By Haniya Frotan
Hadia* was just 21 when her husband was killed in a suicide bombing in the Afghan capital Kabul, leaving her with three young children to bring up alone.
The bombing shattered the family’s once peaceful life. Still traumatised from losing her husband in such a violent way, Hadia suddenly found herself having to go out and find work in a country where, even before the Taliban’s return to power, most women stayed at home with their children.
But if life was hard before 2021, that was nothing compared to what Hadia faces now. As well as being unable to find work due to mounting restrictions imposed on women by Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, she has been forced into hiding under threat of having her children taken away.
Having done everything in her power to keep them safe, Hadia now faces a legal challenge from her dead husband’s father for custody of her teenage daughter and two younger sons. Although she says the man is a drug addict, as a single woman the law would still go against her.
“One day, my son came home looking pale. He told me his grandfather had blocked his way and tried to force him to go with him,” she said.
“My heart sank. If my children end up with him, he will surely sell them to pay for his drugs.”
Her fears are not unfounded. Afghanistan has one of the world’s worst rates of drug addiction, with poverty and desperation rife, and a ready supply of narcotics.
Hadia felt she had no choice but to flee and has moved home three times since then. She now lives in a quiet part of Kabul, but fears even there she is not safe after her father-in-law filed a complaint with authorities accusing her of illegally taking the children.
“The thought that after everything I’ve endured, all this pain and loneliness, they might end up in the hands of a drug addict drives me mad,” she said.
Hadia’s situation, extreme as it is, provides a window onto the plight of widows and other single mothers in current-day Afghanistan, where poverty, legal restrictions and the social stigma of widowhood have created a perfect storm of suffering.
The United Nations Development Program reported last year that female-headed households in Afghanistan have suffered the most severe impacts from the country’s economic decline.
For Hadia, finding shelter and work over the past few years has been a huge challenge. Without a man, she struggled even to rent a place to live. She did what jobs she could find, working in schools and on farms for just 4,000 to 5,000 Afghanis ($60-70) a month, or weaving carpets. Returning home late, she was criticised as “immoral” and asked who she’d been with.
“Even if I wore new clothes, they’d whisper: ‘Who bought it for her – and in exchange for what?’”
Forced into marriage
Although she is still young at 30, the lines on Hadia’s face speak of years of pain and weariness and the skin on the hands that gently stroke her young son’s face are rough.
The religious council that her father-in-law complained to has summoned her for a hearing, but the very idea terrifies her.
Hadia worries most about her 13-year-old daughter, fearing the girl could be pushed into an early marriage by her father-in-law. As a victim of forced marriage herself, she knows what that would be like.
Hadia doesn’t remember exactly whether she was 13 or 14 when her father married her off to a 32-year-old man in a so-called exchange marriage – a traditional practice in which a girl from one family is exchanged for a girl from another.
“My father gave me away in exchange for my brother’s marriage. Back then, I didn’t understand what was right or wrong,” she said.
That marriage lasted only a year. Disputes between Hadia’s brother and his wife led to them separating, as a result of which Hadia was also divorced. A few months later, her father again married her, this time to the man who would become the father of her children.
Her second marriage lasted 14 years. Despite its hardships, Hadia describes it as a relatively peaceful life. But with her husband’s death in a suicide bombing, the cycle of pain and struggle began all over again.
Despite all the suffering she has endured, Hadia still holds onto hope. She dreams of a different future for her children, one free from the pain she has known.
She now lives in a hidden shelter, the location of which Rukhshana Media is not revealing. Fearing the loss of her children, hiding is the only option she feels she has.
“No one will take the side of a woman on her own,” she said. “Even the law in this country would rule in favour of a man like him—an addict.”
Note*: Name changed for safety reasons.
