When you have to pretend to be sick to exercise
KabulGoing to the gym has never been a common habit for all women in Afghanistan. In many remote areas, women do not even know what a gym is. For them, being active means working in the fields, carrying water, or spending long hours doing unpaid labor at home.
But in cities like Kabul, Herat, and Mazar-e-Sharif, before the Taliban’s return, women-only gyms existed, spaces for exercise, connection, breathing freely, and taking care of one’s body.
I was familiar with the gym culture in Kabul. For a while, I practiced wushu and, like many young women my age, I used to go to the gym after university. It was something I looked forward to. As women, we could not exercise freely in parks or public spaces, but the gym felt safe.When the Taliban returned, this space, like so many others was completely shut down.
Even though I had stopped going to the gym before the fall of the republic because of COVID-19, hearing that all women’s gyms were closed and that female athletes had been entirely erased from Afghanistan’s sports scene left me with a heavy feeling. It felt like being a prisoner who, instead of receiving a reduced sentence, is transferred into solitary confinement.
Today, going to the gym as a woman is not just forbidden, it is frightening. Under Taliban rule, exercising as a woman can make you a criminal. No women’s gym operates openly. Even a woman who secretly trains other women in her own home risks arrest.
Just last month, Khadija Ahmadzadeh, a taekwondo coach, was arrested for secretly teaching girls. She was detained for 13 days, forced to repent, and released only after a court session. The news deeply unsettled me. Even though I no longer go to the gym myself, I worried for my friend, who still trains in secret.
In a strange way, the countless restrictions imposed by the Taliban have made some young women braver. Despite the risks, they find ways to access spaces that are officially forbidden. One of my closest friends, someone who feels more like a sister to me, has been taking this risk for more than a year. When she first told me she was going to the gym, I was shocked. But the way she managed to go affected me even more.
In Kabul, some private hospitals have gyms in their basements, officially meant for patients. The Taliban believe only patients whose doctors recommend exercise use these facilities. In reality, many girls obtain fake prescriptions or invent illnesses to gain access to a place where, in most parts of the world, women can go freely without fear.
The gym pass
My friend told me her doctor wrote a prescription saying she had a lower back injury and needed physical exercise for recovery. That prescription allows her to enter the gym.
But even these hospital gyms are closely monitored by officials from the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Sometimes they check medical prescriptions. They order trainers not to allow women they consider “improperly dressed” inside. They demand that trainers report girls they suspect of using drugs. Even playing music is forbidden.
Still, inside the gym, the atmosphere is different. It is a place where girls can laugh, train, sweat, and, for a short time, free their bodies from fear. But this sense of freedom is fragile. The fear of inspections never disappears. That is why someone is usually posted in the hallway, ready to warn others if Taliban officials arrive.
Exercising as a woman is not a crime, just as studying was never a crime. Sometimes I wish I could go to the gym with my friend, but I am afraid. Not only of the Taliban, but of the exhaustion that comes with living multiple hidden lives at once. My physical health matters to me, but even a minimum sense of safety feels difficult to risk.
Yet whenever I think about my friend and women like her, I feel suspended between fear and admiration. Women who pretend to be sick just to exercise. Women who run, breathe, and train, not for medals or recognition, but simply to feel alive.
In a country where being a woman has become a daily struggle, even moving your body can become a form of resistance quiet, hidden, and silent, but deeply powerful.