Afghanistan Peace Campaign
A woman knits at a small tailoring business supported by UNDP in western Afghanistan. Photo: UNDP, 18 April 2023
Afraid to step outside alone
As if trying to keep my family afloat and caring for a bedridden husband weren’t enough, I also struggle with an illness. I suffer from seizures, which began when I was still a girl. Back then, my husband and I were secretly courting. One day, my brother caught us and threatened to tell my father. The fear and trauma triggered my first seizure, and I’ve suffered from them ever since. I need daily medication to manage them. I can’t go out alone, because I’m too scared that I’ll collapse in the street.
Here in Afghanistan, seizures are misunderstood. People mistakenly believe they are a sign of possession, and some even attempt to “exorcise” the person who is having a seizure. Others take advantage and seize the moment to rob them. Because of this, I hardly ever leave the house by myself and must depend on others for even the simplest tasks.
The weight of family ties
On top of my illness and my husband’s, we face pressure from relatives. My husband’s four brothers take him to doctors and pay his medical costs, but only because my mother-in-law insists. They lend us the money for treatment, but don’t help with daily expenses. Now we’re buried in debt to them – some 300,000 Afs (about USD 4,000) – that we are expected to repay one day.
Even so, they don’t believe my husband is truly ill. They often accuse us of pretending and rarely visit. This hurts my husband deeply. Everyone knows that my husband is a proud, hardworking man who has never missed a day of work before he fell ill. Sometimes he cries and says, “No one comes anymore because I have nothing to offer.” All I can do is hold his hand and tell him it isn’t true. I try to console him by saying everyone is struggling and anyone can fall sick, but in my heart, I know he feels his dignity has been damaged and that he misses his family.
Living on bread and the kindness of others
Still, I try my best to find ways to make ends meet. To earn a little, I embroider khamak (an intricate form of embroidery using white silk thread). In a good month, I can earn 1,000 Afs (around USD 14) and I use the money to buy flour, oil and other groceries. Doctors say my husband needs meat, fruit, broth and vegetables, but we cannot afford to buy them. Most days, we eat bread for breakfast and lunch. For dinner, we eat potatoes. I buy the smallest potatoes because they’re cheaper. My husband eats what we eat.
My own family isn’t doing well either. Only my younger sister visits and helps when she can. She sometimes brings clothes for my children or a little food, but she cannot do much more. Once, we didn’t have money for gas to cook dinner. I couldn’t bear to tell the children we had nothing, so I took them to my sister’s house, saying they missed their cousins. We ate dinner there.
My eldest son, now 18, went to Iran for work when he was 14 but was deported this past spring. He had just finished eighth grade when he left. At first, he got a job in a tailor’s shop and later he worked in a plastic factory. He used to send us 5,000 Afs (about USD 66) each month, and after my husband fell ill, we relied on that money to pay the rent and other expenses. He started looking for a job as soon as he got back to Kabul, but he hasn’t managed to find one yet. We also tried to put him back in school, but the school would not accept him because he needs a new electronic tazkira (ID card). He has to go to our village to get one, but we don’t have the money to send him there.
My middle son is 13 and in grade nine. He works after school in a tailor’s shop. My daughter is 10 and in the third grade. My youngest son is seven and has just started school. This year, the government changed the uniform of schoolchildren from the Western-style ones introduced during the Islamic Republic to traditional clothing. My second son bought his own uniform with the little he earns at the tailor’s – 200 Afs a week. My sister paid for a uniform for my youngest. My daughter wears one of her cousin’s old clothes because I couldn’t afford one for her.
There are days when one of my children comes home from school in tears, because their classmates bring food and snacks to school, but they sit with nothing to eat. Sometimes I give them bread, so at least they have something in class.
Sometimes a relative brings us flour, oil or meat and a family we know regularly helps with food. Last Ramadan, the family said they would give us oil. On the way to their house, I met a man distributing aid. I begged him to see my home. He did, and when he saw how we lived, he gave us flour, rice, beans, oil and even some meat. But he never came back, and we haven’t received any other assistance.
Some people have told me to go to the office of Ayatullah Fayaz in Kabul,[1] because they may be able to help, but I can’t go there alone without a mahram. The office is only open while my children are in school and I can’t risk being out by myself and having a seizure in the street. Once, I took my husband’s health documents to our mosque’s mullah and the street representative, begging for aid. They looked but did nothing.
Holding on to hope for my children
Some nights I feel overwhelmed by how hard life can be. I stay up thinking about how we will make it through the next day, how I will repay all our debts and how I can keep going. I cry quietly when the children are asleep, wondering how much longer we can survive like this and if my husband will ever recover.
My children are the only thing that keeps me going. I look at them and dream of a day when they will finish school, find good jobs and make better futures for themselves and our family. I tell them to study hard every day, to become doctors, engineers and teachers, and to build lives better than the one we are living now. That is what keeps me going. Hope—for them and for their future.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour
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