December 5, 2001	Wednesday	Ramazan 19, 1422

JALALABAD: Five years of shutdown and neglect have taken their toll on Jalalabad’s Girls’ School No 2. There are no books to read, no lesson plans to teach from, no furniture to sit on, and no funds to pay for materials or teacher salaries.

What this school lacks in resources, it makes up with enthusiasm. This is the first chance these girls have to resume their educations since the Taliban rule. “I cannot express my happiness to you,” says Lida, a 15-year-old who is preparing to pick up where she left off, in fifth grade. “I can remember the day the Taliban came, and we went home in great sadness. We are quite happy to return to school.”

Many girls kept up with their studies at home, they say, taught by parents or older siblings. And these girls say they intend to take full part in Afghan life. “In Afghan society, it is not an unusual thing for girls to go to college,” Lida says. On this day, more than 500 girls have shown up for registration at Jalalabad’s Girls’ School No 2.

They are among some 3,500 girls who have registered for classes here. Abdul Ghani Hidayat, director of education for the post-Taliban provincial government, said last week. Hidayat said the province has reopened more than 280 schools for 150,000 returning students.

For Maezuddin, the grey-bearded principal of Girls’ School No 2, the day the Taliban announced on radio that all girls’ schools would be closed was a particularly tough one. “I was just asking the parents to make arrangements in their homes so their children can get educated,” he says, thumbing his smooth, reddish prayer beads. Now, he says, “It will be difficult for them to start from the same status they were in before.” He says he has no trouble finding teachers willing to work, even without salaries, since most take second jobs selling vegetables in the market.

“Right now, under the present government, we are earning nothing,” he says. “We just do this to serve the nation, to serve the soil, so the nation can be relieved of its barbarism.”

In her fourth-grade classroom, Miss Nooriya is teaching more than 30 girls the most basic of lessons, the rules of the classroom, raising their hands before speaking, and sitting quietly on cotton rugs stretched out over an inch-deep deposit of sand. “I want to go to school all the way to 12th grade, and I want to go to university,” says 12-year-old Yasmin, whose father was a college-educated agricultural expert for the provincial government. —Dawn/LATS Service (c) Christian Science Monitor.