“My father dressed me up as a boy for 10 years to protect me.” This is the rare story of Nilofar Ayoubi, an Afghan women’s rights activist who now lives as a refugee in Poland after being forced to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban returned to power. Nilofar was born in 1996 in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, during the country’s first Taliban regime. She was just four years old when she experienced an event that would change the course of her life. According to her account to the BBC, a man slapped her in the street for not wearing a hijab and then checked her to make sure she was a girl. Her father reacted immediately. He cut her hair, dressed her in her brothers’ clothes and decided that for years she would grow up as a boy. This practice is known in Afghanistan as “bacha posh”, a tradition where some families temporarily raise their daughters as boys so that they have more freedom of movement, go to school, work or help the family.
In Nilofar’s case, her father’s decision was not driven by a desire to have a son, but by a belief that his daughter should have the same opportunities as her brothers. “Being a boy meant having power. Even a two-year-old boy had more rights than his mother,” she recalls. For about ten years, from the ages of 4 to 14, Nilofar lived as a boy. She could accompany her father to the market, travel by bus, attend sports activities, and play outside with other children, things that were impossible for many Afghan girls.
She says she gained a lot of self-confidence and that most people didn’t realize she was a girl. Even her closest friend lived the same way. However, this double life had its difficulties. No one had explained to her the changes a girl’s body undergoes during puberty. When she first started menstruating at the age of 13, she didn’t understand what was happening. With the arrival of puberty, the family was forced to end her life as a boy. Her mother experienced this moment with pain, as she knew that her daughter would lose the freedoms she had gained and would face the restrictions common to Afghan women.
Nilofar says she found it very difficult to accept the change. “I cried at night and prayed that I could change my gender,” she said. But her experience shaped her and pushed her towards activism. During her studies, she created awareness groups for girls and later went to India to study, always with the support of her father, who asked her to decide for herself about her future and marriage. The family later settled in Kabul, where she set up a successful furniture business that employed hundreds of people, including many women. In 2021, when the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, Nilofar and her family were forced to flee the country. With the help of Polish journalists, they were involved in an evacuation operation and left Kabul with only two backpacks. Today, she lives in Poland and is a well-known international voice for the rights of Afghan women and girls. Recalling her years as a boy, Nilofar says that period was both a gift and a pain. “It was a blessing and a curse. A curse because I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere, but a blessing because I was able to see both sides of society. It made me the woman I am today.”