In July 2007 we double locked every door, shut the windows and stared instead at the glowing telly. The Taliban had taken control of a part of the city, a mosque – which had of course turned into a place to hoard arms and provide a safe haven to radical Islamists. The army descended, tanks and helicopters, hypocrisy in cheek and guns in hand, ready to fight the hydra of religious terrorism.

One of my earliest memories is Afghan refugees flooding into Pakistan, and hushed whispers of the Taliban in Afghanistan. With choppers flying overhead and the death toll rising, in a manner quite similar to the reign of the Deatheaters in Harry Potter, we hoped against hope that the Taliban would not win, would not come to power.  We panicked and thought of every stupid question, questions that we dared not voice as if that would make them more real, more solid. Would I have to wear a burqa? Should we hide our books? Will I still be able to write? Will they kill us seeing that we are openly atheist anyway? Would they kill my parents and sell me to some man twice my father’s age?

It was a question of survival – there wasn’t time left to feel. We did not cry. We did not scream. We did not even panic. We sat in silence and said not a word to each other. It would only be years later that my Pakistani childhood would catch up with me, only in my late twenties would I begin to grasp the depth of devastation to my soul.

Perhaps we died in childhood, and only when we fled the warzones did we realise that something inside us was irrevocably broken.  The thing about trauma is that it demands to be felt, whether its on a beautiful, sunny Tuesday years later or when they amputate your personhood in real time.

Trauma and Resilience / Zainab Abbas / Knowledge Integration and Project Planning: Education Futures (2023-24) by is licensed under a