To all public and private universities
Peace be upon you...
May God bless you in all your endeavors
By the decision of the Cabinet dated 1443 AH, you are all informed that according to this ruling,
the education of the female class is suspended until further notice, and you should implement it immediately and inform the ministry of your actions.
This notice was distributed to all universities in Afghanistan yesterday.
I had read the news on the BBC news site and wrote to R to ask her how she was. She was devastated. She wrote to me that she had been studying for her last exam till the early hours of the morning, then fell asleep on her books. She was woken by a phone call from a friend who told her that they couldn't take their last exam as the universities were now closed. There were messages all over social media, questioning whether this was true. It was. Since receiving that message, she cannot control herself, she wrote, crying all the time.
"What are we going to do? What kind of game has fate played with us?"
Another of my contacts, H, had heard of the news before R. She had texted me about the closure together with the above copy of the Taliban notification. H was in a different emotional situation, having completed her exams a couple of weeks ago.
"The Taliban and all other fundamentalist groups see their destruction in the presence of educated and informed women so they try to keep women at home and prevent them from having education. But they will never stop girls from knowledge by closing the schools and universities. There are many other ways to improve knowledge. Education will definitely be opened again with the struggles of conscious women."
This photo was sent to me, showing the male students of the Medicine Faculty in Nangarhar province who left their exams to stand with the female students.
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