Nazira Khairzad was asleep in her bedroom in Bamyan, Afghanistan, where she lived with her family, when her phone rang. It was a driver she knew from Free to Run, a non-profit, offering to help her and her family escape the city, where the Taliban had just entered. From where he was calling downtown, residents were scrambling for refuge.
Nazira stayed inside. She was afraid Taliban soldiers were on the other side of her door, which opened to an outside staircase. With no more cell credit, she could not call her family downstairs. Her phone rang again. Nazira’s soccer teammates, many of whom ended up escaping into the mountains surrounding the valley-city of Bamyan, asked where she would flee. She changed into a burqa, packed a suitcase, and began clearing the walls, which were adorned with certificates she and her sister had won from soccer matches, ski competitions, and races. She piled them into a tapestry, along with the trophies that lined the mantel, and tied everything up. At around 4:30 in the morning, her father called to tell her their neighbors were driving to Kabul. “You should go with them,” she recalls him saying.
In Kabul, Nazira joined her older sister in the basement room she shared with several other women, the pair sharing a twin bed.
“It was not my choice to come to Germany,” Nazira told me, calling from her home in Neuberg, where she lives with her parents and two brothers. On August 15th, when the Taliban reached Kabul, Nazira took refuge with her ski coach, Gul Hussain Baizada. Through his work as a tour guide, Baizada had contacts outside the country who he said could help them flee. Nazira had called her parents from the airport. “If you stay in Afghanistan,” she recalls them telling her on the phone, “the Taliban will kill you.”
Nazira was born in 2004, just three years after U.S.-allied forces overtook the Taliban. In the years that followed, Afghan society liberalized. Young women returned to school in droves. In 2007, a group of women formed the Afghan Women’s National Team. Still, women in sports met backlash. When Nazira and Nazima, at 11 and 13, started their city’s first girls’ soccer team, they did so in private, telling their parents they were heading to math class before sneaking off to early-morning practice. Undeterred by the stigma they faced, the sisters were soon winning matches, outrunning male peers, and dominating ski challenges. In 2015, shortly after Nazira started playing soccer, she ran a 10k race and finished first, crossing the finish line in tattered sandals and a long dress. By the time the Taliban took over, she was keeping goal for the Afghan Women’s National Team in Kabul, preparing for a match in Tajikistan.
In August 2021, as the Taliban neared the capital, photos circulated online of Mahjabin Hakimi, a volleyball player, her head severed from her body. The message was clear: women in sports should fear for their lives.
On August 21st, 2021, Nazira flew to Italy with Baizada, his family, and two other athletes. Within her first few days there, Nazira received a message from the Afghanistan Football Federation, instructing her to go to the airport with her parents. Her teammates on the Afghan Women’s National Team flew to Australia—too late for her to join them. She found her own team in Ferrara, where she was placed in a house with other refugees. In February of 2023, she was selected to play on AC Milan. Meanwhile, she struggled to find a way for her parents to join her in Europe. Given her background in sports, Nazira worried the Taliban would target her family. Her sister, Nazima, who was waiting for a European visa in Pakistan, harbored the same concerns. Headaches often debilitated her. At the time, she dismissed them as symptoms of stress.
By the time Nazima reached Germany—after visiting her sister in Italy and a doctor in France—her health had worsened even more. She often vomited. Several times, she fainted. Drained and confused, she visited the doctor and left with no conclusive diagnosis. On August 21st, 2023, she underwent an emergency MRI. Nazira, in Italy, got a call from her sister’s roommate, who said Nazima was in the hospital. At this time, Nazira’s parents were with her in Italy (Nazira’s coach on FC Milan, along with several journalists she knew, helped them get there). Nazira and Nazima’s mother, shocked, insisted they visit Nazima in the Frankfurt hospital where she was recovering. The MRI had revealed a tumor at the base of Nazima’s brain, next to her cervical spine.
After an emergency operation to remove the tumor, Nazima went into a coma for several days. When she woke up, the right side of her body was paralyzed. The operation had damaged her nerves. When Nazira saw her sister—soon after surgery—she lay supine and swollen on the hospital bed. Oxygen tubes formed a web around her. The doctor said she would never stand or walk again. The family decided to stay in Germany.
For four months, Nazira stayed in the hospital with Nazima, sleeping on a chair or in a small closet. She accompanied her sister through persistent nightmares, incessant requests for pain killers, and a second surgery. Visitors were not allowed past midnight. When nurses signaled to Nazira it was time to leave, she nodded and waited for them to exit the room before falling asleep.
By the time Nazima was discharged in early 2024, she weighed less than 82 pounds—down from 119 when she arrived. She still struggles to eat properly, run, and do what she most enjoys: ski. Even today, it feels like heavy stones weigh down her right arm. Between appointments with an occupational therapist and a psychologist, she and Nazira train. They plan to run a race in Spain at the end of the month. Both will move through airport security unsure Nazira will make it back. Nazima, her two brothers, and her parents were all granted asylum. Nazira was not.
“I have duldung,” Nazira said. “It’s worse than deport,” Nazima added. At a café along the Main River, the three of us peered over Nazira’s ID. “Exclusion of deportation (Duldung),” it read in German. And under that: “No residence permit! The holder is required to leave the country!” A red diagonal line slashed through the page. By EU law, foreign nationals cannot apply to asylum in two countries. Since Nazira has asylum in Italy, her application was rejected in Germany. Duldung, which translates roughly to “toleration,” allows her to stay.
“This is rejection, but they say due to humanitarian you can stay here for a while,” said Asef Hossaini, founder of Abad, a Berlin-based support organization for Afghans. Duldung may be issued to people without passports or documents, people who are too sick to travel, or people like Nazira, who could be killed at home. Duldung has been described as a state of “indefinite waiting” and “legal limbo.” “It’s just humiliating,” said Qaiz Alamdar, an Afghan living in Berlin.
Nazira’s status puts her in a precarious situation. Duldung does not make a deportation order go away; it just delays the process. The fear of being deported—and being separated from her family, her soccer team, and her investment in adjusting to German language and life—looms. News stories fan fear among many immigrants living in Germany, whose fate blurs as the country’s politics shift right. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pledged to curb irregular migration and increase deportations, a move some say is a reaction to the anti-immigrant party AfD’s rise in popularity.
Afghans, who make up the second-largest group of migrants in Germany, are especially at risk. In July, Germany sent 81 Afghan men convicted of crimes back to Afghanistan, the second such flight from the country since the Taliban took over. So far, criminals have been the only Afghan deportees, but the government may soon target people residing illegally in Germany. Merz’s recent collaboration with the Taliban signals a future of quid pro quo negotiations, by which the Taliban cooperates with Germany’s deportation goals in exchange for a hand in the country’s consulates. In July, Germany allowed two Taliban officials to work in the Afghan consulate. This means the Taliban now has access to biometric data and personal information about Afghans in over twenty countries.
These shifting conditions of protection for Afghans jeopardize any sense of stability Nazira has found in Germany. Today, though, she is focused on herself. On Sunday, she ran the Frankfurt marathon, finishing with a negative split. Under constraining circumstances, sports give her hope. “When I play football,” she told me, “I feel free.”
