I was a child, I remember those days when I lost my family. Maybe I was 7 or 8 I think.

We were crossing the border between Afghanistan and Iran when I lost my family and a lot of people were trying to cross the borders to the neighboring countries. I was kidnapped by masked men with their faces hidden who took me to another place. One of the men had long hair and a mustache. He was a cruel person and I will remember him always. I was crying and begging him: “Please take me back to my family!” He was so cruel. Sometimes he was hitting me. One day he threatened me: “Stop crying. If you cry, I will kill you.”

After some days there came an old woman to the place they were holding me, who probably was his mother. We lived in a big house, with two other children in the beginning, but they took them away after a few days. I was forced to take care of the animals, to clean and feed etc. And I was also forced to dance for the cruel man for his pleasure with bells tied around my feet.

After more than two years I tried to escape from there. It was during the night when I climbed up to a little hole high in the wall. It had a glass. I broke it and pieces of the glass which were still hanging on the wooden frame hurt my right knee and my left eye. When I fell out of the hole and down on the outer side of the house I could not escape because of my injuries. It was early in the morning when they caught me and I had lost a lot of blood. I was unconscious. They carried me back into the house but they didn’t call a real doctor. The one who came just pulled the pieces of glass out of my eye, but some pieces remained inside. After one or two months this man came again and took out the remaining pieces of glass. I could not see anymore with my left eye. I never saw a real doctor in that time neither a hospital.

After that the cruel man warned me: “The next time, if you will try to escape again, I will shoot you.” He had a Kalashnikow gun and pistols. I swore that I would do everything he was asking me to do.

I waited until I was a little older in order to be strong enough to escape. I think, it was more than three years later. I had made a plan and so I escaped from there. It was possible, because in a way they started trusting me. They thought that I would stay there finally on my free will. In the middle of the night I escaped. I walked till the morning and then I stopped a car. The driver took me to the next bus station. He said, that it was near to Herat. I had a little bit money, which I had stolen from the old woman. When I arrived in Herat I didn’t have any money anymore. I asked a bus driver to take me without a ticket and he allowed it. When I arrived to Kabul city, it was in a very bad state. All the city was empty and the houses destroyed, some were burning others had already burnt and I could hear the sound of rockets and bombs exploding.