Grief and Sorrow of Afghan Women
Shameen’s brown eyes almost disappeared when she thought she wanted to erase one day from her memory, but it still seems so clear. Still in a state of trauma, she recounts the events that brought her to be in a safe house in Kabul, Afghanistan.
She was raped and stabbed nearly killed by her own husband seven days earlier. Her lips and eyes are shaking and full of fear when she told the incident. “He fell on his body on me. I can only scream,” she said.
She got married (by arrangement) 15 years ago when she was a teenager. Along the way she was tortured and abused, every day she suffered a blow with electric wires or metal plates. “He was chasing me with a hammer. He said, if I’m quiet he would stab me,” said Shameen about her husband’s behavior.
She and her husband can not have kids. In Afghanistan, the issues like this, mistakes are always blamed on women.
After a case of severe beatings, Shameen escaped from the house towards the police station. Her husband had promised the police that he was not going to attack her again. Thus, even Shameen relented and agreed to return to the house with her husband.
A few days at home, she was invited by her husband to go to the tomb of Shameen’s sister. Her sister was still 15 years old and burned to death because not able to please her husband.
Shameen said her little sister was 11 years old when he was forced to marry a man older than her sister. Her husband continued to beat her until one day her husband killed her.
When Shameen walked in the cemetery with her husband, he brought her to the place of worship. There, her husband insisted she fell to the ground, revealing a burka and raped her. Her husband threatened her with a knife and asked him, who will help him now. Shameen shouted as he slashed her neck and body.
Lucky, a passer rescued. Now, she has no one else to lean on, not even her parents. In their eyes, Shameen has made them embarrassment, an offense that can be executed.
In Afghanistan, a woman blamed for the injustices they experienced. Shameen said, when her sister was murdered, her parents turn a blind eye. She missed the parents and siblings but she knew she could not see them again. “They’ll kill me,” she said without blinking.
She is now hiding in a safe house, isolated, and alone. Like most women of Afghanistan, she lost all hopes.
Afghanistan is a country that for centuries looked at women as property, is not considered equal. Women are often beaten, raped, and even sold to the highest bidder. There is little place for women to complain.
The government took Shameen to a shelter run by Women for Afghan Women (WAW). The organization started in New York, United States, providing humanitarian assistance for women who do not know that they have rights. Currently, in that safe house, WAW gives attention, security, and education for women and 54 children.
According to United Nation’s institutions for women (UNDF for Women), about 90 percent of Afghan women suffer domestic violence. However, there is only less than a dozen places like WAW’s safe house in Afghanistan and was usually managed non-governmental organizations. The perpetrators are rarely prosecuted or punished, and most women are afraid to say anything about the violence they experience.
“Their mother is beaten by their father. They were also beaten by their fathers or brothers. This is a way of life,” said Manizha Naderi, director of WAW. Naderi is an Afghan-American who grew up in New York and returned to Afghanistan to work with other women in hopes of bringing change to the country. Although, he says, a change that requires several generations.
“They saw their mother beaten, they saw their sister, their aunt, everyone,” said Naderi.
Not just women who suffer. Hosnia is eight years old cheerful girl. She likes to play with toys and other little girls in the shelter. She shakes her body on the mat where she sits on. The shaking rocks her green plastic earrings she wore when she spoke with a muffled voice.
“I’ve got trouble,” she said when asked what she was doing at the shelter.
Her smile faded as he recalled the fact that her being there. Three years ago, when Hosnia age five, she was raped and left to die outside his home in northern Afghanistan. Her father found her blood-covered floats in the middle of a small river. She spent a month in hospital to recover his small body of these brutal attacks.
Since love and fear of her life, her father took him to the safe house was owned by WAW. According to WAW, the rapist of Hosnia is a teenage boy from a wealthy family. That teen sentenced only for a moment, he was quickly released from prison because of tribal and family connections. WAW was pressing the authorities to review the case. Adolescent rapists were later sentenced to six years in a youth prison in Kabul.
The rapist was serving three years. Hosnia’s parents are still afraid of their daughter’s life. Thus, the shelter becomes home now, and women and children there be a family. “We’ll take care of him until today,” said Naderi.
Hosnia father, a poor farmer, knew an opportunity for her daughter to have a future in a country where rape victims are punished is precisely when he grew up in the shelter. It has dozens of stories about broken hearts; it also is home to dozens of women and girls who have the courage to live in a country where being a woman are one of the greatest dangers.