If You Break Me, A Thousand Versions of Me Will Rise 

When I look into the mirror of tomorrow, I do not see a single reflection—I see a thousand. A thousand versions of myself: fearless, educated, free, and unbreakable. I see my mother beside me, not behind a curtain, but in front of a classroom, in front of the world. In my future, I am not just a woman—I am a movement. This is not just about the future of Afghan women. This is about my own future, the life I see for myself after every broken dream.

I am an Afghan girl. When I open the window of my present, I smell the scent of prison, of chains, of burning books and forgotten dreams. I see a nation where a girl holding a pen is feared more than a man with a gun. I hear the silence forced into the throats of women. But beyond the smoke, I see the rising sun of resistance.

Our schools were shut, our books called weapons. Our futures were stolen under the false name of religion. They built cages and called them culture. They feared us. Not because we are violent, but because we are powerful. A girl with education becomes a woman impossible to control. And that is what they fear most: a free-thinking Afghan woman.

But it’s too late. This is the 21st century. The age of digital courage. You can close the doors, but not the screens. You can silence the radios, but not the voices on podcasts, blogs, and pages filled with fire. You cannot erase us.

In my future, I become a writer whose words travel beyond borders. When my voice is silenced in Kabul, it will echo in Canada. When my poems are banned in Herat, they will be sung in classrooms in Melbourne. If my books are burned, they will rise as digital seeds across every corner of the world.

But I do not stop at writing. I dream of creating something revolutionary: a system I call “Smile Access”—a facial recognition technology that opens physical and digital doors only when someone smiles. Because the most powerful form of resistance is joy. I want to remind the world that our strength is not just in our survival but in our ability to dream and smile through it all.

I will start a company named “The Beginning of Smiles.” It will be built by Afghan women and girls, where we create smart inventions with heart, where we show the world that technology is not only circuits and code—it’s emotion and connection. Our devices will require kindness to function. No entry without empathy.

In my future, I also build a radio station. Not one controlled by fear, but one powered by the voices of girls. Girls from every village, whispering their poems into the wind. Girls who have never been heard will be heard in every corner of the earth. The airwaves will carry our truth like birds freed from cages.

In that future, I will also paint. I will draw the faces of forgotten girls on city walls and canvas skies. My paintbrush will tell stories that bullets tried to silence. Each color will reclaim what fear tried to steal—our joy, our strength, our presence. Art will be the weapon of beauty that no one can ban.

I want to become a mentor, a guide for young Afghan girls. I want to sit beside a little girl who thinks her dreams are too loud and whisper, “Dream louder.” I will help them write poems, design apps, and build worlds from imagination. I will be the teacher that I once wished I had—the one who believed in fire, even when the world poured water on us.

And what of those who broke us? Those who thought closing schools would end our story? They will read history books one day—written by us. In those pages, it will say: In the heart of Asia, in a land called Afghanistan, rose women who turned ashes into art, chains into pens, silence into song.

That is my future. That is our future.

We will fill the museums of tomorrow with the resistance of today. Foreigners will weep in front of paintings by Afghan girls. They will listen to our voices and stand in silence. The tricolor flag of our freedom will rise again, not just on poles, but in the hearts of people. And they will bow, not to power, but to resilience.

I write. I rewrite. I keep writing. This is not just my voice. This is the voice of a thousand Afghan girls. We are not afraid. We do not lower our heads. We burn, but we build. We are the architects of a future they cannot stop.

And if they break me again? From that crack, a thousand more of me will rise.

We are women. Not chains. Not shadows. We are freedom. We are life.

And the future—we already own it.