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Police arrested her husband on charges of beating her to death in their home in the western city of Herat; he confessed to the assault but not to murder. Today the case is classified by the courts as "suicide."
The death of the 25-year-old thrust her work into the spotlight and today her poems -- written in the Dari language, which is close to Persian -- have been translated into several languages.
They speak of the pain of Afghan women, trapped in a conservative culture torn apart by nearly three decades of war that were followed by the 1996-2001 rule of the extremist Taliban -- known for their harsh treatment of women.
An extract from "Useless", for example, reads: "Happy the day when I will break the cage/When I will leave this solitude and sing with abandon/I am not a weak tree that sways with every breeze/I am an Afghan girl and it is right that I always cry."
Anjuman's work evokes "a great sorrow directly linked to her status as a woman and an Afghan," says Leili Anvar, a literature expert who has translated some of her poems into French.
Under the Taliban, girls could not go to school, women were barred from working and confined largely to their homes.
The removal of the fundamentalist regime has seen few improvements to the lives of most Afghan women, who suffer abuse and discrimination.
Women still chose to end their lives through self-immolation, including in Herat, an ancient city of two million people and known for its art, culture and literature.
Anjuman "was becoming a great Persian poet", the head of the respected Herat Literary Circle, Ahmad Said Haqiqi, said at the time of her death on November 4, 2005.
Anvar, who has dedicated several pages of an upcoming anthology of Afghan poetry to Anjuman, agrees. "When one considers her age, the extreme maturity of her work is astonishing," she says.
Anjuman "showed a great mastery of Persian free verse and of the music of language," she told AFP.
One of the late poet's professors at the University of Herat, Mohammad Daud Munir, says her work showed a "deep and comprehensive thought."
"Her absence has left a gap in the literary community of Herat," he said.
Anjuman's first collection, "Gul-e-dodi" ("Dark Red Flower"), came out a few months before she died and while she was a university student.
The Herat Literary Circle has since released a second collection of 80 poems and her work is regularly published, Munir says.
Abroad, beside the publication due in France, Anjuman's work has also been translated into English and Italian.
The memory of the young woman is fresh among those who were close to her.
Her best friend, Nahid Baqi, who studied with her at university, is bitter.
"Everyone wants to forget," she told AFP. "There was pressure on the authorities to conclude that it was a suicide."
Anjuman's husband, Farid Ahmad Majeednia, who is the head of the Herat University library, says she has written only about the Taliban period and before she was married.
"All of her poems are a narration of sorrow and sadness which is a result of being imprisoned behind home walls," says Majeednia, who is raising the couple's young daughter.
"Now almost two years later, my hands and legs still tremble when I think of her death and her absence," he says.
"After Nadia's death lots of things have ended for me."
As a tribute to my fellow poet, I have written the following poem in her honor.
Nadia Anjuman
I don’t believe in heaven,
but if there was one
for poets I’m sure
you would be there,
or where ever it is
your Allah lives.
I never knew you,
but have heard of you
since your death.
I was greatly touched
by your death or more so
by your life.
Of how you and your
sisters of literature
secretly met under
the guise of “The Sewing
Circles of Herat”
in Afghanistan.
Pretending to sew
only to study literature and poetry
right under the snouts
of the Taliban;
punishable by death
or worse.
In an oppressive society
where women must be covered
from head to toe by a burqa.
Any woman showing her ankles
must be whipped.
Women must not talk
or shake hands with men.
A society where women
were even banned from
laughing out loud in public.
Where no stranger, should
hear a woman’s voice,
nor your shoes make a sound
when you walked the streets.
Women not allowed to wear makeup,
and any woman with painted nails
should have her fingers cut off.
The list goes on and on
of things a woman was banned
from under the rule of the Taliban.
It has been said of you Nadia
that you brought shame
to your family for being a poet
and writing of love and beauty
in a world where you saw little of it.
Your death whether at the hands
of your shamed husband
and his beating of you,
or by as he claims,
your own hand of poison,
has touched a nation;
many nations in fact.
You will not be forgotten
Nadia Anjuman.
Some lines from your poems read;
I am caged in this corner
full of melancholy and sorrow…
My wings are closed and I cannot fly…
I am an Afghan woman and so must wail.
Wail no more Nadia, you are free;
free from your cage
of melancholy and sorrow;
free to spread your wings and fly.
May your poetry soar in the hearts
of all mankind.
~J
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