If the Taliban Had Never Existed

My name is Samira. I'm eighteen years old. I live in a city where the sun rises without fear, and no explosion steals the sleep of its people. Every morning, the laughter of children echoes through the dusty streets, and girls walk to school dressed in colorful clothes, carrying their books. No one looks at them with suspicion or blame; this is Afghanistan, a place where the Taliban never existed.

Every day, I walk to school with my best friend, Zainab. Our first class is math, followed by science, and then English. At noon, we sing songs in the schoolyard, perform plays, and our teacher tells us stories from around the world. Sometimes, I wonder if the Taliban were here, would we even be allowed to speak, laugh, or learn? My mother always says, You're lucky to live in a world we once only dreamed of. When I was younger, I didn't understand what she meant, but now I do. I know that once, girls like me weren't allowed outside their homes. Owning a book was a crime. Listening to music was a sin. Going to school was a crime that could cost a life.

My father is a writer. He always says, When fear rules, the pens fall silent. But now, in a world without the Taliban, my father writes every day about love, peace, and a future where no one is afraid. My little sister, Leila, wants to become a painter. She has painted a big orange sun smiling over the mountains of Afghanistan on her bedroom wall. She says, This sun came only when the shadows left.

Once, I found a book in the public library called Days When Girls Were Forgotten. Curious, I read it. It told the story of a girl named Farzaneh, who lived under the Taliban. She was denied schooling. At night, by candlelight, she secretly read her father's books. She dreamed of becoming a teacher, but never could. The book ended by saying Farzaneh was killed not on a battlefield, but silently at home, simply because she wanted to learn.

Reading that book brought tears to my eyes. I promised myself that as long as I live, I will be the voice for girls like Farzaneh. That's why I decided to become a writer like my father, but to tell the story of my generation.

In a world without the Taliban, Afghanistan belongs to everyone: Hazara, Tajik, Pashtun, Uzbek, all studying together in universities, working, and rebuilding the country. No faces are walls, and no languages are crimes. We live in peace, not peace forced upon us, but peace we choose. My father says, If the Taliban had never come, thousands of children would be alive today.

Sometimes, in the silence of the night, when I look at the stars, I wonder if this world is just a dream. Maybe I'm dreaming too. Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up in a world where girls are forbidden again. But then, I hear my sister's voice, reading her new poem to our mother, I hear my friends laughing on the phone, I hear my teacher saying, No one has the right to silence your dreams.

And I understand, no, this is not a dream. This is a reality that could have been, A reality that, if the Taliban never existed, could have come true long ago. Today, I'm writing my own story. Maybe some day, another girl will read it in a library and wish to build a world where cruelty is only a bitter memory, not a reality.