“If the Taliban continue to rule the way they do now, and deny girls’ education and women’s participation in society, Afghanistan will die.” Sahra Alizai has spent half of her life teaching. For 25 years, she taught more than 3,000 men and women to become schoolteachers at the prestigious Kabul Education University. Now, far from her native Kabul, in the boxy London hotel room she shares with her husband, she has become the student. The education instructor often feels lost in the British capital. “Every night I dream of being back in my classroom at the university, and not in this hotel room in London,” Alizai says. She hopes it will only be a matter of time before she is back to teaching others. Read more about the Afghan women who are attempting to build new lives abroad at the link in our bio. Photographs by @kristinavaraksina for TIME