DENVER -- While the Taliban pedestals their power in Afghanistan, Coloradans who once called Afghanistan home can only watch with horror.
"To be honest, for the past week I couldn't focus on my own life," Commerce City resident Meena Saber said.
Instead, Saber's attention has been on her past life. The one as a little girl under Taliban rule decades ago.
"Boys like my brother were allowed to go to school, girls were not allowed to go to school," Saber said in reflection.
Receiving a basic education happened under the radar, covert tutoring sessions were not out of the ordinary and women were prohibited from leaving home without a male escort.
"They could not go out, or they can not go to anyone's house without a guy," Saber said. "I couldn't play in playgrounds, I couldn't go out."
On some days, that was a good thing.
"I heard gunfire as a child," along with the cries from war, she said.
That's why she fears for the next generation, once again under Taliban control.
"I don't want any young boy or any young girls to hear that," Saber said tearfully.
Saber still has family in Kabul. Her aunts and uncles touched base with her a few days ago.
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"We are scared for their safety. We are scared that we don't know what's going to happen in a month, who will be alive in one month and who will not," Saber said.
While their fate is uncertain, Saber and a local group of Afghan-Americans are working with citizens there to relocate to Colorado.
"I never want to see another Afghan girl spending their childhood age as I was," Saber said.
But, if this is the same Taliban regime Afghanistan endured pre-9/11, basic human rights may be the greatest loss amid the nation's political turmoil.