Dear Zari: Hidden Stories from Women of Afghanistan Page 5

  About two hundred and fifty guests came to the wedding ceremony, and I sat up high on a dais with Javed. It was the most unhappy day of my life. Here I was, perched on a highly decorated sofa for everyone to see, embarking on a marriage that I did not want but had accepted; all because I was an Afghan woman.

  Sharifa’s Story

  In Afghanistan, women usually become mothers a year or so after marriage. It’s perfectly normal for Afghan women to have up to four or five children; in fact, even that would be considered a small family. For most Afghan women the purpose of marriage is simply to have a family, but her family is not considered complete until she produces a son. Any woman who manages to give birth to a succession of sons is cherished by her husband, praised by her mother-in-law and respected by her community. In this way, the mother feels proud of having achieved what she believes she was born to do. If on the other hand a woman is unable to produce a boy, she feels a failure and her life is made miserable.

  As a result, Afghan women tend to go on having babies one after another until a son is born; some women will even give birth to more than ten children in order to achieve their goal. Any woman who gives birth to a boy soon after her marriage is considered to be very fortunate, so many women spend much of their pregnancy praying and worrying about whether or not they will have a son. At special occasions families will ask God to bless them with a son, and it is customary at wedding ceremonies for older Afghans to approach the young bride saying, ‘May you become the mother of sons.’ In my Pashtun community, there are even special songs that reinforce the desire for male children, such as ‘A Son Is Gold’ and ‘God Only Gives Sons to Those Who Are Loved’.

  Sons are so important in our culture that some mothers will go so far as to neglect their daughters in favour of their sons. I’ve spoken to girls who’ve told me that at Eid their parents will buy new clothes for their brothers but not for them, and in some houses I have seen how mothers will serve their sons a large piece of meat while only giving their daughters a bowl of soup. I remember an Afghan relative who once visited us with her two daughters and son. She looked at me and my four sisters and exclaimed, ‘Oh my God, seeing so many girls together is very frightening. I wouldn’t know how to cope with so many of them.’

  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve wished I’d been born a boy; I know my older sister feels the same. Before my brother was born, when female friends and neighbours asked my mother about her children, she would look sad and they would sympathise with her for not having a son. Some women in our family would deliberately make spiteful comments about her lack of male children. I remember when one relative – who enjoyed none of the social and professional advantages our family did – had just given birth to a baby boy. She said in a cruel way to my mother, ‘Oh, this is the will of God. Some women have all life’s luxuries while others don’t. But a wife who is able to give birth to a boy really completes a family, and that makes her a proper woman.’ At this my mother became very upset; I could see the pain in her eyes, and thought that she felt she was to blame for not giving the family a son. We comforted her and wiped away her tears, although she tried to mask her distress.

  ‘Mum, whenever this woman comes to our house she makes you upset,’ I said. ‘Why is this? What does she say to hurt you?’

  I remember my mother said, ‘My child, she’s lucky. She’s given birth to a boy, a son to the family. She’s not worried about the future.’

  When I asked her how it was that boys could safeguard the future, she replied that they would always be able to take care of the family, their sisters and their mother. I told my mother that I could do that just as well as any boy, and that I would take care of her and my sisters, of the whole family. She smiled and stroked my cheek, saying, ‘I believe that you could do it but you can’t do it in the way that a boy could.’

  I knew then that as a girl there was only so much I could do to make my mother feel better. The community had spoken and it had made her feel a failure. My older sister felt my mother’s pain, too, and would try to be like a boy – wearing boyish clothes that disguised the fact that her body was becoming womanly – and my mother would praise her and say how like a son she was. But I only truly understood why it was so important for an Afghan woman to give birth to a son when I was older.

  The tendency for parents to place greater value on their sons than on their daughters is common to every ethnic group in Afghanistan. One day Tabasum, one of our reporters at Afghan Woman’s Hour, rang to say she had interviewed a mother who had given birth to twins, a boy and a girl, and that the way the mother treated them had made her angry. I asked her what had happened to make her feel like this. She said, ‘I’m used to seeing girls treated differently to boys, but I don’t think this mother would even care if her daughter died. Both her babies are six months old and the son is healthy and active, but the daughter thin and listless. I think she’s suffering from malnutrition. How can the twins be faring so differently? I’ve heard that the mother is breastfeeding the baby boy but has stopped breastfeeding the girl.’ Tabasum said this was because the mother believed the girl would one day be the property of another family, through marriage to someone else’s son, whereas the boy would make a family in his own parents’ home. He would bring a bride home and together they would one day care for his mother, so he needed to grow up healthy and strong.

  Tabasum and I worked on this story together, and were keen to know what the mother was feeding the daughter. When we asked her, she said, ‘I tried to give my daughter bottled milk but she didn’t like it, that is why she’s suffering from malnutrition. I’ve even had to take her to the hospital a couple of times.’ Tabasum was very worried about the baby girl, saying to me ‘Zarghuna Jan, when I looked at the baby girl she seemed to be pleading with me to help her. She wasn’t kicking her arms and legs like a normal healthy six-month-old baby would, and I just didn’t know what to do or say. How could I tell her mother that what she was doing to her daughter was wrong when she believes what she’s doing is right?’

  As part of the programme we interviewed a doctor who explained how important it was for mothers to feed their babies properly, regardless of their sex. The doctor said, ‘Dear mothers, think about both your sons’ and your daughters’ future. Would you want your son to marry a weak and unhealthy girl? Of course not! Every daughter will one day end up living in someone else’s house, and would you want your future daughter-in-law to be so unhealthy and weak that she couldn’t give birth?’

  If mothers don’t treat their daughters equally then how can we possibly expect men to treat us equally? A number of women spoke to us about how some family members had made them feel inferior simply because they were female, with one mother of four daughters telling us, ‘Every time I’ve given birth to a girl, my husband disappears from the house for days. I’ve even heard of fathers who haven’t so much as held their baby girls for a year, or spoken to their wife for months because they believe she was to blame for giving birth to a girl.’

  As someone who grew up in a family of girls, I know just how much my mother suffered before she had my brother, but after listening to the stories of these mothers I felt both proud and lucky to be part of my family. Sharifa was not nearly so fortunate. She was a school friend when I was a teenager in Pakistan, and I’ve never been able to forget her story. It shows what happens to those girls who don’t have a brother, and to those mothers who don’t have sons.

  Sharifa and I were classmates in 1998 at the university for Afghan refugees in Peshawar, and at the time we both lived in a crowded neighbourhood populated mainly by Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban’s occupation of Afghanistan. She was the oldest of six daughters who had been born with only one-year gaps between them all. Sharifa was usually full of energy and fun and loved messing around and playing practical jokes, and was popular with both her classmates and teachers. She was short with big green eyes, and I remember how she wore a dark blue hijab that was far too big and swamped her.
I would meet Sharifa every day at a bus stop on the busy Arbab Road, which was always dusty and full of cars and lorries belching out fumes. This was at a time when very few women ventured out onto the streets, and as refugee students we were required to cover our heads and faces with large scarves. We always joked that we were wearing our hijabs to protect our hair and skin from the pollution in Peshawar.

  Sharifa and I enjoyed the journey to university each day, and would chat to the driver and talk amongst ourselves about our futures. However, there were days when Sharifa wouldn’t speak to anyone, not even me – her best friend. At first, I thought she was being rude and felt offended. Then if I asked her whether something was wrong, she would reassure me there wasn’t before turning away, lost in her thoughts.

  One morning I arrived at the bus stop to find Sharifa in one of her silent moods, and decided to try to get to the bottom of what was wrong with her. When I asked her she replied, ‘Before I get married I want to have a check-up with the doctor to find out if I’m able to have a son. If I’m not able to, then I won’t get married at all.’ Neither of us knew at the time how the sex of a baby is determined, so I advised Sharifa to get married first and then worry about whether she had baby boys or girls.

  But still she was upset. She would talk about wanting to make her future husband happy, and clearly believed that would only happen if she gave birth to ten sons. The other girls and I would make fun of Sharifa for being so desperate to get a husband, and she would grow angry with us but didn’t fight back. She would simply go quiet and retreat into her thoughts, yet we continued to poke fun at her. Then one day we realised we’d gone too far, and that Sharifa was very distressed. When we tried to tell her that we were only messing around, she said, ‘Yes, I know you’re only joking but it still upsets me. You don’t understand – my mother has given birth to seven girls, and if my father dies we won’t have anyone to look after us. My mother is not able to have a boy; she’s not strong enough.’

  I had met Sharifa’s parents and so I was shaken by what she had told me. ‘Sharifa,’ I said, ‘you have six sisters and that means you’re strong. You also have a lovely mother and father, so you really shouldn’t worry.’ But whenever I met Sharifa’s mother, she always seemed to have just one thing on her mind. First she would ask after my mother, but then she would always ask about my brother. Similarly, the first question she would ask of her daughters’ friends would be how many brothers and sisters they had.

  One day I found Sharifa in tears, and I knew she was crying about her situation at home and had finally worked out why she was always asking about my brother and mother; she was trying to find someone else in a position vaguely similar to hers. But of course she thought I was far more fortunate than her because I did at least have one brother, and he represented security. I told Sharifa not to think in such a negative way, saying, ‘You have a big family and when you and your sisters get married it means you will have brothers, and your mother a son.’

  But my words didn’t comfort her. ‘Zarghuna, you’ll never understand because you have a brother. I’m mostly upset for my parents. Because I’m the oldest daughter I’ve seen my mother weep every time she gives birth and discovers that it’s another girl. Each time it happens my dad won’t talk to her for months and life at home is wretched. Even my grandparents ignore my mother. It’s truly awful to see what happens to a woman when she’s incomplete.’

  I tried to calm her down. ‘Listen, Sharifa, of course your mother is complete. Who says she isn’t? I’ve met her. She’s a beautiful and kind young woman—’

  ‘What would you know?’ she countered angrily. ‘She’s not complete because she hasn’t given birth to a boy. It’s as simple as that.’ Sharifa lowered her voice and confessed, ‘Sometimes I even get cross with her. If she could give birth to a son then at last we could have a happy life.’

  ‘Sharifa,’ I replied, ‘happiness doesn’t come like that. It comes with what you already have.’

  I remember we were sitting in the corner of our college grounds, under the shade of a small tree. We would often sit there and chat. I wiped away the tears from Sharifa’s face with my scarf and tried to reason with her that it wasn’t anyone’s fault that she didn’t have a brother, or her mother a son. These things were in God’s hands, and there was no point in getting so upset about it as life has to go on. But Sharifa insisted that she personally was being blamed for the situation, ‘My grandmother says it’s my fault. I was the firstborn daughter and therefore all the other girls followed me. I brought bad luck on the family.’

  I desperately wanted to do something to help Sharifa, but the bell went and we had to go to our next class. Sharifa dried her eyes and tidied up her hijab while I wiped the dust off my trousers. But after that conversation, I couldn’t stop thinking about Sharifa, and prayed that her mother would have a baby boy.

  Weeks passed, and school broke up for the holidays. A month later the new school term started and I saw Sharifa again. We hugged each other and met in breaktime under our usual tree. I couldn’t wait to hear her news; I wanted to know what clothes she’d made, what earrings she had bought and where she had been during the holidays. ‘Zarghuna, I’m so happy. I think our life is finally going to change for the better. My mother is pregnant again and we’re all hoping that this time she’ll give birth to a boy.’ I promised to pray for the outcome they longed for, but then suddenly she became very emotional. She looked down at that dusty floor and then up at me, before saying quietly, ‘Zarghuna, I really hope God will be kind to my mother this time. I so hope she gives birth to a boy, because if she doesn’t something terrible is going to happen’.

  I looked at her for a few moments before asking what she meant. She looked down and then up at me again, and said, ‘My father is planning to get married again, and the marriage will be in exchange for me.’

  I was horrified. ‘No, that can’t be right. He can’t do that!’

  But Sharifa said simply, ‘If he does decide to take a new wife in exchange for me, I think I will die.’ Her words filled me with dread. Even at our young age, I knew she was contemplating suicide. We’d both heard of girls who had set fire to themselves to avoid arranged marriages; it was the last resort for those who feel trapped.

  Sharifa took a deep breath and continued, ‘He has even chosen a girl who is the same age as me. In exchange for her, my father will give me to the other family’s son.’

  ‘You can’t just accept this,’ I said crossly, and reassured myself with the thought that nothing definite had been decided because Sharifa’s mother’s pregnancy still had some months to go, and she might yet give birth to a boy.

  ‘God will be kind,’ I said. ‘He will give your mother a son.’ Sharifa agreed and tried to be cheerful.

  Several months later Sharifa and her sisters were busy choosing names for the brother they so longed for and – as was the custom amongst the Afghan refugees in Pakistan – my mother and I went to visit the family (as it was usual for mothers to befriend the mothers of their daughter’s friends). We arrived to find Sharifa’s family all getting very excited in anticipation of what they hoped would be the arrival of a baby boy, and both my mother and I prayed that this time God would indeed give them a son.

  We sat in Sharifa’s house in a small dark room with Afghan mattresses positioned by the walls and a traditional red Afghan carpet in the middle. The weather was unseasonably hot, so Sharifa served Roh Afza, a sweet juice that smells of perfume and is famous in Pakistan for its sugariness. As we sat drinking the juice, I could see how confident and hopeful Sharifa’s mother was in her heavily pregnant state, and was pleased to see the family so happy. It was one of the most enjoyable days we’d ever spent together.

  A couple of weeks later I saw Sharifa at the bus stop where we used to wait for our school bus. As soon as she saw me she started crying, and passers-by stopped to stare at her outburst. Some even poked fun at her for crying on the street, making nasty comments – ‘Why are you cryi
ng? Do you need a man?’, ‘Are you crying for a husband? Why don’t you come with me?’, ‘What’s the matter, can’t you get a man? Do you want some cock?’

  I hugged her tightly, not caring what these strangers were saying. I wished I’d been able to shout something back at them, but it wouldn’t have been safe. I looked closely at Sharifa, and said, ‘Try to calm down. What’s the matter? Has something happened to your mother?’

  Sharifa was more upset than I’d ever seen her. She could barely speak without gulping for air. At last, she gasped, ‘Zarghuna, I’m ruined, my mother is destroyed, everything is lost.’ Immediately I thought her mother must have had a miscarriage, or a serious problem while delivering the baby. Again I calmly asked her what had happened, but by this time Sharifa was crying hysterically and it was clear from her puffy, red eyes that she’d been crying for a long time. ‘Zarghuna, it’s another girl!’

  I could see how exhausted she was, as if all the energy had drained from her body, and I decided to take her back to my home. When we arrived back at my house my mother was surprised to see us both, but I explained that Sharifa was upset and my mother accepted this without further question. I made some sweet tea and as we sat down on the carpet, I tried to calm Sharifa down. As I did so, I wondered what kind of society we were living in. How could it make any sense that an innocent baby girl could bring so much pain and suffering to Sharifa and her family?