Life Paused: Three Days of Internet Blackout
Whatever I thought about led to a dead end. The internet blackout, the severing of my connection to the world, was not a problem I—or anyone else—could solve. As with all these years of my life, I had been thrown to the ground, unable to gather my body, my spirit, my resolve, and think about going on. In my mind, a thousand homelands fell a thousand times over. And with each fall, I lost a piece of myself, my dreams, and my future.
The internet had still kept me close to myself, close to my dreams, on the path of doing something, of being someone, of not vanishing into nothingness. After the universities were shut down, to keep alive my dream of becoming a doctor, I dragged myself to the clinic every day to wear the white coat and feel the ache of university a little less. I couldn’t do it. It didn’t work. In the middle of the road, the Taliban issued order after order, and I kissed my dream of medicine and tucked it away in a corner of my heart. But through online classes and online connections, I had found another path. I found work and felt less of the emptiness the Taliban had injected into me and into society. Now, with the internet cut off, once again I felt hollow and returned to that same emptiness—asking myself over and over why I had come into this world. Why doesn’t it end? How long can I endure?
Three days without internet felt like a three-thousand-year hell; a hell showing that even if we are saved, worse can still happen. In a single moment, the internet was cut and an entire nation went into a coma. Into a sleep with no awakening. Underground. The internet was cut, and I lost everything—my self-belief, my connection to the world, my work, my small joys… The whole world turned into nothing, and only Afghanistan remained. Afghanistan and the Taliban. Us and the Taliban. Us and an eternal prison. On the first night, I hoped the internet would be restored by morning. On the second day, I hoped it wouldn’t last a week. On the third night, I cried out of helplessness, thinking of millions upon millions who cry out of helplessness. We had fallen so far behind the world’s train that I could not know what was happening beyond the walls of my house. No one knew of anyone else’s condition.
Once again, we fell. The scenes of August 15, 2021—the fall of Afghanistan—came alive in my mind. We fell, and once again work, education, purpose, and dreams were taken from us. It was as if I had slept in 2025 and woken up in 1996. I was left with the walls of my home. With no work, no daily life. With connections that did not go beyond my door.
