Fatima Haidari, an Afghan refugee and women’s rights activist, at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, February 7, 2023. PIERO CRUCIATTI / AFP
PORTRAIT – Threatened by the Taliban, the young woman had to flee the country whose wonders she was discovering. She continues her work from Italy, offering virtual tours of Afghanistan.
The finely chiselled walls of the Great Friday Mosque in Herat, Afghanistan stand in bright sunshine. The azure doors, decorated with enamelled earthenware, reveal a vast stone-paved courtyard inside the building. And it is Fatima Haidari, a 24-year-old Afghan, who sets the story of this splendid setting… from her student room in Bocconi, Italy, for cyber-tourists who want to know the wonders from Herat.
With a black scarf tied around her head, this radiant-faced 2.0 guide captures her audience through Zoom, where she recounts in fluent English the splendours of the Afghan city in which she grew up, after spending her childhood in the rocky mountains in the center of the country. Fatima Haidari was a tourist guide, the first in Afghanistan. She lived from her activity for a few months, until she acquired a certain notoriety beyond the borders of her country. This unusual profession placed him…
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