Written by Diwa Momand, translated from Dari by Qais Akbar Omar
Diwa Momand (pen name) is a student of Persian literature whose relationship with storytelling began at school, when she and her classmates exchanged letters and, through them, created their own worlds of words and stories. After 15 August 2021, her writing took a different direction. What had once been an intimate exchange between friends became a way of writing for a wider audience: for anyone willing to feel, to understand, and to look closely at realities that can seem almost impossible to believe still exist in this century. Her stories seek to give shape to these realities, preserving the voices, experiences, and emotions that might otherwise go unheard.
Qais Akbar Omar holds a BA in journalism from Kabul University, an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University, and was a Scholars at Risk Fellow at Harvard University in 2014–15. Qais is the author of A Fort of Nine Towers, which has been published in more than twenty languages, and the co-author of A Night in the Emperor’s Garden, which has been dramatised by BBC Radio. He has published short stories in The Southern Review, AGNI, The Hopkins Review, The Markaz Review, Guernica, Arrowsmith, Literary Hub, American Chordata, and elsewhere.
This story was produced as part of Paranda, a writer development programme and global network for women writers in Afghanistan and the diaspora, facilitated by Untold Narratives, a development programme for writers structurally marginalised by community or conflict, and supported by KfW Stiftung.
