big chador, covering everything but her eyes, even though she hadn’t reached puberty, looking only about eight years old. The mystery of why she wore such an exaggerated hijab at such a young age attracted me to her. I cautiously looked around to make sure my friends couldn’t see me. Then I stepped toward the girl, still keeping my distance, when she removed the veil and smiled at me. It was then that I first saw Nazia. Some say Afghan means pain and tears, and for Nazia, it meant exactly that. No one can choose the geography or family into which she is born, so this is her destiny, written by God. But God is supposed to be just and good. Is this justice? Is this good?

Nazia was thin, with striking emerald-green eyes and light brown hair. She was very beautiful, so beautiful that even the dirt smeared on her face didn’t decrease her beauty. There were black spots of pus on her skin, but even so, something about her face attracted me to her. It was as if her eyes had a strange electricity, like the sparkle of a diamond, like the joy in the eyes of a newborn baby, who is purely happy not knowing anything about the world and the people in it. Her eyes projected a heavenly sense of calmness, joy, kindness, and innocence. I asked her name, but she didn’t understand Persian, so I resorted to my broken Pashto. I asked her why she covered her face at such a young age, and she said that she wasn’t allowed to go out without covering her face. After that, I asked what grade she was in, and she replied that she didn’t go to school. She spoke about school as if it were an unattainable, beautiful dream, but a spark in my mind said No, this will not be an unattainable dream for Nazia.  

A feeling inside me said that these innocent eyes deserved to go beyond her imagination. I interrupted Nazia’s words and went to Zalmay. He was kind, but the times and traditional ideas he grew up with were obstacles between his heart and his actions. When I talked to him about Nazia, he kept saying that in our nation, girls weren’t allowed to be educated. This, however, was not something that he deeply agreed with, and he was looking for a way around it, looking at me carefully with big black eyes to find the excuse he needed. Eventually, he told me that he was satisfied with my argument, but he could not afford to send Nazia to school.

This presented a big challenge for me. My budget was only 10 afghanis, and I really didn’t know what to do. Filled with sadness, I went to Mr. Rassouli, who was my father and the school founder. He seemed to have two faces: at home he was a truly kind and warm father, but at school his professionalism made him cold. I went with trepidation to the administration office, and when I saw he was alone, I asked him in the most respectful possible tone to be the father for a short time.

Inner peace is the peace that a person feels in every bit of their being, a happiness that doesn’t need screaming, noise, and laughter. This kind of feeling appears with a smile or a warm look, when a person does a good thing, a useful thing, or simply helps another. It feels like the smell of a book mixed with coffee, like the sound of rain hitting the window, like a first love, the first day at school, or the first snow. I had that pure feeling the moment I saw Nazia in her school uniform. A feeling of happiness for something that wasn’t beneficial for me but meant something to Nazia. It was then that I knew that the meaning of true happiness, the meaning of being human, is different from what we’ve been told.

How interesting is the relationship between tears and smiles? Sometimes great pains are so painful that they make people laugh, and sometimes joys are so sweet that we cry with them. Nazia was crying, and her heavenly green eyes shone like an aurora borealis. Mr. Asadi had promised her a school bag as well. When I raised the issue with Mr. Rassouli, he immediately asked Nazia and Zalmay to visit the office. He offered free tuition, textbooks, and uniforms. For the first time, I had experienced his warm look at school, and with that look, he told me, “I am proud of you.” This was the first time I heard my father say this to me. The second time was when I left him to study abroad. I am anxiously awaiting and looking forward to the third time. However, I didn’t want to think about what he would have said if he had known about my past selfishness, where, rather than thinking for myself, I was simply following my friends.

Nazia was going to school, and she didn’t need to cover her face. My little bird had left its cage and was flying in the sky of dreams. She was beautiful, and now she lived a beautiful life, but some people did not like beauty, people who hated the happiness of others, people who identified fully with tears and imposed them on others: Men who love moribund women and hate lively and happy women. Men who consider women to be only a means for their needs. Men who consider women’s hair as fiery chains of hell, women’s voices as death bells, and women’s education as a sin. Men who are weak themselves, and have no control over their instincts, and hide their weakness by imprisoning women at home.

In 2022, just before the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan, Nazia was in eighth grade and at the top of her class of both boys and girls. Nazia had demonstrated to herself that she could be smarter than a boy. But after the Taliban took power, she was forced to leave school. I went to visit her and found Nazia’s beautiful eyes were no longer shining, no longer gave the vibe of heaven; her red lips no longer smiled, and she didn’t laugh. It was as if there had been a storm, and Nazia’s soul had been swept away with it. Nazia was to become a bride, the bride of a man she had never seen or known, and she was going to meet him for the first time at the wedding. Even so, Nazia was lucky to be married at the age of fifteen instead of ten or eleven.

Nazia had an older sister who happily showed off her own glittering wedding dresses, saying that Nazia would have glittering dresses like hers. But Nazia, who had cried with happiness in her school uniform, was laughing with sadness at the gorgeous wedding dresses. She said the clothes would imprison her. “I had big dreams,” she said. 

I thought I had done her a favor by helping her go to school. But maybe I had done the biggest evil to her. If she hadn’t gone to school, maybe she would have had her sister’s perspective, maybe she would have been happy now, and maybe her eyes would sparkle. Why is it that the more we know, the more we suffer? While the school uniform had freed her, she now knew that the glittering dress would imprison her. There is a big difference between a bird that has always been inside a cage and a bird that has tasted freedom and then is forced back inside.

As I am writing this, maybe Nazia has become a mother. I remember my last question to her: “If your daughter can’t attend school, what will you do?” She said that she would teach her daughter at home because she is literate. It was then that I knew that our work was not useless. Knowledge is a treasure that will never disappear. The caged bird had experienced freedom, and surely her daughter will experience freedom as well. Nazia may have a son who respects her daughter; a daughter may come from Nazia who will change society, a daughter who is a fighter against wrong ideas. Nazia will be a hero, a hidden hero who is a light for the future. The society in which Nazia grew up may change because Nazia is a mother there.

And so, this is the time to say: a hero doesn’t need to be Batman or Spider-Man. Maybe we need Batwomen and Spider-Women if we are to achieve real change and reform.