Yaser Qubadian
My sister was only 14 when she was killed. She was so talented, and determined to get to university that she was taking her university entrance exam early. I was 16 at the time and taking the same exams, at the Mowud Educational Centre in Kabul, along with around four hundred other students.
It was a hot August day in 2018. I was just coming into the classroom with my friend Dawood when the explosion happened. Kawsar was in the front row, right where the suicide bomber detonated his explosives, killing at least 48 students and injuring many more. The blast knocked me down, my ears ringing. I quickly jumped back on my feet, only to see hundreds of people lying on the ground around me. Dawood was on the floor, I could see that his foot was injured. He wasn’t screaming or saying anything, but he was breathing.
I searched desperately for Kawsar. The blackboard was covered in blood and was partly destroyed. Human flesh and blood were all over the classroom that smelled of smoke. There she was, in the front row, covered in blood. We rushed her to the hospital but it was already too late. She was too close to the explosion. There was not anything the doctors could do.
When we buried Kawsar, I also buried my soul with her in that grave. I wished they had buried me instead of her and had let her live because she had dreams far bigger than mine.
All these years, I have lived with the agony of that loss. Kawsar and I were all we had in life. My father was killed when Kawsar was only six months old. So, she had no memories of him. He was working with an international construction company. He and five of his colleagues were killed in a Taliban attack in Farah province in 2006. Soon after that, my mother married again. So, Kawsar and I became mother and father to each other. She used to call me “moustache,” and because she had beautiful green eyes, I called her “my green eye.”
As a result of the explosion, I lost my hearing in one ear. I also struggled for years with the psychological implications of that tragedy. Yet, the most profound part has been losing Kawsar. When we buried Kawsar, I also buried my soul with her in that grave. I wished they had buried me instead of her and had let her live because she had dreams far bigger than mine.
Kawsar wanted to study medicine and was ready to do whatever it took her for her dream to materialize. She was going with me to those university preparation classes although she had several years before she would have naturally taken the exam.
After I recovered, I started volunteering wit war victims for several years. That was my way of coping with my own loss but also making sure that Kawsar’s memories and dreams lived on. In 2019, I found a place of refuge at the newly launched Afghanistan Center for Memories and Dialogue, where survivors like me gathered to talk about their trauma and remember their loved ones. It was where I remembered Kawsar.
In the summer of 2021, months before the Taliban took over my country, I started a new job with the center where I worked on preserving memories of war victims in a country torn by conflict and bloodshed for so many years. Unfortunately, the museum had to close as the Taliban’s onslaught neared, to protect the staff and the artifacts.
I also had to leave Afghanistan to avoid persecution at the hands of the regime. I was lucky to find a sanctuary in Canada, where I will be able to get a quality education and become a lawyer, as I had dreamed of. But Kawsar will never have a chance of becoming a doctor as she had dreamed.
To see the Taliban in power means having the war continue inside us, the Taliban continuing to invade and brutalize. Amid that pain, what gives me a little comfort is the launch of Afghanistan Memory Home, a continuation of the Afghanistan Center for Memories and Dialogue. When I learned of its launch, I was quick to share Kawsar’s memories and belongings, including her clothes, notebooks and stationary, her school certificates and photographs. I remember the day before the Eid holidays when we bought those clothes for her, the rainbow shoes that she loved.
To see the Taliban in power means having the war continue inside us, the Taliban continuing to invade and brutalize.
The Afghanistan Memory Home, in many ways, is my home away from home. It is where I feel my experiences live in, where I have treasured my suffering and my camaraderie with my sister. It is where the stories of thousands of those who have lost loved ones come to life and permanence. The initiative also has a virtual museum, which means not only I can visit it in Canada, but so can many who might feel suffocated under the Taliban.
For now, the Afghanistan Memory Home brings some inner peace to me and many others like me. But I also hope it can eventually contribute to real peace in my country. Maybe not in my generation, but the next one, or the one after. By seeing what their parents and grandparents went through, by understanding how many people we lost in decades of war, they can have a clearer vision of how to create a peaceful Afghanistan.
Remembering the past is the only way to see into our future.
Yaser Qubadian is an activist from Afghanistan now living in Edmonton, Canada.
