Sola Mahfouz stopped going to school in 2007 when she was an 11-year-old living in Afghanistan.
“A group of men, they came to our door and threatened my father, that if you continue to go into school, they will throw acid on our face or kidnap,” she recalled. So she spent years confined to her home doing domestic chores.
“Over the years, I left home only a couple of times a year and, whenever I did, I had to wear the suffocating burqa that covered me from head to toe,” said Mahfouz, who uses a pseudonym to protect the safety of her family members who still live in Afghanistan. “But, meanwhile, my brothers were going to school and they were thriving academically, and I felt jealous of their lives.”
Once her chores were done each day, she embarked on a secret mission to educate herself. She spent almost six years teaching herself English and math online and eventually made her way to Arizona State University for college.
Today, she works as a quantum computer researcher at Tufts University.
Mahfouz, 27, also is working to bring awareness to the plight of Afghan girls three years after the Taliban officially banned them from attending school beyond sixth grade.
The school year in Afghanistan began this month without the 1 million girls estimated to be barred from school since the Taliban returned to power following the 2021 withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces.
“Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where women and girls are not allowed to attend secondary and higher education,” said Fereshta Abbasi, an Afghan researcher working with Human Rights Watch. Abbasi, who is currently living in exile in the United Kingdom, says women have been banned from almost all aspects of public life in Afghanistan.
“Women do not have the right to freedom of movement. They need to be accompanied by a mahram, which is a male blood-related member of the family,” she said. “Women do not have the right to protest. No right to freedom…
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