By Elyas Ahmadi
In the early hours of the morning in southern Ghazni city, many women who live in poverty leave their homes in search of bread for their families. If they are lucky, someone may buy them a few loaves or give them their leftovers. But often, a woman suffering from hunger will instead be meet with verbal and sexual harassment.
Nadira, 30, a resident of Ghazni city, is among these women. Each morning she would set out in search of food for her three sons, the eldest of whom is 12 years old. He’s already working to help support the family in a cookie bakery for around US$6 a month. He hated having to work. “In the beginning, he used to cry that he won’t go anymore,” Nadira says. “For one day or two days, I begged him to work, and on the third day, I slapped him and said ‘How should we live if you don’t go’.”
Slowly, Nadira felt that her sons were wasting away from hunger, and one and a half months ago, she sold them to people she thought might be able to better help them.
She was so much under pressure that she put her children up for an auction. Nobody has bought them and neither she has sold them.
“I took my children to the mosque. I told the people, take them and keep them for yourselves,” she says. “It is very difficult to give your children to others, but when they are perishing from hunger in front of you, you will be happy to give them to others so that they can at least stay alive.”
Nadira, a Farsi-speaking woman, was herself sold when she was 10 years old by her father to a man who was over 60 years old, and whose native tongue was Pashto.
“We were four sisters. My father sold us all to use opium,” she says. “In my husband’s house, they oppressed me a lot. They used to beat me and say, ‘Hide your face,’ in Pashto. And because I didn’t understand their language, they would beat me.”
When she was taken to the older man’s home, Nadira did not know that she was now married and would stay with him. “I still remember that my sister-in-law got me out of the car [at his house]. And when my grandmother was leaving to return home, I was crying because I also wanted to go home with them. They told me, ‘We will take you to your mother’s house tomorrow’.”
For about three years after her marriage, the older man provided for Nadira, but his age soon made him unable to work and they were running out of money. As a teenager, Nadira became the money-earner for her husband and children by washing clothes and begging.
Now Nadira’s husband is in his 80s and struggles to walk properly. Around the same time that Nadira made the decision to auction her sons at the mosque for them to be better fed, she asked her brother-in-law to come and help look after her husband. “He was falling down every moment. I called his brother, who took him in with himself and now he lives with him,” she says.
For other women living in poverty, they are more harassed as begging makes them targets for abusers and sexual predators.
Bibi Shakiba*,33, said her husband left her and their three children 11 years ago and never came back home. He was a drug addict, she says.
Two of Bibi Shakiba’s children roam the city of Ghazni from dawn to dusk as espandis, warding off evil spirits by waving a tin of coals in exchange for small change. She used to go begging in the city as well, but after twice being propositioned for sex, she no longer feels safe to do so and isn’t comfortable even talking about it. “An old man, around 50 years old, took my contact number saying that he would help me,” she says. “He did call again but he said very bad things.”
“Also, someone else asked about my husband in the city,” she says. “I said he is drug addict. Again, he said something that was very ugly.”
Bibi Shakiba cries as she recalls her husband and his abandonment, saying she has given up hope of him ever returning. While wiping the tears from her eyes with her sleeve, she explains that she was 17 years old when her father married her off. “It’s a pity that my life was ruined. My husband used to beat me so many times, he would point a gun at me, because I would tell him, ‘For God’s sake, don’t steal’.”
Azizullah Alizada, a religious scholar and social activist in Ghazni city, tells Rukhshana Media that many women who come to him for help have shared similarly painful stories of harassment and sexual predation. “Several women have cried in front of me, telling me that when they asked for help, people have said something back to them in such a way that the women wish for death from God,” he says. “They all say things against morals and against modesty.”
“They said they asked for 10 afghanis (15 cents) to buy a loaf of bread for their children,” he says. “But people ask for something immoral in return.”
Gul Bibi*, 35, a resident of Ghazni city with six children is married to a man 25 years older than her who is addicted to drugs. She says that he is so drug-addled that he cannot help her with the family demands. And sometimes he hits her.
Her youngest son Mohammad was not yet one-year-old when he fell onto a glass and lost his left eye. According to Gul Bibi, doctors have said that if his eye is not treated over time, his right eye will also lose its vision.
Gul Bibi is already struggling to afford food for the family. She doesn’t know how she can afford to treat her child’s eye. She is also trying to pay attention to her husband for fear that he could take the children away and sell them for money.
Some other women have fallen into poverty since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan as they lost their jobs and have not managed to find consistent work.
Mr Alizada says that for every ten poor people who come to him, eight of them are women. “Most of their husbands are drug addicts but there are also some who previously had a job, like being a teacher, a nurse, but now they are unemployed.”
For Rahima*, the challenge is that her husband was killed, leaving her to care for their family of six. Two years ago, someone shot him dead. Rahima says he had already left his work in the military after working in the security forces for some time when he was killed. “He had finished serving the military,” she says. “I don’t know who shot him in the head with a bullet but he died.”
Rahima’s mother-in-law used to beg in the streets for some time after her son was killed, but then she had a fall and now she can’t walk. “She broke her leg and we had no money to treat her,” Rahima says. “Now she can’t stand.”
Zahra, 35, is the sole earner for a family of seven after her husband had a nervous breakdown after a traffic accident and never fully recovered. The 35-year-old says the family is so poor that they often go to bed hungry and cold. “With God is my witness, we take turns wearing shoes. Not all of us have shoes. We have spent the nights sleeping hungry in the cold winter,” she says, looking on the verge of tears.
The women who spoke to Rukhshana Media said that the aid being sent by group such as the World Food Programme (WFP) has not benefitted them even once.
Mr. Alizada says that partly due to their extreme poverty, these women are not included in the local mosque lists, which are usually the points of contact for the aid distributed by organizations such as WFP. For this reason, the poorest families still miss out.
He says even his own list of desperately poor people in Ghazni is only about 2000 families. But he believes the real number would be much higher.
*Note: In this report, the names of some interviewees have been chosen as pseudonyms.
