The niqab saves an Afghan star.. Ariana Saeed tells the story of her escape

An Afghan singer who used her global fame to spread the word for women's rights wore an all-encompassing cloak to flee her homeland when the Taliban took control of Kabul.

Ariana Saeed has been in the Afghan capital in recent months to start a garment business.

Ariana told "Reuters" that she received a call on the 14th of January, warning her that the Taliban are closing in on the capital.

The singer and her fiancé Haseeb Sayed booked two seats on a commercial flight on August 15, the day the Taliban entered Kabul.

The Afghan star stated that the commercial plane, which was overloaded, never took off, and described scenes of panic at the airport, punctuated by the sounds of gunshots.

Fearing that Taliban fighters might recognize them, she and her fiancé left the airport and hid with relatives in Kabul.

And the next day they heard that the Taliban were searching houses house by house in the neighborhood in which they were.

She set out again for the airport, wearing a veil that only revealed her eyes, and went out with her fiancé's young cousin, as if she were going out for a family visit.

"We passed the Taliban security checkpoints.

One of them stopped our car.

And as soon as he saw me in it with the boy, he said, “Go.”

Syed, who holds Canadian citizenship, was in a separate car, and had arrived before them at the airport under the control of the US military.

Ariana said that an Afghan recognized him at the airport and told an official, "This is a very famous singer's fiancé, and you should let him in because they will kill him if they catch him."

The two flew on the morning of August 17 on a plane that landed in Doha.

On August 19 they arrived in the United States, and the two arranged to travel to Istanbul via Amsterdam.

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