‘Starting From Zero’: After Afghanistan, piecing together a life again

During her scramble to get out of Kabul, Seema Rezai didn’t get to hug her family goodbye. 

It was August 2021. Ms. Rezai, then 18 years old, had received a written death threat from the Taliban. The militant political movement, then on the cusp of reclaiming rule of Afghanistan, had received a tip about the teenage girl who’d taken up boxing. Ms. Rezai had shaved one side of her head. She’d tattooed the word “boxer” on her right hand. Her coach was male. So when a U.S. photojournalist reached out to offer the athlete safe passage out of the country, her family urged her to go. 

“When the plane started taking off, everyone was crying,” recalls Ms. Rezai. “I was getting far from [my] country, from Kabul, from my family. ... And it was really