Only one man’s opinion mattered to her, and after early reservations, Kohistani’s father told her simply: “Run. Run for Afghanistan. Run like you’ve never run before.”
Pop!
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As the gun went off, she rose quickly from the starter’s blocks. Head down, arms and legs pumping in unison, then slowly rising, building speed. She felt like she was flying Friday morning. She crossed the finish line in 14.42 seconds, a personal best by almost a half-second — on a track that had no mud, no potholes like back home.
Almost four seconds behind the world record, she did not qualify for the next round and finished 31st out of 32 competitors.
As if that mattered.
“I’m going to say sorry for my family because I was racing for my medal and I cannot achieve any medal for them,” Kohistani said, her eyes welling up.
“You’re crying because you didn’t win?” she was asked.
“No,” she said. “It is the journey. Being here is more important for me than a gold medal.”
The Afghan sprinter now wept openly as she spoke, tears dotting her hijab. “It was one of my dreams to go to the Olympic Games. And right now I achieve my dream and my dream come true and I am very happy for that.”
“I’m here to represent a country with lots of problems right now,” she continued. “Right now we are facing the loss of children, the loss of family. There are bombs a lot in my country. The women in my country have lots of problems right now.”
Kohistani was letting go of everything, pouring it out. “There are a lot of bad comments about me in my country and there’s lots of people not ready to support me. But I think I will make the nation of Afghanistan proud of me and they are going to never forget me. I just opened a new window, a new door, for the next generation of my country. I can say that they will follow me all the time.
“There are lots of girls in Afghanistan. Because of some social problems, because of family problems, they cannot do sport. But I’m going to say for them: Come and join me, Tahmina, and we can make a very big and strong sport network in our country.”
She was asked if she faced any retribution for competing.
“Right now, when I go back home, there were will be a lot of problems, people who are waiting for me, people who will do things wrong with me.
“Maybe they have their own idea about me,” she said. “I’m not going to say they are wrong. Maybe one day they will realize that I was right. Maybe the next generation of Afghanistan will be proud of me because I opened a new window for them.
“They are not ready to accept me. They are thinking that I am wrong and I cannot do that because I am a Muslim and I am from Afghanistan and it’s not good for being a female athlete in my country.
“What I face, I face all the challenges, cross all the problems, and right now I am here.”
Here. The Olympics, where the longest journey to the shortest race ended with a 5-foot-3 woman showing more strength than the strongest Bulgarian weightlifter, more stamina than the gold-medal marathoner. Here, where Tahmina Kohistani’s tears kept coming, answering the question she pondered on the starting block.
How is this possible?
She just showed us.
For previous columns by Mike Wise, visit washingtonpost.com/wise
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