Ever since he was a young boy, Mohammad’s country has been in peril. Born into a middle-class family in Afghanistan in 1992, he has never known his homeland at peace. Growing up, his refuge from violence and conflict was football. A gifted striker, he played for the Afghan national youth team from ages 13 to 19. At university, where he met the woman who would become his wife, she would often ask him: “Do you like me or football better?”
When the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021, Mohammad knew that he and his wife had to leave. As a woman, there was no hope for her there. He remembers the exact day the Taliban announced their victory in August that year: his feelings of confusion and disbelief, and walking for hours, as if in a trance, hoping none of it was real. He was still a child when the Taliban first took Kabul in 1996, but he was old enough to remember what the regime meant: jihad, oppression, Sharia law.
