Life after escaping the Taliban, a gay Afghan teacher’s diary
It is September 29, 2022, and I am sitting in my hideous room in a hotel in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, waiting for my Afghan passport to arrive back from the British Embassy.
Despite so many hardships, taking so many risks and working so hard to leave my home in Afghanistan and arrive somewhere safe, I have no hope that it will contain a British visa.
Thousands of miles to the west, in Britain, there is education, opportunity and, most importantly, no one waiting to force me to be someone I am not or torture me for being myself, a gay Afghan man.
Back in Afghanistan, I hear that Taliban soldiers have already been to my parents’ house with an arrest warrant. Although my mum and dad were thankfully not told what the charges were, every day I read stories about what they do to people like me who are still there.
