Sitting at her office desk in Coffs Harbour, Mitra Hussaini is only now beginning to come to terms with the past 12 months of her life.
In that time, she has fled from her home in Afghanistan and from the Taliban which had targeted her, forged a new life in northern NSW, and is now fighting to get her family out of Afghanistan.
Long before the fall of Kabul, she caught the Taliban's attention for the wrong reasons.
"I was someone who strongly believed in women's empowerment and I really strongly believed that girls must get education," she said.
Ms Hussaini used her own money to create an organisation from scratch, and ran campaigns and courses educating young Afghans on the rights of women, particularly conversations around sexual consent.
It was a stance, she said, that put her on the Taliban's hitlist.
Anonymous phone call
Ms Hussaini's first run-in with the Taliban came in October 2018, while she was on a trip in the rural province of Bamyan.
After a fiery exchange with young Afghan men at a seminar on sexual consent, she said she received a chilling phone call.
"A boy called [and said] your name has been given to the Taliban," she said.
Ms Hussaini believed the men who had criticised her for promoting the importance of sexual consent had given them her name.
The person who called her anonymously said her plate number had also been given to the Taliban.
They said her vehicle was set to be stopped in the Jalrez district, at a known Taliban-controlled village, where she believes she likely would have been assassinated.
"I think he [the boy] told me maybe because he was part of the group [that informed the Taliban] and had a change of heart," she said.
Escape from Kabul
Two years later when the Taliban began its rapid resurgence to power, Ms Hussaini knew she had to get out.
One week after the group took Kabul, she began taking steps to escape with the help of western contacts, despite pleas from her family to stay.
Contacts from her work with the United Nations helped her to secure a flight out.
It took her several hours to pass through the Taliban's security.
"There was five Taliban checkpoints. I wore a very long burqa and covered everything," she said.
"I took only eight dollars with me."
Ms Hussaini saw many of the horrors that were reported during the fall of Kabul at the city's airport.
"The Taliban were directly killing the people, so many women, so many children," she said.
"The foreigners were also scared — they were also killing and shooting."
Using her UN accreditation to get into the western-controlled section of the airport, Ms Hussaini spent four days in the American camp, before boarding a cargo plane to Dubai, where she was granted a temporary Australian visa.
The women left behind
Ms Hussaini feels a relative sense of safety now she is in Coffs Harbour.
She is surrounded by supportive friends and colleagues, and works with in the state's environment and planning department.
But her family is in hiding to avoid retribution from the new regime.
She is especially concerned for her sister, who she said was traumatised from seeing women attacked and killed in the streets.
"She's really scared, because now she can't go outside and she saw three incidents [killings] with her own eyes," Ms Hussaini said.
She has asked her family to limit what information they tell her, in order to protect themselves.
"I tell them, 'don't tell me where you are, just stay there'," she said.
Ms Hussaini, who is still awaiting a permanent visa application, said she had found it challenging to lobby on behalf of her family.
"You need to know people at the top," she said.
She said the women she formerly worked with back home also faced a worsening situation each day.
As she works to find a way to bring her family to safety, her plea to the world is not to forget the women of Afghanistan.
