“I do this for myself, for my life, to express myself and, if necessary, to forget everything else,” Tarrasch, who does not speak English, said in an interview conducted in Spanish.
Tarash will be one of the most fascinating and surprising athletes at the Paris Olympics later this month. She was Afghanistan's first female breakdancer, but fled the country after the Taliban returned to power in 2021. She will be on the world stage when breakdancing, or breaking, makes its Olympic debut in Paris.
Many conservative Afghans dislike dancing, and women are especially forbidden from participating. Under the Taliban, Afghan women have effectively been barred from many sporting activities. Since the group returned to power three years ago, the government has closed girls' schools, stifled cultural and artistic expression, restricted women's movement, and limited access to parks and gyms. A UN human rights report earlier this year said the Taliban's “disregard for the fundamental rights of women and girls is unparalleled in the world.”
From the day she started dancing four years ago, Tarrasch faced criticism and threats from some members of the community, neighbours and relatives. She said she knew she had no other choice if she wanted to continue dancing. “I had to leave and never come back.”
Breaking, a complex mix of athleticism, acrobatics, strength and strategy that originated on the streets of New York in the 1970s, has been included in this year's Summer Olympics as an attempt by Olympic officials to attract a younger, more urban audience.
Tarash, one of 16 B-girls competing for medals in Paris, will not be representing Afghanistan or competing under her country's flag. Instead, she will be dancing as part of the Refugee Olympic Team, made up of displaced athletes who can no longer live and train in their home countries. The team, which debuted at the Rio Games in 2016, will feature 36 athletes from 11 countries this year, five of whom are Afghan. They will compete under a special flag featuring the nation's coat of arms of a heart with an arrow around it, signifying the “shared experience of the journey.”
For Tarash, who has relocated to Spain, the Olympics are a chance to dance freely, to become a symbol of hope for girls and women in Afghanistan and to send a broader message to the world.
“When you ask foreigners about Afghanistan, all they think of is war, guns and old buildings. But Afghanistan is so much more than that,” says Jawad Sezda, a close friend of Tarash's and a leader in Kabul's tight-knit hip-hop community. “Afghanistan is where Manizah is breaking. Afghanistan is where I'm rapping. … Afghanistan is so much more than war.”
Her passion made her a target
When Tarrasch was 17, she stumbled across a Facebook video and was fascinated by the sight of a young man spinning his head. She had never seen anything like it. “At first, I thought it was illegal to do something like that,” she said. Tarrasch began watching more Internet videos and was surprised by how few female dancers there were.
“I said right then and there, 'I'll do it,'” she explained. “'I'll learn.'”
She contacted the boy in the video, Sezda, who encouraged her to visit a local club where he was training. He was trying to grow a hip-hop community in Kabul, using social media to invite people of all ages and genders to dance and rap with his “Superior's Crew.” There were 55 boys training there, and Tarash was the first girl.
“In Afghanistan, in Kabul, it's bad for boys to dance,” says Sezda, 25. “It's even worse for girls to dance. It's very dangerous. It's not accepted in our society for girls to dance. It can't happen. We are trying to normalize it, but it's very difficult. You can't dance on the street, you can't dance in public.”
During one of the crew's first group events, a “cypher” at a small club, a car bomb exploded nearby. There were casualties on the street, but the dancers inside were unharmed. As word spread that Tarrasch was dancing there, she began receiving death threats. The club was supposed to be a safe place, but one day a man came in claiming to be a potential dancer. He seemed suspicious to the Blake Crew, and according to Tarrasch and Sezda, police quickly swarmed the club and arrested the man with the bomb.
“[They] “He said he was an ISIS member,” Sezda said. “He just wanted to blow himself up.”
They closed their clubs and struggled to grow their community while keeping things secret.
“We were active, but we looked out for each other,” he said. “We were very careful. We just wanted to do what we wanted to do: fulfill our dreams, rap, play concerts, break, introduce Afghan hip hop to the world. … There were a lot of problems, a lot of lives were at risk, but we carried on.”
A few months later, after NATO and U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban returned to power, Sezda said his landlord called him and warned him not to come back because people were searching for the Superior's crew.
“There are many reasons to leave,” Sezda said. “The first is to protect my life.”
If they wanted to continue dancing and rapping, they saw no other options, and Tarrasch, in particular, couldn't bear the idea of living in Kabul without getting a break and losing the hip-hop culture that had given her so much purpose.
The 12 members of the Superiors crew gathered what they could, piled into three cars, and headed for Pakistan. Tarash, along with his 12-year-old brother, said goodbye to his mother, sister and other brother.
“I wasn't scared,” Tarash said, “but I realised I couldn't leave and come back. This was important to me. I didn't leave because I was scared of the Taliban or because I couldn't live in Afghanistan, but I wanted to do something to show women that we can do it. It can be done.”
Olympic dream comes true, family reunited
For almost a year they had been living illegally in Pakistan, without passports and with fading hope. Never feeling safe in public, they spent most of the day crammed together in an apartment, 22 of them. There was no training, no dancing. Tarash received word that Taliban authorities had approached her mother in Kabul, asking about the girl's whereabouts.
“Sometimes I wish I could just forget about it all,” she said.
They sought help from embassies, aid groups and non-governmental organisations. Eventually, with the help of PeopleHelp, a Spanish refugee organisation, they were granted asylum in Spain. The group was split up, and Tarrasch and her brother were taken to Huesca, a small town in north-eastern Spain. She worked as a cleaner at a local hair salon. There were no dedicated breaking studios or clubs, but they found a gym where they could dance after hours.
She missed home, but Tarrasch was safe and dancing again, and though she felt her Olympic dream fading, she couldn't give it up.
In February, an American named Isabel Guarco came to the rescue. Guarco had befriended Tarrasch, Sezda and the crew, and began researching online. She found a PDF with dozens of Olympic email addresses and sent out a note. The next day, she received a response: from Gonzalo Barrio, manager of the Refugee Olympic Team.
A refugee team had been selected for Paris, but Olympic officials were so moved by Tarrasch's story that they rushed to mobilize resources: the Spanish Olympic Committee agreed to oversee her training, and coaches in Madrid were happy to volunteer their time.
“We felt we had to give it our all,” Spain's technical director, David Bento, said.
In March, Tarracha received a scholarship to move to Madrid to focus on breaking full time, and just a few weeks later, Guarco, who had been with Tarracha on the set of a documentary, got the news that he would be competing in the Olympics.
“She started crying and it was like she was laughing,” Guarco recalled. “She was like, 'This is so surreal,' and then about 10 minutes later she started crying again.”
“I was crying tears of joy and fear,” Tarrasch explained.
She was worried about her family in Afghanistan, and as the news was not made public for three weeks, Tarasche and her support network began making phone calls. They were eventually able to bring her mother and two remaining siblings to Madrid, where they are now living in a refugee hostel.
Tarash never forgets that breaking and hip hop, banned in her hometown, gave her life purpose and helped save her family.
“This is so much bigger than any dream I ever had or thought,” she said.
Incompatible with the Olympic mission
Part of the Olympics' stated mission is to “support the advancement of women in sport at all levels” and to encourage “the principle of gender equality.” As such, the Olympic movement has long had a tense relationship with Afghanistan. The International Olympic Committee suspended the country's Olympic Committee in 1999, and Afghanistan was barred from participating in the 2000 Sydney Games. Its eligibility was not reinstated until the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
These will be the first Summer Olympics since the Taliban seized power. Last month, the IOC announced that six athletes — three men and three women — would compete under the Afghan flag. But Taliban officials are not welcome in Paris, and the IOC is only negotiating with Olympic officials operating outside Afghanistan. Some of the Afghan athletes, like Tarash, are thought to be training outside Afghanistan.
Although Tarash is heartbroken by the loss of her country, she hopes that this summer she can be a symbol of hope, even if most Afghans can only follow her through social media. She remains hopeful that one day she will be able to return to Kabul, dance freely, and help forge new paths for young Afghan women.
“If the Taliban say they're leaving in the morning, I'll be home in the afternoon,” she said. “Without a doubt.”
In Madrid, she trains six days a week, working with Vento on technique and as her strength and conditioning coach. She dances under the name B-girl Talash. Until recently, she had little formal training, learning from her peers and YouTube videos. But music moves her, and Vento sees her personality emerge when she puts her mind to it.
“Her attitude is even stronger when she's in front of an audience or in an intense fight,” he said. “I think the style that Manizha cultivates is that of a true warrior.”
Gabriel Alvarez Jacobs contributed to this report.
