In the last days of the winter, it had snowed so much that there was no any way to go to the spring to bring water. I lit wet and dry firewood together in the fictile burner, filled a big caldron with snow, and put it on the fire to melt. I infused a dusty tea from the meltwater and put more snow in the remaining hot water to melt water for the sheep and cows. It was a tough winter, but now when I think about that winter, it was the last season I was living with my parents. By the end of the winter, I started an excruciating life.
In the spring of 2004, my father died of a stroke. After his death, my mother was paralyzed and passed away after a year of pain and illness. We remained two single people: My younger brother, and I. I was going to school and my brother was farming.
I was the oldest student in a class of 60 people. Due to the lack of teachers, I volunteered to teach the girls at the elementary school. It was the starting point of my teaching journey.
High School Graduation and University Exclusion
Dividing the inheritance, our house went to my younger brother. All my older brothers got their shares. But there were not the names of me and my three sisters in our father’s testament, meaning we did not have the right to inherit. I was left homeless and an extra burden on my little brother’s shoulders.
He told me many times to get married and I left his house, fearing that I would not be able to go to school after marriage. With my duffle bag, I used to go to one brother’s house, and when his wife’s behavior changed towards me, I would move to another brother’s house. Likewise, I moved to my sisters’ house many times until I finished high school and passed the Kankor exam.
At that time, there was no internet or television in our village. On a cold winter night, in a local radio news bulletin, I heard that the results of the Kankor exam had been announced. “Following the news,” the news presenter said, “call us in a live program so that we tell you whether you have succeeded in the Kaknor or not.”
hesitatingly, I called the radio program. The host of the program wanted me some information that was necessary to find the results. Then, he said: “You have been admitted to the Computer Science Faculty of Herat University, Congratulations!”
I didn’t know whether to scream from the excitement of succeeding in the Kankor exam or to cry because no one was going to support me to continue my studies.
A few days later, the winter ended. By the new year, village boys and girls began to get ready to go to the cities and universities. But I had spent all the money I had earned through teaching for my brothers, while now none of them were willing to pay my travel costs to Herat province.
I returned to school and started teaching. Later, I got a capacity-building opportunity in a teacher training center in Nili City, Daikundi province.
I still begrudge studying at the university, but, as much as possible, I studied in other education centers. Commuting to Nili City, I met a boy who had just returned from Iran. He had sent me a marriage proposal through a friend of mine. Even though we didn’t know each other much, I accepted his proposal to avoid my brother’s wife’s taunts, saying I had grown old and no one would marry me anymore. I started a new life with my husband, my mother-in-law, and a teenage sister-in-law.
Domestic Violence Experience
Before our marriage, I had told my husband that I wanted to continue my job as a teacher after marriage. He had accepted. But when I was getting ready to go to the village where I worked, he and his mother didn’t allow me to go.
after a long talking and arguing with my husband, he accepted to go with me to that village. My mother-in-law stayed at her home with her daughter and we went to the village where I was working as a teacher.
A year after, domestic violence began to intensify, and the second winter in the husband’s house was also spent with domestic violence and family disputes.
One day, while I was seven months pregnant, I was kneading the dough in the kitchen. I was daydreaming about meeting my students again. I had missed the girls and colleagues.
Suddenly, my husband appeared in the kitchen and brutally kicked me on the back and on two sides. I lost my balance and fell down on my stomach. A sharp pain started in my stomach and spread to my back. When I stood up, my husband attacked me again and hit me on the head and face so much that I was bleeding from my mouth and nose. Then he left the kitchen.
The day was over and it was night. The dough was left in the kitchen. There was nothing for the diner. My husband didn’t return home. The next day, I went to my work village by a passenger car on the Daykundi-Kabul route.
A week later, my husband appeared again, this time in the school. He slapped me in the face several times in the schoolyard in front of my students. I didn’t defend myself for fear of harming my baby in the stomach. But the school guard arrived and kicked him out of the school.
A year later, my husband came back with a bill of divorce, saying “Give me my son and I go!” But when I asked for my marriage portion, he gave me my son in exchange for it. In fact, since he didn’t have money, he sold my son to me in exchange for my marriage portion, which was about 200,000 Afghanis (around $2,000). I believed in the power of my independence and started a new life with my little son.
Wool-spinning at Home Instead of Teaching at School
I have been a single mother for six years. Along with all other challenges, I struggle with the cold winters of this village. Life is too difficult for single mothers in a village where the sources of income for the majority of the families are livestock and agriculture. My son and I don’t even have a piece of land to plant a tree on. We live in a rented house and I have no source of income other than my school salary.
The teachers’ salaries in the villages have never been paid on time. They are always being paid with a three- to-four-months delay. But with the girls’ school’s shutdown by the Taliban, we are facing an uncertain future. Now, I take the black and white sheep wool from the village women, and after passing them through an iron comb, I turn them into yarns. After they hand over the yarns, the women give me a small amount of money as a wage.
