It is the story of a fighter who went from dream to nightmare, for one night, the night of the capture of Kabul by the Taliban. Last February, Mohadese Mirzaee became at 22 the first Afghan female airline pilot. She posed, proudly, arms crossed and head held high, in front of her Boeing 737, that of the company Kam Air. The press around the world had reported his story. And then in August it all fell apart, and Mohadese disappeared until The Guardian, the British daily finds her and publishes, Tuesday, November 16, an interview in which she tells the chaos of her exfiltration.
‘If I can get a plane into the sky, I can do anything’: female Afghan pilot refuses to be grounded https://t.co/HeWlHElvmx
– The Guardian (@guardian) November 16, 2021
On August 15, she was in Kabul, at the airport, ready to take off her plane for Istanbul when news of the city’s capture fell and hundreds of desperate families swarmed the tarmac. The flight was canceled, but after a few hours she was offered to board for Kiev, Ukraine. Immediately, without a period of reflection. She took off, and said goodbye to her country. “It all happened extremely fast, she said to Guardian, it was an emotional roller coaster, I left my family in the morning, said goodbye thinking to come back, and I never imagined being in exile at night. “
When she arrives in Kiev, she takes the count of her pending visas and leaves for Bulgaria, in Sofia, where she is trying to rebuild herself. And above all to re-pilot. “Because today’s Taliban are the same barbarians they were twenty years ago, she says, they want to silence women, if I give up my passion, they will have won. “ And that’s out of the question.
For a few weeks now, she has been applying to local companies to pursue her career, not to give up what she has conquered, she who paid for her flying lessons by doing odd jobs as cashiers, who drummed for months at the doors of companies who told him all “no, no woman“until succeeding, and revolutionizing a very masculine airline sector.”You know, Afghan women have been fighting for decades, we have seized every opportunity, conquered everything that could be possible, but today, even though I want to go home, I can’t, it There is no longer a place for women like me in Afghanistan. I lost it all, but I will fight, and I will fly (…) If I can send a plane in the sky I can do it all. “