Senior escapes war-torn country, celebrates 2 years of freedom

It’s November again, we are in the year of 2023, and I am wondering where does time go?!   I traveled to Qatar on November 1st of 2021, exactly two years ago and escaped Afghanistan which is my birth country. I was 15 years old and now I am 17. In two weeks it’s going to be my 18th birthday and here is my story: 

I am Sadaf Sharifi, an Afghan (Hazara) girl from Afghanistan. I was born on November 20th of 2005 in a very small and modern family in Wazir Abad, which is in the eastern part of Kabul province, the capital city of Afghanistan. When I was only a child, my family moved the western part of the city that was named Dasht e Barchi that looked like a desert 15 years ago, and there were not many buildings and houses around, but in 15 years the whole place is filled with a lot of houses and tall buildings. A lot has changed.

In our neighborhood, there was a private school named Marefat High School. When I was 5 years old, I started to visit this school two years before I started school because my older brother started from first grade in the same school as well, and I was going there every day with my mom to take him to school. I was learning a lot until I started as a first grader in March of 2011 at Marefat High School. 

The two years of going back and forth to Marefat High School introduced me to different exciting things to do at school, and on the first day I joined the music department as a singer and stayed there for 9 years. At the same time, I was asked by my elementary literature teacher to join the radio, and I worked there for five years. During the 10 and half years of studying, I was not really quiet and I didn’t sit a side and got involved in different programs and events as an announcer, singer, speaker, debater and peace activist. When I started my 7th grade year, I started to be a public speaker and a debater (British Parliamentary Debate) and started to set my targets and goals for my future educational future. 

I started to work in a newly invented educational and youth TV Station called “SA TV,” which means “Sound of Afghanistan Television” that was supported by an American nongovernmental organization named “NED National Endowment for Democracy” as a presenter and reporter. This was the best experience of my life and when I found out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was doing the work as a real journalist but I can call myself a “Student Journalist.”  

However, there was no hope of living, and there was no hope of the future because in my country there was no security and I never felt secure because there were explosions almost every day. The Taliban were attacking the schools and educational places and centers because they just wanted to get educated to bring a change to their country and their world. On August 15 of 2021, it was the middle of the school year; I was in 11th grade. During the mid-term exams, I had chemistry that day when the Taliban got into the city and took over the government. My schoolmates and I had to leave the school and I never saw my school and my friends ever again. 

Pressure, stress, confusion, depression, fear and all the negative psychological effects started to grow in me day by day. I thought I lost my future and all my dreams and I saw the darkness in front of my eyes. I felt that there was no way to change that situation, and for one and a half months I hid from the Taliban, because of all my pictures and videos and being a student journalist who was talking about democracy, girls’ education, women’s rights, and peace. 

I left Afghanistan on this day and after almost 3 months of being in different American military bases in Qatar and New Jersey of the United States, I arrived in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on January 12th of 2022. I started to study 10th grade at CommonWealth Charter Academy for almost three months and transferred to Big Spring High School in Newville, PA as a junior and finished my junior year with success. 

I’m a senior this year and involved in different clubs and activities such as Mini-THON club or Four Diamonds (Fundraising), Dawg Pound club (School Spirit), Student Council, FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America), PawPrint newspaper (Writer), and Powder Puff (Girls’ flag football). I am planning to go to college and study “Journalism, Communication and Political Science,” a double major for a bachelor’s degree and hopefully get my master’s degree after graduating from college.  I am the first woman in my family who is going to attend college and get a higher education. 

Fortunately, after one and a half years of being away from my family, which was hard to leave behind in an insecure country like Afghanistan, finally my family joined me and my brother in the United States in April of this year which was the best part of 2023. 

Yesterday, I could not believe that it’s been two years already since I left Afghanistan, but I have done a lot and I’m really happy and proud of doing all the work that I’m doing. I’m studying and working hard to build my future and lead girls and women in the world so that they can change the world with their work and their ideas. I want to encourage the new generation to work hard and do whatever is  needed to do for a better future for our next generations.