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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Annie Kelly

‘They are trying to eradicate us completely’: the passion and pain of telling the stories of Afghan women

Zahra Joya poses for portrait on a bench in Elthorne Park, London.
Zahra Joya has been living in London since her escape from the Taliban in August 2021. Photograph: Anselm Ebulue/The Guardian

On the nights that she manages to fall asleep, Zahra Joya always returns to Afghanistan in her dreams. On good nights she travels back to Bamyan, her home province, with its green mountains and bright blue lakes, or to her parents as they looked when she was a little girl.

Increasingly though, her dreams are full of roadside bombs or men with guns. Some nights, memories of her last hours in Afghanistan play over and over on a loop: the panicked crowds outside Kabul airport, people being whipped and beaten, the sound of her sisters crying.

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