“I plan to encourage and inspire women with my success”

Marwa Rahim's medical career hopes were cut short by the Taliban takeover. Now she is determined to resume her studies.

Marwa Rahim, 22 years old

I was born in war, I grew up during the war and went to school during the war.

I used to watch a TV series called " Heart Surgeon", and I dreamed that one day I would be a doctor, and help as many people as possible, especially women.

I worked hard in high school, reading a lot in my spare time. During the summers, I took optional English and math classes. I got excellent grades despite the lack of learning facilities and resources in the Afghan education system.

There was no school medicine in the province where I was born, so I traveled to another province, five hours away, to study medicine. This province was dangerous, with attacks and bomb threats all around us as the war continued. I lived in a dormitory, in a small room with 10 other girls. Conversations and noise made studying difficult; there was no library and often no electricity. During the day, I had to study in the hallway. There were very few resources like books, lab materials and computers.

Later all the universities closed due to the pandemic, and our courses and even our labs have been put online. We didn't have lab equipment at home, so a teacher suggested we use a magnifying glass instead of a microscope. When we were asked to study malaria for a lab, the professor suggested we take blood from an insect and examine it.

Now that I'm in Houston, I want to go back to school, even if I have to start over, to become a great doctor, to help people in Afghanistan, and to go to other countries where there are victims of war. I plan to encourage and inspire women with my success, to never give up. I want my family and friends to be proud of me and to become a useful person for this land which is now our home to all.