Zahra and Manizha Abbasi want to tell their story: of two sisters who were forced to leave their home following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021. Now in Germany, the pair use photography and art to depict life under Taliban rule – sharing their images with the world to ensure Afghan women’s voices can still be heard.
“I want to tell you that a girl, before the Taliban, had a dream: a colourful dream; a life that she had chosen for herself. She could smile and go places she chose for herself,” says Manizha, 24, as we speak over Zoom. She and Zahra now live in government accommodation in Germany, in a small city near Mannheim. “But after the Taliban, everything changed completely. You couldn’t trust anyone. For me, life turned to black and white during those three months that I was there at that time.”
Manizha was working for the Afghan National Television channel in Kabul at the time of the takeover. The Taliban knew her address and had begun targeting women journalists and presenters. She knew her life was at risk, and fled to Pakistan alone in November 2021, before the rest of her family. “I lost everything I had worked so hard for, all in that one day when they took over. Life before the Taliban wasn’t easy, but we wanted to fight for our country. But after, there was no hope to fight,” she says.
Her sister Zahra, 20, was a passionate cyclist back in Afghanistan. “I loved it. I started when I was 12 years old and even made it into the country’s Under 18 team,” she says. “But then we lost everything. Even nowadays, when I try to get on a bike I can’t bring myself to do it because of the trauma of all the memories.” A month and a half after Manizha left, Zahra joined her sister in Pakistan, where they stayed for seven months before receiving approval to move to Germany. In 2023, they were joined by the rest of their family.
Zahra and Manizha’s photography is divided into two parts: the beautiful side of Afghanistan and, in their words, ‘the ugly side’ – all through the lens of women. They depict life through the chadari, the full-length veil that the Taliban has made mandatory for women. “We wanted to show how women in Afghanistan dream, how beautiful and colourful they aspire to be,” says Manizha. “But at the same time, the Taliban want to obscure all of that. They only want darkness for these women, for them not to learn anything, because they know that if women were to learn, they would fight for themselves. Our art is for them and to share their story with people outside of Afghanistan.”
The sisters’ work is full of elements of life that the Taliban have stripped away from women in their home country. After the banning of musical instruments, they decided to make their own versions of traditional Afghan instruments, in various colours, out of cardboard as props in their photographs: “When the Taliban came they went to three places: the press and national TV, the presidential palace and the Afghanistan National Institute of Music – where they destroyed all the instruments and set fire to them,” Zahra says. The girls shared how their younger brother, who’s a musician and was a member of the institute, was crying and decided to destroy his own guitar on the same day. For now, the people in Afghanistan risk their lives to play and enjoy the sound of music only in secret.
So far, the two sisters have created over 200 images and counting. They tirelessly strive to present their work to those who wield the power to enact change and have had their work exhibited in Berlin twice since living in Germany, yet securing proper visibility remains an uphill journey.
Zahra is honing her painting skills, while Manizha is actively promoting their presence on social media – constantly exploring new mediums to shine a light on the voices of Afghan women. “We use books, we use jewellery, we use colours, we use flowers, we use whatever we can to show their dream,” says Manizha. All in the fervent hope of amplifying their story and the stories of so many others, sharing them far and wide across the world.
