By Ellaha Rasa
Sima used to stand at the gate of her house and watch school students passing by. She heard the groups of girls before she saw them, talking animatedly to each other in their black uniforms and white shawls. Sima had never been to a modern school, not even for a day. The only education she received was in a religious school where she learned the Quran.
Sima is 13 years old from an extremely poor family. Both her parents have recently died within a year of each other due to freezing temperatures. She lives with one sister and three brothers in a mud house in Darwaza-e- Khosh area, in the center of Herat city.
Her biggest wish is to go to school. Up until her mother died, she used to hope that one day her mother would send her. Then when her mother died a year ago, even the religious school was taken from her. She was told it’s more important she learn good housekeeping instead. “I used to go to the mosque and read half of Sipara [Islamic Arabic Alphabet],” she says. “But since my mother died, my brother did not let me go to the mosque because it is a long way from home to there.”
Sima’s siblings are so poor that they sometimes cannot even afford bread. She believes the cold in their home was what killed her father this winter as they could not heat it.
Noor Agha, 25, Sima’s elder brother has decided he wants to get married, but he doesn’t have the money for it. As the sole breadwinner of the family since his father’s death, Noor Agha waits every morning with his three-wheeled motorcycle at Darwaza-e-Khosh square in the center of Herat city, hoping to find a load to transport. Some days he returns home empty-handed and weary with stress. Noor Agha says that every day there are dozens of people coming to Darveza Khosh to seek work, but there is not enough work for them all.
Afghanistan is in the grips of a severe economic crisis since the Taliban takeover, due both to Taliban governance and policies as well as international aid drying up and groups withdrawing. “Before [the government collapsed], our situation was better,” Noor Agha says. “But since the Taliban came to power for the past eighteen months, we have not have our morning and evening bread. We went to bed hungry last night.”
Noor Agha earns 350 afghanis a day, an amount equal to around US$4 dollars, when he works well. But the high cost of food has made life more bitter to his taste. “Household costs are high, and fuel and food prices have gone up a lot,” he says “Currently, a kilo of onion costs 60 afghanis in the market.”
Besides Noor Agha, Sima has two other brothers, Ahmad Taher, 12, and Mohammad, 8. The pair keep busy every day trying to collect plastic waste from the garbage. They try to contribute to household expenses by selling plastic.
The siblings live together in a rented house that costs 2,500 afghanis per month, or US$28 dollars per month. But they have just been evicted. According to Noor Agha, since the beginning of the cold season, he has not been able to pay the house rent due to unemployment: “The owner of the house came to the house yesterday and took two blankets and our TV in exchange for the house rent and has told me to vacate the house.”
If Noor Agha’s landlord evicts them, they will certainly have no shelter and will be forced to live under a tent in Shaidayi area of the province, he says.
So Noor Agha’s mind has turned to a solution. He’s decided Sima must marry. “I need money to get married, but at the moment, I can’t afford to pay the marriage cost and the wedding expenses,” he says. “If there is luck and someone is found, I will let my sister marry someone with that money.”
Is Sima going to do this? She answers yes – with her brother’s insistence and the pressures of poverty, she says she agreed to it. “My brother wants to get married, but he has no money,” she says. “He tells me that if anyone is found, I will let you marry.”
And a suitor may have already been found. A man 10 years older than Sima has proposed to marry her for 300,000 afghanis (US$3400). “My brother says that his friend is paying good money to marry me, and with that money then he can get married,” she says. “I didn’t say anything in response to my brother. I wish he could find the money and not let me get married.”
Sima’s voice breaks as she tries to fight back tears. “I am not happy that my brother is giving me to a husband. But my family is poor and they expect me to help them by getting married. That’s why I am satisfied to marry the man my brother wants.”
More families are facing similar pressures, with a rising number of reports of families marrying off their daughters at younger and younger ages to pay debts or in exchange for wives for their sons.
The Taliban set a limit of 150,000 afghanis for the marriage of young girls, but in practice, it is not regulated. Taliban policies have also contributed to the increase of forced and underage marriage of girls and women. Closing school, universities, workplaces and many public areas to females has have enforced an attitude of girls and women having no other future than to marry. Poverty and illiteracy, as well as the closure of previous government initiatives educating people against these practices, further compound the problem.
