This is the story of a woman whose education was cut short by the Taliban’s return, whose marriage took her to Germany, and whose experience of migration taught her that no place, no matter how safe or comfortable, can replace home.
Morsal tells me her story from behind a laptop screen. She is sitting in Germany, while I listen from the other side to the story of a woman who once left Afghanistan excited about going away, believing that in another country she could study, work, and build a better life. But now, after living in Germany for some time, when she talks about those days, her voice seems caught between satisfaction with her life today and longing for the life she left behind.
Before the Taliban returned to power, Morsal was studying. She had plans for her future and wanted to complete her education. But after the Taliban returned, her education was cut short. Schools and universities became restricted for girls, and the future Morsal had imagined for herself suddenly took a different shape. Around the same time, her family decided that she should get married. Her fiancé was living in Germany, and Morsal was expected to join him after their marriage.
But getting to Germany was not that simple. It took nearly two years to complete the process of leaving Afghanistan. For two years, she waited for the day when her life would change. Whenever she thought about the future, she imagined herself in Germany. She says that more than anything, she was happy to leave Afghanistan and go somewhere where she could once again make decisions about her future.
“At first, I was very happy to leave the country. I thought that when I reached Germany, my life would become better. I could study, work, and build my future. I thought leaving meant reaching a better life.”
But when she finally arrived in Germany, she experienced something she had not known before: the pain of migration. She says that while she was in Afghanistan, she may not have understood what migration really meant. She thought migration meant leaving a place with problems and going somewhere with more opportunities. But after arriving in Germany, she realized that a person does not only leave their country behind. They also leave behind people, memories, sounds, streets, friends, and a part of themselves.
“When I arrived, I realized for the first time that migration is not just about leaving a country. When you are far from your home and family, you lose things that no one can rebuild for you.”
Morsal now has a good life in Germany. She loves her husband and is satisfied with their life together. She has a job and can continue her education, something she was unable to do in Afghanistan. She appreciates the opportunities she has found in her new life and does not want to overlook the good things in her life today. But among all she has, there is always a sense of something missing: home.
“I love my husband, and I love my life too. I have a job, and now I can study again. But even with all of this, you still miss your home, your family, and your country.”
She says the hardest part of migration for her is loneliness. Loneliness does not always mean being alone in a room. Sometimes a person can feel lonely even in a city, among people, or at work, when no one understands the language of their memories.
Morsal speaks with her family and friends on the phone most nights. Her phone screen feels like a window through which she can return home for a few minutes. She can hear her mother’s voice, talk to her friends, hear about their daily lives, and for a few moments forget that she is thousands of kilometers away from them. But sometimes these calls make her longing even stronger.
“I talk to my friends and family, we laugh and joke, but when the call ends, I break down. Because I realize that they are there and I am here. I talk to them for a few minutes, but when the phone screen goes dark, I am alone again.”
For Morsal, her longing is not only for people. She also misses the atmosphere of Afghanistan, the things that once seemed so ordinary that she never imagined she would one day miss them. She misses family gatherings, friends she could see without making plans, and talking to people who did not need her to explain her culture and memories.
“Nowhere in the world can become home, no matter how many comforts you have. You can have a good life here, have a job, study, and have opportunities, but there is still something missing in your heart.”
When she talks about the difference between life in Afghanistan and Germany, she pauses most on one thing: in her own country, she did not have to explain everything in order to be understood.
“Here, when you joke with someone, they may not understand your joke. When you talk about a memory, they may not know what it means. They do not know your culture or understand your words the way people from your own community do. In your own country, you can laugh from the heart because there are people who have seen the same things you have seen, share the same culture, and understand the same language.”
According to Morsal, this is one of the painful parts of migration: in a new place, a person has to explain themselves all over again. They have to learn a new language, adapt to a new culture, and find new ways of dealing with things that were ordinary in their own country.
Sometimes a word in one’s mother tongue, a song, a photograph, or even the smell of a particular food can bring the entire past back to life. In those moments, the distance between Germany and Afghanistan is not simply a distance on a map for Morsal. It is a distance between two lives.
Still, she does not want to overlook her current life. She wants to complete her education, continue working, and build the future that was once taken away from her. Perhaps continuing forward is a way for her to reclaim her life, a life whose path was changed by war and restrictions.
But the more she talks about the future, the more her conversation returns to the past: to Afghanistan, her family, and the question of whether she would have ever migrated if circumstances in her country had not changed.
Morsal is silent for a few moments. Then she says, “If I could have studied in my own country, maybe I would never have become a migrant. We could have studied there, worked, and lived alongside our families. I did not choose to be away from my home.”
At the end of our conversation, Morsal no longer talks about the difficulties of her early days. Instead, she speaks of a deeper pain: the people who, in her view, caused her and many other girls like her to experience migration.
She says, “I will never forgive those who caused us to migrate. We could have studied, worked, and built our lives in our own homes and our own country, but they did not let us. They forced us to leave our families and friends and experience the pain of migration.”
The laptop screen remains on. Morsal is sitting in Germany, a place that has given her opportunities to study, work, and build a new life. But behind this new life is a girl who still longs for home, for her friends, her family, and a country that, if she had been given the choice, she might never have been forced to leave.
For Morsal, migration was not the end of one life. It was the beginning of a life she did not choose, but in which she is now trying to find herself again.
