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“For Gulandam, I abandoned my religion”
A love story of a Hazara and Pashtun couple and the Taliban prison.
On a sunny day amidst the hustle and bustle of the taxi station, Rajab and Gulandam sat calmly on the taxi seats with their four children. After 18 years of pursuit and escape, they hoped to reach a safe place. However, before the car could start, armed individuals appeared around the vehicle and ordered Rajab to get out. Gulandam sank into deep fear because she knew that her brothers, like shadows, were pursuing them with the help of the Taliban. The armed men, who were members of the fifth police district of the Taliban in Kabul, put a black bag over Rajab’s head and made Gulandam, along with her children and elderly aunt, who planned to go to Pakistan with them, board a military vehicle and took them away.
Rajab and Gulandam are a couple from the Hazara and Pashtun ethnic groups who succeeded in getting married in 2011 after five years of imprisonment and struggle in the courts. Rajab is 50 years old, and Gulandam is 38. Both of them originally come from the Daulatabad district in Balkh province, and they have been relentlessly pursued and threatened for the past 18 years since they decided to get married.
In 2006, Rajab and Gulandam lived in two neighboring villages named Elang and Dorman Afghaneya in the…
