20/06/2025
🪷 "They tried to bury us. They didn't know we were seeds." Niloufar mentally repeated the phrase she had heard over and over as she stood at the edge of the crowd, her red veil brushing her skin against the wind, rifle steady in her hands. She was ready.
The world had forgotten about women like her.
Until now.
All her life she had known that the power that held her was in the silence that imprisoned her. But now she would speak. They all would.
It struck her as beautifully ironic, the strength tucked inside that quiet quote she kept repeating like a mantra. They were buried like seeds in the shadows.And yet, they rose, fierce and graceful like delicate flowers blooming through the cracks of the sun-scorched streets.
She smiled at the thought of her namesake.
She was one of them.
A flower, yes, but not a fragile one.
Niloufar: A lotus flower, born from the mud, reaching always toward the light. She had finally reached it.
Behind her were women who carried the weight of raising generations on their shoulders. Her people. Her women. Her community. Could there be any stronger person in the world than the one who was brought into it to suffer, from the day she was born?
Whether the world remembered their names or not, the earth would always remember the sound of their footsteps—loud, defiant, and unafraid. This was the revolution they had been waiting for.
A female soldier of the Afghan Socialist Army, photographed in Kabul in 1984. She was part of the women’s battalion of the People’s Militia (an anti-imperialist force that played a key role in the 1978 Saur Revolution). This image was captured during a military parade celebrating the revolution.
Story and illustration by
Photo by Viktor Khabarov
