The life of a disabled woman under the Taliban

By Laila Yousufy

Farzana’s leg was paralyzed in a roadside bomb blast, presumably planted by the Taliban on Kabul-Ghazni highway. Her parents had died when she was just five. She lived with a brother and sister after her parents’ death. Her brother died of cancer one year after she was wounded about eight years ago. She lived with her sister since then.

Then the sister, too, died. She was killed in an attack on Kabul airport where she was worked as a member of the former government’s security forces.

“The Taliban took away my sister, my legs, and my peace in my youth,” said Farzana, 29. “And now the same Taliban have displaced me.”

“I have nowhere to go and stay,” she added.

Farzana lives in a house in Kabul and has no family member to help her in her daily life. She could walk on crutches, but she can’t do that anymore because her health condition has deteriorated. She is on wheelchair now.

She said she even needs help when she goes to the bathroom.

“I am a burden on everyone,” she said. “I look at the door every day so that maybe someone come and take my hand to get up.”

Farzana said the life of a disabled women is worse than hell in Afghanistan. She weeps as she speaks about the difficulties she faced in life.

She said her sister took good care of her when she was still alive. One day Farzana received a call, someone informing her about her sister’s death.

“My sister’s death was harder to bear, even harder than the time when I lost my own legs,” Farzana said. “I lost hope, I lost my eyes and I have nothing left.”

After two difficult years and experiencing mistreatment while living with a relative in Ghazni, Farzana left for Kabul and started living in the house of another relative, who was a former government’s soldier.

She said she was doing embroidery and knitting to make a living. And she also received some support from an international organization.

Then the Taliban came, and the former soldier and his family fled, leaving Farzana behind. Her life has become even more difficult since then.

No one leases a room for a single disabled woman, who don’t have any male family members to take care of her. She doesn’t enough to eat or buy the medicine she needs.

She now pays 1,500 Afghani per month for the room she has rented. But the future seems uncertain because she has no money, no family and no legs to walk.