Stabbing Or Shooting Someone Is Not the Only Way to Kill Them

By Basira Rahmati

Have you ever thought that you could kill someone without touching them? And what does it mean to be alive, when your dreams are not allowed to live? These are not just questions for me; they are the reality I have lived. I have not been killed by a weapon, but I am slowly dying in another way. My future and my dreams have been taken from me by something quieter and deeper, something that seeps into your soul and tells you, you are not meant to matter.

Because killing does not always mean death, sometimes it means taking away someone’s right to dream, to grow or to live freely. And here in Afghanistan, girls like me are being erased, not with bullets, but with silence.

To understand the weight I carry, you have to start at the very beginning with the day I was born.

It was January 2002, a bitterly cold winter day in Kabul, when I entered a world that was not waiting for me. My parents had already welcomed three daughters, and they were hoping, maybe even praying, that their fourth child would be a boy.

But I was not.

Even though they did not say it aloud, I could sense it in how the story was later told, my birth brought quiet disappointment instead of celebration. That girl was me.

For years I did not understand that silence. Years later, when I turned seven, my mother sat me down and gently told me how they had expected a son. My arrival had felt like something they needed to ‘accept’ rather than rejoice in. I listened, silent. I did not cry. But something inside me began to stir.

I was not like most children. Even before she told me that story, I already knew something was different. I was curious, always watching, always sensing. I noticed things other kids might have ignored. I could feel it in the way my parents looked at me, not unkind, not cold, but like there was something unspoken behind their kindness.

A quiet weight. A hint of guilt.

They loved me, I know that. They were caring and gentle, but I could also feel that they carried a kind of shyness, or maybe even regret, about how they had felt the day I was born.

I did not blame my parents. Maybe they were under the weight of tradition. Maybe it was the pressure of a society that measures a woman’s worth by the sons she bears.

But still, was it my fault?

Was it my choice to be born a girl?

Even at that young age, I began asking questions that adults often avoid: Why do we treat boys and girls so differently? Are girls really seen as less?

And what would it take to prove that a girl is more than enough? I did not wait for someone to give me answers. I set out to find them on my own.

By 17, I had completed 12th grade, at the top of my class. I was preparing for the Kankor Afghanistan national university entrance exam, something that girls are no longer even allowed to dream about it. I determined to study architectural engineering, a field I was told was for boys. But I did not care what ‘they’ said. I believed girls could design the future just as well as boys could build it.

And I made it.

Despite family struggles and social barriers, I passed the exam and enrolled at Kabul University, one of the very few girls in my department. I remember the day my mother walked with me to the university. She looked at me and said, ‘You are better than any boy in the world to me, you have done something that not everyone can do. I’m so, so proud of you.’

That moment changed me. For the first time, I felt seen not as a daughter people had to accept, but as a woman they could believe in.

I was building a future. I had found my voice. I was finally free to dream, and for the first time, I felt like I truly belonged in the world I had imagined for myself.

But then, everything stopped.

Two years into my studies, the Taliban returned to power. With a few cruel words, they closed the doors of every university to women. My faculty, once a symbol of hope and purpose, became a silent place where girls were no longer welcome.

They did not shoot me. They did not stab me, but they killed something inside me.

Because when someone takes your education, your purpose, your future, they are not just stealing your rights. They are erasing your existence. But I am not the only one. I am just one example of more than 20 million girls and women in Afghanistan who are now banned from going to university, entering a park, sitting in a restaurant, or even walking freely in an open space to breathe.

Maybe I am one of the lucky ones because I have a smartphone to access the internet and can attend online classes.

But what about the girls in rural areas like Nuristan, Kapisa, Helmand and Qandahar far Pamir in Badakhshan?

What about the ones who do not even know what opportunities exist, who are cut off from the world entirely? Many of them spend their days cooking and cleaning, carrying silent grief inside their hearts. I do not know exactly what is in their hearts, but I feel it, because I am still thinking of them.

They have no voice.

They cannot speak up.

But I can.

I am here to speak, not just for myself, but for them. And I am so, so sorry.

I am sorry for every one of my sisters who still lives in Afghanistan with no right to grow, to learn or to exist freely.

I carry your stories with me, and I am here to tell the world how they treat a girl, how they treat a woman in Afghanistan.

I still breathe, I still walk, but part of me is no longer alive.

What do you call it when a girl studies for years, only to be told she no longer has the right to learn?

We are not bleeding, but we are broken. Not by war, but by silence.

Not by a single bullet, but by a thousand daily cuts to our freedom.

Still, I am not writing this for pity. I am writing it for truth.

Because even if I cannot go back to the classroom right now, no one can stop me from speaking. No one can take away the voice I have found.

And if you are reading this, you have heard it.

That means I am still alive. That means we are still here.

#FutureArchitect of freedom Basira Rahmati, still standing, still speaking.