By: Ziba Balkhi
Parwana was still in her mother’s womb when her parents found out she was a girl. They were disappointed – they had wanted a son. And they resolved to give her away. “When I was born, my mother and father wanted a boy,” Parwana*, 25 says. “So, they gave me to one of their neighbours who couldn’t have children.”
Parwana was already a teenager by the time she learned the truth, after harrowing years of abuse at the hands of her family. “I was 13 years old when I realized the family I live with is not my (biological) family,” she tells Rukhshana Media. “Then I could finally understand their behavior because they were very cruel, both my family and my stepfather’s relatives.”
Her stepfather forced her work since she was 13. “My stepfather told me to go find money,” she says. “I’ve worked in many different places.”
Life has been deeply difficult for Parwana. Abandoned by her biological family, and forced to work as a child, she would later be sexually assaulted and has continued to experience violence.
Parwana says the sexual assault was the worst experience of her life in part because she has been smeared with a bad reputation ever since. She tells Rukhshana Media that no one is willing to marry her because she is not considered a virgin and her life has been destroyed.
The attack happened when she was 19 years old at the hands of a man who insisted that she should marry him, but Parwana refused. While going to work only two streets away from her house in the early hours of the morning, the man was hidden and struck her over the head from behind as she walked by.
Parwana did not understand what happened. When she opened her eyes, she found herself inside a house with her assailant standing over her. “He ruined my life,” she says.
Only three years ago even her adoptive father asked her for sex. “The person whose house I live and whom I considered to be my father all my life asked me for sex. From that day on, I have not had a comfortable life at all.”
“Every time I see him, I think he is staring at my body. I just cry day and night;” she says. “But what is the solution? What should I do? If I don’t stay in that house, where can I go alone?”
Despite the difficulties, Parwana has tried to make the most of her days. She was a midwifery student at a private university in Mazar-e-Sharif before the Taliban banned education and work. And until a week ago, she was working as a market seller in one of Mazar-i-Sharif’s marketplaces. But once again, because of her gender, fate has put an end to that with the Taliban restrictions female sellers in some markets.
“I didn’t have the support of my father, so I worked hard for my education,” she says. “I used to work as a salesperson every day. And in this way, I paid for my university expenses so that I could live a comfortable life one day. But they closed the university to us women.”
Having a son is considered an advantage in Afghan society. The gender bias at its worst means that in some families, women are considered “guilty” of giving birth to a girl. That attitude has even resulted in death – like in the case of a woman in Kunduz 11 years ago who was killed by her husband for giving birth to a girl.
A number of obstetricians and gynecologists in Balkh say that some families request abortions after finding out the gender of their fetus, but only if it is a girl.
“In our hospital, we have had cases where women are not ready to take their child home after they have given birth to a girl. We convince them with great difficulty,” says Dr Anita, one of the gynecological doctors at Abu Ali Sinaye Balkhi Seminary Hospital in Mazar-e-Sharif.
This is all despite the science that the gender of the child is not related to the woman. “The Y chromosome present in men’s sperm plays a fundamental role in determining the gender of the child. It’s not present in women,” Dr Anita says. “But the majority of men believe don’t accept that.”
“Not long ago in the hospital, there was a woman who found out that her baby was a girl and her blood pressure went up so high, she went into a coma. The lady bled so heavily, the doctors had to take out her uterus,” she says.
Some women give birth to multiple children in quick succession in an attempt to have a son, but in some cases, the effort kills them. “Some women have given birth to five girls in a row,” Dr Anita says. “They give birth without considering an interval between each birth, which should be at least three years, just because their husband wants a son. This in itself has caused the death of some mothers during childbirth.”
Suhaila*, 47, is a woman whose husband divorced her after giving birth to three girls. She looks much older than her age. Her silver-white hair, deep wrinkles on her face, and shaking hands reveal the pain she’s carried alone for 18 years.
She lives with her three daughters in Faqirabad area, a more remote area of Mazar-e-Sharif city. With a heavy voice of anger, Suhaila says her husband divorced her 18 years ago because she did not give him a son. “I had two daughters. When I found out that I will become a mother again, my husband told me from the beginning that if it is a girl, he will divorce me.”
“I was very sad about what to do if it was a girl,” she says. “But that’s what happened – my third child was also a girl.”
Only two months after that birth, her husband left her and his three daughters forever. She has raised them alone. Suhaila trembles with the memory of all she has suffered in the past years.
“Even before the birth of my third daughter, my husband treated me very badly and beat me. He always used to say ‘I am the only man in our tribe who has never had a son,’ But what difference does it make if the child is a girl or a boy?” she says.
“Both a boy and a girl are children and God’s blessing,” Suhaila says. “But to my husband, only boys are important and that’s it.”
Suhaila says that she has been working in people’s homes from dawn to dusk to support herself and her three daughters. “When my husband left me, I stayed with my daughters,” she says. “At that time, my eldest daughter was six years old, the second was three years old, and my youngest daughter was only 2 months old.”
She sold her gold earrings – her only pair – and rented a room for them. She used to leave her three children alone to go to people’s houses to work.
“I was stressed about what to do, how to cover our expenses. Without a husband it was very difficult for me to provide for three children,” she says. “I didn’t understand whether I should take care of them first or work outside the home and earn money for keeping my daughters alive.”
“The Taliban have renewed my pain that I am a girl”
Whatever it took, Suhaila raised her daughters and sent them to school. Eventually they would go to university and attained jobs. After many years of a life of challenges, Suhaila tells Rukhshana Media that she and her daughters reached a level of comfort they had never know. “One of my daughters was a teacher in a private school, my youngest daughter had just secured the score for psychology at Balkh University, and my oldest daughter was working in a foreign NGO.”
But then the Taliban took power. The more comfortable period of life that was just beginning was cut short. Now all of them are housebound and unemployed.
Sadia* is the eldest daughter of Suhaila and a graduate of Balkh University’s computer science faculty. After the Taliban closed girls schools, she lost her job. Then she got work in a foreign organization. But with the Taliban’s decree banning women from working in domestic and foreign international organizations, she was immediately unemployed again. “We have gone through a lot of problems. When my own father did not stay for us because we are girls, that pain is always in my heart,” she says. “And now, the Taliban once again renewed my pain that I am a girl.”
“Is being a woman so bad that my father doesn’t ask after us? And the Taliban don’t give us human rights?” She says.
But Sadia, 24, has found a silver lining. She loves to paint, and until now, rarely found the time to do so. “My mother endured a lot of suffering for us. Until now I never had the chance to paint my mother’s face. Now that I am unemployed, I play with paper and colors and paint my mother’s face.”
But she admits she is worried about their income. “Currently, the organization I used to work for pays something towards our living expenses. But after a while, our contract will expire and they may not renew that because the Taliban don’t allow women to work. I wonder what I should do if the situation continues,” she says.
Sadia and her sisters say their education did not happen easily. They sometimes went thirsty and hungry for days to afford their classes. The Taliban has stripped them of all they’ve worked so hard for. “I’m afraid to take all my dreams to the grave,” Sadia says.
Fakhria*, 18, is Suhaila’s youngest daughter. She secured the score for psychology in this year’s university entrance exam, but she could not go to university because of the Taliban’s ban.
Sitting in a small room near her bookshelf, Fakhria says books are her only friend during these hard days. “I would have liked to become a good psychologist after graduating from university and help all the women who were in pain,” she says. “My mother made many sacrifices for me to achieve my dream.”
“When my father abandoned us because we were girls, I fought for years to show everyone that being a woman is not a crime;” she says. “But today, like my father, the Taliban are the enemy of women.”
Suhalia says that because of her children’s gender, she has fallen into a dark depression again. “These dark days behind my daughters cannot be ignored, and today they have been subjected to violence once again because they are girls. They cannot go to school and university and work,” she says.
Note: Due to security sensitivities, the interviewees’ names have been chosen as pseudonyms.
