KABUL — A month after losing her eye in a
deadly suicide bomb attack on her academy, a young
Hazara woman has finished
among the top candidates in Afghanistan’s tough university entrance exams.
اضافة اعلان
Results issued over the weekend showed Fatima Amiri
scored 313 points out of a possible 360 in the “Kankor”, a highly competitive
test that more than 100,000 students sat this year to win a coveted university
place.
The top student got 355, but anything over 300 puts
students in the very highest category.
“I am happy to have succeeded in the field of my
choice,” said Amiri, who wants to study computer science.
“But I am not satisfied with my score. I was aiming
for more,” she told AFP Monday.
It was a courageous achievement by the 17-year-old,
who was badly injured in the September 30 attack on a private college where
dozens of young men and women were cramming for the Kankor.
A suicide bomber entered the hall and walked to the
front — where girls and young women had been segregated — then detonated a bomb
that killed at least 54 people.
Most of those in the hall were from Afghanistan’s
minority Hazara community, Shiites in a majority Sunni nation.
The community has been a frequent target of attacks
by Daesh — who consider them heretics — and Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers
said they had killed six
Daesh plotters in a follow-up operation.
But education for girls like Amiri is tough enough
even without the threat of Daesh attacks.
The Taliban have shuttered secondary schools for
girls across most of the country, but some private colleges — like the one
Amiri was attending — remain open.
Amiri was still recovering from her wounds when she
sat the exams — blinded in one eye and deaf in an ear.
“I was happy to be able to take the exam, but my
pain did not allow me to be very happy,” she said, tears welling.
“The day of the exam, I felt the absence of my
friends.”
When the results were announced, she rushed to the
scene of the tragedy to pay tribute to them.
“I went there and told my friends who were martyred
that I have succeeded,” she said.
“I have to continue my studies for them, even if
it’s hard.”
Top students from the Kankor get the choice of the
best courses at the leading universities, but Amiri’s dream now is the
opportunity to study abroad.
“I’m sure that if I study here, the same incident
will happen again and I could lose my life,” she said.
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