education · After 9/11
From Badakhshan to Kabul: The World Suddenly Opened
After the Taliban government collapsed in 2001, Shah’s family moved from Badakhshan to Kabul. He learned English from his father’s manuals and ESL classes, spent paid hours in internet cafés trying to understand the wider world, and eventually saved enough to buy his first desktop computer. Access to information became one of the defining ideas of his later work.
The story
What happened—and what it changed.
Kabul became a classroom beyond school. Languages, technology, public service and daily contact with people from many backgrounds widened what seemed possible—and exposed the distance between decisions made about conflict and the lives shaped by them.