Nigara Shaheen can remember exactly where she was when she became, in her own words, “a refugee for the second time”.
“After Tokyo 2020, my main plan was to give up my refugee status in Pakistan, go back to Afghanistan and start working,” said the judoka, who competed for the IOC Refugee Olympic Team in the women’s -70kg category. “I was at Dubai airport and I was talking to my friends in Kabul, telling them that after 10 days I will come to Afghanistan.”
But that summer, the Taliban had retaken control of the country and it was not safe for her to return, according to Olympics Information Service.
“It was heartbreaking,” she said. “I imagined how my life would look in the future. I planned everything: go back home, start my own dojo, train girls, work on my book. Then, all of a sudden, everything was nothing. Blank. I don’t know how to find the words. My world shattered in front of my eyes.”
Shaheen was just six months old when her parents fled the civil war in Afghanistan in 1993, walking for two days and two nights to cross the border into Pakistan, where the family settled in the northern city of Peshawar.
It was there she discovered judo.
“I would be incomplete without it,” she said. “I remember as a kid, if I didn’t go to the judo mat for two or three days – because sometimes I would have exams or projects – I would have stress. It’s so dear to me. My nightmare was that I wasn’t able to compete or train. It’s a really close relationship that defines who I am as a person.”
But Shaheen never felt truly safe or accepted in Pakistan, and when she was 18 she returned to her homeland to study at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. A career at the Ministry of Finance was then cut short when, as a woman, she was forced to choose between her job and competing at the 2017 Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong China. She chose judo.
Next, she moved to Russia after landing a scholarship to study for a master’s degree in international trade at the Ural Federal University in Yekaterinburg. But despite Russia’s pedigree in combat sports, including women’s judo, Shaeen was again treated as an outsider.
She continued to compete internationally, however, and was selected as one of six judoka on the 29-member IOC Refugee Olympic Team for Tokyo 2020.
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