Grinning at the Camera While the City Falls Apart

Sadaf, Sahar, and Nargis just want the ordinary things. Study at university. Start a band. Be happy. In Kabul, those desires come with costs that shouldn’t exist.

They get harassed on the street for being women who have opinions. They get harassed for fighting for equality. When they’re feeling brave—and they’re frequently braver than most people I know—a bombing nearby takes whatever’s left of the optimism and sets it on fire. The city keeps finding new ways to remind them of what it is.

None of that stops them. They drive around together. They laugh while crossing the university grounds. They practice drums. In their spare time they show up to feminist demonstrations, hand out leaflets, and push against the violence that just keeps coming. The short film they made shows what a day in Kabul looks like when you’re young and refuse the script it hands you.

The hardest thing about watching it is the grins. They smile constantly into the camera—big, real, unguarded—even while describing things that would hollow most people out. Executed women. Policemen shot in the street. Death moving through the dark. The grin stays. You don’t know if that’s resilience or bravado or something that doesn’t have a word yet, but it sits with you after the screen goes dark.