From Kabul to Paris: The Young Woman Who Chased Her Dream of Fashion Across War, Borders and the Edge of Death

When the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, thousands of Afghan women saw the futures they had spent years building disappear almost overnight. Many were forced into their homes, others fled into exile, while countless more remained, trying to adapt to a life shaped by sweeping new restrictions.

Sahar, a young woman from Kabul, says she was among those who felt they had only two choices: to stay, or to live.

She lost both of her parents as a child and was raised by her uncle in a conservative household where girls’ independence—and even their education—was viewed with suspicion. Despite those restrictions, she managed to stay in school until the tenth grade while quietly nurturing a passion that would define her future: fashion design.

She learned sewing at an early age and spent hours sketching dresses and experimenting with fabrics. While other girls were encouraged to prepare for marriage, Sahar dreamed of launching her own fashion label.

“It wasn’t simply a hobby,” she says. “It was the future I imagined for myself.”

But in the environment where she grew up, those ambitions were met not with encouragement but resistance. Pursuing higher education or building an independent career was considered inappropriate for a young woman.

Then, in August 2021, everything changed.

As the Taliban seized Kabul and rapidly reimposed restrictions on women, Sahar says the possibility of pursuing her dream all but disappeared.

“If it had already been difficult to reach my goals,” she recalls, “after Kabul fell, it became almost impossible.”

Like many Afghan women, she watched opportunities vanish one after another. Schools and universities closed to girls, women were increasingly excluded from public life, and careers that once seemed attainable suddenly became impossible.

For Sahar, remaining in Afghanistan no longer meant postponing her dreams—it meant giving them up entirely.

Leaving, however, was never her first choice.

“I never wanted to become a migrant,” she says. “I simply wanted a chance to live my life.”

She insists her decision was not driven by the desire to move abroad, but by the absence of any safe or legal path to continue living freely in her own country.

Her journey began in Nimroz Province, a gateway used by many Afghans attempting to leave the country through irregular routes. It would eventually take her through Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Switzerland, Germany and France—a journey marked by repeated deportations, violence, exploitation and moments when she believed she might not survive.

Her first attempt to cross into Iran ended in failure.

She was detained by border authorities and forced back into Afghanistan.

Standing once again near the border in Herat, she says she felt utterly defeated.

“I reached a point where I thought there was no way forward,” she recalls. “For a moment, I even thought about ending my life.”

But despair did not stop her.

A few days later, she attempted the crossing again.

This time, she made it into Iran.

What followed was not simply a migration, but a relentless struggle for survival.

Travelling alone as a young woman meant facing dangers that extended far beyond harsh terrain. Human traffickers controlled every step of the route, migrants were forced to follow orders without question, and violence was a constant threat.

Crossing into Turkey proved to be one of the most physically demanding parts of the journey.

For hours, she and other migrants trekked across snow-covered mountains. At times, she says, the snow reached her waist, making every step exhausting.

The freezing temperatures were only one danger.

She recalls hearing gunfire from border guards echoing through the mountains while walking past the bodies of migrants who had frozen to death before reaching safety.

“Every time I saw one of those bodies,” she says, “I wondered if I would be next.”

At one point, exhausted and barely able to continue, Sahar says an Afghan woman travelling with two small children kept encouraging her.

“You can do this,” the woman repeated.

Although they had never met before that journey, Sahar says those simple words gave her the strength to keep walking.

Reaching Turkey brought the first sense of stability she had experienced since leaving Afghanistan.

For a while, life began to resemble something close to normal again.

To support herself, she accepted whatever work she could find. Gradually, she found opportunities in the fields she had always loved—fashion and modelling.

Eventually, she became a partner in a small clothing business with two other people, an experience she describes as the first real step toward fulfilling the dream she had carried since childhood.

Yet that fragile sense of security would not last.

Without legal residency and facing the constant risk of deportation, Sahar once again found herself confronting the same question that had haunted her since leaving Kabul:

Should she stop, or keep moving?

She chose to continue.

Her next destination would be Europe.

“Every Border Was Another Test of Survival” — From Turkey to Greece, family threats, deportation under the Dublin Regulation, and the crossing that nearly cost Sahar her life.

Turkey was not the end of Sahar’s journey.

For a brief period, it offered something she had not experienced since leaving Afghanistan: stability. She found work, built new skills in fashion design and modelling, and for the first time felt she was moving closer to the dream that had sustained her through years of hardship.

But beneath that fragile sense of normality lay a constant fear.

Without legal residency, every day carried the possibility of detention or deportation. No matter how hard she worked, she says, she could not imagine building a secure future while living in uncertainty.

“I realised that I still didn’t have a future,” she says. “I was surviving—but I wasn’t really living.”

Eventually, she made another painful decision.

She would continue toward Europe.

Her route took her across the Aegean Sea aboard a small inflatable boat, one of the crossings attempted every year by thousands of refugees and migrants seeking safety in Europe.

The crossing itself lasted only a few hours.

The uncertainty that followed lasted much longer.

After reaching Greece, Sahar was transferred to the island of Lesbos, one of Europe’s busiest reception points for asylum seekers. She spent four months there waiting for her asylum process to move forward.

She had imagined Europe as a place where the fear she had carried from Afghanistan would finally end.

Instead, she says, it became another chapter of insecurity.

During her stay on Lesbos, Sahar says she was assaulted several times by unknown individuals.

More troubling, however, were the threats that followed her from home.

According to Sahar, members of her family had already been pressuring her while she was living in Turkey, urging her to return to Afghanistan.

“They believed that a woman living alone abroad brought shame to the family,” she says.

The pressure intensified after she arrived in Greece.

She believes someone close to her disclosed her location inside the refugee camp to relatives living in Greece.

Soon afterward, she says, several family members began searching for her near the camp.

On one occasion, she says she was followed close to her accommodation.

“Some days I was too frightened to leave my room,” she recalls.

For Sahar, the threats meant that even after crossing continents, she still could not escape the expectations and pressures she had left behind.

The dangers were not limited to family members.

She says that during her migration journey, some people who initially appeared willing to help later exploited her vulnerability.

According to Sahar, several individuals threatened to reveal her whereabouts to her relatives unless she paid them money.

For migrants travelling without legal protection, she says, exploitation can come from unexpected places.

“Sometimes the people you fear aren’t only the smugglers,” she says. “Sometimes they’re the people who pretend to be your friends.”

Despite the growing sense of insecurity, Sahar continued her journey.

She travelled to Switzerland and applied for asylum, hoping she had finally reached a country where she could begin rebuilding her life.

Instead, her application faced rejection, and she risked being removed.

From Switzerland, she travelled onward to Germany.

But under the European Union’s Dublin Regulation—which generally requires asylum seekers to have their claims processed in the first EU country they entered—German authorities transferred her back to Greece.

For Sahar, the return felt devastating.

“I knew I couldn’t go back to Afghanistan,” she says. “But I also knew I wasn’t safe in Greece.”

Once again, she found herself trapped between two impossible choices.

Returning home was not an option.

Remaining where she was no longer felt safe.

So she decided to take one final risk.

Her destination this time was the United Kingdom.

Like thousands of others in recent years, she boarded a small inflatable boat to cross the English Channel—one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and, increasingly, one of Europe’s deadliest migration routes.

The boat was dangerously overcrowded.

Passengers were packed so tightly together that there was barely room to move.

As the journey continued, Sahar found herself pinned beneath other passengers.

Gradually, she struggled to breathe.

“I couldn’t get any oxygen,” she remembers. “Everything went dark.”

She lost consciousness.

When she finally woke up, she learned that many of the passengers had believed she had died.

Some had even begun reciting Islamic prayers for the dying, convinced she would not survive the crossing.

Years later, that night still haunts her.

Whenever she thinks back to the journey across the Channel, she says she can still feel the panic, the suffocation and the overwhelming helplessness of those final moments.

Yet even after surviving one of the most dangerous crossings of her life, her journey was still not over.

Following her transfer back from Britain, Sahar eventually returned to France.

For the first time since leaving Kabul, she says, she arrived in a place where she could begin imagining something more than survival.

She could begin imagining a future.

“I Just Wanted to Live” — Starting over in France, rebuilding a life through fashion, launching the dream of SaharSoul, and the message Sahar hopes will reach every Afghan girl still searching for a future.

By the time Sahar arrived in France, she had crossed mountains, seas and borders that had tested her strength in ways she never imagined.

She had survived freezing temperatures on the Turkish frontier, deportation, exploitation, threats from relatives, violent attacks in refugee camps and a near-fatal journey across the English Channel.

For years, survival had been her only goal.

Now, for the first time, she began to think about something different: living.

“I didn’t choose France only because it was safe,” she says. “I chose it because I believed I could finally become the person I had always wanted to be.”

For Sahar, France represented something far beyond asylum.

It represented fashion.

The country that had shaped some of the world’s most influential designers was also the place where she hoped to revive the dream that had first emerged in a small sewing room in Kabul years earlier.

Despite everything she had endured, she had never abandoned that dream.

Even while travelling across countries, she enrolled in online fashion courses whenever she could find an internet connection. She continued sketching designs, studying fabrics and following international fashion trends.

“I didn’t want migration to become my identity,” she says. “Fashion was always the identity I wanted.”

She had already gained practical experience while living in Turkey, where she worked in fashion and modelling and later became a partner in a small clothing business. Although legal uncertainty eventually forced her to leave, those experiences convinced her that her childhood ambition was still within reach.

Today, Sahar’s goal is to establish her own fashion brand under the name SaharSoul.

She hopes it will become more than a clothing label.

“I want people who wear my designs to know that they carry a story with them,” she says. “A story about survival, hope and refusing to surrender.”

She imagines SaharSoul as a celebration of resilience—particularly the resilience of Afghan women whose lives have been transformed by war, displacement and political upheaval.

“I want every collection to say something,” she explains. “Not just about fashion, but about women who refused to disappear.”

Yet even after reaching France, safety remained relative.

According to Sahar, the pressure from some members of her family did not end when she crossed into Europe.

She says the disapproval of her decision to live independently abroad continued long after she had left Afghanistan, leaving her constantly worried that her whereabouts might once again become known.

For years, she says, anxiety became part of everyday life.

But despite everything, she believes she has already achieved one important victory.

“I survived.”

She pauses before adding another thought.

“When I look back, I don’t think about borders anymore. I think about the girl in Kabul who simply wanted to become a fashion designer.”

That girl, she says, never imagined that chasing a dream would require crossing continents.

Nor did she imagine that choosing education, independence and a career would eventually force her to leave her homeland behind.

Looking back, Sahar insists she never chose danger.

“If there had been a safe and legal way,” she says, “I would never have trusted smugglers with my life or crossed dangerous seas.”

Instead, she believes she was left with no real choice.

“When every legal door is closed,” she says, “people don’t stop dreaming. They simply take more dangerous roads.”

Although this is her story, Sahar does not believe it is unique.

She sees herself as one among thousands of Afghan women whose lives changed dramatically after the Taliban returned to power—women who lost access to education, employment and the freedom to decide their own futures.

Many remain inside Afghanistan.

Others are scattered across refugee camps and temporary shelters around the world, still waiting for a chance to begin again.

For them, Sahar has a message.

“Never let go of your dreams,” she says.

“It may take years to reach them, but never allow anyone to convince you that being a woman makes you less capable or less deserving.”

She still hopes that one day Afghanistan will become a country where no girl has to leave home simply to study, work or choose her own future.

Until then, she says, she will continue building the life she once imagined as a teenager in Kabul.

Perhaps one day, dresses carrying the SaharSoul label will appear in shop windows far from Afghanistan.

If that day comes, Sahar hopes people will see more than a fashion brand.

She hopes they will see the story of a young Afghan woman who crossed war, exile and the edge of death—not in search of adventure, but in search of the ordinary freedoms that many people take for granted.

Because, in the end, she says, she was never searching for another country.

She was simply searching for a place where she could live.

Sahar is careful not to present herself as extraordinary.

“I don’t think I’m different from thousands of other Afghan women,” she says. “The only difference is that today I have the opportunity to tell my story.”

She believes her journey reflects a much larger reality—one shared by countless women whose lives were transformed after the Taliban returned to power.

Some remained inside Afghanistan, where access to education, employment and public life has been dramatically curtailed. Others fled, only to discover that exile brought its own hardships: dangerous border crossings, uncertain asylum procedures and years of living without stability.

For Sahar, migration was never an ambition.

It was a consequence.

“If there had been a safe and legal way to continue my education and build my future in Afghanistan, I would never have left,” she says.

She rejects the idea that people willingly risk their lives on mountains or at sea.

“No one chooses to trust smugglers,” she says. “People do it when every other option has disappeared.”

Those words have become central to how she understands her own journey.

When she thinks about the years she spent moving from one country to another, she does not remember only the fear. She also remembers the strangers who offered kindness along the way.

She remembers the Afghan woman in the snow-covered mountains on the Turkish border who kept repeating, “You can do this.”

She remembers the moments when complete strangers shared food, water or encouragement, expecting nothing in return.

“They reminded me that humanity still exists,” she says.

Those memories now shape the future she hopes to build.

Her ambition extends beyond establishing a successful fashion label.

Through SaharSoul, she hopes one day to create opportunities for Afghan women—particularly those forced into exile—to develop skills, earn an income and regain confidence in themselves.

“I want fashion to become a language,” she says. “A language that tells the stories of women who refused to give up.”

She imagines collections inspired not only by contemporary design but also by Afghanistan’s rich cultural heritage—traditional embroidery, handcrafted textiles and patterns that reflect the country’s diversity.

“I don’t want the world to know Afghanistan only through war,” she says. “I also want them to see its beauty.”

Asked what she misses most about home, Sahar pauses.

“Kabul,” she answers quietly.

She misses the streets where she grew up, the familiar mountains surrounding the city and the memories of her parents, whom she lost at an early age.

Despite everything that has happened, Afghanistan remains home.

“I never wanted to leave forever.”

Her greatest hope, she says, is that one day she will be able to return to a country where girls can study freely, women can work without fear and no one is forced to choose between their dreams and their safety.

Until then, she will continue building her life in France—one sketch, one design and one collection at a time.

For Sahar, success will not simply be measured by sales or recognition in the fashion industry.

It will be measured by something far more personal.

“If one Afghan girl sees my story and decides not to give up on her own dream,” she says, “then everything I went through will have meant something.”

Her journey began in Kabul with a young girl holding a needle, thread and an impossible dream.

It crossed deserts, mountains, detention centres, refugee camps and some of the world’s most dangerous migration routes.

Along the way, she lost certainty, security and the life she once knew.

But she refused to lose hope.

And perhaps that is the story Sahar hopes the world will remember—not simply that she escaped Afghanistan, but that despite war, exile and unimaginable hardship, she never stopped believing that she had the right to imagine a different future.