Shabana at her part-time job at the Burman University Library (A Better World)

By Alessia Proietti

Young Afghan woman shares extraordinary journey to finding freedom in Lacombe

Dec 1, 2023 | 12:37 PM

There’s something about the Alberta sky.

The morning sunrise that wakes with bright orange beams. The grey stormy clouds that swirl with cracks of lightening like tree branches. The cotton candy hues at sundown or the green northern lights on those lucky clear nights.

This sky is what Shabana loves most about living in Lacombe, a simplicity in life the 22-year-old never takes for granted after escaping the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, all by herself. rdnewsNOW has been requested to keep her last name anonymous.

“Every day I take a picture of the sky and I send it to my mom and say, ‘look at that! How it’s beautiful!’ Every day it’s beautiful, the shape of the sky,” she said.

Although her story may shock most, Shabana may be considered one of the lucky ones.

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The Taliban are an Islamist nationalist group that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996-2001, before being removed from power by a military coalition led by the United States. This is the year Shabana was born.

EDUCATION

During this time, Lacombe-based non-profit A Better World (ABW) began to do their work, building schools across the country for boys and girls, including 13 in Shabana’s home province of Jawzjan.

She attended ABW’s Arab Khana School, which served students from Grade 1-12. Boys and girls went to school together until the fourth grade where they were split.

For Shabana, apart from playing at friends’ houses after school on Fridays, she loved learning English.

“It was interesting for me to learn it from scratch, from the alphabet,” she said. “It’s learning a new language that I never heard.”

Shabana during her interview in 2019 with A Better World. (A Better World)

She said it was the golden ticket to achieving her dream: to represent her country on an international level. She could be a diplomat, work for the United Nations (UN), work at an embassy, she contemplated the career possibilities.

She says her parents were very proud of her as many Afghani children did not go to school, let alone learn how to read and write in their own Persian language. According to UNICEF, roughly 3.7 million children are out of school, with 60 per cent of them being girls.

After graduating from high school, she continued to pursue her dream in university, studying political science. She also got involved in local politics, joining the more progressive Junbish-e Milli party, led by Abdul Rashid Dostum, and attending seminars.

But things began to look different across her country. While Shabana says there was always fighting around, she began to hear more frequent accounts on the news of bombs in schools and terrorist incidents targeting educational institutions.

Her mom begged her not to go to school; high school was already more than most. But Shabana persevered.

In May 2019, Eric Rajah, Co-Founder of ABW, had returned to Afghanistan to follow-up with students at his schools to see if they were making an impact on young lives. He says he was told by the Ministry of Education that it would potentially be his last trip for a while as the Taliban were closing in, requiring him to travel with a dozen armed guards at all times.

Eric Rajah (left) with guards assigned to him by the Ministry of Education in 2019 trip to Afghanistan. (A Better World)

Shabana was one in a group of girls interviewed, keeping Rajah’s contact card.

TALIBAN RETURN

The Taliban took over in August 2021.

Shabana said people were scared and began to flee the country as the Taliban had been known to kill religious minorities and opponents, detain journalists, and abuse human rights on various accounts.

She, however, continued as normal for a while, graduating university in 2022 and working at a local television station, until members of the Taliban began to harass her.

She says they found her WhatsApp number and Facebook account, messaging her that they knew her address, which prompted her to move homes, and pushing her to divulge information about her job and affiliated political party.

It wasn’t long before they attacked her manager, she says, and warned that if she ever worked again on the station or advocated for women’s education, that she and her family would be harmed. It was then she realized that she would be the last graduating class with female students from her university.

According to the UN, Afghanistan has become the only country in the world where girls are banned from education beyond primary school and to ban women from working in any job outside the home, including international organizations like the UN.

“It was a shock. I cried all night and said, ‘how could this happen? I graduate, I study for four years, now I’m unemployed, I cannot work. This is the worst story’,” she said.

Her dreams to study international law, to represent her country, vanished. She pulled out Rajah’s card and sent an email for help.

“I’ve been to university every day with the possibility to be killed. I had that much of a hard time in Afghanistan, but I decided to go and pursue my education. I knew that going to another country was challenging but I accepted it; at least it’s better than staying in Afghanistan with depression, with no hope, losing my dreams,” she told her parents.

While Rajah began to research, Shabana became his eyes on the ground, visiting ABW schools to note updates on their status. To his relief, they were all still standing, unlike during the Taliban’s first regime, and being utilized by students.

Embassies had shut down in the country leaving young dreamers landlocked. Shabana would have to go to their neighbour country, Pakistan, to apply for a student visa in Canada.

THE JOURNEY

Women were not allowed to fly out of the country without a male chaperone; but that did not stop Shabana.

She borrowed money from a relative to purchase an expensive visa off a street vendor to get into Pakistan. She faced growing worry and skepticism from her family at the thought that their second youngest daughter of six was leaving dangerously by herself.

Rajah said he tried contacting the other girls from his 2019 interviews, but they were either unreachable or their parents were too scared to commit. He says he remembers Shabana’s father fearing this may be his daughter’s last hope for a future but took the chance to let her go.

Her only brother drove her to the border. With a luggage of clothes in hand, she stepped out of the car, and walked to the border under the dark night sky.

“There were many Taliban at the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, asking me where I was going, for what, and why I’m alone. I was single so I had to say that my husband was waiting at the border of Pakistan for me because otherwise, they wouldn’t allow me to move,” she said.

On the other side, she found a ride to a female student hostel in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, where she stayed for two months.

Many families may envision their child leaving the nest on their first day of college, loading boxes into their campus dorm room. For Shabana, this was her first experience away from home.

RESISTANCE

In Canada, Rajah was facing increasing resistance from universities who did not accept credentials from Afghanistan.

Finally, Burman University, a publicly funded independent post-secondary institution in Lacombe with a similar mission of service as ABW, agreed to give Shabana a chance, offering a conditional acceptance letter into the business program.

Rajah says as the university is smaller, Shabana could receive more tailored support for her needs. The institution hired an immigration consultant to handle paperwork, noting however that less than 10 per cent of student visa applications from Afghanistan are approved; the lowest success rate of any country.

Rajah began to lose hope, he said, but Shabana held on tight.

Two weeks before the first day of school, Shabana received her visa.

Shabana in Lacombe (A Better World)

Not out of the weeds just yet, Rajah then had to find a direct flight from Pakistan to Canada as her visa would not be accepted in other countries. After three weeks of searching, Rajah purchased the last seat on a questionable website. Shabana finally took the 16-hour flight to Toronto and then to Edmonton, a week into the Fall semester.

LIFE IN LACOMBE

Living on campus, Shabana says she likes the quiet life of Burman, even landing a part-time job at the school library. Although the institution is Christian-based, all students are welcome, providing her with allotted time and space to pray in her Islamic faith.

“Now I’m studying, I’m so happy, I feel safe, I feel freedom. Here, I can educate [myself], I can work, I can do, I can reach my dreams; it feels so good,” she said.

Speaking to her family daily, she jokes about consoling her mother’s worries about eating pork and drinking alcohol, and says she hopes to bring her family one day, noticing a decline in spirits particularly in her sisters who long to return to school.

Shabana questions whether she’ll be able to achieve her dream of representing her country, especially under a Taliban government, but says she’s achieved something even greater.

“After the Taliban, one of my biggest dreams was to move from Afghanistan to pursue my studying and I reached my dream,” she said.

Shabana speaking at A Better World event this month. (A Better World)

And above all, Shabana expressed her deep gratitude for ABW, her professors, Rajah, and his wife Candi, who have treated her like a daughter.

“This is a big responsibility. Somebody who has no family here, and you have to see them through, not just during school. She’s basically not going to be able to go back [to Afghanistan], not likely, not in the near term,” said Rajah, who lives near Burman where he graduated from.

“All the challenges the women are facing, even though it’s one, that one person can make a difference some day. You cannot help them all; the duty is to help the ones you can.”

A BETTER WORLD

Rajah says none could have been accomplished without the grand generosity, commitment, and trust of donors, particularly in central Alberta.

Shabana’s entire journey from the visa to Pakistan to her arrival in Canada cost around $4,000, Rajah says, but her education will cost around six times that amount per year, all paid for by specific donors who supported their projects in Afghanistan.

ABW supports over 100 students around the world through their sponsorship program, with donors providing over $40 million towards projects since the organization’s beginning in 1990.

Although his schools in the Middle Eastern country are not serving as many girls as they once did, Rajah says he has no regrets.

“We had a 14-year window to do something, and we did it. There’s a whole generation of students who graduated and because of that, they went to university and the revolution will start with them,” he said. “You never regret when you invest in young people.”

They say the sky is the limit, but for Shabana, the big, blue, beautiful Alberta sky leaves endless possibilities.