08/24/2025
Royesh: Before you entered university, you had a trip to Japan. What was that for? How did you get into that competition? Who were you competing with, and what was the outcome?
Maryam: That was an interesting experience. You had asked our English teacher to organize a contest. She conducted several interview rounds for eligible students including myself even though I had just joined Marefat (she knew me from Kateb). Even though I’d missed the first few rounds, she let me participate. I didn’t really know what others were doing, but I saw that some people only took a speaking test—just like the one I did. What was interesting was that, instead of selecting three people, they only chose one—me. Then you told me: Now build your own team. That meant you trusted me, and I got to pick two more members. I already knew Benin—she was my friend. I didn’t know Somaya, but someone recommended her to me. That’s how our team was formed.
I had only a little background in debate from school—just some basic things I remembered. We didn’t have much time to prepare. In just a few weeks, we had to get familiar with that specific format of debate.
Then, the visa issue came up. We couldn’t get visas directly from Kabul, so we had to go to Pakistan. We went to Islamabad and found out the visa queue was extremely long and slow. So, the three of us and our mentor traveled to Karachi. After three weeks, we finally got our Japanese visas. Then we went to Japan.
It was a major competition. Honestly, it was kind of a shock—for me at least— because 13 countries had sent their top representatives. In their schools, debate is part of their system—they have school teams, national and international competitions. I don’t remember all the details of the debates, but we came in second place. Japan came first. I think we performed really well.
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