“Naima Brand” features stones from the heart of Badakhshan’s magnificent nature and towering mountains, transformed into jewelry by Naima’s delicate, creative hands. The stones are extracted through the hard work and hardship of miners. After traveling long, winding routes and incurring heavy tax costs, they finally reach Naima’s waiting hands. She is grateful for this precious gift of nature. Therefore, despite her limited experience, she draws on her creativity and ingenuity to craft handmade jewelry from these stones. She hopes that, through this work, she can help preserve the precious heritage of her homeland.
Naima is a daughter born of this land. She has tasted the water of its streams and breathed its air with every part of her being. She grew up beneath the branches of its trees. Like other girls in the country, when she was old enough, she put on a white headscarf and went to school. She sat on wooden benches and learned the alphabet and the basics of life. In her second year of school, she eagerly covered her Grade Two textbooks and read and wrote from their pages.
In 2021, when she entered Grade Three, at a time when she had begun to form words from letters and sentences from words, everything suddenly changed. Although Naima was too young to fully understand the scale of the upheaval, she knew that something significant had happened. She saw the magnitude of that change in the eyes of girls above Grade Six. Their teachers looked at them with sadness and concern, but had no words of comfort to offer them.
As Naima repeatedly witnessed and heard about girls above Grade Six being barred from school, the anxiety of moving up to the next grade grew stronger each year. The excitement of childhood and the fleeting memories of her early years did little to ease her fear. Eventually, Naima also completed Grade Six and, like other girls, was denied the opportunity to continue her education and attend school.
In 2025, as the path to school closed for Naima, another path opened before her, one filled with light and beauty. She stepped onto it with enthusiasm. Through a family member who works as a jeweler and makes jewelry from silver and Afghanistan’s natural gemstones, Naima entered the profession.
“I do not remember exactly when it began, but for as long as I can remember, I have always enjoyed looking at and owning jewelry. You might say that every woman has an interest in jewelry. But what makes my experience different is that I grew up in a family where jewelry-making has been a profession. When I was deprived of the opportunity to go to school, I experienced the deep sadness and depression caused by this exclusion, just like my classmates. To be honest, there is no alternative that can fill the void left by not being able to attend school. But I tried to fill that gap, as much as I could, by turning to jewelry-making. At first, I only collected pictures and created new designs for jewelry such as rings, earrings, bracelets and lockets, hoping to come up with new ideas. But after about nine months, because I was always present in the small jewelry workshop at our home, I realized that I could do the work myself.”
Naima began her work by sorting natural stones and learning to identify them. She learned which parts of the stones were valuable and which needed to be discarded. She also learned how to fill certain gaps in the stones and stabilize the color of others.
Her learning and work did not stop there. Gradually, with her family’s support and guidance, she began thinking about establishing her own jewelry brand. Through this brand, she hopes to create and bring to market jewelry combining valuable stones that she now knows how to identify and can trace to different parts of Afghanistan. These include lapis lazuli, emerald, turquoise, ruby and agate. Although she has only recently entered the profession, her enthusiasm and determination to learn have helped her develop skills beyond what might be expected at her age.
Naima, who is not yet 15, is full of energy, excitement, vitality and a desire to learn and keep moving forward. She hopes to reach a point where she can see her goals and dreams fulfilled and take pride in what she has achieved. She wants to bring beauty to all the beautiful girls of her homeland, who, despite all their suffering, have managed to keep their spirits beautiful.
Note: The title of this piece is taken from a book of the same name by Abdullah Yamgi Badakhshi.
