Nilofar Ayubi is Afghan and spent ten years disguised as a boy to escape the oppression that women suffered during the first phase of the Taliban regime. Born in 1993, she now remembers the period when she lived as a different person for her own protection. She grew up in Kunduz, a city in which, she says, “it’s not fun for a woman to grow up.”
“As a child, a person automatically has more power, even if he is a two-year-old child. From the age of four, a boy can become the legal companion of the woman who brought him into this world, and she becomes his slave,” he said Nilofar in an interview BBC.
“If you are a woman, you become invisible,” he emphasized.
Due to the strict rules that the Taliban regime imposed on the female community, many mothers began to dress their daughters as boys to protect them. For For Nilofar, the disguise allowed him to live “freely.”
As a child, the Afghan woman had short hair and wore her brothers’ clothes. He admits that he even saw himself as a boy, because he lived and had habits with which they were associated. “I didn’t even know girls menstruated,” he explained. BBC.
At the age of 13, after practicing judo, Nilofar noticed blood on her pants. She says it was a reality check and she began to realize “she wasn’t safe anymore.” The process of accepting that she was, in fact, a woman was not easy.
“I remember being so upset because I was a girl that I cried in bed at night and begged God. (…) For a girl in Afghanistan, everything is taboo, including what happens when her body starts to change,” she said.
Even though they eventually assumed she was actually a woman, Nilofar described himself as a rebellious and courageous man. She went to school and created a movement to promote women’s education, especially regarding topics not taught in educational institutions in Afghanistan.
Given her academic merits, the young woman had the opportunity to study in India. There, at the age of 19, he got married.
Returning to Afghanistan and relying on her husband’s support, the young woman became a successful entrepreneur and created a fashion, furniture and interior design empire focused on providing jobs to women without the financial support of a man.
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