Author Sodaba Haidare BBC 100 Women

When the Taliban swept Kabul on August 15, their only shooting was to celebrate. For Afghan women, the salvo means that they have lost all their rights and freedoms. Five of them have been sending daily diaries to the BBC, which depict their rapidly changing lives.

In the TV series "The Handmaid's Tale" adapted from Margaret Attwood's dystopian novel, there is a scene in which the protagonist and book editor June Osborne (June Osborne) Came to her office one morning, only to learn that the new leader of the country has banned women from entering the workplace.

Her boss summoned all the female employees and told them to pack up and go home.

On August 15, 2021, Maari, a soldier who served in the Afghan army, had almost the same experience. At 07:30, she went to work in the government department, looking forward to a busy day of meetings. Walking outside, she immediately noticed that the street was unusually quiet, but she continued to move forward and took out her phone to check the conference calendar.

"You have come to work!" When she walked in, the surprised male colleague said.

"I don't think Kabul will collapse," she replied.

But when her boss faced her, she hardly put down her bag. "Go and tell all the women to go home," he said. She followed her instructions and told the female staff to leave immediately from room to room. But when her boss asked her to go home, she refused.

"As long as my male colleague stays to work, so do I," she said.

Maari is not just any employee. She was a senior official with an impressive military record, and her boss reluctantly accepted her words.

But with the passage of time, reports of the Taliban’s entry into Kabul have become unignorable. Maari's boss decided to close the door of the department and let everyone go home.

Elsewhere in the city, geography teacher Khatera is starting a new course-her 40 students, all teenage boys, flip through their books to find the correct page.

Soon, other teachers walked into the classroom with their mobile phones. There are conflicting reports on Facebook: some people say that the Taliban are in Qargha, a small town on the outskirts of Kabul, and some people say they are in Koht-e Sangi and are already in the city. The principal quickly suspended classes and sent everyone home.

When Khatera arrived at the bus station, she saw people running in all directions, carrying luggage and children. Traffic is at a standstill.

"Everyone is a sargardaan," she wrote-Dari means "lost". "It's like Judgment Day here."

Hatra started walking. She was not worried at first, but then she noticed that the Afghan soldiers were carrying their bags to the airport, with their children walking behind, holding the end of their mother's scarf. Everyone is leaving.

Khatera's heart beat faster and she started jogging. Now she knew that the Taliban had returned.

"This is the worst nightmare," she repeated in a low voice.

At about the same time, Zala, a student at the American University of Afghanistan, received an email stating that she would be evacuated to the United States within 48 hours.

She made a quick trip to Shar-e Naw in the northwest of Kabul, an area suitable for shopping, buying last-minute travel essentials.

She also suddenly saw someone running and asked what happened. The first person she stopped was anxious to answer, and then a man told her that the Taliban had taken Kabul.

"My strength is gone, my hands and feet are beginning to tremble. How do I go home?" She thought to herself. She would cry when she passed cafes and restaurants, where she would often meet friends, drink coffee and listen to music. Her whole life flashed before her eyes.

She is too young to know the rule of the Taliban, but she heard horror stories from her parents who lived under the Taliban regime in the 1990s. Unless she gets on the plane, this will be her future.

Prior to the acquisition, Wahida Amiri, a 31-year-old law graduate, ran a library in the center of Kabul. She has collected nearly 5,000 books, and her dream is to expand to all parts of Afghanistan and encourage women to read.

For her, the arrival of Taliban soldiers-patrolling the streets and determining people's lifestyles-is an injustice that needs to be challenged.

Over time, she became more and more angry.

"Why didn't anyone say anything? Why didn't anyone do anything?" She asked anyone she met.

No longer allowed to work, Vahida sat on her balcony for several days. It used to be her favorite place in her home, where she could hear people talking, birds and dogs. It was deathly silence now. In late August, she counted the number of planes leaving Kabul Airport, sometimes 10 per day, sometimes 20 per day, carrying Afghans out of their homes.

"If everyone is gone, who will stay?" She wanted to know. Will there be women without a good education?

"Afghanistan was injured. It was shattered to pieces," she thought.

One night, a friend of Wahida's phone. "Let us protest," she said.

Many women gathered at friends' houses on Friday afternoon. They named themselves the spontaneous movement of women fighters in Afghanistan and took to the streets the next day, September 4, to demand equal rights.

They met at the shopping mall Foroshgah with the purpose of marching all the way to the Presidential Palace of Afghanistan. But at the Ministry of Finance, they only walked a short distance before they met the stern Taliban soldiers.

"There are too many of them. They hovered around us. We told them we were protesting peacefully, but before we knew it, we were forced to a corner and they fired tear gas at us," she said.

In the days that followed, many women said they were stopped, beaten with whips, and beaten with electric batons.

That day was the day when the Taliban declared victory in the Panjshir Valley, a small province in northern Afghanistan, famous for its resistance to the Soviet Union and the Taliban in the 1990s. In 2021, this will be the last piece of territory outside the rule of militant groups.

Wahida’s family is from the Panjshir Valley, and she took to the streets again, this time with her sister-in-law and six male friends.

When she called for a ceasefire in Panjshir, she met a group of angry Taliban soldiers holding AK-47s. One of them approached Wahida and said threateningly: "You'd better go home and cook lunch."

"I'm not afraid of your gun," Wahida said. "I have the ability to argue with you on any topic you want. And I won't go home to cook."

The Taliban banned protests the next day.

In the field of healthcare, women workers are too important to be lost.

Mahera is a young doctor specializing in obstetrics and gynecology in a busy hospital in the northern province of the country. He stayed at home for the first week after taking over, but later received a call back.

However, working under the Taliban is not easy.

"They sneered at everything," Mahera said. "When patients complain about the lack of services or the price of medicines, they come to intimidate us. They think we are unfair to the patients."

Many medical staff have fled the country and most clinics have been closed. Mahera now travels to 12 areas to provide front-line care; this is a vital task because Afghanistan has one of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world.

"On the first day of my return, I wore a chaderi [head to toe covering]. I was shaking under it," she said. "But over time, I think the Taliban have become accustomed to us, and I don't have to wear it anymore."

A week after the Taliban announced the reopening of boys’ schools across the country, Khatera received a call asking her to come in. She put on her school uniform and walked towards what she called the "Happy Land." She missed it-the smell of chalk when she wrote on the blackboard, and her students brazenly asked her about the smell of the capital city. She was full of excitement.

When she arrived at school, it was obvious that her students were also very happy to meet her. They took out their planner and asked her to sign, just like celebrities after fans have signed. But immediately she was called to the principal's office.

All her female colleagues are there. They were told to sign their names on the register and go straight home.

"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan still bans women from working," the principal said.

Why are all female teachers being recruited for nothing? Khatera thought that the principal might want to please the Taliban by showing the signatures of women preparing to work.

At the school gate, she stopped to see the classroom she had taught for 10 years. She wanted to tell the boys that she would be back one day, but she couldn't help but burst into tears.

On the day the Taliban occupied Kabul, Hatra was shocked and terrified, but it broke her heart.

Since the Taliban invasion, Mali and her former Afghan National Army comrades have been in hiding. Former soldiers and women have been promised amnesty, but Mali does not believe it.

"They had to come to my area many times to ask people on the street where we were. They said we had weapons hidden in the house and they wanted to talk to us," she said.

One day, a colleague from Mali who was fighting the Taliban knocked on her door. Through the peephole, she recognized a shopkeeper, but did not open the door

"They have a picture of you and they show it to everyone," he said, speaking to the closed door in case she was listening. "I saw it with my own eyes. If you are still here, please leave. Save yourself."

Maari is particularly vulnerable because she comes from the long-persecuted Shiite Hazara community. Her family in central Afghanistan was recently forcibly expelled from their home by the Taliban. She has nowhere to go.

"I might starve to death because I can't get out of the house and no one will know," she told me.

Mali said that the international community has forgotten the Afghan female soldiers. She seeks help from people abroad every day, but they seem to be far away from the earth.

Zara was born after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. She has been studying political science and law at a prestigious university because her father is a wealthy man and can afford tuition.

She was told that the first flight she was preparing for did not happen.

Since then, she will be told every few weeks that she will be evacuated. Packing up, packing up the bedding, and unfolding again, this has become a ritual for her and her family.

“Today we put away all the plates and cutlery because we received news that we will be evacuated in the next 24 hours. Oh, they told us not to pack a big bag, so I just packed a backpack,” she wrote.

This girl who likes to try different looks recently changed her tight jeans, colorful tunic and scarf to a pure black headscarf.

"I've never worn clothes like this before," she said-she is not used to it and it will take a while to get it right. "It's time for a scarf." She covered her face so as not to be recognized when she went out.

It has been 100 days since the Taliban swept Afghanistan and entered Kabul. In most provinces, including the capital Kabul, girls are still banned from attending secondary schools, women are still banned from entering the workplace, and their roles are vacant or held by men. Due to the loss of international aid, the economy is collapsing, and the cold winter temperatures have arrived. According to the World Food Program, 95% of Afghans do not have enough food.

As the only breadwinner in the family, school teacher Khatera and doctor Mahera are working hard to put food on the table.

Haven't paid for a few months.

Around this time of the year, Afghanistan’s central heating system is turned on—but Khatera’s does not. She can't afford it.

Vahida Amiri is getting tired day by day. But she is determined to continue to speak out for Afghan women.

Maari has managed to leave Kabul and live in a secret place-just two days after she left, the Taliban came to her house.

Khatera sat at home in the cold, dreaming of going back to school.

Zara is still waiting to evacuate. Today, she received another email about a possible evacuation in the next 24 hours. She began to believe that she might never leave.

Mahera recently received a marriage proposal from someone connected with the Taliban. She didn't want to marry him. She faces a difficult decision every day: choose to save her patient's life or her own life.

All names have been changed except for the name of Hida Amiri

Illustration courtesy of Ghazal Farkhari @rasmorwaj

BBC 100 Women selects 100 influential and inspiring women from around the world every year. Follow the BBC 100 women on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Use #BBC100Women to join the conversation.

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