Fahima Sultani is 20 years old. She is a budding entrepreneur with a product idea that has legitimate promise. She is a woman who yearned for education growing up in Afghanistan where, as a young girl, she sold plastic shopping bags to pay for her classes and notebooks. She is a young woman who loves riding a bicycle and swimming, and now that she’s in the U.S., wants to learn how to drive.
The new ASU student from the Ghazni Province in Afghanistan is a lot of things.
But there is a lot she is not. And, if she can help it, never will be.
“I am not the girl to get married and do chores from morning to night. I am not the girl to only give birth, raise children and serve my husband. I’m not the girl who stays all the time at home. I’m not the girl to easily forget my dreams,” Sultani says, with a voice that exudes the clarity and confidence of someone older than the two decades she’s spent on this Earth. “I was a girl with so many big dreams. That’s why studying inside of Afghanistan was not enough for me and my dreams.”
But, when she arrived in Arizona last December, she realized ASU with its educational offerings would more than suffice.
Sultani had been an economics major, one of only five degree programs she could choose from at the Asian University for Women. But she’s rethinking it after reviewing the plethora of choices available here.
“I’m not so sure now because there are more than 300 options at ASU and I want to take my time and explore my interests,” Sultani says.
Last summer, the Asian University for Women arranged transportation and evacuation for 148 of its students living in Afghanistan, after the Bangladesh campus closed due to the pandemic. The process took five days with the majority of that time spent inside a bus — one of seven the university chartered for the mission.
Sultani describes the evacuation with draining scenarios that involved explosions, gunfire and Taliban using their rifles to bang on the buses while they issued threats.
“They were yelling, ‘You cannot leave Afghanistan. Just go back or I will kill you all at once!’” Sultani recalls. “I had never seen a Taliban soldier. I saw historical movies about when the Taliban regime was there, but that was the first time seeing them from that near position.”
The difference between breathing and living
The movies she saw hardly prepared Sultani for the real-life encounters with the armed men that she had only heard nightmarish stories about. She takes deep breaths and
clutches her fists when describing the wrath she felt from those men, all while searching for the most appropriate words for what she had witnessed.
“I can’t even express … they are not talking like normal people. They were so angry. They were so frightening, even their faces and clothing. Everything was so shocking and frightening. I was shaking in fear. I was feeling like this is my last moment taking breath and sitting like this,” says Sultani, who pulls her knees into her chest, lays her forehead on them and folds her arms in a self-hug.
Sultani demonstrates this posture from the safety of her hotel room, housing that was arranged by ASU.
She is among about five dozen students that will receive a fully-funded tuition and room and board thanks to a partnership between AUW and ASU. With the support of ASU alumni, partners and the business community, the students were brought to Arizona last December from Wisconsin, where they spent more than three months on an Army base after successfully evacuating Afghanistan.
She had not heard of the university or of Arizona before Googling it on a late afternoon on that base.
“All the pictures I saw, I was so impressed. It was so beautiful, more than I could ever imagine. I was so happy that I could live in so much diversity,” she says.
Sultani was a sophomore when her education — and life as she knew it — was brought to a halt in the wake of the American withdrawal and the Afghan government’s rapid succumbing to the Taliban.
Her maturity and composure is present even when sharing what ran through her mind while battling to get into the Kabul International Airport, with the Taliban threats and war violence as the constant backdrop.
“I know if I stay in Afghanistan, I will not have the opportunity to go to school and pursue my education. I would just be like a robot, staying at home and doing what they say. So, I knew that I am not that kind of girl. I want to make big changes in my community and serve my community,” Sultani says. “Even if I lose my life, I will keep trying to enter the airport because if I don’t leave Afghanistan, I will be taking breath but I will not be living anymore.”
A birthday in a new country
Sultani celebrated her 20th birthday 11 days after arriving at ASU. But in a whirlwind of meetings and going over her future class schedule in a new strange land that would be home for now, it was much different by far than her previous 19.
“That day I cried … it was very different because I had to deal with many circumstances and different things,” she recalls.
Sultani did speak with her family that day. Her parents, older sister and three younger brothers remain in Afghanistan. Her sister was in her sixth semester at Kabul University but stopped attending because the Taliban won’t let women continue their schooling.
The education of her brothers, who are in elementary-, middle- and high school, also suffers because the Taliban is refusing to pay teachers’ salaries, so the teachers don’t show up to class.
Sultani chokes up when talking about her 8-year-old brother watching the news reports back home and asking her parents if this meant he could no longer go to school.
“He was so young for that, but he felt that pain and cried. And when he cried, we all cried,” Sultani says, stifling tears.
Entrepreneurial inspiration
Sultani may not know what specific degree she wants to pursue, but it will be in a business field. She talks about an idea for an innovative product that, to her knowledge, does not exist.
It’s an accessory that combines the benefits of two outdoorsy pieces of equipment into one. It’s easy to envision it occupying shelf and floor space at shops like REI or Bass Pro Shops, attracting customers seeking gear for wet conditions.
And when a teacher proclaimed her concept “brilliant,” it was the affirmation Sultani needed to fully embrace the entrepreneurial spirit.
Sultani dreams of a future that includes her returning to her homeland when it is safe and, hopefully, no longer controlled by the Taliban. She talks about wanting to be an example for future Afghan women and girls, and the daughter she may have one day, who she wants to spare the struggles she endured.
All of this serves as more motivation to work harder and make the most of the opportunity she knows is rare and precious. She wants to be part of a movement that will pave the way for other Afghan females to pursue their education and achieve their aspirations.
“I’ve never experienced 100% security in my country ever. But now I’m in a country where I am treated equally as a man. No one says, ‘You are a girl so you cannot do this,’” Sultani says. “So, I can make my own dreams come true.”
Fahima Sultani arrived in Phoenix in December 2021. Sahar was among 61 students arriving on a chartered flight that was made possible by ASU alum and private jet charter company Wheel’s Up founder Justin Firestone, Honeywell and Delta Air Lines, along with the support of an Intel Corporation of America grant. Sultani recently completed courses with Global Launch, ASU’s English language learning and academic preparation program. She has not yet determined her major as she is still considering the hundreds of options at ASU, but leans toward an entrepreneurial plan.
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