The simple fact was that she had lived with more daily restrictions in Tehran, where she was born and raised, than she ever had to endure in Kabul (her Afghan grandparents fled to Iran in the 1980s, during the Soviet-Afghan war ). “Life was good,” he says. “In Tehran, people are a bit depressed about the situation. But in Kabul there was so much hope and desire. A new generation was burning with him. I could see women in every field: musicians, entrepreneurs, artists, politicians. I could teach my university courses without a hijab. I could show my students any picture I liked. These things would never happen in Iran.” But life was really about to change. When newly elected Joe Biden confirmed in April 2021 that US troops would withdraw by September 11, Taliban insurgents began to intensify their attacks on the Afghan state. In May, for example, a car bomb outside a Kabul school killed more than 60 people, most of them schoolgirls. “Even I could see that the security situation was different,” says Hossaini. “I lost two journalist friends [to Taliban attacks] during these months. When my mom would call, which was every day, she would say: Fatimah, use a different entrance every time you come home.” At some point she returned to Tehran, mainly at the behest of her parents. (Her mother is a housewife and her father runs a small business. The eldest of three sisters, Hossaini, never independent, moved to Kabul when she graduated from university.) “But I only lasted a month and a half.” He struggles to explain it. “I just had to be in Afghanistan. I was there on bright days. I felt I had to be there in the dark days as well.” Before a photo exhibition of hers in the US, she had a US visa and that was her insurance policy. “I thought: if the worst happens, I can use this visa.” She shakes her head. “My parents couldn’t believe I was coming back. They said I was crazy. But I didn’t listen to them.” The night before Kabul fell, I did an interview with CNN. I said, “People will never let the Taliban claim this city.” In Kabul things seemed calmer. She told her mother that the media was exaggerating the situation and that she shouldn’t worry. But her mother was worried, and no wonder. Across Afghanistan, cities were falling to the Taliban: Herat, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif. It was now August. A friend called and said, book your seat in the US. in three weeks, commercial flights will no longer exist. “Imagine that,” says Hossaini. “I had heard the stories of my grandparents. I knew about all the people who were stuck in Afghanistan during the communist years, even those on visas. But then again, I couldn’t believe it would happen to me. My mind drifted away from it. The night before Kabul fell [on 15 August], I did an interview with CNN. I said, “People will never let the Taliban claim this city.”

Yasamin Yarmal An actress since the age of 14, Yarmal moved from the northern province of Balkh to Kabul against her family’s wishes and became a star of Afghan cinema during the communist era. When the Taliban took power in 1996, Yarmal had returned to Balkh, where she ran a clandestine school for several hundred students, many of them girls, in defiance of a ban on female education. The school was discovered and Yarmal was arrested and beaten by the Taliban, causing him to drop out. After 2001, Yarmal returned to acting, working in radio and television as well as helping to revive the local film scene. The Taliban’s return to power has dealt a fatal blow to Afghan cinema, he says. Yarmal left Kabul in August and now lives in Paris with her three children. All captions by Killian Fox

That same evening, she and 10 of her friends went to a cafe to drink tea. “One of them invited me to her sister’s wedding! We were just drinking and talking. Little did we know, then, that this would be the last time we would meet.” The next morning, having finally booked a flight to the US, she took a taxi to take her to a clinic for a PCR test. The driver thought she must have lost her mind. The Taliban are at the gates of Kabul, he said. Looking out the car windows, he noticed people running on the streets. What kind of person runs around Kabul in August? “It wasn’t normal. I began to think that something could happen.” At home she made some green tea and took it to her balcony, overlooking her city, and then she saw them: “Down there were Taliban fighters on their motorbikes, waving their flags. He’s here, I thought. I called it: “HE’S HERE!” But there was no one to listen to me. I was alone.” She’s not sure how she spent the night. He couldn’t cry, he couldn’t eat. She had missed her flight, if she had actually left. The next day another friend called. “He said: ‘They go door to door looking for journalists, musicians, teachers. make sure you are not alone.’ I took my backpack, my laptop, my camera and a hat that is traditional to my tribe [Hossaini is an ethnic Hazara, a group that has often been persecuted in Afghanistan], and I went to stay with friends.” She spent the next two days with them, deleting all social media, begging journalists who had any footage of her to take it down. Her voice is full of contempt. “Those fucking terrorists. One day, early in the morning, we had three Taliban at the door. They were only looking for food and when we gave it to them they left.”

Shegofa Ibrahimi, an actress and musician in her 20s, Ibrahimi grew up in Dasht-e-Barchi, a poor area of ​​western Kabul populated mostly by ethnic Hazaras. She belonged to an all-female theater group and was beginning to train as a ballerina and violinist when the Taliban returned to power. “He told me that he went through a difficult journey to choose art and work as an artist,” says Hossaini. Ibrahimi fled Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul last August, leaving her family behind and taking nothing but a traditional Afghan dress her mother had made for her. He now lives in Lyon. “When she said goodbye to her parents, she didn’t know where she was going to live,” says Hossaini. “She got the dress to remind herself where she came from”

But her mind was clear now: it was, she finally admitted, time to go. Like thousands upon thousands of other desperate Afghans, he went to Kabul airport. There he would spend the next four days. “It was crazy,” he says. “Mothers who abandon their children. lovers who leave each other. People were so desperate they would do anything to get away.” It wasn’t, he tells me, the way we might have seen it on TV. He was not in the military section of the airport, where British and American soldiers were filmed by news crews lifting tiny babies over wire fences. It was in the commercial section, a chaotic realm that could only be reached through seven Taliban checkpoints. Inside, people stood in long lines, each one corresponding to the country they hoped to travel to seeking asylum. It was scary and surreal. Looking around, she saw several Afghan politicians and singer and TV personality Aryana Sayeed, one of Afghanistan’s biggest stars. At first, Hossaini joined the American line. She knew that going to the US would make it almost impossible for her to see her family again: travel between the two countries is extremely difficult. But she was desperate and had her visa, after all. Wouldn’t it help her? Obviously not. “Go back, go back!” the Americans shouted. This made her very angry. “I thought: you betrayed us. We’re about to lose it all. You have destroyed our country. At least be a little nice.” The Taliban are exactly as they were 20 years ago. The only difference is they have Twitter accounts now Like others at the airport, she began calling embassy staff, regardless of which country they represented. Germany, Italy, Poland: four days later, and he would have gone anywhere. It occurred to her that in France, artists are admired, even honored. “Just take me,” he shouted, in the general direction of the French. “I’m an artist!” She was duly allowed to move from the American line to the French line – and it was at this moment that the miracle happened. “David Martinon, the French ambassador to Afghanistan, used to come to my exhibitions in Kabul. I wore this crazy outfit with a scarf. only my eyes could see. But he recognized me. “Fatima?” he said. He put his arms around me. “You will be welcome in Paris,” he told me.

Anarkali Kaur Honaryar Born in the tiny Sikh community of Afghanistan in 1984, Honaryar grew up dreaming of becoming a pilot. Instead, he studied medicine at Kabul University and graduated as a dentist. After the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, Honaryar joined the Loya Jirga assembly to elect Afghanistan’s interim government and helped draft the country’s new constitution. She later became the first non-Muslim woman to serve in the lower house of parliament, championing the cause of the country’s embattled Sikh and Hindu minorities. In 2009 she was voted “person of the year” by Radio Free Afghanistan and in 2011 she received a Unesco award for her efforts to protect Afghan women from domestic abuse, forced marriage and gender discrimination. Honaryar left Afghanistan for India in August 2021 and arrived in Europe this spring

Some hours…