A woman filmmaker's flight from Kabul

September 13, 2021 12:28

"I'm thirty-seven. I was born in Kabul, I grew up in Iran, and immigrated to Slovakia to study. When I finished a Ph.D. in filmmaking, I decided to return to Afghanistan. I thought that it is better to be telling stories from my own country than to be in Europe and make stories that aren't very close to me. My film "Hava, Maryam, Ayesha,' a story of three women in Kabul, played at the Venice Film Festival in 2019.

"On Sunday, I wanted to go to the bank and get cash. I made my coffee and prepared myself: I put on lipstick and a very short dress. I took a taxi. Traffic was bad. At the bank I saw maybe five hundred people. Around fifty were women. You could understand that there was something happening: the bank was full of fear.

"The teller said, "There is no money -- we are waiting for the central bank to send us money." Suddenly, the gunshots started. And the manager of the bank told me, "The Taliban is inside the city. They've surrounded us. You should go home.' He said, "If they know you, they will kill you.' I am well known there. He showed me the back door, and I started to run."

Last week, the Afghan filmmaker Sahraa Karimi hastily packed a few things, made it onto a flight, and watched from the airplane window as her city got smaller and smaller.

Read her account here.

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