Mehrullah, wake up
I was lost in a dream, running through a vast city where English voices flowed around me like a river, blending into a melody I longed to understand. Towering buildings reached up toward a blue sky, their glass windows catching the morning light. Bright smiles passed on every corner, while cars streamed back and forth along wide roads, each one carrying its own destination, its own story. The rhythm of the city echoed like the heartbeat of possibility. I ran faster, sure that just beyond the next street, the life I imagined was waiting, close enough to see but always just a little farther ahead
Then a soft, familiar voice found me. “Mehrullah, wake up, my sweet child. It’s time for breakfast. You need to get ready for school.” My mother’s tender voice wrapped around me like a warm embrace, pulling me back from the world I never wanted to leave. I opened my eyes to the pale morning light spilling across our small home. The smell of fresh bread drifted from the kitchen, grounding me in the gentle, inevitable reality of morning. And though the dream had vanished, the hope it had awakened remained quietly alive inside me.
I slipped from under my thin white blanket, feeling the cool morning air on my skin. I crossed my small rooms, drew back the curtain, slipped into my black sandals, and went outside. My mother was waiting by the door, her gentle smile lighting the morning. She took my hand, and we wandered together through the little garden. We passed the flowers and the almond trees that had shaded so many mornings before, the worn bricks beneath my steps, each one holding the footprints of ordinary days.
At that time, I thought I was just growing up. I never imagined that those ordinary mornings were shaping me. After breakfast, I packed my blue school bag, making sure every book was in place. My mother picked up my black shoes and, with patient hands, brushed them until they gleamed in the soft morning light. Every careful stroke of the brush was a quiet kind of love.
I slipped on the polished black shoes my father bought me in Kot-e Sangi, lifted my blue bag onto my shoulder, and said goodbye. For a moment, I turned and saw her still standing in the doorway, smiling. I smiled back before turning down the narrow road to school. That morning, I carried more than books. I carried my mother’s hopes, my father’s hard work, and a dream that quietly grew with every step. It felt like just another walk to school. But looking back now, I realize I was already walking toward the future I longed to build.
At school, I was eager to learn, hopeful and determined. Every lesson felt like a step forward toward the future I dreamed of. When the final bell rang, I lifted my blue school bag onto my shoulder and walked home under the afternoon sun. A gentle breeze moved through the streets, trees whispering overhead, birds singing as if they were waiting to greet me. I walked unhurriedly, books against my back, carrying the day’s lessons in my mind. As I neared home, the orange gate always brought a sense of peace. I pushed it open and stepped inside. The cool mosaic tiles sparkled beneath my feet, and for a moment, it felt as though the whole world had become calm again.
The three small rooms, each with its quiet charm, welcomed me back. The afternoon sun rested on the walls of our little house. In the small kitchen between the two rooms, my mother had prepared lunch. She greeted me with that same gentle smile that brightened every morning of my childhood. There was something in her eyes that made every worry fade away before it even had a chance to form. After lunch, I’d finish my homework as quickly as I could, simply eager to return to the place I loved most, beside my mother.
We rested our heads on the same pillow. Sometimes I’d close my eyes and listen to the gentle rhythm of her voice. She never rushed her words. Every sentence carried meaning. To me, she was the greatest storyteller I’d ever known. Through her, I learned to dream, to believe in people, and to carry a quiet confidence about the future. At that age, I thought those afternoons would last forever. Looking back now, I see how deeply they shaped me. Those moments felt endless then, but now they live in memory, more precious than I ever knew.
We have to leave
Then came the day everything changed. In August 2021, the Taliban took over Afghanistan. My father lost his job. Fear filled the neighborhood. Families left for Pakistan and Iran. One afternoon, my father came home with papers. His smile was gone. I kissed his hand. He said, “We have to leave.”
We packed only what we could carry. My brothers Elyas, Shoaib, Elham and I rolled our red and pink bicycles into a dark room. My little sister stood there, watching us. We didn’t know it would be the last time we saw that room. Before leaving, I touched the walls one last time. I looked at the kitchen where my mother told stories, the almond trees in the yard, and the path leading to my school. Everything was the same, but I felt different. My feet felt heavy. I kept turning back, thinking maybe we’d return soon, but really I was saying goodbye to my childhood.
As we stood at the border, I held tightly to the memories I’d carried, my school, my mother’s gentle voice, her stories, and the dreams I’d held for so many years. I believed they would survive the journey. I believed that if I held them tightly enough, they would cross with me, unchanged. Yet, as I stood there, my heart whispered only one thing: Don’t leave. Don’t leave your home behind.
As we crossed the border, I kept whispering to myself. “This is only temporary. I’ll go back to school. My mother will tell her stories again. We’ll come home.” I believed every word. I didn’t yet understand that I wasn’t just crossing a border. I was crossing into a completely different life.
When we reached the room my father had rented, he opened the door. My heart pounded. The room was small, dark, and suffocating. There was no yard, no almond trees, no cool mosaic beneath my feet. Only four bare walls. In that moment, I didn’t know how to understand what we had lost. I only knew that everything familiar was suddenly gone.
Still, I whispered to myself, as if the words could protect me. “This is only temporary. I’ll go back to school. My mother will tell her stories again. We’ll go home.” I held on to those words with everything I had, even though hope was the only thing I had left.
This is only temporary. I’ll go back to school
Days slipped into weeks, then weeks into months. The hope I had carried across the border grew quieter each day. Every morning, I woke up wishing to hear my mother’s soft voice. “Wake up, it’s time for school.” But every morning began with the same silence.
In the corner of our small room stood a worn yellow cupboard. Inside rested my blue school bag, exactly as I’d packed it before we fled Afghanistan. My notebooks were still stacked neatly inside. Beneath them lay the polished black shoes my father had bought for me in Kot-e-Sangi. I couldn’t bring myself to move them.
At first, I believed I’d carry that bag again in a few days. Then one week passed, then another, and another. Dust settled on the straps while my dreams waited quietly beside it. My younger brothers still talked about school before they fell asleep, wondering when we’d sit in a classroom again, when we’d open our books. None of us knew the answer.
One afternoon, I went with my father to a small pharmacy because I wasn’t feeling well. The pharmacist, with a prescription in his hand, looked at me and asked, “Can you speak English?”
I turned toward my father. His face looked tired after another long day of searching for work. I wanted to answer. I wanted to. But I slowly shook my head and lowered my eyes.
As we walked home, I couldn’t stop thinking about that moment. Before we fled, I had dreamed of learning English. Now, even the simplest conversation felt beyond my reach. It wasn’t just that I’d lost my school. I felt as if I was beginning to lose the future I’d imagined for myself.
Yet every evening, despite his exhaustion, my father gathered us together. He reminded us that education was something no one could take from our hearts.
“Don’t give up. One day, another door will open,” he’d say
I held on to those words with everything I had.
Don’t give up. One day, another door will open
That night, I lay on the cold floor beneath my thin blanket, a bundle of folded clothes serving as my pillow. Sleep wouldn’t come. My father’s words lingered in my mind. Carrying me back to the life I had left behind.
I closed my eyes and drifted into the dream, hearing English voices around me again. For a moment, I imagined myself walking toward a classroom, my bag on my shoulder, believing the future was still waiting for me.
Then a soft vibration broke the silence.
My father’s phone, resting on the shelf, trembled. I opened my eyes. Through a small opening in my blanket, I watched as my father reached for it. He studied the screen, his face unreadable in dim light. Then he took a slow breath, and answered.
“Yes.”
He listened quietly.
“Yes,” he said. “This is me.”
A long pause followed.
“Yes. Of course.”
Then, for the first time in weeks, I saw something change in his face. He lowered the phone.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “I’ll come.”
He sat in silence for a few moments. I didn’t ask who had called. I just watched him. Deep inside, without knowing why, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time. It was small, almost fragile, but it was there.
I watched my father disappear through the wooden door. The room felt empty again. I lay back down beneath the thin blanket, pulling it over my face. My pillow was still a folded bundle of clothes.
I closed my eyes, hoping to find the dream again.
My father’s words drifted through my thoughts.
Don’t give up. One day, another door will open.
When my father opened the door, something was different in his face. There was a gentler smile there than I hadn’t seen in a long time.
I walked to him and kissed his hand. He pulled me close, held my head against his chest, and kissed my forehead.
“Son,” he said, “there may be an opportunity for you to go to school.
For the first time since fleeing Afghanistan, I felt something I had almost forgotten.
Hope.
Our Future Is Not Over Yet
Years later, I came to understand that my story was not unique. It was one among countless stories of Afghan refugee children whose education was disrupted by conflict, displacement, and uncertainty. Across Pakistan, many Afghan families have spent years struggling not only for food, shelter, and safety, but also to protect one of the most precious things they carried with them, their children’s right to learn.
I don’t need reports to understand that reality. I lived it.
The evidence confirms what children like me experience every day. A joint report from UNICEF and the Mixed Migration Centre found that shrinking protection, poverty, and uncertainty continue to leave many Afghan children and young people facing serious barriers to education and other essential services. UNHCR has long documented that access to education remains one of the greatest challenges facing Afghan refugees in Pakistan, with documentation problems, poverty, and limited opportunities keeping many children out of school. Human Rights Watch has similarly warned that recent crackdowns and forced returns have left thousands of Afghan refugee children facing even greater obstacles to education, healthcare, and protection, pushing many families further from the stability necessary to learn.
Behind every statistic is a real story, like mine: a boy who dreamed of becoming a doctor, a father who sacrificed everything to educate his children but watched that dream slip beyond his reach, and a child who stood speechless in a pharmacy, unable to ask for medicine because he’d never been given the chance to learn English.
As Nelson Mandela reminded us, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” And for too many Afghan children, that weapon was taken away before they ever had the chance to hold it.
Afghan refugees are not asking for sympathy. They are asking for the right to learn, to grow, and to reclaim the futures conflict has stolen. We are not asking for charity. We are asking for justice, for the chance to return to our classrooms, to open our books again, and to dream without fear.
Because when education is taken from a child, it is not only a classroom that is lost. It is a dream, a voice, a future, a life that might have changed the world.
And even in exile, even in silence, there remains one voice reminding us:
“Our future is not over yet.”
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