Dear Zari: Hidden Stories from Women of Afghanistan (23 page)

When we arrived at Khairkhana my father and brother lifted me out of the taxi and into the wheelchair. I expected Waheed and Farah to be waiting for me inside my parents’ house. I searched the room full of relatives for the only two people I was desperate to see. I wanted to see Farah in the new dress I had made for her and had sweets in my hand for her. I asked where Waheed was but nobody would tell me. Eventually I lost patience and started shouting and crying
.

‘
Where is Waheed?’ I screamed. ‘Why will no one tell me what is going on?
’

At this, people averted their eyes from me. Some even started crying. My mother came up to me and put her arms around me
.

‘
You won’t see them again, my darling
.’

She held me closer to her. ‘They are not coming back to you
.’

My heart sank and I began to feel sick and faint. I asked her to repeat what she meant. Why would I not see my daughter?

‘
You can’t see them and you won’t be able to live with them
.’

I began to weep. I couldn’t understand what was happening
.

My mother was crying now. ‘Wazma, my child. That bastard husband of yours has said now you’re disabled he can’t live with you. He’s going to marry someone else
.’

I felt as though my whole world had come crashing down. I couldn’t
believe that my beloved husband would do or say such things. My baby, my little girl, was being taken away from me. All my dreams were crushed, my feelings torn to shreds. At that moment, the world became dark
.

Wazma was crying and said, ‘Dear Zari, this was the worst thing that happened in my life. The pain in my leg has been nothing compared to this.’

I could barely believe the story Wazma was telling me and I could feel tears welling up.

I told everyone that I loved and needed Waheed and Farah. I promised I wouldn’t get angry with them or ask why they hadn’t come to see me in hospital. All I wanted to do was go back to my own home and see them again
.

My relatives looked on helplessly as I cried. My mother was crying with me. Finally she spoke. ‘All right, Wazma, my child. We will take you to see Waheed but you will have to be strong
.’

My father objected, calling my mother crazy for entertaining such an idea. He asked her why she wanted to take me to that arsehole’s house. He didn’t want his daughter to see him again because he was not worthy of her. But my mother was calm and firm. She said it would be better for me to see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears. Only then would I believe what kind of person my husband had become
.

I still couldn’t believe what she was trying to tell me. I couldn’t stop crying. My heart was beating furiously. I had difficulty breathing. It was as if someone was suffocating me. My father wasn’t convinced by my mother’s argument but he still went to find a taxi for us
.

I was carried into the car. It took my parents and me up the steep mountain road to my house. I started to feel cold and began shivering. I prayed that everything my mother had told me was a lie. I hoped for a miracle and pictured Waheed holding me in a tight embrace and my daughter welcoming me in her new dress with a beautiful smile
.

It was beginning to get dark by the time we arrived at my home. Waheed and I had always sat outside our house in the summer and gazed at the
stars. Now I looked up at the sky and examined those same stars for messages. Were they telling me not to go in? Were they giving me news of a happy reunion?

The taxi couldn’t make it up the last part of the journey, so my mother and father struggled to push my wheelchair up the narrow stony path. Some of my friends and neighbours came out to greet us. They seemed surprised to see me but still stopped to kiss me. They put sweets into my hand, as is our custom to show they were happy to see me alive. All this made me feel better but the most important man in my life did not come out to welcome me home
.

My mother approached my door. I stopped her and said I wanted to knock on it myself. I felt some strength and anger return. I would knock on my door and find out what lay behind it for myself
.

I noticed how dusty it had become. I tried to clean it with my sleeve but the dust wouldn’t go. Then the door opened. Waheed appeared. I could see from his eyes that he immediately recognised me, even though I had grown thin and pale. But even though he saw me, he wouldn’t look into my eyes. I began to weep
.

‘
Waheed!’ I shouted. ‘Waheed jan. It’s your wife here, Wazma. I know I’m not strong and beautiful any more but I swear to God and I swear on the life of my daughter that my love for you is as strong as ever. I’ve come back to you
.’

Waheed began crying but still he wouldn’t look at me. And when I asked to be allowed in to see my daughter he raised his hands as if to bar my entry
.

‘
You can’t come into the house. It’s not your home any more
.’

I begged to be allowed to stay so that I could at least be with my daughter, but Waheed shook his head. ‘I want to be happy,’ he said. ‘How can I live with a wife who has no leg? You can’t even look after yourself, so how can you take care of my daughter?
’

At that moment, Waheed died for me. He became like a small insect in front of me. I had lost my leg, I had lost my love and now I realised I had lost my baby girl. I heard his words and yet I didn’t hear them
.

‘
I am planning to marry again, so you are free from my side. You can do whatever you want but you can’t see my daughter again. Now you are disabled I don’t think you can look after my daughter properly
.’

I asked him why he was being so cruel. It wasn’t my fault that a rocket had landed and taken away my leg. I had only lost a leg. Everything else about me was the same, especially my love for my daughter. I pleaded with him, as a mother, to let me see my daughter. But no matter how much I begged, he stood like a stone at the door. After a while, he went back inside the house and closed the door. At this, I fell down weeping and shouting. My parents pulled me away, lifted me into the taxi and took me back to their home
.

What choice did I have but to live with my parents? It wasn’t easy for them because they were getting old and I needed a lot of help. My leg also gave me a great deal of pain, which required medicine. My sister-in-law resented my presence because I was eating their food, which was paid for with her husband’s earnings. I was becoming a burden on my family and even my parents were starting to blame me. I became depressed. I would cry all the time and not do anything or talk to anyone. I was just wrapped up in my feelings and desperately missed my daughter
.

One day a neighbour mentioned that there was a centre for disabled people in the Qal-e-Fatih Ullah area of town. I asked my father to take me there. They encouraged me to sew clothes and with their help I became a tailor. I am now earning, which means I can give my parents money and contribute to household expenses. They no longer criticise me or moan about me: having money makes me important!

I was very upset by what had happened to Wazma but I admired her for her determination and hard work and asked if I could ask her a few personal questions. She said that after all the hurt she had suffered, talking about her feelings was easy. I asked her what she would have done if the rocket attack had taken Waheed’s leg instead of hers? Wazma smiled and replied that she would have stayed and looked after him. She would never have left him. She said she knows that she was cast out
because she is a woman. She could accept this abandonment, but the worst thing is being separated from her only child.

‘I miss her! Sometimes she comes to the centre to see me. She knows I’m her mother and she’s nice to me. I’m happy that I see her sometimes. Life has been unfair to me but at least I’m still alive and able to earn a living sewing.’

Wazma is not alone. Hundreds of women in Afghanistan suffer like this. According to the United Nations, the decades of war that have plagued Afghanistan – the rocket attacks, landmines and bombs – have left more than a million people disabled. Some have lost legs and arms, others their sight, and many their peace of mind. You don’t have to walk far in Kabul before you come across a disabled person. There is a special ministry in Afghanistan called ‘The Martyrs and Disabled Affairs Ministry’. This ministry is responsible for providing assistance to those disabled through the war, helping them to find suitable jobs and offering them financial aid. Some of the officials are disabled themselves. I ask myself, would my country have such a ministry if it weren’t for the war?

It is not unusual to find a man like Waheed with a heart made of stone, as Wazma puts it; a man who would reject his wife because she had become disable. However, there are many women – young and old – who are married to disabled men and take care of all their needs. It is easier for a disabled man to find a wife because the woman has no say in the marriage, but it is almost impossible for a disabled woman to find a man who will accept her.

I made a special radio programme on Wazma’s story, dedicated to Wazma herself, in which we invited experts to discuss the lives of women in her situation. As a journalist, I couldn’t demand that Waheed return Farah to her mother; I wasn’t a judge in court but at least I could tell the world her story. The essence of the programme was that disabled people have the same rights to family life as anyone else. I hoped this programme would have a deep impact on the audience and especially on Wazma’s family.

The next day when I went to the office, I was still thinking about Wazma. Her story had affected me, too, and I had spent the night thinking about her. A colleague came up to me and told me that I had to be at my desk in an hour’s time because someone was going to call me from the United States. I was surprised because I wasn’t expecting a call. I asked who the caller was and my colleague just shrugged and said the person only asked to speak to the presenter of Afghan Woman’s Hour.

An hour later, I found myself speaking to an Afghan living in America. He told me how he had heard yesterday’s programme and it had made him cry. He hadn’t been able to get the woman who had lost her leg in a rocket attack out of his mind and wanted to help her. He offered to provide Wazma with money on a regular basis. Fortunately, I was going to Afghanistan later that month and was able hand her the money in person. Wazma’s story had touched someone in our audience to the point where they were prepared to do something.

During my time at Afghan Woman’s Hour, not a day would pass without a reporter sending us a story about a family or woman living in extreme poverty. The war has deprived so many people of their homes, land, jobs and income, and they now find themselves trying to survive in plastic tents in Kabul city. If you’re on your first visit to the capital and compare it to the provincial cities of Afghanistan, Kabul might appear to be quite developed and wealthy, but look closer and you will be shocked by the number of beggars standing in the road.

Out in the field, whenever I was talking to women and gathering stories, people would run towards me, eager to show me their torn clothing and wretched-looking children. They would assume I belonged to a non-governmental organisation (NGO) or the United Nations, there to distribute food or some other aid. There have been many occasions when I have told these women that I’m from the BBC and not from a charity, and seen their hopeful faces fall with disappointment. Once I met a little girl who was carrying water to her home from a nearby well in a village on the outskirts of Kabul. Her hands were frozen and she was crying with cold. I felt useless and wished God could give me millions of pounds so that I could help these people.

Each time I go back to Afghanistan and am confronted by extreme poverty, I think how grateful I should be to God for everything I have.
When I walk into a supermarket in London I’m faced with a bewildering choice of different types of bread and I’m aware that in Kabul a girl will stand at the roadside and beg all day long just for a crust of bread. When I first started returning to Afghanistan I used to give a few coins to beggars on the street but I found that within seconds I’d be swamped by a crowd of people – men, women and children – all desperate for money. A colleague soon warned me against doing this; he worried that if I didn’t give every one of them money, I might be attacked. It was certainly frightening to be surrounded by a dozen beggars in a busy city like Kabul with all the security risks.

According to a UN report, a third of the Afghan population lives below the official poverty line. In many of the poorest families the breadwinner is disabled, has fallen ill or even died. And these families do not have a relative in the West who can send them money every month. So those who have no one to care for them starve, their children starve, and they die from the freezing cold in winter or the stifling heat in summer.

On one trip to Afghanistan I encountered a woman begging on the streets. She was carrying her baby daughter who looked only a few months old. I tried to talk to the woman about her life, but she said, ‘Sister, if you’re going to give me some money then it’s fine to stand here and talk to me. Otherwise, please don’t waste my time.’ I’ve found it hard to get this woman out of my head, holding her child in the middle of a chaotic and busy street in the centre of Kabul. It was dusty and noisy and bitterly cold. The baby’s lips had turned blue and the mother wore plastic shoes with holes in the soles. I looked at the two of them, both stiff with cold, and I urgently wanted to help, but there was so little I could do. I gave the woman some money and left. As I walked back to the office, her words were ringing in my head. She was right. Why would she waste her time being interviewed by me when she could be attracting the attention of passing cars and people and getting money for food?