IImmediately after the Taliban’s shocking and swift capture of Kabul in August 2021, women across the Afghan capital began a painful process of self-erasing their texts, in anticipation of the house raids that would inevitably follow. Precious books that had helped them become themselves were set on fire, certificates of qualifications acquired through years of hard study were destroyed in an instant, diary pages were wiped clean of ink, bowls of lapis lazuli-colored water were all that remained of the bold hopes and dreams they had entrusted to each other.

For the 21 members of a group of creative women, a single lifeline to the outside world remained: the WhatsApp group chat of Untold Narratives, a UK-based development program for marginalized writers that had helped them compile an anthology of their stories.

Over the next few months, their words – which an Untold employee in London downloaded several times a week so they could be deleted from their own devices for security reasons – accumulated into a shared diary. By the time the anniversary of the Taliban takeover arrived, they had written 200,000 words between them. Of these, 70,000 have now been carefully extracted and translated from Dari and Pashto into English. The result is My Dear Kabul: A Year in the Life of an Afghan Women’s Writers’ Groupan intimate chronicle of history as it unfolds, beginning in the chaos of the day the Taliban entered the city and ending the following summer.

As the gunfire and explosions subside, fear continues to permeate every aspect of life. It is exacerbated by inflation and power cuts, by bureaucratic blockages and by the humiliation women suffer in shops and on the streets at the hands of the men who encourage them. Their freedoms are being snatched away and, with schools, offices and, eventually, public parks banned, the claustrophobia is palpable. Cultural activist Naeema writes: “Three years ago, I was involved in the publication of ten children’s books. Today, my greatest achievement is taking a taxi alone.”

Crucially, this book celebrates the individuality of its authors and their voices, amplifying their collective power. Known only by their first names, the authors range from single women in their twenties like Sadah, a teacher, and Marie, who founded a women-run counseling center, to Najla, a grandmother nearly 60 with a degree in language and literature. They also come from diverse ethnic backgrounds, highlighting the complexity of a country too often perceived by outsiders as homogeneous. As a result of its tragic and turbulent recent history, several authors were born in exile, and some – Freshta, for example, who reported on women’s issues for a radio station threatened by the Taliban – were forced to flee abroad even before the Taliban took power.

The women’s approaches are as varied as their perspectives. There are entries that resemble poems and others that read like reportage. Some strive for analytical insight, others offer a more impressionistic record. Images shimmer with indelible vitality: Nilofar, a literature student, dreams that she is cycling to a picnic, an Afghan flag in her hand. Maryam, 25, who uses a wheelchair, tracks the seasons by describing the quince tree outside her bedroom in Kabul. “Little feathers fall around my head,” she observes in spring, asking, “Are those butterflies or quince blossoms leaving the tree?” Najla, meanwhile, describes how her nephew wears a different disguise every day to avoid being pursued by the Taliban as he heads off to his English class, smiling behind his grandfather’s sunglasses.

Sometimes it’s just the raw emotions: anger and fear, despair and confusion. The laborer Atifa writes from Herat in the west of the country: “Hoping and wishing is pointless, even forbidden.” The women’s need to appear strong for their families becomes a recurring theme, but in this virtual sanctuary there is room for all emotions.

Is there courage here? Yes, and there is plenty of it. It is expressed in lipstick and graffiti, in the fact that they go to the office even though they know they are facing checkpoints, and in night-time escapes over rooftops and borders, sometimes legally, sometimes with people smugglers. And of course, given the reality of these women’s lives, it is courageous to contribute to the group chat yourself, to bear witness and not to be silenced.

By the end of the book, many are facing new challenges, struggling with the fear of exile and the varying degrees of frustration and prejudice that come with living as a refugee in countries like Iran and Tajikistan, Germany and Sweden. In Stockholm, Masoma, an engineer born a refugee, has to start all over again on her 48th birthday – alone. In the same city, she makes a decision. “Today I bought myself flowers and thought that I have to live,” she writes.

The resilience she and the rest of the group are showing is extraordinary. But in a way it is also shameful, because even though they don’t think about it, the question remains: where were the global protests in support of the women and girls of Afghanistan when the Taliban entered Kabul? Where are they today, three long years later?