When women describe Afghanistan as hell, you need to understand that they are not exaggerating. For centuries, women in this country have been harassed, tormented and punished in various ways; deprived of their right to education, removed from all social spheres, punished in extrajudicial tribunals, forced marriages and honour killings, and threatened with physical and psychological violence. Afghan society is defiantly patriarchal, blending together bizarre traditions and widespread sexism to create a true hell. In the hellscapes that populate religions, people are condemned for their sins, but in ours women are punished for their innocence.
The participation of women in Afghanistan has always depended on the decisions of men. If a woman wants to enter and secure her place in society, the first obstacle she faces is the closed door of her home, sealed against her by a male member of her family. If some women manage to open this door, the government has made sure to block any avenue of social growth to them. The only thing left for Afghan women to do is to cry behind the closed doors that bar their access to schools, universities, offices or even entertainment venues.
But the occasional permissiveness and overwhelming constraints actioned by these opening and closing doors does not apply to all Afghan women, only to women in the big cities and to women in those provinces experiencing instability in their social status amid the waves of political change in the country. In rural areas, however, centuries of shifts in the country’s political make-up have had no impact whatsoever on many women’s lives. These rural women are neither exposed to nor benefit from any intermittent loosening of social rules, and their lives often remain stagnant. In the remote areas where those women live, women’s issues are resolved by men who rely on tradition. For them, social growth is a strange concept. I am a Pashtun woman from the southeast of Afghanistan, and I want to write about the women of this region, also from the Pashtun tribe, who are facing immense difficulties.
There is a saying in Pashto (language): A woman’s place is either inside the house or in the grave. But this is not merely a simple proverb, it is rather a law that dictates the social role of women among the Pashtun people. It means that a woman has no place outside the walls of her house. She has no right to study and no right to work. Deprived of these fundamental rights, women remain far removed from any kind of participation in society. The confines of their home become their whole world and, in that small space, they continue to suffer all kinds of violence.
In our highly conservative society, especially in Pashtun culture, the birth of a girl is not something joyful, while a baby boy brings great happiness to a family and is celebrated with aerial gunshots so that everyone all around will be informed of the male birth in their house.
Some women have no say in choosing their husbands, and many girls are engaged to one of the boys in their family (usually to their uncles’ sons: that is, their first cousins) in a process called ‘naming’. This means that the girl, like a house or land or an object, is placed under someone’s name, like a title deed, and considered a part of their property. This decision, made at birth, is unbreakable, and the girl and boy cannot sever it when they get older. If girls are not betrothed to someone in childhood, they are married off in adolescence, or sometimes even before puberty, without their consent. In the holy religion of Islam, a girl’s consent is a prerequisite for marriage, but in Afghanistan, whenever the rules of religion do not serve people’s interests, they are ignored in favour of existing traditions.
Boys have to work hard because getting married is a major expense. In exchange for getting a wife, they have to pay a lot of money to the girl’s family. Effectively buying the girl. This is called walwar, in Pashto, meaning the price of the girl. The bride price is determined by her height, figure, health and family name. Surprisingly, despite the fact that the vast majority of the Taliban are from the Pashtun tribe and strongly oppose educating girls, the price is higher for girls who have attended school up to a certain grade or who have completed their education in the cities, for it is believed that an educated woman is better able to manage her family life and raise her children.
Women are not allowed to eat at the same time as the men and on the same food cloth
Girls are not only married for walwar, they can also be given away in compensation, as ‘blood money’ or baad. According to prevailing custom, if a member of one family kills someone from another family, then, in order to end the enmity between the two feuding sides, one or more girls are offered to the victim’s family in baad. The life of a woman who enters a family in this way is lower than that of an animal. The family of the murdered person has the right to inflict all kinds of injustice on the poor girl. In both cases of walwar and baad, price is the most important thing, with women either being given as a payment, or having a payment secure their transfer from one owner to another. They are seen as objects of transactional value, wholly material and subject to trade and exchange.
When a girl is given to a husband in exchange for a large sum of money, she becomes the property of her in-laws and, if the poor woman ever loses her husband, she’s forbidden from remarrying of her own accord. Her husband’s family, who continue to ‘own’ her, will forcibly marry her to another male member of their family (usually the deceased husband’s brother or nephew) with the justification that this woman is now their namus (honour). In Afghan culture, namus refers to the responsibility of male family members to safeguard the dignity of their mothers, sisters, daughters and wives in the eyes of men outside the family. If there are no eligible men in the family to marry the widow, then a young boy can try his luck; after my cousin’s son died of illness, leaving his 30-year-old wife a widow, I heard that she had been married to her late husband’s 12-year-old brother. The last time I visited them they were living in a refugee camp in Pakistan. At the time, this woman was taking care of her brother-in-law the way a mother takes care of a child, so when I heard that they had married, I felt sick.
Men are not the only ones guilty of perpetrating violence against women in these regions. In our tribe, women also use violence against other women. Older women regularly oppress younger girls in terms of how they dress and how the resources inside the house are used. When a woman enters her husband’s house upon marriage, all decisions about how she dresses, when she can visit her relatives, whether she can join family events, and how she does chores come under the authority of the older women of the family. On one occasion when I was travelling in my province, I noticed that most of the young women covered their faces by holding part of their hijab between their teeth so it would not fall off and reveal their faces. Only their eyes were visible. When I asked one of them about this, she told me that it was a custom; when a new bride enters her in-laws’ house, she must cover her face from everyone at all times until her mother-in-law gives her permission to uncover it.
In some households, the order in which the women eat is also different from that of the men. In our province, women are not allowed to eat at the same time as the men and on the same food cloth. Instead, the women prepare the food, take it to the food cloth, and then return to the kitchen to wait. Since children are dependent on women, they don’t eat either. Only when the men and older women have finished eating can the other women and the children of the household eat what’s left over.
Since the Taliban is predominantly Pashtun, it is little wonder that they want to keep women completely within the walls of their homes. A lifetime of following the dominant culture of their region, which taught them not to value women, has led them to impose their way of life on the whole country.
Yet the Taliban themselves, during both periods of their rule (1996-2001, and from 2021 onwards), have, as I’ve said, always had a strong preference for marrying educated girls from urban areas. Whenever they have occupied Afghanistan, they’ve married women by force or in exchange for money, removing them from civilised society and disappearing them into rural compounds. Often, these women are never seen or heard from again. I know of one such woman, whom I will call Marjan, born and raised in Kabul, and whose father forced her to marry a Taliban fighter at the age of 12. Money was exchanged for her and all opportunities she might have had to flourish were crudely cut off. She suffered a bitter fate. Marjan’s story was first recorded orally, passing from mouth to mouth, and becoming a tale of sorrow and caution to other women. I was witness to her story, which I promised to record and to relay to you here.
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My name is Marjan. In 1996, when the Taliban first took over Afghanistan, I was 12 years old. We lived in Kabul. My father was perpetually unemployed and I could never understand why. While he didn’t do anything to provide for his family, he smoked hashish, which my mother had to pay for. My mother was a cleaner in a government office. Our family’s financial situation was precarious and her salary could barely feed us; my three brothers and I never had good clothes to wear and our shoes were always torn. (Having new shoes was one of my dreams that never came true.) When the Taliban entered Kabul, they banned women from working and girls from studying. I, who once dreamed of becoming a doctor, was confined to the house. I was in the sixth grade.
We had never eaten to our fill before, but when the Taliban came and cut my mother’s salary and our only hope, we were plunged into unprecedented poverty. Exactly one month after the Taliban seized Kabul, all our food supplies ran out, and on the day my mother boiled the last of the rice for us to eat, she announced that from now on we would go hungry. Two more days went by when we soaked old bread that was no longer edible in water and ate it – bread that we used to send to our neighbour’s chickens! On the third day, we had nothing to eat and no strength to stand up. My mother was very sad and her skin had turned deathly pale. She borrowed a burqa from our neighbours and left the house. We were afraid for her, going out with the Taliban everywhere. Our neighbour’s wife told us that she had gone to her place of work in the hopes that the Taliban would hire her back.
After a few hours, my mother came home crying, telling my father that the Taliban whipped her and wouldn’t even let her enter the ministry she used to clean. She said she had also gone to see her brother, an officer in the Ministry of Interior Affairs, to borrow some money, but he had also been fired. My father, as angry as ever, dismissed the matter as none of his concern and wished we would all die so that he could be rid of us.
Another day passed. In the months since the Taliban seized power, my father had been selling one of our household items each day to make money to buy hashish. But that day there was nothing left to sell and he grew furious as he hadn’t smoked hashish. He started beating my mother, telling her that she must find him money to buy hashish in any way possible. At that moment there was a knock at the door. I went to open it. It was our neighbour’s wife, again. I didn’t like this neighbour of ours at all. The people in our street used to say she was related to the Taliban. I was afraid and didn’t want to let her enter our house. I worried that she might tell on my father for smoking hashish and that he would be taken by the Taliban and flogged in the city square.
From the day I learned my left from my right, I had only seen my mother sad and crying
The neighbour’s wife pushed me aside and bustled in. She stopped my father from beating my mother and started talking to my parents as she pushed me out of the room. After she left, my father was no longer angry, he was even smiling, but my mother looked more sad than ever.
That night, the neighbour’s wife sent us food. My brothers and I ate our dinner happily and went to bed with our stomachs full. In my sleep, I heard suspicious comings and goings, and pleasantries in the Pashto language, but no matter how hard I tried to open my eyes to see what was going on, sleep took me back.
When I woke up in the morning, my mother was stroking my hair and shedding tears.
Did my father beat you again? I asked her.
She did not answer and only cried harder.
My father entered the house that day with his hands full of groceries that he had bought for breakfast. Bread, cream, even sugar. I had not eaten sugar for a month, and quickly jumped up and took the bread and sugar from him. My father ordered my mother to stop crying and make breakfast. As usual, she obeyed silently. I was overjoyed and couldn’t believe that we were having sweet tea and cream for breakfast and, most importantly, that my father wasn’t angry, but rather playful with us. My mother’s grief didn’t bother me unusually since, from the day I learned my left from my right, I had only seen her sad and crying. But this was the first time I was seeing my father happy.
The happiness continued throughout the day. After breakfast, my father emptied a cigarette and filled it with hashish before going outside to smoke it.
Where did my father get the money to buy breakfast and hashish? I asked my mother.
My mother shrugged her shoulders and her tears started to flow once more. As she cried, she stroked my hair, saying: ‘My lovely daughter, how beautiful you are. Your life is wasted. You’re unlucky, like your mother.’
Upset by her crying, I kissed her cheek and said: ‘Don’t cry, Madar.’
She didn’t say anything more. Again, my father came home with handfuls of groceries. This time, he brought cakes and biscuits. Meat as well. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought my father had stumbled on treasure or a bag full of money in order to bring us all this different food. But, more than the food, I was happy that my father had his hashish and wasn’t getting angry at us.
My father asked my mother to leave the cake and biscuits for the afternoon as we had guests. My mother, as if she didn’t even hear, did not look at him.
My father walked up to her and grabbed her hair in his fist. Storming now, he demanded: ‘Did you hear what I just said!?’
My mother still didn’t react. To keep the peace, I stepped in: ‘I’ll put the cake and biscuits on a plate.’
I took the plastic bag into the kitchen and my mother followed me. She washed the meat and continued to chop the onions in silence.
I saw our neighbour take a bundle of money from the hands of the Talib and place it in front of my father
In the afternoon there was a knock at the door. I wanted to go and open it, but my father stopped me and sent me to my room. I went inside and looked towards the door from behind the curtain. The courtyard door opened and the neighbour’s wife entered, along with her husband and a Talib whose face was completely covered with hair. Only his two eyes were visible. The Talib had a white turban on his head and a gun slung over his shoulder. I was very frightened because I thought my fear had come true, and that the neighbour had informed the Taliban about my father smoking hashish. My heart was beating so fast I thought it would stop. My father invited the visitors into the guest room and their friendly conversation began. My father spoke in Dari and the Talib spoke in Pashto, with the neighbour acting as interpreter.
The neighbour’s wife remained outside the guest room and instead played the role of the hostess. She put the cups on a tray and asked me to take the plate of biscuits up to the room. I did as I was told. The neighbour’s wife pulled aside the curtain and entered the guest room and, in that brief moment, I saw our neighbour take a bundle of money from the hands of the Talib and place it in front of my father. When my father saw the neighbour’s wife, he said cheerfully: ‘You’ve brought tea just in time, as our friends have to celebrate with sweets.’
The neighbour’s wife said laughingly: ‘May God bless this union for all.’
She came out to take the biscuits from me. I went back into the kitchen and asked my mother what union the neighbour’s wife had been talking about and if the Talib had not come to arrest my father, after all. My mother started to cry once more and said: ‘Dokhtarem, my daughter, your father gave you to that man.’
I was searching my mind to figure out the meaning of her words when the neighbour’s wife came and kissed me on the cheek, saying: ‘You’ve become our bride, your father gave you to my brother.’
With a detestable smile, she added: ‘My brother had long desired a Kabuli woman.’
It was as if my veins had frozen and I couldn’t speak. I felt nauseous. It was hard for me to comprehend what had happened.
My mother’s crying intensified. My brothers stared at me with confused looks.
That day passed. I don’t know how, but it did. I was so shocked and frightened that my brain then erased that day from my life’s diary.
Some days later, the neighbour’s wife came to our house again. She brought with her a large Afghani velvet dress decorated with silver coins. The dress was so heavy that it was difficult to lift it from the floor. She also brought green trousers and a green headscarf so large that it covered my whole body. My mother had not agreed to a wedding ceremony because she believed that the death of her 12-year-old daughter was not something to be celebrated.
The neighbour’s wife dressed me in the Afghani dress, braided my hair, and applied makeup to my face, putting red lipstick on my lips. She coloured my eyes with kohl. Raising my chin with her fingers, she smiled: ‘You are a beautiful bride, our relatives will be blinded with envy when they see that Miraj has married a Kabuli woman, and such a beautiful one at that!’
Several men, including the Talib, came to our house. They argued loudly over the size of the dowry before both sides came to an agreement and the marriage took place. The neighbour’s wife, who had also put on makeup and now looked more hideous than ever, came into the room to put a burqa over my head, then she told me to say goodbye to my mother. When I tried to open my mouth, my heart was so heavy with grief that I fainted.
The next time I opened my eyes, I found something blocking my face. I realised from the movement of my surroundings, that I was in a car. I tried to remove the burqa from my face, but a rough hand stopped me and said in Pashto: ‘Don’t take off your hijab.’
Two harsh eyes nestled in their sockets, and moved quickly, giving me a feeling of endless fear
I got scared and stopped moving, sitting like that for hours with my face blocked. I didn’t dare take off the burqa. Finally, the car stopped and the man grabbed my hand and took me out of the car. We entered a restaurant that had private rooms for families. There, the neighbour’s wife, who was now my sister-in-law, lifted my veil.
My eyes fell on the man who was now my husband. He was about 25 years old or more, but I wasn’t sure since his face was hidden behind an overgrown and untrimmed beard. His hair was long, reaching down his shoulders. Two harsh eyes nestled in their sockets, and moved quickly, giving me a feeling of endless fear. With a meaningful smile, my sister-in-law said: ‘Miraj, look at your wife, she’s so beautiful.’
But Miraj didn’t even bother to look at me, instead, he gave his sister a contemptuous smile: ‘You idiot, is this the place for that kind of talk?’
Food was served, but I didn’t want to eat. However, upon being ordered by the harsh tones of my Talib husband, I was forced to.
We continued our journey and reached a village the next morning. The car stopped in front of a large mud house with old layered walls. As soon as the car stopped, we heard gunfire. I thought a fight had broken out and started crying, but my sister-in-law told me that the people of the village were celebrating Miraj’s wedding.
I was still not allowed to lift my veil and, buffered on both sides by my husband and his sister, I was taken into a courtyard and then to a room. Many women had gathered there to see me. They sat me next to an old woman in the corner and told me to kiss her hand as she was my husband’s mother. Everyone called her Adi, which means mother in Pashto. I kissed the old woman’s hand. I could tell from her sharp gaze that she was indeed the Talib’s mother.
All the women and children in the family were led by Adi and her cane
A few days after I married the Talib, his sister, who was my only line of communication with the rest of the family, went back to Kabul with my husband, and I was left alone in the house with a handful of people I didn’t know, and not even knowing what they were saying. Because I had no understanding of their culture and way of life, my mother-in-law would beat me with her cane whenever I made a mistake.
Besides Adi, my five brothers-in-law and their families also lived in that house. None of the men were home, though, because they were all members of the Taliban and had been given different positions in different provinces after the occupation of Afghanistan. All the women and children in the family were led by Adi and her cane. Her word was law and anyone who disobeyed it was punished. If the women of the house were excessive in their use of food, if they failed to care for the animals properly, or if they were slightly late in completing their daily chores, Adi would reprimand them. Not a day went by without several members feeling the sting of her cane against their bones.
As time passed, I gradually learned their language. My mother-in-law’s cane also taught me how to do the housework and look after the animals. The only thing I never learned was to cover my face. This was in direct defiance of my mother-in-law. Every time she saw my bare face she beat me with her cane and threatened that, as long as she lived, she would not allow me to reveal my face. The rest of the women and children in the family lived under her iron rule. To the extent that they knew compassion, they were kind to me, helping me with household chores and showing sympathy whenever I cried and missed my home and family.
My husband came home occasionally. There was no intimacy between us. I was dissatisfied with him for the miserable life he had put me in and I could never imagine him as my husband and a man who supports me. Like the rest of the men in the family, he considered expressing affection for his wife to be shameful and would not use any loving words towards me.
I had no news of my mother, father and brothers, and whenever I asked him about them, he would say they were fine. When I begged him to take me to Kabul, he warned me never to dream of it again. Once, when I insisted that he take me there, he almost beat me to death.
In 2001, the Taliban regime fell, but at the time I didn’t know what year it was. The boys who were allowed to go outside told us stories of what was happening. They spoke of infidels from different countries coming to Afghanistan and swore that they had seen farangi (a name for foreign soldiers such as the British troops during the Anglo-Afghan wars) walking around the villages. It wasn’t long before planes were flying overhead every night and bombing people’s homes. As news spread of soldiers from foreign forces searching houses and killing anyone they had the slightest suspicion about, the inhabitants of our village gradually began leaving their homes and moving away.
One night, my husband and his two brothers returned and shared the news of their other two brothers getting killed. Adi didn’t cry. She fell silent for a moment, then said: ‘I sacrificed them in the way of religion.’ My mother-in-law informed the rest of the family of the deaths of her two sons and threatened everyone with her cane, saying that if she heard anyone cry she would break their bones. The wives of her murdered sons beat their heads in silence as the terrified children looked on in horror.
A few days after the death of the two brothers, my mother-in-law and her sons decided to marry off their widows to the remaining men in the family. One of these two women ended up marrying my husband. My mother-in-law took this decision because I had not given birth in all these years and his brother’s wife had two children. It was not painful for me because I did not love the man I called my husband and lived with him only by force. The widows who lost their husbands were remarried while they were still mourning and shedding tears.
I don’t know what year it was because there were no calendars. This house hated pen and paper, let alone calendars. The situation was getting worse by the day with increasing air and ground attacks by foreign forces – or the infidels, as the locals liked to call them. Hardly a house in the village escaped being bombed, and the night raids continued to rob people of their peace. During one of his visits, my husband said the whole family would have to move to Pakistan because the village was no longer safe, and that the young boys of the household would have to go to the madrasa where they would train to become suicide bombers. According to him, the religion was in more danger than ever before.
The house had two rooms, and beneath the building was a dark cellar with a cell made of iron bars
Everyone was getting ready to move. I was happy about it because I was finally going to leave that damned mud house after so many years of imprisonment. I was so excited, since I’d seen nothing but the inhabitants of the house and I missed seeing the streets, the cars, the shops, everything. I was eagerly packing my clothes into a bag when my mother-in-law called out to me. She had been unable to walk following the death of her two sons, and when I went to her, she said: ‘I’m not leaving: I don’t want to live comfortably in Pakistan while my sons are fighting on the front line. You also have to stay with me.’ I insisted on going, but she threw her cane at me and said: ‘I didn’t ask your opinion, Shand!’A couple of years into my marriage, when I still didn’t get pregnant, my mother-in-law had started calling me barren, or shand in Pashto.
Everyone in the house loaded their belongings into a lorry and left for Pakistan while I remained with my insane mother-in-law and my husband’s nephew, Nasim, an 18-year-old boy. Nasim was more polite than the other men in the family and never disrespected women. For this reason, they thought he was simple. They said he wasn’t fit for jihad.
But then, a few days later, we were also moved from the village to a distant place. I had no idea where we were, so I asked Nasim. He said we were in the same province but in a place so remote no one would find us. We were taken to a house near a mountain. The house had two rooms, and beneath the building was a dark cellar with a cell made of iron bars inside it. I thought that it might have been built for livestock. In front of the house stretched a vast desert plain, covered with weeds. The isolation of the house terrified me, we were completely alone there. The only fun I had in those first 24 hours was being allowed to fetch water from a spring on the far side of the mountain. We had two mules, two goats and a cow, and they were my strength on that empty plain. I would feed them grass and spend hours telling them my stories. Sometimes, I shared my feelings with Nasim. My husband would come to visit us in the middle of the night from time to time, bringing us food and fuel for the lamps. After kissing his mother’s hands, he would disappear again.
I was so lonely there that everything around me started coming to life and talking to me. I talked to the cups, the pots, the fire, the mules, the goats and the cow. Sometimes I talked to the mountain as well, and because it was high I asked if there were any living beings on the other side and if there was another house anywhere in our vicinity. My mother-in-law was getting older every day. Her face had grown more wrinkled and the two or three teeth she had left said farewell to her mouth and were gone. When she cursed at me, I would ignore her words and stare at her toothless mouth. She thought I was making fun of her and would throw her shoes at me. I was slowly becoming detached from the real world. Based on the Indian films I had seen before I got married, I would create romantic or spy scenarios in my mind, where I was the hero, and I would live inside these dreams for hours.
Through the changing seasons, I felt the passing of the years. With the fragment of a mirror that I had brought with me hidden in my clothes, I would look at my face. Fine wrinkles had formed around my eyes and several white strands of hair had also appeared on my head. It was a painful realisation that my youth had slipped away from me. The only regret I had was that I had never known love. In my dreams, I tried to conjure a young man with whom I would fall in love, but it was impossible. No matter how hard I tried to give him features, this man remained faceless. When I tried really hard, his face resembled Nasim’s. This thought made me feel ashamed because I saw Nasim as a member of the family – a kind and supportive companion, not a man I could fall in love with. I can’t deny that sometimes I could feel his intense gaze on me, but I would pretend to not notice it. Under such conditions, Nasim was the last being on earth I could have feelings for.
One summer, some time into our lives there, I heard a car approaching the house near midnight. This had never happened before. I rushed out with Nasim, and together we watched it coming towards us. It stopped in front of the house and my husband and two other men with guns got out, dragging a fourth man violently out of the car and taking him into the cellar. Luckily, the animals were tied outside as the weather was hot. They took the man into the cell, cursing him all the while, then tied him up and locked the door. My husband explained to his mother that they had caught an infidel and she should be careful not to let him escape. Then he instructed Nasim and me to feed the prisoner since he would soon be exchanged for one of the mujahidin.
They took Nasim with them when they left so that he could buy and bring us back food, lamp oil and other necessities. Occasionally, Nasim would be gone for a long time and I would grow very scared, fearing that he had disappeared for good. In the years I had lived by the mountain, I had no access to news. What little I heard was that Afghanistan had been invaded by infidels from more than 20 countries and the Taliban were trying hard to drive them out. Living with an infidel imprisoned nearby seemed very frightening.
The night of fear passed, and dawn appeared. My mother-in-law asked me to take food to the prisoner. I had no choice but to prepare food and go to the prisoner. With trembling hands and legs I opened the cellar door and found the man tied up in the cell. When the light entered the cell, he raised his head. He was a foreigner and looked to be about 40 years old. He was thin with blond hair and a white face. He looked very clean and handsome. I always thought foreigners were beautiful. No matter how much Afghans cleaned themselves, because of their brown skin they still didn’t look as clean and handsome as the foreigners. My mother used to say the same thing about Russians. She would say the Russians were very white and had red cheeks. They were always on top of their tanks and, whenever they passed on the street, everyone would gather around to see them.
Just as I put my hand to her shoulder, she fell over to the side like a piece of dry wood
I pushed the food tray through the gap between the iron door and the floor, towards the prisoner, and gestured for him to eat. The man looked at the tray and ate some bread. I felt sorry for him. With a hand gesture and a broken accent, he asked: ‘Tea.’
I pointed to the cup of water.
But again he said with the same accent: ‘Tea.’
I went home and brought him a cup of tea. He drank the tea with the bread as I said to myself aloud: This poor man has become a prisoner of this cursed plain just like me.
When the man finished the tea and bread, he pushed the dishes towards me through the crack under the door, and I took the tray and went home. I also prepared food for my mother-in-law and took it to her room. Her head was leaning against the wall and she was looking at something in the distance. I said: ‘Adi, eat.’ But staring out at the plain, she didn’t answer. I called out to her again, but she still didn’t reply. I didn’t know how to make her notice me. If I touched her, she would hit me with her cane and curse me, but if I left her, the food would get cold. I was hungry, too, and was obliged to wait for her to finish before I could eat. Nor did she like me eating in the room in front of her. She would say that a woman must eat last and only after she has fed everyone else.
My wait got longer and longer, but Adi still didn’t raise her head. Cautiously, I approached her and just as I put my hand to her shoulder, she fell over to the side like a piece of dry wood. I screamed and gasped. This plain had swallowed Adi’s life just as it had swallowed my own hopes and youth.
I had seen many dead people after my marriage. Dead women, and dead children and men, killed in the air raids or fighting, as well as those who died of disease and the lack of doctors and hospitals. But I had never been left alone with a dead person before. My whole body was shaking. The only living person on this plain had died and now I was all alone. I ran out of the room and back perhaps 10 times. It was then I realised that being alone was worse than having to suffer Adi’s insults. I was stunned. I didn’t know what to do, and Adi’s empty eyes were now on me. Suddenly I remembered that there was another living person in that place. The foreigner!
For the first time, he met my eyes, his gaze heavy with meaning
I took the key from Adi’s pocket and headed for the cellar. I wanted to ask the foreigner for help. I was very scared. But then I quickly changed my mind. It could put me in danger. My husband could arrive at any moment and kill me or kill the foreigner, thinking he was trying to escape. I went back into the house, sat in the corner and waited for Nasim to return.
It wasn’t long before he did. Nasim put the grocery bags down by the door. The second I saw him, I broke down in tears. Surprised, Nasim asked: ‘Why are you crying?’ I couldn’t speak and only pointed at Adi. He went over to her and took her hand in his. The cold touch of Adi’s hand made him realise she was dead. He closed his eyes in anguish and said in a trembling voice: ‘Adi is dead, may God rest her soul.’
Nasim laid Adi’s body on the cushion on the floor and closed her eyes with his thumbs. We covered the body with a piece of cloth. Nasim and I just sat there with our heads down, shocked, neither of us daring to speak. Finally, Nasim raised his head and said: ‘We have to wash Adi’s body and bury it.’ I refused.
I told him: ‘No, don’t do that, Miraj must come and see with his own eyes that Adi died a natural death, otherwise he’ll suspect us.’
Nasim stood up. Worried, I asked him where he was going.
‘I’m going to send a message to Miraj.’ And for the first time, he met my eyes, his gaze heavy with meaning, and added: ‘I will never leave you alone.’
I looked at him intently. How much he had grown. More; he had begun to age. There were strands of white hair on his temples and his face was starting to wrinkle, just like mine. This land had aged us both.
It was almost noon when Nasim left. He returned in the darkness of the night, saying that he had contacted Miraj and that he would be coming soon. Not a single word was exchanged between us after that. Nasim took the Quran from the windowsill, then sat down next to Adi and started to recite. That night, neither of us slept.
The sun had not yet risen when Miraj arrived, travelling in the same car that he had brought the foreigner in. Two other men had also come with him. Miraj entered the room and knelt down beside his mother. From his trembling shoulders, you could tell he was weeping.
Looking at Adi, he said slowly: ‘I wish you had waited a little longer and seen our victory.’ His shoulders slumped under the heavy weight of grief. He knelt over Adi, motionless, for an hour, then he put her body in the back of the car and told Nasim and me to sit in the back with her and watch over the body. He dispatched the two men he had brought with him to get the foreigner out of the cellar. He too was hustled into the car, with the two men sitting on either side of him, and we left that damned plain forever.
Adi was laid to rest. The foreigner was taken away by the Taliban when we reached a city I cannot name. I was worried about him but there was nothing I could do. I learned that the Taliban had once again captured Afghanistan and seized power. History had repeated itself once more. We arrived in Kabul in the middle of the summer of 2021, which meant that 24 years of my life had passed in captivity. I began to sob as we entered the city. My heart ached as I remembered the day I was taken from Kabul, faint from the fear of being torn away from my family and birthplace. I was asking myself if my mother and father were alive, what fate had befallen my brothers, and would I ever be able to see them again?
What mattered to her family was his position in the Islamic Emirate and the amount of money they received
My husband had attained a high position in the Islamic Emirate. He drove around in expensive cars that were said to have been left behind by the high-ranking officials of the former government, and he had bought a big house for us all. I may have been back in Kabul, but I still wasn’t allowed to leave the house. I asked Miraj to take me to my parents but he refused. Indifferent to my pleas, he said he had no idea where they were now.
Not long after we arrived in Kabul, my husband married for a third time. When my husband’s other wife and I protested, he said that as a Muslim man he had the right to have four wives at the same time. His third wife was a midwife and did not live with us. We didn’t even see her face. I wasn’t too surprised that an educated woman married my husband, a mountain man who was opposed to girls’ education. Nor did her family mind the fact that he was already married or a member of the Taliban. What mattered to them was his position in the Islamic Emirate and the amount of money they received as shir baha. Bitterly I recalled that my father had also forced me to marry Miraj for these very benefits.
Nasim still lived with us. After Afghanistan fell once again to the Taliban, his family, who had migrated to Pakistan, returned to Kabul and settled in our house. Nasim’s father urged him to marry one of his cousins, as he was nearly 40 years old and it was getting late for him to marry. But Nasim would not accept and made an excuse, saying that, when he had earned the money for shir baha himself, then he would marry. Then he gazed at me with a look full of meaning, a meaning I was never willing to grasp.
Every day, I tried to find a way to see my mother and brothers, until it finally occurred to me to ask Nasim for help. I asked him to take me to one of my relatives so that I could find out about my mother from them. Our previous house was a rental and I knew that my family might have moved from there in the past 20 years. Nasim took me out on the pretext of taking me to the doctor. We went to a relative’s house whose address I somehow remembered. Luckily, they still lived in the same place. There I was told that my father had been killed in a suicide bombing under the previous government, and that my mother and brothers were living in Iran. I got my mother’s number from them so that I could call her later. The news of my father’s death didn’t make me very sad, because he deserved it. He threw me into the Taliban’s oven and paid for it.
My days were still filled with pain. My mental state was deteriorating with each passing day. The 24 years I had spent in the captivity of Miraj and his family had robbed me of my youth, my dreams and my existence. Life had passed me by and I had not benefited from it. Now, heartbroken and empty-handed, I had no hope.
My husband, who had gone to attend the opening of a madrasa, was killed in an ISIS bombing. Yet again, three more women were widowed and had to be remarried. I chose Nasim out of necessity. I had no other choice: the Taliban were still in power and I could not free myself from the claws of Miraj’s family. We got married. It was only when he became my husband that Nasim confessed his love for me, which he had kept hidden in his heart for many years, saying if this turn of events had not taken place he would have never married and would have always taken care of me. I have a good life with Nasim. We live separately from his family. He loves me and does everything he can to make up for the past. But the old wounds remain a nightmare for me that follows me every night.
*
Today, when women everywhere are advancing alongside men in politics, technology and science, achieving remarkable milestones every day, there exists a corner of the world called Afghanistan where women are undergoing a regression, and new traps are continually being set to ensnare them and violate their rights. Women and their participation in society have become pawns in a game played by Afghan rulers and those in power around the world to achieve their political goals.
Marjan’s bitter life is a clear example of the lives of Afghan women, especially in remote areas where they are not seen as living and conscious beings. These women face all kinds of violence on a daily basis, they are deprived of their right to education, and all paths for personal and social growth are closed to them.
I know Marjan personally. She is a woman drowning in grief who was thrust against her will into a life of fear and horror. All her dreams were shattered and her life scattered like ashes in the wind, without her having lived a moment of it for herself, of her own free will. Her achievement in life is that of an injured soul whose wounds reopen with every mention of the violence she has endured. The days of her past life and the hardships she went through are the focus of her words, and her testimony. It is as if she never left that mud house and that desert plain, and is buried there along with her youth and her dreams.
This piece was developed as a partnership between Untold Narratives and Aeon.
