PESHAWAR, Nov 3: For Haziza, a 12-year-old Afghan girl, recently arrived here from Kabul, now getting education at a local school is no less than a blessing for her.

She had never thought of making again to a school after the Taliban regime closed down all institutes imparting education to girls in Kabul subsequently after the student militia took over the Afghan capital in 1996.

The Taliban rule made the girl-students, of all ages, to abandon their schools. Haziza was no exception though her father wanted her to get education.

She was in the first grade when denied her basic right as well as Islamic right to get education.

“I still remember my days in grade-one and the passage I used to cover daily from our house to the school in Kabul,” said Haziza while recollecting her memories.

However, the little girl, bearing innocent looks, has to pay a heavy cost while finding her way back to school again.

She managed to avail this cherished opportunity at Peshawar not only by leaving her motherland, the neighbourhood, friends and above all her mud-house where her family was bracing tough realities of life hardly meeting both ends for their survival.

Rather, Haziza paid a cost much more than that. She lost her mother and a brother to the first day of the US air strikes on Kabul before finding an opportunity to join a school in Peshawar.

Following the burial of her mother and brother, her father decided to leave the homeland to save his remaining children — three sons besides Haziza.

“I along with my father and three brothers was in my grandfather’s house when first batch of thundering war planes started pounding Kabul on Oct 7, last, whereas my mother and a two-month old brother stayed back in our home,” said Haziza while narrating the family’s ordeal to Dawn .

“It was really very terrifying as there were explosions one after the other,”.

Upon their return they found their house — near Kabul’s airport — ruined and the two (mother and Haziza’s brother) buried under the wreckage.

“They were no more there when we arrived at the house,” said Haziza.

The family’s decisions to migrate to Peshawar was no less than a blessing in disguise.

Her father did not hesitate to get Haziza admitted to Ariana School, in Peshawar, after being referred to by a neighbour of the Afghan family. Haziza’s father, along with his four children, is staying in the Tajabad area, here, after managing to enter Pakistan illegally on Oct 11, last.

It is new beginning for Haziza as she starts her education once again from grade-one at Ariana School, run on non-profit basis by a non-governmental organization — Afghan Women Council.

Haziza is not the only one who got admission to Ariana School upon entering Pakistan recently with their families fleeing war inside Afghanistan in the antebellum situation.

Since Sept 11, last, some 250 children of the freshly arrived Afghan families have been admitted to the school — already housing some 2,700 students of the Afghan refugee families.

Divided into three sections of the school — contained in as many modest houses in a posh locality of Peshawar - all the students, girls and boys, have their own sorry tales to tell.

Fifteen-year old Musa lost her brother 13 years back after a rocket hit their house near Jalalabad. Whereas, an other 13-year-old girl, who could not speak Pushto, have been living with her grandmother in Peshawar ever since her parents got killed, 10 years back, during the Russian invasion.

“All these students are the worst victims of war,” said Fatana Gillani, the head of the Afghan Women Council, while referring to a group of around 100 orphans who were being distributed packets of school uniform and note books at Ariana School.

The school operates in two shifts to ensure facilities to maximum number of Afghan children leading a refugee life in Pakistan.

“These children are our future, they are the future of Afghanistan,” said Fatana who finds a ray of hope in the face of these Afghan students majority of whom are Pakistanis by birth and Afghans by the core of their heart as they, like their elders, cherish to return to their country given peace reigns high!