On an overcast Saturday in May, taekwondo champion Marzieh Hamidi prepared for a training session at the club where she trains on weekends in the southern suburbs of Paris. Wearing black leggings and with her hair tied back in a low bun, she stretched before the training session.

Hamidi trains with the French national team Monday through Friday at the Insep (Institut national du sport, de l’expertise et de la performance), with combat sessions in the morning, and cardio and physiotherapy in the afternoon. The 21-year-old is determined to keep winning competitions to draw the international community's attention to the plight of Afghan women.

Since coming to power, the Taliban have restricted women’s rights to work, education, travel and sport. As a result, women in Afghanistan became nearly invisible, with their participation in the workforce down to 4.8 percent in 2023, while it was 19 percent in 2020. Donors have become reluctant to provide Afghanistan with aid, and two-thirds of the population are in urgent need of aid, according to a 2024 report by the Australian National University.

Also read: A year on, women in Afghanistan remain defiant in wake of broken dreams

At the club in France, the warm-up session transitioned to combat, and the athletes began sparring with each other. "Marzieh is very determined- when she has an objective, she does everything in her power to achieve it," said Jesse Van Thuyne, one of her coaches. "When people tell her 'yes', she hears 'yes'. When they tell her 'no', she still hears 'yes'.”

Pausing her training and moving to an empty locker room, Hamdi began recounting her odyssey. She was born in an Afghan refugee family living in Iran. When she was 12, her mother made the decision to move the family from Iran to Germany, but it was not meant to be. As the family attempted to cross the border from Iran into Turkey, the Iranian police caught them and deported them to Afghanistan.

Hamidi and her family found themselves in a hostel in Herat, an Afghan border city. "It was the worst night of my life," said Hamidi, because she could hear the shots of guns and she imagined the gunmen entering the hostel. The family left for Kabul the next day, where Hamidi’s uncle and cousins lived, with the intention of getting their passports and returning to Iran.

Two years later, the family was back in Iran and Hamidi was now 14 years old. She couldn’t go to school, because Iranian authorities considered that the family had crossed the border illegally. Bored and unoccupied, Hamidi began practicing taekwondo after being introduced to the sport by an Iranian friend. "When I started kicking, I felt more powerful, more confident," said Hamidi. She began winning competitions, and the sport had a healing effect on Hamidi: "it was like taking a medicine."

Hamidi’s family moved to Afghanistan for the last time in 2020. The adolescent was just getting used to her new surroundings and practicing taekwondo at a local club when the Taliban rolled into Kabul in August 2021. She couldn’t imagine her future as an athlete with the Talibs, who considered a woman without Purdah- the practice of shielding women from the view of men- as a vice. So she stayed home, immobilized by fear.

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A fighting spirit

Hamidi became a refugee for the second time when she obtained a visa from the French government and left Afghanistan on November 24. There was a brief layover in Doha, and it wasn’t until her arrival at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris on December 1 that the shock set in. Accompanied by two other Afghan girls, Hamdi remembers that she simply looked at them and "we all just started crying". It was then that she understood she had come too far to go back home.

Yet the heartbreak eventually yielded to a fighting spirit. Before the Taliban arrived, Hamidi would ask herself many questions about the rules for women in Afghanistan. After the Taliban arrived, when she no longer had any rights, Hamidi decided she wanted to fight them and everything they represented: the beards, the whips, the burqas, and the archaic punishments. "The Taliban made me understand what my values were, and the true value of a woman," she said.

After spending two weeks cloistered at home, Hamidi began attending small protests in Kabul demanding equal rights for women. Yet she knew it was dangerous and she didn’t want to be a casualty of history. She decided to continue her combat against the Taliban while in exile.

"It's challenging to work with Marzieh because when she came to France from Afghanistan, she was full of anger and a desire for vengeance because of the situation in her country," said Hans Zohin, one of her coaches. "With time, she gained peace and efficiency."

Along with training intensively, Hamidi began speaking out against the Taliban at international conferences and to different medias. "Maybe they [the Taliban] changed my life: they took my country but they gave me more power as a woman," she added.

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'All refugees deserve a good life'

Hamidi often receives pictures and messages from other women trapped in Afghanistan, who ask her for help. She is haunted by the fact that there is nothing she can do for them. "All refugees deserve a good life, you shouldn’t have to be an athlete or an artist for the government to accept you or open doors for you," said Hamidi. She added that while for her it was the war and the Taliban that forced her to flee, every refugee has a different reason for leaving home.

The young woman knows she has been exceptionally lucky to be surrounded by people and institutions that care about her, like the French Federation of Taekwondo (FFTDA), the Mayor of Vincennes Charlotte Libert-Albanel, where she lives and trains, and her French “mom” Murielle.

After the interview, it was time to return to training. Hamidi began sparring with a teammate from Afghanistan. Their movements were quick and clean, it was like watching a ballet in fast motion. They spun, kicked, and ducked, defying gravity and achieving unhuman-like perfection. A ninja, a refugee or a feminist on a mission to unseat the Taliban? Marzieh is all three and much more.

Also read: Olympics: Female Afghan athletes in exile seek pathway