KABUL -- A month after losing her eye in a deadly suicide bombing of her academy, a young Hazara woman has finished among the top candidates in Afghanistan's tough university entrance exam (Kankor).
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 took this year to win a coveted university place.
The top student got 355, but anything above 300 puts students in the very highest category.
"I am happy to have succeeded in the field of my choice," Fatima said Monday (November 7). "But I am not satisfied with my score. I was aiming for more."
![Kabul student Fatima Amiri, 17, is seen here at her home in the city's Dasht-e-Barchi neighbourhood on Novembr 7. [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]](/cnmi_st/images/2022/11/08/38537-Kabul-wounded-student-739_416.webp)
Kabul student Fatima Amiri, 17, is seen here at her home in the city's Dasht-e-Barchi neighbourhood on Novembr 7. [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]
![Kabul student Fatima Amiri and her father, Sayed Hassan Agha, are seen here at their home in the city's Dasht-e-Barchi neighbourhood on November 7. [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]](/cnmi_st/images/2022/11/08/38538-Fatima-Amiri-exams-739_416.webp)
Kabul student Fatima Amiri and her father, Sayed Hassan Agha, are seen here at their home in the city's Dasht-e-Barchi neighbourhood on November 7. [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]
It was a courageous achievement by the 17-year-old, who has said she wants to study computer science.
She was badly injured in the September 30 attack on the Kaaj Higher Educational Centre in the Kabul neighbourhood of Dasht-e-Barchi, which coaches young men and women ahead of 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 took at least 54 lives.
Most of those in the hall were from Afghanistan's minority Hazara community.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, but the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) has carried out several deadly attacks in the area targeting schools, mosques and members of the Hazara community.
In April, a series of bombings hit two education centres in Dasht-e-Barchi, killing at least six and wounding 24. No group claimed responsibility.
In May last year, at least 85 people -- mainly female students -- were killed and about 300 were wounded when three bombs exploded near their school in Dasht-e-Barchi.
Again, no group claimed responsibility, but in October 2020 ISIS claimed a suicide attack on an educational centre in the same area that killed 24 and injured more than 50.
Education is tough
Education for girls like Fatima is tough enough, even without the threat of ISIS attacks.
Afghan girls, now in their second year of being barred from education after sixth grade, are struggling to keep learning nonetheless.
More than one million teenage girls have been deprived of education across the country over the past year, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
Secondary schools for girls across the country have been closed, but some private colleges -- like the one Fatima was attending -- remain open. Other girls seek to continue their education by taking home-based classes.
Fatima was still recovering from her wounds when she sat for 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 scorers on the Kankor have the choice of the best courses at the leading universities, but Fatima'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.
