Three years have passed since the day I graduated from Kabul University; three years since the days when I still didn’t know that one day I would long for the simplest moments of my life.
Today, when I look at the past, more than missing the classrooms and books, I miss my people; I miss friends who once walked beside me, laughed, and talked about the future, and today each one has fallen into a corner of the world. Some have left, some have drifted away, and some are no longer in our lives.
I long for the days when, after class, I would walk in the university courtyard with my classmates. Sometimes we walked aimlessly and talked for hours. Sometimes we would leave the university, stroll around, and sit in restaurants and cafés in Karteh Seh and Karteh Chahar of Kabul. Girls and boys sat together, laughed, and talked about our studies, our lives, and our dreams.
Those days were normal for us; we didn’t know that one day these very ordinary moments would become the most precious memories of our lives.
A few days ago, I passed by the engineering gate of Kabul University. Just one look was enough to bring years of memories back to life. I stood and looked at that gate, but in reality, I was looking at my past.
Suddenly I saw myself again in those days; among my friends, among the laughter, the walks, and the dreams that had not yet lost their color.
Sometimes my heart tightens. I wish one autumn day I could return to Kabul University. Walk under the trees whose yellow leaves slowly fall to the ground and for a few hours imagine that nothing has changed.
I wish my friends were beside me again.
I wish I could hear the sound of their laughter again.
I wish we could walk aimlessly after class again and not worry that perhaps that day might be the last day we are all together.
We studied two and a half years of university during the republic era; an era that, with all its problems, offered us the opportunity to live, study, make friendships, and build dreams. But we spent the remaining part of university under Taliban rule; days that for me were among the hardest and bitterest days of my life.
Perhaps that is why today I miss Kabul University.
I don’t just miss a building, a gate, or a courtyard; I miss a chapter of my life, I miss my youth, I miss my friends, I miss the people who left, and I miss the days that will never repeat.
Three years have passed since my graduation, but I still feel that part of me was left behind at Kabul University; perhaps in one of those corridors, perhaps under the shade of one of those trees, perhaps on an autumn afternoon, among the sound of my friends’ laughter.
Kabul University for me was not just a place of study; it was part of my life, part of my youth, part of memories that, the more time passes, the more I miss them.
Some people graduate from university, but some memories never end.
And I, still three years later, miss Kabul University; I miss the days when we didn’t know they might be the most beautiful days of our lives.
