Five months after escaping the Taliban in Kabul, Jamilia Naseri is one of many Afghan women living in limbo in an Albanian hotel room. She describes the despair of watching her homeland face humaniatrian collapse and uncertianty over her future.
Jameela Naseri is a human rights lawyer and women's rights advocate from Afghanistan. Lauren Bohn is a journalist and co-founder of Foreign Policy Interrupted. She's a fellow in New America's International Security program and at the Atlantic Council. Over the past six months, Naseri shared her story with Bohn over a series of voice mails, which Bohn wrote down with the input of Naseri. The views expressed in this commentary are Naseri's own. View more opinion on CNN.
The winter sky in Albania is gray and the air is damp. We're living by the sea. It's our first time ever actually seeing a sea, but it's too cold to dip our toes in. It feels expansive and full of possibility, yet devastatingly out of our reach -- just like parts of our new lives. Throughout the day I check in on the fellow Afghan women sharing a roof with me at our hotel in the Albanian resort town of Shengjin. They joke that I am Albania's new therapist. We play card games and visit Albanian pastry shops where the deserts taste bittersweet, like our exile.We try to fill our days with activities to make the time pass more quickly.
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