When he was 13 years old, Mirwais Tokhi was in Kandahar, Afghanistan, scared for his future and trying to flee the Taliban. Now, the 17-year-old is in Toronto planning his future and trying to decide which university he will attend.
Walking around the University of Toronto campus, Tokhi reflected on a time when he was afraid to show his face.
“I was afraid of going back home, afraid of darkness, afraid of not getting educated,” Tokhi told CTV News Toronto.
Tokhi and his family had been vocal advocates of youth education, including girls—something that has been denied to many children over the age of 12 since the Taliban took over in August 2021. As the Taliban started to take over that summer, Tokhi’s family received credible threats and he feared he would be forced to join their forces.
In an interview with CTV News Toronto in 2021, where he spoke under anonymity, Tokhi pleaded to “get us out from Afghanistan.” The teenager wrote a letter then, illustrating his hopes.
“In my native tongue, my name means light and my light has burned bright. My goal is to be a mathematician or an engineer. I want to raise my voice for Afghan women and Afghan youth, but everything has changed and my light is dimming,” Tokhi wrote, in part.
“But, everything has changed and my light is dimming. I wake up to the sounds of bombs and bullets exploding and places near my house getting hit by the Taliban rockets.”
It took months to escape Afghanistan. Tokhi says his family was briefly detained before sneaking into a neighbouring country and eventually arriving to Canada.
Now, years later in Canada, Tokhi says everything is different.
“The light is shining right now,” he says.
The 17-year-old is a Grade 12 student at Clarkson Secondary School in Mississauga, and has an average over 95 per cent. His dreams of higher education are soon to come true, as Tokhi has been accepted to the computer science program at Queen’s University, the University of Ottawa, Carleton University, the University of Guelph and the University of Toronto.
“It’s the gut feeling that matters the most, I think, and my gut feeling is telling me to come here (the University of Toronto) next year,” Tokhi said about UofT.
Tokhi’s parents and his two sisters are thriving as the family works towards getting Canadian citizenship. His aunt is an author named Sola Mahfouz, who lives in Boston. She says she is relieved the family is in Canada with an opportunity to thrive.
“I think it’s just you live as a human in your full capacity instead of just like, ‘Oh, I, (in Afghanistan) you cannot even dream of a thing because you can’t do it,‘” Mahfouz said.
Where he was once afraid to show his face, Tokhi says he now aims to inspire knowing there is a lot of light in his own future.
“Never give up, and dream big,” he said.
