Afghanistan Diaries: Noor

Editor’s Note: This is part of More to Her Story’s ongoing Diary series, offering first-person accounts from young women living through conflict, repression, and change. The following was written by a 22-year-old woman in Afghanistan after the Taliban shut down her art workshop. All names have been changed for safety.

They shut down our workshop.

The place that had become our quiet refuge — where brushes spoke louder than words, where color softened the weight of our pain — is now silent. The walls that once held our laughter, our struggle, our little rebellions in paint, now echo only with absence.

We only wanted to paint the pain of this world. To give it shape. To survive it.

But they didn’t let us.

Art is not a crime.

It’s the breath of the heart.

It’s the only way I know how to speak without fear.

But the Taliban came. Not once — many times. Not with guns or shouting, but with words that chilled us more than threats ever could.

“If you wear proper hijab,” they said, “we won’t bother you. You can continue painting.”

And so we did. We wore the hijab — not out of force, but out of fear. Fear that this small corner of hope, this space where our dreams lived in color and light, would be taken from us.

But still, they shut it down.

They said it was because our teacher was a man. That a man has no right to teach painting to girls and women — even if that painting is the silent language of dreams.

I don’t understand. Why is it wrong to dream with a brush?

Why is it wrong to learn from someone kind, simply because he is a man?

That workshop wasn’t just a room. It was a home for us. A place where we breathed, where we belonged — even if only for a few hours. A place where we were not invisible.

Now, the Taliban are demanding money — bribes — from our teacher to reopen the art workshop.

They say girls have no right to any kind of education. They say painting is forbidden. They say we are on the wrong path.

Afghans live in deep poverty.

And still, the Taliban take. They silence. And always, they target girls.

They hate art. They hate education. They hate our freedom to imagine a world beyond them.

Now the doors are closed.

And our dreams remain behind them — quiet, waiting.

Maybe one day, we’ll return.

Maybe one day, they’ll open again.

But for now, all I can do is remember.

And write.

And hope.

*Names have been changed for safety reasons.