Sama Shahin

"When should we come back for our results?"
"Whenever God wills."
This was the conversation I had with my vice principal on 15 August 2021, after my final Grade 10 midterm exam. It was the same day Kabul fell, President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, and the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.
Almost five years have passed.
I am still waiting for those results.
Until that day, I believed my future was predictable. Like many students, I had ordinary dreams. Since middle school, I have wanted to rank first in the national Kankor examination. I was never the student who studied all night, but I loved learning. From Grade 1 to Grade 8, I was always one of the top students in my class. Even after my family moved to a new neighbourhood, one year before the fall of Afghanistan, I managed to earn marks above ninety and become one of the highest-achieving students in my new school while struggling with depression.
I believed that if I continued working hard, the next step would always be there.
I will never forget my last exam.
That morning we had our Civic Education exam. I arrived late, so I started writing the answers before copying the questions, hoping that if time ran out, at least my answers would already be on the paper.
I never imagined that those answers would never even be marked.
Just as I finished writing, teachers rushed into the classroom and quickly collected every exam paper.
"Go home immediately," they said.
"The Taliban have reached District Six."
The entire classroom fell silent.
Our vice principal, an elderly man with white hair, hurried everyone toward the school gate, telling us not to stay outside.
Before leaving, some of us asked him,
"When should we come back for our results?"
He replied,
"Whenever God wills."
Normally, the last day of exams was also the day the school announced when report cards would be distributed.
That day, there was no date.
Only those words.
I walked home along Chahar Qala-e Chardihi Road and, for the first time in my life, I saw Taliban vehicles carrying large white flags and driving toward Darulaman.
That afternoon, without knowing it, I wore my school uniform for the last time.

Looking back now, I realize that what Afghan girls lost was never just education.
We lost moments that can never be returned.
The excitement of waiting for exam results.
The sleepless nights before important exams.
The dream of taking the Kankor examination.
The joy of discovering which university accepted us.
The chance to walk across the green campus of Kabul University as students in our own country.
These are ordinary memories for many young people around the world.
For thousands of Afghan girls, they became memories we never had the chance to create.

I know many Afghan girls who refused to let those lost years become the end of their stories.
I am proud to be one of them.
After the fall of Afghanistan, my family moved to Bamyan. For a long time, I felt hopeless. When we returned to Kabul, I began learning English. Later, I studied at a religious school for a year before joining a science programme, based on an American curriculum, that promised an internationally recognised secondary certificate. I studied there for one and a half years before learning that the programme had ended before students like me could graduate.
Another closed door.
Instead of giving up, I searched for another opportunity and was accepted into an online secondary education programme. Today, I am about to graduate.

Today I am twenty years old.
I still have not started university.
I still have not received the results of my final school examination.
There are years that can never be returned to girls like me.
But over these years, I have learned something unexpected.
When the space to grow already exists, our responsibility is simple: to grow.
But when doors close, and opportunities disappear, our responsibility becomes greater.
We must find another place to grow, or create one ourselves.
Perhaps that is what I misunderstood five years ago.
When my vice principal said,
"Whenever God wills,"
I thought he was talking about my exam results.
Today, I know that my future never involved waiting for them.