'We have nothing now': Female taekwondo star banned from sport by Taliban

KABUL, Afghanistan -

The room is freezing cold. There’s a gauzy curtain over the window that lets in soft morning light. The street outside feels forbidden and hostile. If not dangerous.

And now to the story of Anzorat Wali.

The empty room is where she and her older sister Nilab practise taekwondo. Anzorat has a black belt, and a fistful of medals that jingle. She can’t remember exactly how many golds she’s won, but it’s a lot.

And it all stopped the day the Taliban arrived. The shattering of dreams. The end of freedom. A life that now feels hopeless, and she’s only 19.

“I don’t want something big,” she told me, in a soft voice and confident English, sometimes smiling, sometimes unbearably sad. “It’s our right to do something for ourselves, to fight for ourselves.”

They practise at home because all the gyms are closed to Afghan women and girls. Taekwondo has become a world reserved for boys only. Boys have rights. Girls don’t.

“Women’s rights mean nothing to them,” she says, a teenager’s lament that comes across more as weariness, than anger. “We’re getting worse day by day, just sitting at home, eating and sleeping. Nothing else.”

The two of them used to train by jogging around the neighborhood. Everybody knew about the Wali sisters. The Taliban took that away. Now, they rarely go outside, trapped in their home by fear.

“I had lots of hope and dreams,” says Anzorat, her voice trailing off into tears. “We have nothing now. Our rights, our freedom, our jobs. I mean we have nothing here.”

She uses that word a lot. “Nothing.” In two syllables, it sums up a young state of mind, adrift in despair.

She took up taekwondo for the purest of reasons: to learn to fight. Years of training have given her strong, firm legs and a forceful kick.

“It was necessary for any girl to know fighting for self defence in Afghanistan.”

But then she started winning competitions, and out of that grew her biggest dream, to compete at the Olympics. This is a young woman never been satisfied winning silver or bronze.

“What an athlete wants is to do something for myself, for my country,” wiping away more tears without embarrassment.

Her family is Tajik, which is not a good thing in Afghanistan these days. It was a Tajik leader who resisted the longest against the Taliban.

Her brother Milad worked for the foreign affairs ministry. Her sister and her mother held good positions in other departments. They were untroubled and comfortable. The Taliban took that away too. Now they’re all jobless.

“Life was so good,” he says. “Just a normal life. There were no problems.”

Until a beating from the Taliban put him in the hospital. He was waiting in line to apply for passports. Relatives in Vancouver are trying to get them to Canada.

“I felt just a small pain, but after one night it got worse. I told my family this is going to kill me.”

He is immensely proud and protective of his younger sister. As happens when somebody close to you achieves astonishing success.

“She was in love with her sport,” he says. “And when I saw her, she had a happy look on her face.”

The look her face gives off now is more like sorrow. She returns to the words that slip out of her mouth like a moan.

“We have nothing now. We have nothing.”