Nasrin

Nasrin was a widow at twenty-five years old. She was married at the age of sixteen when she was in the 9th grade; her husband was killed during Admin's presidency. Admin was the second communist president (1979-80), and was notorious of the most brutal and massive destruction and torture of intellectuals and professionals in Kabul.

At the time of our interview, Nasrin was teaching in the Teachers' Academy, and wanted to obtain a university degree at the same time. But her quest to become a teacher was not an easy one. After marriage, Nasrin lived with her in-laws. This is a common custom; a proverb in Persian says that parents tell their daughters during their wedding: "We send you in a white wedding gown to the husband's house; we will get you back in a white coffin" (2). Nasrin's in-laws, as well as her own family, wanted her to quit school. But she insisted on continuing her education and even agreed to wear Chadari, the typical Afghan veil which covers the whole figure and has little embroidered grills in the front to see through. She received a high school certificate, and wanted to enroll in the University but could not make the family agree. Her own husband was not opposed to school and education, but he could not oppose his father.

After six months of training, Nasrin obtained a teaching certificate in Early Childhood Education. This enabled her to find a teaching job in a kindergarten and help her family who had serious financial needs: "I hoped that the salary would make my father-in-law happy, who really needed the money. I thought this way, he would see with his own eyes that education was really making a difference. And I had hoped and really thought and planned that he would think the more the better, and would let me go for more and higher education at the university."

Thanks to the financial support that her education was providing, Nasrin went ahead and registered secretly for the university exam (3). She said: "I thought that I had proved that my education was not useless, and, in fact, was very helpful to the whole family. If I just confronted them with the successful results of the concur exam, they would not disapprove." But she was wrong; Nasrin's family did not permit her to join the university. She passed the exam, was admitted to one of the faculties, but was not allowed to go.