Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. I want you to look at my wrists.

You see these scars, these thin white lines that circle around like bracelets. I got them on a cold November night in 2023, tied to a railway track in Afghanistan, waiting to die.

But I am here today breathing speaking to you and that is why I must tell you this story.

My name is Amina. It is not the name I was born with but it is the name I carry now for my safety and for the safety of those I left behind.

I am 24 years old. I am from Kabell, Afghanistan and I am a Christian.

Those last four words in my country are a death sentence. I need to take you back back before that terrible night so you can understand how I came to be on those tracks.

So you can understand what it costs to follow Jesus in a place where following him can cost you everything.

>> Hello viewers from around the world. Before our sister continues her story, we’d love to know where you are watching from and we would love to pray for you and your city.

Thank you and may God bless you as you listen to this powerful testimony. >> I was born in Kbble in the year 2000.

My childhood was not easy, but it was mine. My father sold vegetables in the market.

My mother stayed home with us, my two younger brothers and me. We were Muslim like everyone around us.

We prayed five times a day. We fasted during Ramadan. We did what was expected.

What was normal? What was safe? When I was 7 years old, everything changed. The Americans came.

There was war, confusion, fear. I remember the sound of bombs in the distance like thunder that never stopped.

I remember my father coming home with less money with worry on his face. But I also remember something else.

I remember the slow change that came to our city. Foreign aid workers arrived. Schools for girls opened.

My mother, who had never learned to read, insisted I would be different. I started school when I was eight.

Can you imagine holding a pencil for the first time at 8 years old? Learning that these symbols on paper held meaning, held power, held entire worlds inside them.

For years, life continued like this. Difficult, yes. Dangerous sometimes, yes. But there was hope.

There was possibility. I learned English from a teacher who had studied in India. I learned mathematics.

I learned about the world beyond the mountains that surrounded Kabul. The city itself, Kabul, it is beautiful in ways people who have never been there cannot understand.

Yes, there is poverty and damage from years of war. But there are also mountains that turn purple at sunset.

There are markets filled with spices and fabrics in colors so bright they hurt your eyes.

There are streets where old men sit drinking chai and playing chess. There are gardens hidden behind walls where pomegranate trees grow.

My favorite place was the bookshop near our neighborhood. The owner was an old man who loved poetry.

Sometimes I would go there just to smell the books, to run my fingers along the spines.

He would let me sit in the corner and read for hours, never complaining that I was not buying anything.

It was a good childhood in many ways despite the difficulties. I had friends at school.

I had dreams of becoming a teacher one day. I had a father who loved me and told me I could be anything I wanted if I worked hard enough.

Then when I was 15, my father died. He had a pain in his chest one morning at the market and he fell and he did not get up again.

Heart attack, they told us. He was only 43 years old. I watched my mother break that day.

Not just cry, but break like something inside her shattered into pieces that could never be put back together the same way.

She wailed and tore at her clothes, and I did not know how to help her.

I was just a girl and I had lost my father and I did not know how to carry that pain.

We were poor before now we were desperate. My brothers were too young to work.

One was only 10, the other was seven. I had to leave school. The dreams of becoming a teacher, they disappeared like smoke.

I found work cleaning houses for wealthy families in the nicer parts of Kabul. The work was hard.

I would wake up before dawn and walk across the city. My hands became rough from scrubbing floors and washing dishes.

My back achd from carrying heavy buckets of water. I was 16 years old and I felt like an old woman.

But the money I earned, it kept us alive. It paid for rent. It bought bread and rice.

It kept my brothers in school even though I could not go anymore. At night, I would come home exhausted and find my mother sitting in the dark, not speaking, just staring at nothing.

The light had gone out of her eyes when my father died. She went through the motions of living, but she was not really alive anymore.

I felt so alone during that time. My friends from school, I lost touch with them.

They were moving forward in their lives while I was stuck cleaning other people’s houses.

I had no one to talk to, no one who understood. I prayed, of course, five times a day, I performed the prayers I had been taught since childhood, but the words felt empty.

They felt like they were bouncing off the ceiling and falling back down, going nowhere.

I remember one night I was so tired and so sad that I could not stop crying.

I prayed and I begged God to help us, to make things easier, to give my mother back her life.

But nothing changed. The next day was just as hard as the one before. I started to wonder if God even heard me, if he even cared, or if we were all just alone in this world, struggling and suffering with no one watching over us.

It was in one of these houses that everything changed again. The family I worked for, the Amadis were kind to me.

Mrs. Amadi would sometimes give me extra food to take home. Things her family did not finish.

She would ask about my mother and brothers, show genuine concern for us. It was more than most employers did.

She had a sister who would visit on Thursdays. This sister, I will call her Aunt Sia, though she was not my real aunt.

She had lived in Europe for many years and had recently returned to Kabul. She dressed differently from the other women, more modern.

She spoke multiple languages. She had an education and confidence that I admired. Aunt Sariah often talked to me while I worked.

She would ask me questions about my life, about what I thought of things, about my dreams.

She treated me like a person with thoughts worth hearing, not just a servant. One Thursday afternoon, I was washing dishes in the kitchen when Sariah came in.

She found me crying at the sink. I was trying to hide it, but tears kept falling into the dishwasher and I could not stop them.

She asked me what was wrong. At first, I said nothing because you do not burden wealthy people with your problems.

But she kept asking gently and finally everything came pouring out. I told her about my father, about the weight on my mother’s shoulders, about my brothers who were hungry, about how I was tired, so tired and I was only 16 years old.

I told her I prayed and prayed, but the heavens felt empty. I told her I did not understand why God, if he was merciful like the Quran said, would let good people suffer so much.

She listened. She did not interrupt. She did not judge. She just listened with her full attention like my words mattered.

When I finished, she dried my hands with a towel and she said something I will never forget.

She said there was someone who understood suffering, who knew what it was like to be tired and in pain and to cry out to heaven.

She said his name was Jesus and he called himself the friend of the brokenhearted.

I should have been shocked. I should have been afraid. In Afghanistan, Christians are traitors, enemies, infidels.

The word Christian itself is used as an insult. But I was not shocked. I was curious because something in the way she said his name with such tenderness and conviction made me want to know more.

Over the following weeks, Aunt Sariah would talk to me in whispers while I worked.

She never pushed. She never tried to argue with me about Islam or tell me my religion was wrong.

She just told me stories about Jesus. How he touched lepers when everyone else feared them and considered them unclean.

How he spoke to women when society said they were worthless and should not be educated.

How he wept when his friend Lazarus died because he knew what loss felt like.

How he was tortured and killed but chose to forgive his killers even while hanging on the cross.

She told me about how Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, welcomed children, defended the oppressed.

She told me about how he challenged the religious leaders who cared more about rules than people.

She told me about how he said he came not for the righteous but for sinners, not for the healthy but for the sick.

And something in these stories reached into the broken places inside me because I was broken.

I was tired and hurting and feeling worthless. And here was someone who said he saw people like me.

Who said he loved people like me? I want to be honest with you. I did not convert because of a miracle.

I did not see visions or hear voices from heaven. I converted because I was broken.

And I met someone who said he was broken too. Someone who said he understood.

Someone who said, “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

For months I asked questions. Aunt Sarah gave me a small Bible, a Dari translation which I hid inside a Quran cover.

I would read it late at night by candle light when my family was sleeping.

The words felt like water to someone dying of thirst. I could not stop reading the Psalms.

Oh, the Psalms. They were written by people who understood pain, who cried out to God in desperation, who felt abandoned and alone.

David wrote, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And I thought, “Yes, I have felt that.

I have said those exact words in my heart.” But David also wrote, “The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want.” And something in me wanted to believe that. Wanted to believe there was a shepherd looking for lost sheep like me.

The gospels amazed me. The way Jesus spoke to people. The way he saw past their exteriors to their hearts.

The way he had compassion on crowds because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

The way he said things that turned the world upside down. Like the last shall be first and the greatest among you must be the servant of all.

I read about how Jesus was betrayed by his friend, abandoned by his disciples, denied by Peter, who swore he would never leave him.

I read about how he was beaten and mocked and spit on and crucified between two criminals.

And I read about how he rose from the dead 3 days later. How he appeared to his disciples.

How he showed them his wounds and ate with them and proved he was alive.

How he promised to be with them always, even to the end of the age.

It was not an easy decision to follow Jesus. I need you to understand this.

In the West, you can choose your religion like you choose your clothes. You can try on different beliefs and see what fits.

In Afghanistan, your religion is your identity, your family, your safety, your life. To leave Islam is to leave everything.

I thought about my mother. If she found out I had become a Christian, it would destroy her.

She had already lost her husband. How could I make her lose her daughter, too?

I thought about my brothers. If people found out I was a Christian, it would bring shame on our family.

My brothers might be rejected, might not be able to marry, might be targeted. I thought about the risk to my own life.

Apostasy, leaving Islam is punishable by death according to Islamic law. The Taliban enforces this even before the Taliban took over again.

Converts from Islam lived in constant danger. But I also thought about the words I had read in the Bible.

Jesus said, “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”

He said, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul?”

I wrestled with this decision for weeks. I would read the Bible at night and feel drawn to Jesus.

Then in the morning I would be afraid and think maybe I should forget about this.

Go back to being a normal Muslim girl. Stay safe. But I could not forget.

Once you have tasted truth, you cannot pretend you have not. Once you have felt that pull toward Jesus, you cannot ignore it.

I was 17 years old when I prayed alone in my room one night and told Jesus that I believed he died for me, that I believed he rose again and that I wanted to follow him no matter the cost.

I did not feel lightning. I did not feel an earthquake. I felt peace. For the first time since my father died, I felt peace that reached down into the deepest parts of my soul.

But peace and safety are not the same thing. Ansariah connected me with the underground church.

Yes, there are Christians in Afghanistan. Not many, but we are there hidden, scattered, worshshiping in secret like the early church in the book of Acts.

The first time I attended a service, I was terrified. Ansariah took me to a house in an old part of the city.

We went after dark when most people were inside their homes. We did not walk directly there, but took a complicated route through different streets, doubling back several times to make sure no one was following us.

At the door, there was a code knock. Three fast knocks, two slow, one fast, like a heartbeat with a pause.

The door opened just a crack and we slipped inside quickly. Someone closed it immediately behind us.

Inside, we were led down to a basement. The house belonged to a family who had been Christian for three generations, practicing their faith in secret all that time.

Their grandfather had converted decades ago and had passed the faith down to his children and grandchildren.

There were perhaps 15 people in that small basement room, men and women, young and old.

Some were born into Christian families who had practiced in secret for generations. Others were converts like me, people who had found Jesus and decided he was worth the risk.

We sat on cushions on the floor. The windows were covered with thick blankets so no light would show outside.

We spoke in whispers, always aware that sound could travel, that neighbors might hear, that one wrong move could get us all killed.

And we worshiped. I had never experienced anything like it. In the mosque, everything was formal, ritualistic, prescribed.

You prayed the same prayers in the same way at the same times. There was no room for spontaneity, no room for emotion.

No room for personal expression. Here there was joy. There was freedom. People raised their hands toward heaven.

People had tears running down their faces. An old man played a tab drum very softly.

And we sang hymns in Dari so quietly you could barely hear us. But the emotion, the love in that room, it was loud.

It was so loud in my spirit. The songs were simple, often just a few lines repeated over and over.

But they meant something. They were not just words we were required to say. They were prayers.

They were declarations. They were worship from the heart. When we prayed, people did not just recite memorized prayers.

They talked to God like he was there in the room with us. They thanked him for specific things.

They asked him for help with specific problems. They prayed for each other by name.

And when we read from the Bible, it was not just reading. People would share what the verses meant to them.

They would tell stories of how God had worked in their lives. They would encourage each other to stay faithful.

I felt like I had come home. These people, most of whom I had just met, they felt like family.

Real family. The kind that loves you not because they have to, but because they choose to.

They baptized me 3 months later in a plastic tub in someone’s basement in water that we had heated on a stove.

When I went under that water, I was saying goodbye to my old life. When I came up gasping, water running down my face, I was saying hello to a new one.

A dangerous one, but a real one. For three years, this became my life. I worked during the day cleaning houses, earning money to support my mother and brothers who never knew about my conversion.

And whenever I could, I gathered with my church family. We met once a week, sometimes twice if it was safe.

We rotated between different houses to avoid establishing a pattern. We were careful never to arrive or leave at the same time.

We used different roots. We told different stories to explain our absence to family and neighbors.

We called ourselves brothers and sisters. And we meant it. These people became more than friends.

They became the family I could not tell my real family about. There was brother Rasheed, an old man who had been a Christian for 40 years.

He had a beard white as snow and eyes that crinkled when he smiled. He had memorized most of the New Testament and would recite it to us during our meetings.

His voice would shake with emotion when he quoted passages about God’s love and faithfulness.

There was sister Parisa close to my age who had converted from Islam like me.

We became close friends. We would meet at the market sometimes pretending to shop, but really we were praying for each other, encouraging each other, sharing what God was teaching us.

She was engaged to be married to a Muslim man, and the weight of that secret was crushing her.

She did not know how to tell him. She did not know if she should.

There was brother Hassan, a teacher at a boy’s school who risked everything to share his faith.

He had led several of his students to Christ over the years, always carefully, always wisely.

He knew that one wrong word to the wrong student could end his life. There was sister Mina, a widow with three children who somehow managed to raise them as Christians in complete secrecy.

She taught them about Jesus in whispers at bedtime. She taught them to pray silently in their hearts.

She lived in constant fear that they would say something to the wrong person and their whole family would be killed.

There was sister Leila, the widow in whose house we often met. Her husband had been killed in a bombing years before.

She lived alone, which made her house somewhat safer for meetings, though nothing was truly safe.

She was quiet and gentle, always serving others, always making sure everyone had chai and something to eat.

We loved each other. We prayed for each other. We carried each other’s burdens. We broke bread together, sharing communion with pieces of naan and grape juice in tiny cups.

Remembering Jesus’s sacrifice, remembering that he gave his body and blood for us. We celebrated when someone new came to faith.

We mourned when someone was arrested or disappeared. We supported each other financially, when someone lost their job or faced hardship.

But we were always afraid. You must understand the fear. It was constant like breathing.

Every knock on the door could be the Taliban. Every stranger who looked at you too long could be an informant.

Every time you left a church meeting and walked home through dark streets, you wondered if you would make it back.

You wondered if this was the night you would be caught. The fear was not irrational.

It was based on reality. We all knew stories of Christians who had been discovered.

Some were beaten and released as a warning. Some were imprisoned and tortured. Some simply disappeared and their families never learned what happened to them.

But we decided the risk was worth it because faith is not meant to be private and isolated.

Because we needed each other. Because when you carry a secret that could get you killed, you need people who carry the same secret, who understand, who can pray with you when you are weak and celebrate with you when you are strong.

And because Jesus said where two or three are gathered in his name, he is there among them.

We needed to feel his presence. We needed to know we were not alone. We needed to worship together because that is what believers are meant to do.

When the Taliban took over Afghanistan again in August 2021, the fear became terror. I was 21 years old.

I watched on television as the government fell in days like a house of cards collapsing.

I watched the president flee the country abandoning us to our fate. I watched the Taliban enter Kbble in their trucks, firing guns in the air, celebrating their victory.

The scenes at the airport, I will never forget them. Thousands of people desperate to escape, pushing and shoving and climbing over walls.

People clinging to airplanes as they took off. Bodies falling from the sky. It was like watching the end of the world.

Many foreigners left. Many Afghans who had worked with the Americans or the previous government fled if they could.

There was chaos, panic, a sense that everything was falling apart. Our underground church became smaller.

Some members managed to escape to Pakistan or Iran in the chaos. Others went into deeper hiding.

Others we simply stopped hearing from and we did not know if they had fled or been caught or killed.

But some of us stayed. Where could we go? My mother and brothers needed me.

I could not abandon them. And our church, those who remained, we needed each other more than ever.

We decided that if we were going to die in Afghanistan, we would die as Christians.

We would not deny Jesus to save our lives. We would stay faithful no matter what happened.

The Taliban changed everything quickly. Girls could not go to school after sixth grade. Women could not work most jobs, which meant I lost my work cleaning houses.

You had to pray at the mosque or people would report you. The religious police walk the streets with sticks, enforcing Sharia law, beating people for violations like improper dress or playing music or not having a long enough beard.

Fear settled over the country like a thick fog. No one trusted anyone. Neighbors reported on neighbors.

Family members informed on each other. Everyone was suspicious of everyone else. We became more careful with our meetings.

We changed our locations constantly, never using the same house more than once a month.

We used coded language in messages. We never wrote down names or addresses. We never stayed in one place too long.

Our church shrank to about 18 regular members. Some had fled. Some had gone so deep into hiding we lost contact with them.

These 18 of us, we were the ones who remained, who continued to meet despite the increased danger.

And yet, we kept meeting every week, risking everything. We gathered to worship Jesus. Why?

Why would we risk our lives for a few hours in a basement singing and praying?

Because that is what it means to follow Jesus. Not just to believe in your heart, but to live it out.

Not just to have private faith, but to be part of his body, his church.

Because we believed his words when he said, “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my father in heaven.

But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my father in heaven.” Because we had counted the cost and decided Jesus was worth it.

In the months before that terrible night, the pressure increased. We heard reports of house-to-house searches in some neighborhoods, Taliban looking for Christians, and for people who had worked with the previous government.

We heard rumors of Christians being arrested, imprisoned, tortured, executed. We heard that the Taliban had informant networks specifically watching for any signs of conversion from Islam.

We knew our time was running out. There was one close call about 2 months before the raid.

We were meeting in a basement when we heard Taliban trucks on the street outside.

Someone must have reported suspicious activity, people coming and going from that house. We turned off all lights immediately.

We stopped singing midong. We barely breathed. We prayed silently, desperately, as we heard them knock on the door upstairs.

The homeowner, a brave man whose name I will not say to protect his family if any survive, he answered calmly.

He told them his cousins were visiting from another province, that we were having a family gathering.

Nothing illegal, nothing suspicious. They demanded to search the house. We heard their boots walking through the rooms above us.

They were thorough, opening closets, looking under beds. We sat in complete silence in the dark basement.

20 people not moving, not speaking, barely breathing. They searched the upper floors but did not come to the basement.

Maybe they did not see the entrance which was hidden behind a curtain. Maybe God blinded their eyes.

We do not know when they finally left. We sat in darkness for another hour, too afraid to move, praying silently and waiting to make sure they were truly gone.

After that night, we knew we were being watched more carefully. But we also knew we could not stop to stop.

Gathering would be to let fear win, to let the Taliban win, to deny that Jesus was worth the risk.

So we continued more carefully, more prayerfully. But we continued. We met every Friday evening.

Friday because that was the Islamic holy day when Taliban attention was focused on the mosques.

Most people would be at Friday prayers which meant fewer people on the streets, fewer eyes watching.

We would arrive at different times over the course of an hour through different routes, entering through back doors and side entrances.

We never greeted each other on the street, never acknowledged each other in public. Inside, we would sing quietly, our voices barely above whispers.

We would pray with our hands open toward heaven. We would read scripture, taking turns, savoring every word.

We would share communion with such reverence, remembering that we were doing what Jesus commanded us to do in remembrance of him.

We would encourage each other to remain faithful. We would weep together for those who had been arrested or killed.

We would hope together for a better future, whether in this life or the next.

And we would remind each other of what Jesus said, “In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart.

I have overcome the world.” We believe those words with everything in us. We staked our lives on those words.

The last normal gathering we had. I remember it clearly. It was mid November 2023.

The weather was getting cold. Winter was coming. Someone had brought hot chai in a thermos and we passed it around warming our hands on the cups.

We sat in a circle on the floor wrapped in shawls and blankets against the cold.

Brother Rashid was teaching from the book of Hebrews 11 about the heroes of faith.

He read about people who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, gained what was promised.

He read about women who received back their dead, raised to life again. Then he read about others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.

People who face jeers and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. People who were put to death by stoning, sawed into, killed by the sword.

He read that these people were commended for their faith even though they did not receive what was promised in their earthly lives.

They were looking forward to something better to a city with foundations whose architect and builder is God.

And he said that if we died for our faith, we would join their number.

We would be counted among the faithful. And one day in glory, we would meet them and worship Jesus together forever.

I remember thinking as he spoke, I hope I never have to be that brave.

I hope I never have to choose between my life and my faith. I hope Jesus comes back before that happens.

But in my heart, I knew that day was coming. We all knew Afghanistan was closing in on us.

The Taliban was hunting for converts. Our names, our faces, our meeting places, all of it was becoming known to those who wanted to destroy us.

We were living on borrowed time. But we were not living in despair because we had something the Taliban could never understand.

We had hope. We had love. We had Jesus. And we believed, truly believed that even if we died, we would live.

Even if the worst happened, God was still good. Even in the darkest valley, we would fear no evil because he was with us.

I sit here today, years later, thousands of miles away from that basement in Kabul, and I can still smell the chai.

I can still hear the whispered prayers. I can still feel the rough carpet under my knees as we knelt to worship.

I can still see brother Rasheed’s gentle face as he taught us about faith. Those were some of the most dangerous days of my life.

They were also some of the most beautiful because I was not alone. I was surrounded by brothers and sisters who loved Jesus more than life itself.

Who would rather die than deny him. Who taught me through their lives what real faith looks like.

I did not know then that within 2 weeks our underground church would be raided.

I did not know that I would be dragged out into the night, beaten, tied to railway tracks, and left to be killed by a train.

I did not know that I would face the test I had always feared. But I also did not know that Jesus had already prepared a miracle.

That he was already working, already moving, already orchestrating our deliverance in ways we could never imagine.

All I knew was that I loved him and I was willing to die for him if that was what he asked.

I just never thought I would actually have to find out if I meant it.

The raid happened on Friday, November 24th, 2023. I will remember that date for the rest of my life.

It is burned into my memory, like a brand, like a scar that goes deeper than skin, all the way down to my soul.

We were meeting in a house on the eastern edge of Kbble in a neighborhood where the streets were narrow and unpaved, where the houses were pressed close together with shared walls.

It was an older part of the city where families had lived for generations, where everyone knew everyone else’s business.

The house belonged to Sister Leila, the widow whose husband had been killed years before in a market bombing.

She lived alone in this small house that had once held a family. Her children had grown and moved away.

She had three rooms upstairs and a basement that had been used for storage, but which we had cleaned out to use as our meeting place.

There were 18 of us that night. I remember counting as people arrived, slipping in through the back entrance one by one over the course of an hour.

18 believers gathered in a basement room that smelled of damp stone and heating oil and old carpet.

The room was small, maybe 4 m by 5 m. The ceiling was low with exposed pipes and wiring running across it.

We sat close together on old carpets and cushions that sister Leila had brought down.

A single kerosene heater glowed in the corner, giving just enough warmth to fight the November cold, but not enough to make the room truly comfortable.

The windows, small rectangular openings near the ceiling at ground level outside, were covered with heavy blankets that we had secured with tape and nails.

We had hung additional fabric on the walls, old quilts and bedspreads to help muffle sound.

Every precaution we could think of, we had taken. We had been meeting for about an hour.

Brother Rasheed had led us in worship, his voice thin but steady as we sang hymns in whispers.

We had shared communion, passing around pieces of naan bread and a single cup of grape juice.

Each person taking a small sip and passing it to the next. Now we were praying.

We were taking turns. Each person praying for a few minutes. Our voices low and careful.

We prayed for our families who did not know we were Christians. We prayed for believers in other parts of Afghanistan.

We prayed for the Taliban that God would soften their hearts. We prayed for wisdom, for safety, for strength to remain faithful.

Sister Paresa was praying when it happened. She was praying for her mother, asking God to open her mother’s heart to the truth about Jesus.

Her voice was breaking with emotion as she spoke, tears running down her face. I was listening to her pray, my eyes closed, my hands folded in my lap, feeling the weight of her words.

And then we heard the first sound, a crash. Upstairs, the unmistakable sound of a door being smashed open, wood splintering, the bang echoing through the house.

Everything stopped. Sister Paresa’s prayer cut off mid-sentence. Everyone’s eyes flew open for maybe three seconds.

There was absolute silence in our basement as we all processed what we had just heard.

Then we heard the boots, heavy footsteps, multiple men running through the upper floor of the house, the sound of furniture being overturned, things crashing to the floor and shouting, loud, angry shouting and postoan.

I cannot describe to you. What happens to your body when you realize you are about to die?

It is not like fear you have felt before. It is not like being nervous or worried or scared.

It is primal, physical, overwhelming. Your heart does not just beat faster. It pounds so violently you think it will break through your ribs.

You can feel it in your throat, in your ears, in your fingertips. Your mouth goes completely dry in an instant, like all the moisture in your body has disappeared.

Your hands start shaking uncontrollably. Tremors. You cannot control. No matter how hard you try, your vision becomes sharp and narrow like you are looking through a tunnel.

Everything else fading to the edges. I looked around the room at the faces of my brothers and sisters.

I saw the same terror on every face, eyes wide, mouths open, bodies frozen. Sister Paresa grabbed my hand and squeezed it so hard it hurt.

Her palm was sweating. She was looking at me with such fear, such raw fear that I felt my own terror deepen.

Brother Rasheed stood up, his old body moving faster than I had ever seen him move.

He was trying to position himself between the stairs and the women. An instinct to protect even though there was no protection possible.

Some people started crying. Quiet, desperate sounds. One of the younger men started to pray out loud, fast and frantic, begging God to save us.

We heard them searching the rooms above us. Heavy boots walking across the floor directly over our heads.

Things being thrown around, glass breaking, more shouting. They were tearing through Sister Leila’s house, destroying everything.

Sister Ila herself was shaking, her hand over her mouth, her eyes squeezed shut. This was her home, her sanctuary, and they were destroying it while hunting for us.

For maybe one minute we had hoped that they would not find us, that they would search the upper floors and leave, that somehow they did not know about the basement, that maybe this was a random search, not specifically targeting us.

Then we heard footsteps on the stairs that led down to us. Someone had found the basement entrance behind the curtain.

The door at the top of the stairs flew open with such force it banged against the wall.

Light flooded down the stairs. Bright and blinding after sitting in our dimly lit room.

And they came. Six Taliban fighters, maybe seven. I could not count accurately. My brain was not working right.

Everything was happening too fast and too slow at the same time. They wore the black turbins.

They had long beards. Some had their faces wrapped with cloth showing only their eyes.

They carried Kalashnikov rifles. And they came down those stairs like a flood of violence and hatred.

The first thing they did was beat the men. Brother Hassan, who had been sitting closest to the stairs, was hit in the face with a rifle butt before he could even stand up.

I heard the crack of it, heard him cry out, saw him fall backward with blood exploding from his nose.

Brother Rasheed trying to shield. Some of the women was kicked in the stomach. This old man, this gentle teacher who had spent his life serving Jesus.

They kicked him until he curled up on the floor, his arms wrapped around his head trying to protect himself.

The other men were beaten systematically, punched, kicked, hit with rifles. It happened so fast.

Within seconds, all the men in our group were on the floor bleeding, groaning in pain.

The women were screaming high-pitched, terrified screams that echoed off the basement walls. Some were trying to help the men.

Some were trying to back away into the corners. There was nowhere to go. The room was too small.

We were trapped. The Taliban were shouting over the screaming, cursing us, calling us kafir, infidels, calling us traitors to Islam, traitors to Afghanistan, calling us dogs, pigs, Western spies, CIA agents.

The hatred in their voices was thick and physical, like something you could touch. One fighter grabbed me by my hair and dragged me across the room.

The pain was blinding, like my scalp was being torn from my skull. I tried to grab his hand to relieve the pressure, but he just yanked harder.

He threw me against the wall and I hit it so hard the air went out of my lungs.

I could not breathe. For several seconds, I just could not breathe. I thought I was dying.

My chest was burning, trying to pull in air that would not come. When I could finally breathe again, gasping and wheezing, another fighter kicked me in the side.

The pain exploded through my ribs, something cracked. I felt it break inside me. They were systematic.

They went through the room and beat every single person. Old or young, man or woman, it did not matter to them.

They wanted us to know what they thought of us. They wanted us to feel their contempt, their hatred, their absolute conviction that we deserved this.

Sister Paresa was next to me on the floor. Her face was bleeding badly. There was a deep cut above her eye and blood was running down into her eye and she was um trying to wipe it away, but her hands were shaking too much and the blood just kept coming.

I tried to reach for her to help her somehow, but a Taliban fighter stepped on my hand with his boot.

The pain shot up my arm like electricity. I screamed. I could not help it.

The scream just came out of me. He pressed down harder, grinding his boot into my hand.

I could feel the bones in my hand grinding together. I screamed again. He leaned down close to my face.

His breath smelled like tobacco and onions. His eyes were dark and cold and empty of any compassion.

He said one word, just one word. He asked if I was Christian. I could have denied it.

I could have lied. I could have said no. There has been a mistake. I am Muslim.

I was just visiting this house. I did not know these people were Christians. Please let me go.

The lie was right there, ready to be spoken. It might have saved me or at least delayed what was coming.

But I looked into his eyes, those cold, hateful eyes, and I thought about Jesus.

I thought about how he stood before Pilate and did not deny who he was.

I thought about the disciples who were beaten by the religious authorities and told to stop preaching.

And they said they must obey God rather than men. I thought about Steven being stoned to death, praying for his murderers even as they killed him.

And I said, “Yes.” I said, “Yes, I am Christian.” He spit in my face.

The saliva hit my cheek and ran down toward my mouth. I felt it warm and disgusting.

Then he hit me, not with his gun, with his fist, right in my mouth.

I felt my lips split open. I tasted blood immediately, salty and warm, filling my mouth.

Around the room, they were asking everyone the same question. One by one, going to each person.

Are you Christian? Are you an apostate? Have you left Islam? And one by one, with bloody faces and broken bodies, my brothers and sisters said, “Yes.

Yes, we are Christians. Yes, we follow Jesus. Yes, we have left Islam. Not one person denied him.

Not one person lied to save themselves. Not one. They dragged us up the stairs.

Some people could not walk because of the beatings and had to be carried or supported by others.

Brother Hassan’s nose was clearly broken, blood pouring down his face. Sister Mina had been hit in the head and seemed dazed, not fully conscious.

Brother Rashid was moving slowly, hunched over, his face gray with pain. They pushed us out into the street where trucks were waiting.

It was dark outside, probably 9 or 10 at night. The street was cold. I could see my breath in the air.

White puffs that disappeared into the darkness. The street was empty, completely empty. Our neighbors, if they heard anything, they stayed inside.

No one would help us. No one would intervene. To help us would be to join us, to risk the same fate.

So they hid behind their doors and their walls and their curtains. And they let us be taken.

They threw us into the backs of two trucks. Toyota pickup trucks with covered beds.

They pushed us in roughly, shoving and hitting us, cramming us together like cargo. I landed on top of someone.

Maybe brother Hassan. There was blood everywhere. On the floor of the truck, on people’s clothes, on my hands.

We were pressed together so tightly I could barely move. The smell was overwhelming. Blood and sweat and fear.

Someone was crying. Someone else was praying in a whisper. Most were silent in shock.

The truck started moving. Through gaps in the canvas cover, I could see street lights passing by.

We were driving somewhere, away from the center of the city toward the outskirts. No one spoke.

We all understood what this meant. They were taking us away from people, away from witnesses, away from anyone who might see what they were going to do to us.

The drive lasted maybe 30 minutes, maybe longer. Time had become strange. Every bump in the road sent waves of pain through my body.

My mouth was still bleeding. I could feel the blood running down my chin, dripping onto my shirt.

My hand where the fighter had stepped on it was swelling. The fingers not bending right.

My ribs sent sharp pains through my chest with every breath. But the physical pain was nothing compared to the fear.

The fear was a monster, a living thing with claws that dug into my chest and squeezed my heart.

I kept thinking about my mother. Who would take care of her now? Who would help my brothers?

They would never know what happened to me. I would just disappear like so many others had disappeared.

Another person gone in Afghanistan. Another body that would never be found. Another family left wondering forever.

I wanted to pray but I could not form words in my mind. Everything was just chaos and terror and pain.

The only thing I could think over and over was Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. His name.

Just his name repeating in my head like a heartbeat. The trucks finally stopped. The engines went silent.

I heard the fighters getting out, their boots crunching on gravel. Then they opened the back of our bus, the trucks, and started pulling us out.

We were in the middle of nowhere, empty land on the outskirts of Kabul. No buildings nearby, just darkness and cold and open space.

The moon was almost full, giving enough light to see, but not bright enough to see clearly.

Everything was shadows and shapes, and there were railway tracks, old metal rails running across the empty ground, disappearing into the darkness in both directions.

I saw the tracks and something cold and terrible settled into my stomach. A knowing, an understanding of what was about to happen.

I had heard stories, rumors of Taliban executing people by tying them to railway tracks.

I had thought they were exaggerations, horror stories meant to frighten, but they were real.

This was real. There is an old railway line that runs through that area. It is not used much anymore.

The infrastructure in Afghanistan is poor. The trains are old and unreliable. But a few freight trains still pass through, usually late at night when there is less traffic on the roads, carrying goods between cities.

Everyone local knows the schedule. Trains pass through around 1:00 in the morning, sometimes another one around 4 in the morning.

Everyone knows this. The Taliban knew this. The fighters had flashlights, the beams cutting through the darkness, and they ordered us to walk to the tracks.

Anyone who moved too slowly was hit or kicked forward. We stumbled across the rough ground.

A group of 18 broken, bleeding people walking to our execution. When we reached the tracks, they started with brother Rasheed.

Four fighters grabbed him. This old man who had served Jesus faithfully for 40 years, who had taught so many people about God’s love.

They threw him down on the tracks like he was garbage. They had wire, thick, heavy wire.

They had brought it specifically for this purpose. They had planned this, prepared for it.

They tied his hands behind his back first, wrapping the wire around his wrist several times and twisting it tight with pliers.

Then they wrapped wire around his chest and under the rail, securing him to the steel track.

They pulled it so tight he gasped, barely able to breathe. They did this to each person, one by one, methodically.

They had clearly done this before, or at least planned it carefully. They knew exactly how to tie us so we could not escape, so we would be in the path of the train so we would definitely be killed.

When my turn came, I tried to resist. I do not know why. There was no escape, no possibility of breaking free, but something in me still fought, still refused to accept this.

Two fighters grabbed my arms and forced them behind my back roughly. I felt my shoulders strain.

Felt the muscles pull. The wire cut into my wrists as they wrapped it around and around, binding my hands together.

They pulled it so tight I felt my hands going numb almost immediately. The wire was biting into my skin, cutting through.

Then they pushed me down onto the rail. The steel was so cold against my back.

Cold like ice, like death. I could feel it through my clothes, sucking the warmth from my body.

They wrapped more wire around my body, under the rail, and over my chest, pulling it tight enough that breathing became difficult.

Each breath was shallow and painful. My head was tilted back slightly, resting on the gravel between the tracks.

Rocks and sharp stones pressed into my skull. I could see the night sky above me, stars scattered across the darkness like diamonds on black cloth.

They moved down the line tying everyone. Sister Paresa was placed next to me about 2 m away.

Sister Leila was on my other side. Brother Hassan was across from me. All of us.

18 believers tied to railway tracks like animals waiting for slaughter. When they finished securing all of us, the commander walked up and down the line slowly, shining his flashlight on each face.

His own face was hard, without mercy or compassion. Just satisfaction at a job well done.

I will never forget his face. He stopped in the middle of where we were tied and spoke.

His voice was calm, almost casual, conversational, like he was discussing the weather. He said we had betrayed Islam.

We had betrayed Afghanistan. We had betrayed our families and our ancestors. He said we were not worthy to be called Afghans.

He said we deserved to die like the dogs we were crushed under the wheels of a train.

He said, “Our false god Jesus could not save us now. He told us to pray to him, to call out to him, to see if he would come down from his throne in heaven and untie us.”

Then he laughed. A genuine laugh like he found this truly funny. Several of the other fighters laughed, too.

He said the first train would come around 1:00 in the morning. That was in about 3 hours.

He said we should use that time to think about our choices, about how we had wasted our lives following a dead prophet instead of the true religion.

Then they left. They climbed back into their trucks. They started the engines and they drove away, the sound of the motors fading into the distance, getting quieter and quieter until there was nothing.

Nothing but silence. Complete absolute silence. I lay there on the cold ground tied to a railway track and the reality hit me like a physical blow.

I was going to die. We were all going to die. A train would come in a few hours and it would crush us.

It would be violent and painful and there was nothing we could do to stop it.

I started to cry. Not loud sobs, just tears running down the sides of my face into my hair.

I could not wipe them away because my hands were tied behind my back. They just fell warm against my cold skin.

I could hear others crying too around me. Quiet sounds of despair. Someone was praying in a whisper, words I could not make out.

Someone else was completely silent, maybe in shock. My wrists were burning where the wire cut into them.

My chest hurt from the tightness of the wire and from being beaten earlier. My mouth was swollen and still bleeding a little.

Every part of my body hurt. Cold was seeping into my bones from the ground beneath me.

I started shivering which made the wire cut deeper into my skin. But worse than the physical pain was the knowledge that I would never see mourning, never see my family again, never have a chance to say goodbye.

My mother would wake up tomorrow and realize I had not come home. She would search for me, ask neighbors, maybe even go to the Taliban authorities who would not help her because they had killed me.

The thought of her pain, of her spending the rest of her life wondering what happened to me, that was worse than my own approaching death.

I tried to pray, but I could not. I tried to remember scripture, but my mind was blank with fear.

All I could think was, “Jesus, where are you? Where are you?” Time moved strangely.

Minutes felt like hours. I stared up at the stars and thought about how indifferent they seemed.

Beautiful and cold and far away. While down here we were dying. The universe did not care.

The stars did not care. Were we just alone in this vast empty cosmos, suffering and dying with no one watching?

Somewhere in the darkness, Brother Rasheed started to sing. His voice was weak, cracked, barely audible, but he was singing a hymn in Dari.

The words were about God being our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Others joined in. Quiet, broken voices singing into the night. Sister Paresa’s voice next to me, shaking but still singing.

Brother Hassan’s voice from across the tracks. One by one, those who could still speak, who had not given in completely to despair, they sang.

I tried to sing, but my swollen lip made it hard to form the words.

So I just listened, and something shifted in me. I do not know how to explain it.

The fear was still there, the pain was still there, but something else came too.

A whisper in my spirit so quiet I almost missed it. I remembered Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane the night before he was crucified.

How he prayed in such agony that he sweat drops of blood. How he begged God to take the cup of suffering away from him.

How he said, “If it is possible, let this pass from me.” But then he said, “Not my will but yours be done.”

And I whispered it into the cold night with tears on my face and wire cutting into my wrists.

I whispered it. Not my will, Jesus, but yours be done. If this was how I was supposed to die, then I would die.

If this was the end, then I would meet him face to face in a few hours.

The one I had given up everything for. The one I loved more than my own life.

I would finally see his face. That thought, as terrifying as it was, was also somehow comforting.

In a few hours, all the pain would be over. All the fear would end, and I would be with him forever.

We waited there in the darkness, cold and bleeding and bound. We waited for the train that would end our lives.

We had maybe 3 hours left. 3 hours to prepare our souls for eternity. I closed my eyes and tried to make peace with God, with my life, with my death.

1:00 a.m. Came and went. No train. At first, I did not notice. Time had become meaningless, measured only by the increasing cold that seeped deeper into my bones, and the growing numbness spreading through my hands.

Minutes and hours had blurred together into one long stretch of suffering and waiting. But brother Rasheed noticed.

He had worked for the railway company years ago before he retired. He knew the schedules, knew the patterns of train traffic in this area.

I heard his voice in the darkness, barely audible. He said the first train should have passed already.

His voice was confused, uncertain. Maybe it is late, someone replied. Their voice was weak, hopeless.

Trains are often late in Afghanistan. The infrastructure is poor. Delays are common. We fell back into silence, waiting, shivering.

Some praying, some beyond prayer. Each person lost in their own thoughts, their own fear, their own attempt to make peace with dying.

My wrists had gone completely numb. I could not feel my hands anymore. The wire had cut off circulation entirely.

I tried to wiggle my fingers to see if they still worked, but I could not tell if they were moving or not.

Everything below my wrists was just absent, gone, like my hands had been cut off, and I was just now realizing it.

The wire around my chest made every breath a conscious effort. I had to think about breathing.

Had to deliberately pull air into my lungs with small, shallow gasps. If I tried to breathe deeply, the wire cut in sharply, and the pain was immediate and intense.

So, I breathed like a wounded animal, quick and light, never quite getting enough air, feeling slightly dizzy from lack of oxygen.

My back achd terribly from lying on the hard ground and steel rail for hours.

The rocks and gravel pressed into my spine. My muscles were cramping from being unable to move, from being held in the same position.

The cold had penetrated deep, making everything hurt. Worse, making my whole body feel brittle and fragile.

I could hear others around me in a various stages of suffering. Some were crying quietly, soft sounds of despair that floated through the darkness.

Some were praying, their whispered words rising like smoke into the night sky. Sister Ila next to me was reciting the Lord’s Prayer over and over in Dari like a mantra like a rope she was clinging to as she drowned.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Over and over, her voice getting weaker each time, but still praying, still holding on.

The sky above me was so clear. Living in the city, you never see stars like this.

The lights and pollution wash them out. But out here in this dark empty place far from the city center, the sky was full of them.

Thousands and thousands of tiny points of light scattered across the darkness. I thought about how the Bible says God knows every star by name.

That he counts them, knows each one. If he knows the stars, if he cares about distant balls of burning gas millions of light years away, does he know me?

Does he see me right now? Tied to this track, dying slowly from cold and fear.

Does he care? The questions that come when you are facing death are strange. They are not the big theological questions you discuss in church or study in books.

Not questions about doctrine or interpretation or tradition. Just simple, desperate human questions. Does God see me?

Does he care that I am suffering? Am I alone? I heard Sister Paresa crying next to me.

I wanted so badly to comfort her, to reach out and hold her hand, to tell her it would be okay.

But I could not reach her. I could not even turn my head to see her.

The wire held me too tight, positioned my body too specifically. I could only stare up at the indifferent stars and listen to her weep.

I tried to speak, to say something encouraging, something about Jesus being with us, about heaven waiting for us, but my voice came out as a broken whisper, and I do not think she heard me.

The words just fell into the darkness and disappeared. Time crawled forward like a dying animal, slow and painful and seemingly endless.

I would think surely an hour had passed and then realize it had probably only been 15 minutes.

My sense of time was completely broken by pain and fear and cold. Around 2:00 in the morning, if I was guessing the time correctly based on the position of the moon, something changed inside me.

I cannot explain it exactly. The crushing fear that had been sitting on my chest since they tied us here.

That suffocating terror. It started to lift just slightly. Not gone, never gone, but less heavy.

I started to think about my life, not in a sad, regretful way, but in a strangely grateful way.

I thought about the good things God had given me, even in my short and difficult life.

I thought about my father, how he would carry me on his shoulders through the market when I was small.

How he would save the best pieces of fruit for me, the ripest apples, the sweetest melons.

How he worked so hard to provide for us, leaving before dawn and coming home after sunset, his hands rough and his back bent, but always with a smile for his children.

I thought about my mother, how strong she was even in her grief. How she insisted I go to school when other girls were kept home.

How she believed I could be more than just a wife and mother. That I could learn and grow and contribute to the world.

Even though she did not know I had become a Christian, even though that secret had created a wall between us, I loved her.

I was grateful for her. I thought about my brothers. How they would fight over toys but protect each other fiercely from outsiders.

How they looked up to me, their big sister, asking me questions about everything. I would miss watching them grow up.

I would miss seeing what kind of men they would become. I thought about Aunt Sariah who first told me about Jesus.

How brave she was to risk telling a Muslim girl about Christ. If she had not taken that risk, I would never have known him.

I would have lived my whole life without hearing the gospel. Without knowing there was a God who loved me personally, specifically, completely.

I thought about my church family. Brother Rasheed who taught me so much about scripture, who showed me what a life of faithfulness looked like.

Sister Paresa who became like a true sister to me. Brother Hassan, Sister Mina, Sister Laya, all of them.

We had shared something precious. We had worshiped together, prayed together, broken bread together, carried each other’s burdens.

Even if we died tonight, that was real. That had value. That mattered. Those years of secret worship, of whispered prayers, of Bibles hidden under floorboards, they were not wasted.

They were some of the most real, most meaningful years of my life. I thought about Jesus, how he had changed everything.

How he had given me peace when my father died and I thought I would drown in grief.

How he had made me part of his family when I felt utterly alone. How he had loved me, a poor Afghan girl with nothing to offer him except broken heart and empty hands.

And I realized something lying there on that cold railway track. Even if I died tonight, I had lived.

Really lived because I had known love. I had known truth. I had known Jesus.

The Taliban could kill my body. They could crush it under the wheels of a train.

They could erase my physical existence from this world. But they could not touch what was real.

They could not take away the three years I had spent following Christ. They could not erase the joy I had felt in worship.

They could not destroy the hope I had found in the gospel. I had lived free.

Even in Afghanistan, even in secret, even in constant danger, I had been free because Jesus had set me free from the inside.

Free from the fear of death, free from the tyranny of sin, free from the emptiness of just existing without purpose.

Tears came again, but different tears this time. Not tears of fear and despair, but tears of gratitude.

I was grateful, even lying on a railway track, waiting to die, even in the worst moment of my life.

I was grateful to have known him, grateful that he had found me, grateful that he had called me, grateful that he had loved me enough to die for me.

If I died tonight, I would die knowing I was loved. Knowing my life had meaning.

Knowing that death was not the end, that there was something beyond, someone waiting for me.

3:00 a.m. Came and went. Still no train. By now, several people had noticed. The murmuring started quietly.

Brother Rasheed saying again that something was wrong, that the second train should have come by now.

Others responding in confusion, in tentative, fragile hope. But we did not dare hope too much.

Hope was dangerous. Hope would make it worse if we were wrong. If the train was just delayed and would come any minute and crush us.

So we stayed silent, waiting, suffering. The cold was the worst part now. It was relentless, merciless, cruel.

It reached into every part of you and made everything hurt worse. My muscles were cramping from shivering and from being unable to move.

My back felt like it was on fire from lying on the rocks and steel for so many hours.

My face was numb from the cold air. My lips were cracked and bleeding. But my wrists, where I could still feel them, they were agony.

The wire had cut through the skin. I could feel wetness that was probably blood, though it was too dark to see.

The pain pulsed with every heartbeat. A throbbing that never stopped, never eased. I drifted in and out of something like sleep, but not really sleep.

More like a state where I was not fully conscious, but not fully unconscious either.

A gray place between. I would close my eyes and time would skip forward and I would open them again and not know if seconds or minutes or hours had passed.

In one of these half awake moments, I had a memory so vivid it felt real.

I was 5 years old again and I had fallen and scraped my knee badly.

I was crying not just from the pain but from the fear of the blood, the shock of being hurt.

My father picked me up and held me close and told me it would be okay.

He cleaned the wound gently while I cried into his shoulder. He kissed my forehead and told me I was brave.

And then I heard something, not with my ears, but in my spirit, a voice quiet and clear.

It said, “I am holding you.” My eyes opened. The stars were still there, cold and distant.

The pain was still there, unchanged. The wire still cut into my wrists, but I felt for just a moment like I was being held, like there were invisible arms around me keeping me from falling completely apart.

I started to pray. Real prayer, not just crying out in fear, but actual conversation with God.

I thanked him for my life, even the hard parts. I told him I was scared, but I trusted him.

I told him that if this was my time to die, I was ready. But if he wanted to save us, I would praise him for that, too.

I prayed for my family. I prayed that somehow they would be okay without me.

That God would provide for them, protect them. I prayed that maybe somehow, someday, they would understand why I chose Jesus, that they would not hate me for it.

I prayed for my church family, the ones tied here with me and the ones who were scattered elsewhere.

I prayed that they would stay strong, stay faithful no matter what happened. And I prayed for the Taliban fighters who had done this to us.

This was the hardest prayer. I did not feel like praying for them. I felt anger, hatred even.

They had beaten us, tied us here to die like animals. They deserve judgment, deserved punishment.

But Jesus said to pray for those who persecute you, to bless those who curse you.

He did it from the cross, looking down at the soldiers who had nailed him there.

And he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” If I was going to die like he died, then I should pray like he prayed.

So I did. It felt forced and hollow at first, the words sticking in my throat.

But I prayed that God would forgive them. That somehow their eyes would be open to the truth.

That the same Jesus who had saved me, a sinner could save them, too. Around me, I could hear others praying now.

Brother Rasheed was quoting scripture, his voice thin but steady. I heard him reciting from Romans 8.

I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Those words settled into my heart like stones sinking into water. Nothing could separate us from God’s love.

Not the Taliban, not the wire cutting into my wrists, not the cold, not even death.

We were loved. Right now, in this terrible moment, we were loved by God. 4:00 a.m.

Came and went. No train. Now, everyone was noticing. The impossible was becoming possible. Two trains that should have passed.

Two trains that always pass at these times. As regular as clockwork, both missing. Brother Rasheed said it out loud, his voice filled with wonder.

He said, “Maybe God was doing something. Maybe he was stopping the trains.” But that seemed impossible.

How could God stop trains? They run on schedules, on diesel fuel, on mechanical systems.

They are not controlled by prayer or faith. They are just machines. Someone said maybe the Taliban had stopped the trains themselves so they could come back later and see if we were dead to make sure the job was finished.

That thought sent fresh fear rippling through all of us. If they came back and found us still alive, they would just shoot us instead or do something worse.

We fell silent again, hoping and not daring to hope, suffering and trying to endure.

Praying and wondering if our prayers were reaching heaven or just echoing into empty space.

The pain in my wrists was unbearable now. The numbness had worn off and been replaced by a burning, throbbing agony that consumed my awareness.

I could not think about anything else. Every heartbeat sent a pulse of pain up my arms.

I could feel the wire had cut deep. Could feel the stickiness of blood on my skin.

My lips were so cracked and dry. I had not had water in hours, and the cold air had sucked all the moisture from my mouth.

My tongue felt thick and swollen. I would have given anything for a sip of water, just one sip.

But I was still alive. Against all logic, against all expectation, against the testimony of years of train schedules, I was still breathing.

We were all still alive. The sky started to change. Very slowly, very gradually, the absolute black darkness began to thin.

Not light yet, not even gray, just less dark. The stars started to fade. The brightest ones still visible, but the dimmer ones disappearing.

Dawn was coming. We had survived the night. I do not know if I can describe what that realization felt like.

My body was broken. My wrists were bleeding. I was freezing and in terrible pain.

But I was alive. We were alive. We should be dead. By every reasonable expectation, we should have been crushed by a train hours ago.

But we were not dead. We were still here, still breathing, still tied to these tracks, but somehow impossibly still alive.

Around me, I heard sounds. Not words at first, just sounds, gasps, sobs, noises of disbelief and relief and confusion all mixed together.

Brother Rasheed started praying. His voice stronger now, filled with emotion. He was thanking God, praising him.

He said, “Blessed be the name of the Lord who has not abandoned us to death, who has not left us as prey for our enemies, who has stopped the trains.”

Others joined in, voices weak and cracked from thirst and cold, and hours of crying, but praying, praising, thanking God for what seemed impossible, but was real.

I tried to speak, but my voice would not work properly. My throat was too dry, my lip too swollen, but in my heart I was screaming, “Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.” Over and over, “Thank you.” The sky grew lighter. Pink and orange started to spread across the horizon like paint spilling across a canvas.

Dawn was breaking and we were still here to see it. We had lived through the night.

We had survived what should have killed us, but we were not safe yet. We were still tied to the tracks, still unable to free ourselves.

And when the sun rose fully, the Taliban might come back to check on us, to see if we were dead, to finish the job if we were not.

Or a train might finally come now that it was morning. The signal malfunction or whatever was stopping them might be fixed.

We might still die. We needed help. We needed someone to find us before it was too late.

We needed another miracle. We had gotten one by surviving the night, but we needed one more.

The light grew stronger. I could finally see the others properly. For hours, they had been just voices and shadows in the darkness.

Now I could see their faces. What I saw made me want to weep. Brother Rasheed’s face was swollen and bruised.

Purple and yellow marks covering his cheeks and forehead. Sister Paresa had dried blood all down one side of her face from the cut above her eye.

The blood had run into her hair, matting it together. Brother Hassan’s nose was clearly broken, bent at an angle, his eyes blackened.

Sister Leila’s hijab had come off during the beating, and her gray hair was loose around her face, making her look older and more fragile.

We all looked like we had been through a battle, because we had, and we had survived.

But we were not free yet. The sun rose higher. I could feel a tiny bit of warmth on my face, though my body was still frozen from lying on the cold ground all night.

My hands were still numb, completely without feeling. I was worried about permanent damage, about whether the circulation could be restored after being cut off for so many hours.

We lay there in the growing light, still unable to free ourselves, still not knowing what would happen next, still afraid, but also filled with a strange, impossible hope.

Because we were alive. Against all odds, we were alive. And if God had stopped the trains for one night, maybe he would save us completely.

Maybe this was not the end. Maybe there was still hope. Then we heard voices in the distance.

My whole body went rigid with terror. Was it the Taliban returning? Had they come back to finish what they started?

To kill us now that the trains had failed to do it. The voices got closer.

I could not see who it was because of how my head was positioned. I could only stare up at the sky and listen to the sound of footsteps crunching on the gravel near the railway tracks.

Getting closer and closer. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would burst.

This was it. Either rescue or death. Either salvation or execution. After surviving the impossible night, would we die now at dawn?

The footsteps stopped. I heard sharp intakes of breath, sounds of shock and horror. Then a voice speaking in dar said something like, “Oh god, what is this?

Who did this? It was not Taliban. It was not fighters. It was ordinary people, civilians.”

Their voices filled with horror at what they had found. Three men appeared in my field of vision, looking down at me with faces full of shock.

They were not soldiers or militants. They looked like local workers, ordinary Afghan men wearing simple clothes, work pants, and jackets.

One was older, maybe in his 50s. The other two were younger, maybe in their 20s or 30s.

They were staring at us like they could not believe what they were seeing. 18 people tied to railway tracks, bloody and beaten, obviously left here to die.

The older man said we needed to get them free quickly before anyone sees. His voice was urgent, frightened.

He knew that helping us was dangerous. That if the Taliban found out he had freed Christians, he would be killed, too.

But he helped us anyway. They did not ask who we were or why we were tied here.

They did not ask if we were criminals or terrorists or what we had done to deserve this.

They just saw people suffering and they chose to help. That is mercy. That is what humanity looks like when it has not been completely corrupted by hatred and ideology.

They started trying to free us, working quickly, their hands shaking with fear and urgency.

They did not have proper tools to cut the thick wire, so they used what they had.

One man had a small knife and he started sawing at the wire around the nearest person.

Another man tried to untwist the wire where it was wrapped, working at it with his fingers.

The third man ran back the way they had come, I think, to get something to help cut the wire, or maybe to get more people to help us.

It took time. The wire was thick and had been wrapped tight and twisted with pliers by the Taliban.

And the men were scared, these brave men who had chosen to help us. They kept looking around, checking to see if anyone was watching, if the Taliban might be coming back.

But they worked at freeing us person by person as fast as they could. When they cut the wire around Sister Paresa, she tried to sit up, but could not.

Her body had been in the same position for so many hours that her muscles would not work right.

One of the men gently helped her, supporting her as she slowly tried to move.

She cried out in pain as circulation started returning to her limbs. I watched them work their way down the line of people tied to the tracks.

Each person they freed would try to move and realize they could not stand. The cold and the hours of being immobilized had left us all weak and stiff.

Some were crying from the pain as blood flow returned to their hands and feet.

Some were silent in shock, still not quite, believing we were being rescued. When they reached me, the young man who came to help me looked down at me with tears in his eyes.

He said, “I am so sorry this happened to you.” His voice was breaking with emotion.

He started cutting the wire around my chest first, sawing at it with his knife.

When it came loose, I could suddenly breathe deeply for the first time in hours.

The relief was so intense, so overwhelming that I started coughing. My lungs were expanding fully, pulling in air, and my body did not know how to handle it after hours of shallow breathing.

Then he moved to my wrists. He worked carefully trying not to hurt me more, but the wire was embedded in my skin.

When he finally freed my hands, the pain was incredible, indescribable. As blood started flowing back into my hands, it felt like they were being stabbed with thousands of needles, like they were burning from the inside.

I screamed. I could not help it. The pain was so sharp, so sudden, so intense that it ripped the scream out of me before I could stop it.

The man apologized, said he was sorry. He was trying to be gentle, and he was.

His hands were steady and kind, working as quickly as he could while trying not to cause more pain.

He helped me sit up slowly. The world spun. I had been lying down for so long that sitting up made me dizzy, made everything tilt and sway.

He supported me, one hand on my back, letting me adjust. I looked at my wrists and almost wished I had not.

There were deep grooves where the wire had cut in, the skin torn and bloody, my hands were swollen and purple, the fingers not moving right, but I could wiggle them slowly, painfully, but I could move them.

Nothing was permanently damaged. It was a miracle in itself. Around me, all 18 of us were being freed.

These three men and a fourth person who had come back with tools, they worked with desperate speed, helping person by person, cutting wire, supporting people as they tried to move after hours of being immobilized.

A woman appeared. I do not know where she came from. She had brought water in a container.

She moved among us, helping us drink. The water hurt my cracked lips and swollen mouth, but I did not care.

I drank like someone who had been in a desert for days. The water was the most beautiful thing I had ever tasted.

The woman was crying as she helped us. She kept saying, “This is evil. This is evil what they did to you.”

Over and over like she could not believe humans could do this to other humans.

But humans had done this. Humans who believe they were serving God, who thought they were righteous, who were convinced that killing us was the right thing to do.

And other humans, strangers who did not know us, who owed us nothing, who were risking their own lives, they were saving us.

This is the human condition. We are capable of both terrible evil and incredible good.

Sometimes in the same moment, in the same place, both extremes of human nature are on display.

One of the men asked where we should go. We could not stay here. When the Taliban realized we had not died, they would come looking for us.

We needed to hide, needed to get as far away as possible, as fast as possible.

Someone mentioned a tea shop nearby, owned by a man who was known to be kind, who sometimes helped people in trouble.

It was a risk, but we had no choice. We could not walk far. Most of us could barely stand.

The men and the women helped us. They supported us, half carried us, moving us away from the railway tracks toward this tea shop.

It was maybe 3 or 400 m away. But for us, injured and weak and traumatized, it felt like miles.

We moved as a group, supporting each other. Brother Hassan had his arm around my shoulders, helping me walk because my legs kept giving out, kept buckling under me.

Sister Parisa was leaning heavily on one of the men who had freed us. Her legs not working properly yet.

We must have looked terrible, like refugees from a massacre. Bloody, bruised, barely able to walk.

A group of broken people stumbling across empty ground toward uncertain safety. But we were alive and we were free and people were helping us, risking everything to help us.

Even in the darkest moments, even in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, there was still goodness.

There were still people who chose mercy over cruelty, love over hate, humanity over ideology.

We reached the tea shop just as it was opening for the morning. The owner, an older man with a white beard and kind eyes, he took one look at us, and his face went pale.

But he did not turn us away. He did not close his door and pretend he had not seen us.

He ushered us inside quickly, looking around to make sure no one had seen us arrive.

Inside, he told us to sit, to hide ourselves as much as possible. His small shop was suddenly filled with 18 broken, bleeding people, and he welcomed us.

His wife came from the back and when she saw us, she gasped, her hand going to her mouth.

Then she started crying and then still crying, she started helping us, bringing water and clean cloths, trying to clean the blood from our faces, tending to our wounds as best she could.

We were safe for now. We were safe. We had survived the impossible night. We had been rescued at dawn and now we were being sheltered by strangers who were risking everything to help us.

God had stopped the trains and he had sent these people to save us. The miracle was real.

The tea shop was small, maybe 3 m wide, 4 m long. There were a few low tables with cushions around them, a counter at the back where the owner prepared chai and simple food.

The walls were bare except for some faded posters and a clock that had stopped working years ago.

But to us in that moment, it was a palace. It was sanctuary. It was safety.

The owner, whose name I later learned was Hamid, he locked the door behind us and pulled down the metal shutter over the window facing the street.

This was unusual. Tea shops are meant to be open to welcome customers. By closing like this, he was announcing that something was wrong, that something had happened.

Anyone who saw would ask questions. But he did it anyway. He chose to protect us even though it put him at risk.

His wife, Fatima, she moved among us with cloths and water from a large pot.

She was trying to clean the blood from our faces to see the extent of our injuries.

Some wounds were deep and would need proper medical attention we could not get. But she did what she could with what she had.

She came to me and gently dabbed at my split lip with a damp cloth.

The water stung the torn flesh and I flinched. She apologized softly, her voice maternal and kind.

She looked at my wrists and her face crumpled. Tears started flowing down her cheeks as she carefully tried to clean the blood away from where the wire had cut into my skin.

Why? She kept saying, “Why would anyone do this? What did you do to deserve this?”

I could not answer her. My throat was too tight with emotion. All I could do was cry silently as she tended to my wounds like I was her own daughter.

Around the room, the same scene was repeated. Fatima moved from person to person, cleaning wounds, offering comfort, weeping at what had been done to us.

Hamid brought blankets and wrapped them around those who were shivering most violently from the cold and shock.

He heated water for chai, strong and sweet, and brought cups to us with shaking hands.

These people, these Muslim strangers who owed us nothing, who were risking everything by helping us.

They treated us with more compassion and humanity than I had seen in a long time.

They saw suffering and they responded with love. It was that simple, that beautiful. One of the men who had freed us from the railway tracks, the younger one who had cut the wire from my wrists.

He was standing by the door, looking out through a crack in the shutter. He was keeping watch, making sure the Taliban were not coming.

His name was Rasheed, and his face was tight with fear. Every few minutes, he would glance back at us and then return to watching the street.

The other men who had helped rescue us, they had left. They had families to get back to jobs to go to.

Staying with us would only increase their danger. But they had saved our lives. They had seen people bound to railway tracks.

And instead of walking away, instead of pretending they had not seen, they had acted.

They had risked themselves for us. I will never forget their faces. I will carry them in my memory forever.

Ordinary men who chose to be extraordinary when it mattered most. Brother Rasheed was sitting against the wall.

His breathing labored and painful. The beating he had received was severe. He was an old man and his body could not withstand such violence.

Sister Mina was tending to him, trying to make him comfortable. But we all could see he was in bad condition.

His face was gray. He kept touching his ribs and wincing. Sister Paresa sat next to me.

Her cut above her eye had finally stopped bleeding, but the whole side of her face was swollen and bruised.

She looked at me and tried to smile, but her lip quivered and more tears came instead.

We held each other. No words, just held each other and cried. Hamid came and squatted down in front of our group.

His face was serious, worried, he spoke quietly, urgently. He said we could not stay here long, maybe an hour, maybe two.

But then we had to leave. The Taliban would be looking for us. They would go house to house, shop to shop, asking if anyone had seen a group of injured people.

If they found us here, they would kill us and they would kill him and his wife for helping us.

He said we needed to split up into small groups, two or three people maximum.

Small groups could travel without attracting attention. Large groups would be spotted immediately. He said we needed to leave Kobble as soon as possible.

Not tomorrow, not in a few days, today. Now as fast as we could move.

Someone asked where we should go. Pakistan. Hamid said the border is maybe four or 5 hours drive in good conditions.

Longer if you have to avoid checkpoints, but Pakistan was the closest safe place. Iran was too far.

Going north would take us deeper into Taliban territory. South toward Pakistan was our only real option.

But how would we get there? None of us had cars. None of us had money for transportation.

We could not just walk to the border. That was impossible in our condition. Hamid said he would make some calls.

He knew people. He said, people who might help. He could not promise anything, but he would try.

He went to the back of his shop and we heard him speaking on a phone, his voice low and urgent.

We could not hear the words clearly, but we could hear the tone. He was calling in favors, asking for help, explaining the situation to people who might be willing to risk themselves for strangers.

While he was making calls, Fatima brought us more chai and some pieces of naan bread with honey.

Most of us could not eat. Our stomachs were too twisted with fear and shock.

But the chai, hot and sweet, it helped. It warmed us from the inside, gave us a little bit of strength.

I sipped my chai slowly, letting the heat and sweetness spread through my body. My hands were still shaking so badly, I had to hold the cup with both hands to keep from spilling it.

The cup rattled against my teeth every time I brought it to my lips. I looked around at my church family.

We were a broken group, bleeding, bruised, traumatized. Some were worse off than others. Brother Rasheed looked like he might not survive another day.

Sister Leila had a vacant look in her eyes like she was not fully present anymore.

Brother Hassan kept touching his broken nose and wincing. Several others had injuries that clearly needed medical attention.

We could not get. But we were alive. We had survived the night. We should be dead.

Crushed under train wheels. But we were alive. Drinking chai in a tea shop. Being cared for by strangers.

Alive. Hamid came back from his phone calls. His face showed cautious hope. He said he had found some people willing to help.

Not enough transportation for everyone at once, but enough to get us out in groups over the next few hours.

He said a truck driver he knew, a friend from his village, would come within the hour.

This driver made runs toward the border regularly transporting goods. He could hide some of us among his cargo.

It would be uncomfortable, dangerous, but it would work. He said another friend with a taxi could take a small group, maybe three people, and drive them south, pretending they were a family going to visit relatives.

He said a third person, someone he trusted completely, had a van that could take another group.

Not all of us could go together. We would have to separate. Some would go in the truck, some in the taxi, some in the van.

We would take different routes to avoid drawing attention. And once we left Kbble, we were on our own.

We would have to find our own way from wherever the drivers could safely drop us.

It was terrifying. The thought of separating. We had been through this nightmare together. We were bonded by shared trauma.

Splitting up felt like losing the only family who truly understood what we had just experienced.

But we had no choice. Staying together would get us all killed. Splitting up gave us at least some chance of survival.

Hamid said we needed to decide quickly who would go in which vehicle. We needed to organize ourselves, choose groups, be ready to leave the moment each driver arrived.

The discussion was brief and painful. Some people wanted to stay together but could not.

Families needed to be kept together where possible. Those who were most injured needed to be distributed so each group had someone capable of helping them.

I was grouped with Sister Paresa, Sister Leila, and one of the younger men named Fared.

Four of us would travel together. Hammed said an elderly man who sometimes drove his nephew’s car would come to take us.

This driver, Hammed assured us, was trustworthy. He was getting old and probably should not be driving anymore, but he had agreed to help.

Brother Rasheed would go in the truck with several others. The truck had space among the cargo where they could hide if there were checkpoints.

Sister Mana and her small group would go in the taxi, pretending to be a family.

We had maybe 30 minutes to wait for the first driver. 30 minutes of sitting in fear, wondering if the Taliban would find us before we could leave.

30 minutes of saying goodbye to people we might never see again. I went to brother Rasheed.

He was still leaning against the wall, breathing with difficulty. I knelt beside him and took his hand.

His skin was cold, his grip weak. He looked at me with those kind eyes that had always been filled with wisdom and love.

He smiled slightly despite his pain. He said something that I will carry with me forever.

He said, “God had been faithful. From the moment we were captured until now, God had not left us.

He stopped the trains. He sent rescuers. He provided sanctuary. He was with us in the darkness.

And he brought us into the light. He said, “Whatever happened from here, whether we survived or not, whether we made it to safety or were caught again, we had witnessed a miracle.

We had experienced God’s deliverance, and that was a gift, a precious gift that could never be taken away.”

I was crying. I told him I was scared. I told him I did not know if I was strong enough for what was coming next.

He squeezed my hand with what little strength he had. He said, “Faith is not about being strong enough.

It is about trusting that God is strong enough.” He said, “Jesus carried his cross when he could barely walk.

He fell under the weight of it, but he kept getting up. He kept moving forward, not because he was strong enough, but because he was obedient to his father.”

He said, “That is what we must do. Keep moving forward. One step at a time.

One moment at a time. Not in our strength, but in his. Then he did something that broke my heart and healed it at the same time.

He blessed me. He placed his hand on my head. This old man who was in terrible pain.

And he prayed a blessing over me. He prayed that God would protect me, guide me, use me to tell this story so that others would know what Jesus had done.

He prayed that I would reach safety and live a long life serving the Lord.

I could not speak. I just wept as he prayed over me. A knock came at the door.

Everyone went silent, frozen in fear. Was it the Taliban? Had they found us? Hamid went to the door and spoke through it quietly.

A voice answered from outside. Hamid seemed to relax. He opened the door just enough for someone to slip inside, then quickly closed it again.

The truck driver had arrived. A weathered man in his 40s with a thick beard and kind eyes.

He looked at us and his expression showed shock at our condition, but he did not hesitate.

He said his truck was parked in an alley two streets over. Those who were going with him needed to come now.

Brother Rasheed stood with help. Six people in total would go with a truck driver.

They wrapped themselves in shawls and chadars to hide their injuries as much as possible.

They needed to walk through the streets to reach the truck without drawing attention. Hamid checked outside.

The street was relatively quiet. It was still early morning. Most people were inside eating breakfast or preparing for the day.

The group slipped out quickly. Brother Rasheed turned and looked back at us one more time.

Our eyes met. He smiled that gentle smile. Then he was gone. Shuffling down the street with the others, moving as fast as his injured body could manage.

I never saw him again. About 20 minutes later, the taxi arrived. Sister Mina and her group prepared to leave.

We hugged briefly. Sister Mina whispered a prayer over each of us. She said we would see each other again, either here or in glory.

Then they were gone, too. Now we waited for our driver, my group of four.

Sister Paresa, Sister Laya, young Fared, and me. We sat in silence, each lost in our own thoughts, our own fears, our own prayers.

Fatima brought us more chai and some different clothes. She had gathered scarves and chers that we could use to cover ourselves better, to hide our injuries and look more normal.

The clothes we were wearing were torn and blood stained. We could not walk through the city looking like that.

We changed clothes, helping each other because our hands were stiff and painful. The new clothes were simple, ordinary, nothing that would attract attention.

We wrapped scarves around our heads and necks, covering as much of our faces as we dared without looking suspicious.

Then came the knock we were waiting for. Our driver had arrived. Hamid let him in.

An old man, maybe 70, with a white beard and a face like wrinkled leather.

His name was Gulam, and he moved slowly, carefully, like his bones hurt, but his eyes were sharp and alert.

He looked at the four of us and nodded. He said his car was just outside.

We would get in quickly, and he would drive us out of the city, heading south.

He knew back roads that avoided most checkpoints. He had driven these routes for 50 years.

He knew every turn, every village, every place where police or Taliban might stop cars.

But he warned us if we were stopped, if we were questioned, he could not protect us.

He would have to pretend he did not know we were Christians, that he was just giving strangers a ride.

He would do his best, but ultimately we were in God’s hands. We understood. We thanked him for his willingness to help despite the risk.

Hamid opened the door and checked the street again. Clear. He turned to us with tears in his eyes.

He hugged each of us. This Muslim man embracing Christians who were hunted by his government.

He said, “May God protect you. May you reach safety. May you remember that not all Muslims hate you.

That there are those of us who see you as human beings, as fellow children of God.

I hugged him back, this stranger who had risked everything for us. I thanked him and Fatima for their kindness, for their humanity.

I told them I would never forget what they did for us. Then we went outside into the morning light.

The sun was higher now, warming the air slightly. The street was still relatively quiet.

We moved quickly to Gulam’s car, an old sedan that had probably been white once, but was now a faded yellowish color with rust spots and dents.

We climbed in. Sister Leila and I in the back. Sister Paresa in the front passenger seat.

Fared squeezed into the back with us. The car was small and we were pressed together, but we did not complain.

Gulam started the engine. It coughed and sputtered, but finally caught. He pulled out onto the street and began driving south through Kabul.

I looked back at the tea shop one more time. Hamid was standing at the door, watching us go.

He raised his hand in a small wave. Then he went back inside and pulled the shutter back up, reopening his shop as if nothing had happened.

Returning to normal life while we fled for our lives. The drive through Kbble felt endless.

Every corner we turned, I expected to see Taliban fighters waiting for us. Every checkpoint we approached, I thought, “This is it.

This is where they catch us.” My heart was racing so fast I thought it would explode.

My hands were sweating despite the cool morning air coming through the car’s windows. Gulam drove slowly, carefully obeying every traffic rule, drawing no attention to himself or his passengers.

He took side streets when possible, avoiding main roads where there might be more Taliban presence.

We passed people going about their morning routines, shopkeepers opening their stores, children walking to school, women in burkas heading to the market, normal life continuing while we ran for our lives.

It felt surreal, like we existed in a different reality than these other people. No one in that car spoke.

We were too afraid, too exhausted, too traumatized. We just sat in silence and prayed internally.

Prayed that we would make it out of the city. Prayed that the checkpoints would let us pass.

Prayed that God would continue the miracle he had started. At one point, we did come to a checkpoint.

Taliban fighters standing in the road checking vehicles. My heart nearly stopped. This was it.

They would find us. They would see our injuries despite the scarves covering us. They would know we were the ones who escaped.

Gulam slowed the car and pulled up to the checkpoint. A young fighter, maybe 20 years old, leaned down to look in the window.

He had a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder and a hard expression on his face.

He asked Gulam where he was going. Gulam said he was taking his family south to visit relatives in a village near the border.

His voice was calm, casual, like this was the most normal thing in the world.

The fighter looked at us in the car. His eyes moved from face to face.

I held my breath. My scarf was pulled up high, covering most of my face.

But could he see my swollen lip? Could he see the fear in my eyes?

Time stretched. Seconds felt like hours. The fighter’s eyes lingered on me. I forced myself to look down, to appear modest and submissive like women were expected to be.

Finally, he stepped back and waved us through just like that. No questions, no search.

He let us pass. Gulam drove forward slowly, not rushing, not doing anything to make the fighter suspicious.

We continued down the road. The checkpoint disappeared behind us. We had made it through.

Sister Paresa started crying quietly in the front seat. Relief and release of tension. Sister Leila was praying under her breath, thanking God.

Fared let out a long breath he had been holding. We drove for maybe another 30 minutes before we reached the edge of Kabul.

The city gave way to more rural areas, smaller villages, open land. We were leaving the capital behind.

Gulam spoke for the first time since we left the tea shop. He said he could take us as far as a town about halfway to the border.

From there, we would need to find our own way. He could not risk driving all the way to Pakistan.

Too many checkpoints near the border. Too much scrutiny, but he could get us closer than we were now.

We thanked him. Any distance he could take us was more than we could have managed on our own.

The landscape changed as we drove. Mountains in the distance, their peaks still white with snow.

Fields that would be green in spring, but were brown and dormant now in late November.

Small villages with mudbrick houses clustered together. Herds of sheep and goats being tended by boys with sticks.

Afghanistan is a beautiful country. People who have never been there, they think it is only war and destruction.

But it is more than that. It has beauty, history, culture. It has people who are kind and generous despite decades of conflict.

It has mountains and rivers and valleys that take your breath away. I was leaving it maybe forever.

I was fleeing my homeland because I chose to follow Jesus. And I felt such mixed emotions.

Grief at losing my country, relief at the possibility of safety, fear of the unknown future, gratitude for deliverance.

All of it swirling together inside me until I did not know what I was feeling anymore.

Around midm morning, maybe 10 or 11:00 a.m., we stopped in a small town. Gilam said this was as far as he could take us.

From here, we needed to find our own way south. He gave us some money.

Not much, just what he had in his pocket. Enough maybe for food and to pay for a ride if we could find one.

He said there were trucks that made runs toward the border carrying goods. If we could find one, if the driver was sympathetic, maybe we could get further south.

We got out of the car. Gulam looked at us with such sadness and compassion in his old eyes.

He said, “May God with you. May you find safety. May the world become a better place where people are not hunted for their faith.”

Then he drove away, heading back toward Kabul, back to his normal life. Another stranger who had risked himself to help us.

Another person whose kindness I would remember forever. We stood in that small town, four broken people with nowhere to go and no clear plan.

We found a chai shop and went inside. We ordered tea and sat in a corner trying to decide what to do next.

Fared, the youngest in our group. He said he would go ask around about trucks heading south.

He could move more freely than we women could. He left us in the chai shop and went to explore the town.

While he was gone, we sat in exhausted silence. The adrenaline that had kept us going was fading.

The full weight of what we had been through was settling on us. We were so tired, so hurt, so traumatized.

Sister Leila had not spoken much since we left Kabul. She stared into her teacup like she was seeing something far away.

The night on the railway tracks had broken something in her. She was physically alive, but not really present anymore.

Sister Paresa and I held hands under the table. We did not speak. What was there to say?

We both knew we might not survive the next days. We both knew even if we reached Pakistan, the refugee camps were harsh places.

We both knew our lives as we had known them were over. But we were alive and we were together and Jesus was still with us.

Even here in this small chai shop in a town whose name I did not know, he was with us.

Fared came back about an hour later. He had found a truck driver willing to take us further south for the money Gulam had given us.

The driver was leaving in 2 hours. If we met him at the edge of town, he would hide us in the back of his truck.

It was a risk. We did not know this driver. He could be Taliban sympathizer.

He could turn us in for a reward. But we had no other option. We waited in the chai shop, drinking tea we could not taste, eating bread we could not feel in our mouths, just waiting, counting down the minutes until we could continue south.

When the time came, we left the chai shop and walked to the edge of town.

The truck was there, old and battered, loaded with bags of grain and other supplies.

The driver was a middle-aged man with a hard face. He did not smile. He did not ask questions.

He just pointed to the back of the truck and told us to get in and stay hidden.

We climbed into the truck bed and buried ourselves among the bags of grain. It was uncomfortable, cramped, difficult to breathe properly, but it hid us from view.

If we were stopped at a checkpoint, unless they thoroughly searched the cargo, they would not find us.

The truck started moving. We lurched and bounced along rough roads, unable to see where we were going, just trusting this stranger to take us closer to safety.

The journey was long and painful. Hours of being jostled and thrown around in the back of that truck.

My wrists, my ribs, every injury hurt worse with each bump. But I bit my lip and endured.

We all did. Sometime in the afternoon, we stopped. I heard voices outside. A checkpoint.

Taliban voices asking the driver where he was going, what he was carrying. The driver answered calmly.

They seemed satisfied. The truck started moving again. More hours passed. The sun was getting lower in the sky when the truck finally stopped and the driver told us we could come out.

We emerged stiff and sore, blinking in the afternoon light. We were in another small town much closer to the Pakistan border.

The driver said this was the end of his route. From here we would have to walk.

The border was maybe 15 kilometers. If we walked through the night, we could reach it by morning.

15 km. In our condition, injured and exhausted, it would take all night. But it was possible.

We could do it. The driver pointed us in the right direction and left. We were alone again.

We started walking slowly, painfully, but moving forward, one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, exactly like brother Rasheed had said.

Not in our strength, but in God’s strength. Not because we were strong enough, but because we trusted he was strong enough.

Night fell. We kept walking. The pain was intense, overwhelming at times. Sister Ila especially struggled.

She was older and the night on the tracks had taken a severe toll on her body.

We had to stop frequently to let her rest. But we kept going. We had survived being tied to railway tracks.

We had survived the night when trains should have killed us. We had survived the escape from Kabul.

We would survive this too. Around 3:00 a.m. We saw lights in the distance. The border crossing Pakistan safety.

We approached carefully. We did not go to the official crossing that would require documents we did not have.

Instead, we found a place where locals crossed unofficially a path around the checkpoints that people used to avoid bureaucracy and fees.

As dawn broke on our second day of freedom, we crossed into Pakistan. We literally walked across an invisible line in the dirt and everything changed.

We were no longer in Afghanistan. We were no longer under Taliban rule. We were for the first time in our lives truly free.

We collapsed on the Pakistan side of the border. Too exhausted to go further. We just sat on the ground and cried.

We had made it. Against all odds, despite everything, we had made it to safety.

We did not know what would come next. We did not know where we would live or how we would survive.

We did not know what had happened to the others from our group, to brother Rasheed and sister Mina and all the rest.

But we were alive. We were free. And the sun was rising on a new day, a new life, a new chapter.

God had delivered us. He had stopped the trains. He had sent rescuers. He had provided helpers along the way.

He had brought us through the darkness into the light. The miracle was complete. I am sitting in a small apartment in a country I never imagined I would see.

Outside my window there are no mountains, no mosque minouetses calling people to prayer five times a day.

No women in burkas walking the streets. No Taliban trucks with fighters carrying Kalashnikovs. It is quiet here.

Safe. Strange. Three years have passed since that night on the railway tracks. 3 years since I lay on cold steel waiting to die.

3 years since God stopped the trains. Sometimes it feels like a lifetime ago. Sometimes it feels like yesterday.

I look at my wrists every morning. The scars are still there. Thin white lines that circle around like bracelets, like permanent reminders of what happened.

The doctors here said I was lucky. The wire could have cut deeper, could have damaged nerves permanently, but except for the scars and some lingering stiffness, my hands work fine.

My body healed, but some wounds go deeper than skin. I need to tell you what happened after we crossed the border because this story is not complete without it.

The miracle of survival is only part of the testimony. What came after, what we learned, what we lost, and what we found, that matters, too.

We spent two weeks in a refugee camp near the border. It was crowded, chaotic, filled with people fleeing Afghanistan for various reasons.

Some were escaping war. Some were escaping poverty. Some, like us, were escaping religious persecution.

The camp was not easy. Tents packed close together, limited food and water, no privacy, disease spreading quickly in such crowded conditions.

People were desperate, scared, uncertain about their futures. But we were safe. That was all that mattered.

We were no longer hunted. We could breathe without constantly looking over our shoulders. During those two weeks, we tried to find out what happened to the others from our group.

We asked every Afghan who arrived at the camp if they had seen or heard anything about Christians who had been tied to railway tracks.

We searched for any news, any rumor, any information. Some of what we learned broke our hearts.

Brother Rashid did not make it. We learned this from someone who had been in the truck with him.

He died 2 days after we escaped from internal injuries sustained during the beating. His body could not recover.

He passed away in a safe house somewhere south of Kabul, surrounded by other believers, praying until his last breath.

When I heard this, I wept for hours. This beautiful man who had taught me so much, who had blessed me before we separated, who had survived the impossible night only to die days later.

It felt cruel, unfair. But the person who told us about his death, they said something else.

They said brother Rasheed died with joy on his face. He said he had seen Jesus, that he was ready to go home.

He quoted scripture with his last breaths. Thanked God for a life well-lived and passed peacefully into eternity.

He did not die in fear or regret. He died in faith and victory and somehow knowing that made the grief a little easier to bear.

Sister Mina and her group made it to Pakistan safely. We found them in the camp about a week after we arrived.

The reunion was filled with tears and embracing and prayers of thanksgiving. They had taken a different route, but had also experienced God’s protection along the way.

Others we never found. Some may have made it to safety, and we just never crossed paths in the chaos of refugees.

Some may have been caught. Some may have hidden so completely that no one knows where they are.

We do not know. We may never know. This is the reality of persecution. You do not always get clean endings.

You do not always know what happened to people you love. They just disappear into the fog of fear and secrecy.

And you have to make peace with not knowing. After 2 weeks, aid organizations helped us relocate to different countries.

Sister Paresa, Sister Leila, Fared, and I, we stayed together. We requested to be settled in the same place because we were all we had left.

We were family now, bound by shared trauma, survivors of the same nightmare. They brought us to this western country where I now live.

I cannot tell you which one for security reasons. There are still people who would like to kill us if they knew where we were.

There are radical groups with long memories and long reaches. So I keep the location secret.

But I can tell you this place is safe. There are laws that protect religious freedom.

There are churches everywhere. Churches with crosses visible from the street. Churches that meet openly without fear.

There are Christians who have never been persecuted. Who have never had to hide their faith.

Who do not understand what it costs in places like Afghanistan. Sometimes I envy them.

Sometimes their complaints about small things seem trivial to me when I remember what we endured.

But I remind myself that suffering is not a competition. Their struggles are real to them, even if different from mine.

The first year here was the hardest. Everything was strange. The language, the culture, the food, the weather.

I felt lost, disconnected, like I did not belong anywhere anymore. I was no longer Afghan, but I was not yet part of this new place either.

I existed in a kind of limbo between two worlds. I had nightmares almost every night.

I would wake up screaming, convinced I was back on those railway tracks, feeling the wire cutting into my wrists, hearing the approach of a train that never came.

Sister Paresa would come to my room and hold me while I cried, and I would do the same for her when she had her nightmares.

We all struggled. Sister Leila especially. The trauma had damaged something deep inside her. She stopped speaking much.

She stopped smiling. She went through the motions of living, but the light was gone from her eyes.

She died a year ago, quietly in her sleep. The doctors said it was heart failure.

But I think she died of a broken heart, of wounds that went too deep to heal in this life.

I miss her. I miss them all. Brother Rashid, Sister Leila, and all the others from our underground church who I will never see again in this life.

But I also found new life here. I found a church that welcomed me with open arms.

They helped me learn the language. They helped me find work. They helped me begin to heal.

I started studying, something I had always dreamed of but never thought possible. I am training to be a teacher.

The education is free here. Something I still cannot fully comprehend. In Afghanistan, education was a luxury.

Here it is a right. And I am telling my story. This is why I am speaking to you now.

This is why I am sharing what happened to us because the world needs to know.

You see, after we arrived here, after we had time to process what happened, we started asking questions.

We wanted to know why no trains came that night. Was it really a miracle or was there a natural explanation?

Some of the aid workers helped us research this. They contacted railway officials in Afghanistan, asked questions, dug into records, and we learned something that confirmed what we already knew in our hearts.

It was a miracle. There was a signal malfunction at the main junction station about 20 km from where we were tied to the tracks.

A technical failure that stopped all train traffic on that line starting around 11 p.m.

That night. This alone might not seem miraculous. Equipment fails. Signals malfunction. It happens. But here is what made it impossible to explain naturally.

The failure should have been fixed within two to three hours. It would not a complicated problem.

Railway engineers worked on it all night, but every time they thought they had fixed it, something else would go wrong.

A backup system failed. A replacement part did not work. One thing after another, inexplicable problems that kept the trains from running.

The engineers said they had never seen anything like it. The problems made no technical sense.

Equipment that should have worked did not work. Systems that were supposedly fixed broke again immediately.

They worked on it all night, frustrated and confused, unable to solve problems that should have been simple.

And then around 6:00 a.m., right after we were rescued, everything suddenly started working again.

No explanation. The systems just started functioning normally, like nothing had ever been wrong. The railway supervisor we spoke to, he said in 30 years of working for the railways, he had never experienced a failure like that.

He called it strange, inexplicable, impossible. But we knew what it was. God had his hand on those systems.

He held back the trains for as long as we needed him to. And when we were safe, he released them.

Some people when I tell them this story, they try to explain it away. They say it was coincidence.

They say equipment failures happen and we just got lucky. They say I am seeing God’s hand in what was really just random chance.

But I was there. I was the one tied to those tracks. I was the one who should have died but did not.

And I know with absolute certainty that it was not coincidence. It was Jesus. He could have prevented us from being captured in the first place.

He could have made the Taliban raid a different house. He could have blinded their eyes so they never found our church.

But he did not do that. He allowed us to be captured, to be beaten, to be tied to those tracks.

He allowed us to face the full horror of that night. He allowed us to wait for death in darkness and cold and pain.

Why? Because sometimes God’s miracles are not about prevention. They are about deliverance through the fire, not from it.

The three Hebrew boys in the Bible, Shadrach, Mach, and Abednego, they were thrown into the furnace.

God did not prevent them from being thrown in, but he walked through the fire with them and they emerged without even the smell of smoke on their clothes.

That is what happened to us. We went through the fire. We were not spared the suffering, but God walked through it with us and we emerged alive on the other side.

And now I have a testimony. Now I have a story that cannot be explained away or dismissed.

Now I can stand in front of people and say I should be dead, but I am alive and God did it.

If he had prevented our capture, I would not have this story. If he had made the Taliban leave us alone, I would still be hiding in Afghanistan, afraid, never knowing what he could do.

But because he allowed us to go through the fire, because he stopped the trains in such an impossible way, now the whole world can see his power.

Now skeptics have to wrestle with evidence they cannot easily dismiss. Now Muslims and Christians and people of no faith have to confront the reality that something miraculous happened.

This is why I am sharing this story with you. This is why I am telling you what happened to me and my church family on that cold November night in Afghanistan.

I want Muslims who are watching this to know something. I love you. I respect your sincerity.

I know most of you do not condone what the Taliban did to us. I know many of you like Hamid and Fatima and Gulam and the men who freed us.

You have goodness and compassion in your hearts. But I also need to tell you that Jesus is real.

He is not just a prophet. He is the son of God. He died for your sins and mine.

He rose from the dead. And he is still working miracles today. Still delivering people, still calling people to follow him.

I know this is hard to hear. I know it contradicts what you have been taught since childhood.

I know accepting it would cost you everything just like it cost me everything. But he is worth it.

Jesus is worth losing your family, your country, your safety, your life because he is not just a religion or a set of rules.

He is life itself. He is truth itself. He is love itself. I am not asking you to become western.

I am not asking you to abandon your culture or your identity. I am asking you to meet Jesus, to read the gospels with an open heart, to pray and ask God to show you the truth even if the truth is costly.

Because life following Jesus even with persecution is more real and more full than any life without him.

I know this from experience. I lived both lives and I would choose the life with Jesus every time, even knowing the cost.

To Christians who are watching, especially those of you living in free countries, I want to say this.

Please do not take your freedom for granted. You can go to church openly. You can carry a Bible in public.

You can talk about Jesus without fear. You can raise your children as Christians without hiding it.

These are not small things. These are enormous blessings that millions of believers around the world do not have.

Do not waste this freedom. Do not be lukewarm or casual about your faith just because it costs you nothing to follow Jesus.

In Afghanistan, people risk their lives to gather for worship. They memorize scripture because having a physical Bible is too dangerous.

They pray in whispers. They cannot tell their own families about their faith. They live every day knowing they could be killed for believing in Jesus.

And they still believe. They still worship. They still say Jesus is worth it. If they can be faithful when it costs them everything, surely you can be faithful when it costs you nothing.

Pray for the persecuted church. Most of you do not know what is happening to Christians in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and so many others.

We are being arrested, tortured, killed. Our churches are being raided. Our families are being torn apart.

Pray for us. Do not forget us. We are your brothers and sisters, and we need you to remember us in your prayers.

And be bold with your faith. Do not hide it. Do not be ashamed of it.

Do not let the fear of being mocked or rejected keep you silent about Jesus.

You have freedom. Use it. Speak up. Share the gospel. Tell people about Jesus while you still can, while it is still legal and safe to do so.

To skeptics and atheists who might be watching, I know you have doubts about God, about miracles, about whether any of this is real.

I cannot prove to you that God exists. I cannot force you to believe, but I can tell you what happened to me.

I was tied to railway tracks by the Taliban because I am a Christian. I should have been killed by a train around 1:00 a.m.

Then another train around 4:00 a.m. Both trains that should have come that always came at those times did not come that night.

A signal malfunction at a junction station 20 km away stopped all train traffic for the exact hours we needed it to stop.

Railway engineers could not fix the problem no matter what they tried. And then right after we were rescued, everything suddenly worked again.

You can call it coincidence if you want. You can say it was just mechanical failure and good timing.

You can explain it away however you need to in order to preserve your worldview.

But I know what I experienced. I know what I felt lying on those tracks.

I know the terror and the hopelessness and then the impossible dawn when we were still alive.

And I know Jesus met me in that darkness, not with words or visions, but with presence, with peace that made no sense, with strength I did not have on my own, with deliverance that cannot be explained by natural causes.

I am not asking you to believe without thinking. I am asking you to honestly consider the evidence to look at what happened and ask yourself if it can really be explained away as coincidence.

And if you are willing, if you are open, pray. Just pray and ask God if he is real to show you.

Ask him to reveal himself to you. See what happens. The worst that can happen is nothing changes and you still do not believe.

But what if he answers? What if he is real and he has been waiting for you to ask?

I sit here in my small apartment 3 years after the worst night of my life and I am filled with such complicated emotions.

I grieve for what I lost. My country, my family who does not know where I am, my friends who died or disappeared, the life I might have had if I had never become a Christian.

If I had stayed safe and quiet and not rocked the boat, I carry guilt.

Survivors guilt, the counselors here call it. Why did I survive when brother Rasheed died?

Why am I safe in the West while millions of believers still suffer in Afghanistan and other countries?

What makes me special that I got to escape? I have nightmares. I struggle with trust.

I find it hard to feel safe even here, even in this free country. Part of me is always waiting for the door to crash open, for the Taliban to come for me.

But I also have joy, deep, unshakable joy that comes from knowing I am alive when I should be dead.

From knowing Jesus saved me, literally saved me in such a powerful and undeniable way.

I have purpose. I know why I am still alive. I am here to tell this story, to testify to what God did, to tell people that Jesus is real, that miracles still happen, that faith is worth the cost.

I have hope. Hope that my testimony will reach people who need to hear it.

Hope that Muslims who watch this might reconsider Jesus. Hope that lukewarm Christians might be awakened to the value of what they have.

Hope that skeptics might encounter evidence that shakes their unbelief. Every day I wake up is a gift.

Every breath I take is a miracle. I should not be here, but I am.

And I will not waste this gift. I am Amina. That is not my real name, but it is the name I carry now to protect those I left behind.

I am 24 years old. I am from Afghanistan and I am a Christian. I was tied to railway tracks by the Taliban and left to die.

But Jesus stopped the trains. He held them back all night. He sent rescuers at dawn.

He provided helpers along the escape route. He brought me to safety. The scars on my wrists are real.

The trauma is real. The cost of following Jesus was real. But so is the miracle.

So is his deliverance. So is his faithfulness. And I am here to tell you Jesus is real.

He is worth everything. He is worth your comfort, your safety, your family’s approval, your social status, your very life because he gave his life for you.

He was beaten and tortured and nailed to a cross. He died in your place, taking the punishment you deserve for your sins.

And he rose from the dead three days later, defeating death itself, proving he is who he said he is.

And he offers you the same thing he offered me. Forgiveness, new life, hope, purpose, salvation.

All you have to do is believe, trust in him, follow him, count the cost, and decide he is worth it.

I counted the cost. I lost everything. And I gained something far greater. I gained him.

And that was enough. That is always enough. This is my testimony. This is my story.

This is what Jesus did for me and my church family on a cold November night in Afghanistan when we should have died but lived instead.

I pray it reaches the hearts that need to hear it. I pray it changes lives.

I pray it brings glory to Jesus who deserves all glory and honor and praise.

May you know him. May you experience his love. May you discover as I did that he is faithful even in the darkest valley.

Even when you walk through the shadow of death. Even when you are tied to railway tracks waiting for trains that never come.

He is there. He is with you. And he is enough. Let me end with the verse brother Rashid quoted to us that last night before we were captured from Romans 8.

These words sustained me through that terrible night, they sustain me still. I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Nothing can separate us from his love. Not the Taliban, not persecution, not suffering, not even death.

We are held by love that will not let us go. By hands that stopped trains.

By a god who walks through fire with his children and brings them out alive on the other side.

I am Amina. I survived. And I am here to tell you Jesus is real and he is worth everything.

Thank you for listening. May God bless you and open your eyes to see him.