By Cecile McWilliams
October 13th, 2025
FRANKFURT—Here are a few titles of recent notes entries in my phone: “Kabuli pulao,” “Nazira transcript,” “Berlin visits.” New entries have accumulated since Friday afternoon when, in the airport, my classmates and I were hit with the sudden panic of feeling unprepared.
With over two hours to kill in gate B62, most of us pulled out our laptops. Midterms would last until midnight; people had papers to finish and lab reports to edit. For my part, I searched for places in Berlin where I might interview Afghan refugees. Another classmate and I, allied in our desperation to schedule interviews two weeks ago, pledged to stick together. We thought hanging around in Berlin’s Afghan restaurants and carpet stores would feel less intrusive together than apart.
“Women’s Café,” the note titled “Berlin Visits” reads. “A casual women-only get-together for chatting over coffee and cake.” The item was snatched from a list our professor gave us called “Where to find people to talk to.”
I found a contact weeks ago on Instagram. I texted her a polite request to talk, signed with a star emoji. Our chat migrated to a WhatsApp thread, then a phone call, and finally a café in Frankfurt. I pasted “Nazira Transcript” into my notes after we talked on the phone. “When I was 12 years, I began sports with my sister,” I transcribed from one of our conversations.
I met Nazira and Nazima, her sister, at a cafe along the Main River in Frankfurt. Nazima’s story was just as intriguing as the one I heard from Nazira on the phone. After Nazima traveled alone for the first time, to Pakistan, she couldn’t tolerate life at home. For two months, her packed suitcase sat in her room, and each day, she fought with her parents, who insisted she stay home. Early one morning, her younger sister, Nazira, lugged her suitcase as the pair walked thirty minutes to the bus station. Months later, Nazira joined her sister in the capital city of Kabul, fleeing her hometown of Bamyan when the Taliban arrived.
Even before the Taliban’s official takeover in 2021, the jihadist group severely restricted women’s rights in Afghanistan. The Taliban targeted women who failed to comply with its strict interpretation of Islamic law. Women who went to school, learned English, or played sports were particularly at risk. Women of the persecuted Hazara minority––a group that tends to allow women more freedom––were vulnerable, too.
Nazira and Nazima checked all of these boxes.
At 11 years old, Nazira won a 10k race. When Nazira was twelve and Nazima was fourteen, they recruited friends and classmates to start the first girls’ soccer team in their city. Nazima and a friend became the first women to summit Afghanistan’s second-highest peak. In Kabul, Nazira guarded the goal for the Afghan Women’s National Team.
Nazima had already left the country when the Taliban reached Kabul. Since she didn’t have a passport yet, Nazira stayed behind. Soon, she managed to escape to Italy, where she lived in government-sponsored refugee housing and played for FC Milan. Meanwhile, Nazima waited in Pakistan for a German visa.
As we spoke, Nazima and Nazira tweaked details from each others’ stories, refining time stamps, city names, and dates. They corrected each others’ English, sometimes turning to me for a final verdict. They spoke English well but German even better, they said. Our conversation was a game of triangulation, where words in German, English, and Dari stood as signposts for key moments of the past four years. I tried to decipher the meaning of words they only knew in German: “Embassy?” “Hostel?” “Swollen?”
Shortly after Nazima arrived in Germany, she was hospitalized. For months, she was plagued by spells of dizziness, migraine, and nausea, which she thought were symptoms of stress. Doctors in Frankfurt found a tumor at the bottom of her brain, jammed next to her spinal cord. They operated on her twice and clipped nerves by accident. Her family joined her in Germany, with Nazira spending nights on the ground next to her sister’s hospital bed. Once out, Nazima moved in a wheelchair and then with a walker. She says it still feels like her right arm is weighed down by stones.
Over the five hours we talked, the sky turned from gray to blue. Each time the coffee grinder whirred, I said a tiny prayer that my voice memo app still picked up the sisters’ voices. When the conversation turned to the xenophobic attitudes of some Germans, Nazima tapped her sister and gestured to the blonde lady next to us, who turned the pages of a photo book. I asked about asylum and illness, but also boyfriends and food. “Kabuli pulao:” a dish I should’ve tried at an Afghan restaurant, had I been in Frankfurt longer.
