Por Margaryta Chornokondratenko
KIEV, Aug 18 – Sahraa Karimi had been waiting in line to get money from a Kabul bank for nearly three hours on Sunday when the bank manager approached and urged her to leave, the sound of gunfire echoing in the distance.
Karimi, an Afghan film director and the first woman to lead the state-run Afghan Film Organization, decided on the spot to flee Afghanistan with her brothers and nieces, even knowing that Kabul airport was in chaos.
In a hotel in Kiev, Ukraine, she told Reuters about her escape, which she said occurred with the help of the Turkish and Ukrainian governments.
“I took my family with me. I leave my house, I leave my car, I leave my money, I leave everything I have, “he said.
The 36-year-old has sounded the alarm about the return of the Taliban regime, stating that it would strangle the film industry and women’s rights.
“They don’t support art, they don’t value culture, and they will never support this kind of thing,” Karimi said. “And they are afraid of educated and independent women,” he said, adding that the Taliban wanted women to be “hidden and invisible.”
The Taliban say they will respect women’s rights under Islamic law, while a senior Taliban leader has said their role will be decided by a council of Islamic scholars.
After leaving the bank and not being able to find a taxi to go home, Karimi started running through the streets. The director, whose film “Hava, Maryam, Ayesha” was shown at the Venice Film Festival in 2019, filmed herself while running, in a video posted on Instagram with more than 1.3 million views.
Karimi and her family were supposed to leave on a flight evacuating Ukrainian nationals, he said, but as thousands of Afghans flocked to the airport in hopes of escaping, access to their flight was cut off and they left without them.
“The moment we missed the first plane was the saddest moment of my life, because I thought, ‘Well, we can’t leave anymore, we’re staying,’” she said, adding that she was concerned that the Taliban were targeting her family and not her.
He wanted his nieces to live in a country where “they give you freedom and you have your education. As a human being you should have a value, but under the rules of the Taliban, well, you live, but a miserable life. “
This week images circulated on social media of Afghans running towards a US military plane and clinging to its side.
“A lot of people came to the airport and just, you know, (they were) kind of hugging (the) plane, just to take them away. They were so desperate, ”Karimi said.
After missing the first plane, Karimi contacted the officials who were helping her again. She was told to step away from the crowd, and hours later officials she did not identify took her family to another part of the airport, from where she and her family boarded a Turkish flight to Ukraine.
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