15-year-old Mariam from Missouri, Sharif in northern Afghanistan remembers the first day she went to school last August.

It was about a month after the Taliban took over her country.

The Taliban entered our class and most of the girls ran to the back of the classroom and turned around.

They didn't want to see their faces. They don't want to see the Taliban.

We're only using Mariam's first name so she can speak freely.

She told NPR that she refused to run away when Taliban officials entered her classroom for regular monitoring.

I didn't want them to know I was afraid of them. I just sat there and refused to look at them.

About 300 miles away in Kabul, 17-year-old Fatima Sadat said she's dreamed of being a psychologist.

But she hasn't been to school since the Taliban took over. She's been very worried about her future.

We were all afraid that the Taliban closed the schools and did not want to open them again.

Also, we were not given any books to study, so we were left to our own fate.

Sadat's fears were soon realized.

See, the Taliban had promised girls would be allowed to go to school.

But when hopeful girls across Afghanistan actually showed up to their classrooms three weeks ago, many were turned away.

That's 18-year-old Sakina Jaffari in Kabul.

She says some of my classmates began weeping. We were so excited to return and now we don't know what will happen to us.

That echoed another schoolgirl who spoke to Afghan news outlet Tolo.

That schoolgirl also asked, what is our crime that were girls?

But access to education for girls is only one of the many promises the Taliban has walked back.

There's a great deal of uncertainty. There's a great deal of fear among people about what is to come.

Consider this. Last summer, the Taliban promised a more inclusive, progressive Afghanistan.

Now eight months later, many of those promises have been broken.

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