Read Online Dear Zari: Hidden Stories from Women of Afghanistan by Zarghuna Kargar - Free Book Online Page A

enjoyable days we’d ever spent together.
    A couple of weeks later I saw Sharifa at the bus stop where we used to wait for our school bus. As soon as she saw me she started crying, and passers-by stopped to stare at her outburst. Some even poked fun at her for crying on the street, making nasty comments – ‘Why are you crying? Do you need a man?’, ‘Are you crying for a husband? Why don’t you come with me?’, ‘What’s the matter, can’t you get a man? Do you want some cock?’
    I hugged her tightly, not caring what these strangers were saying. I wished I’d been able to shout something back at them, but it wouldn’t have been safe. I looked closely at Sharifa, and said, ‘Try to calm down. What’s the matter? Has something happened to your mother?’
    Sharifa was more upset than I’d ever seen her. She could barely speak without gulping for air. At last, she gasped, ‘Zarghuna, I’m ruined, my mother is destroyed, everything is lost.’ Immediately I thought her mother must have had a miscarriage, or a serious problem while delivering the baby. Again I calmly asked her what had happened, but by this time Sharifa was crying hysterically and it was clear from her puffy, red eyes that she’d been crying for a long time. ‘Zarghuna, it’s another girl!’
    I could see how exhausted she was, as if all the energy had drained from her body, and I decided to take her back to my home. When we arrived back at my house my mother was surprised to see us both, but I explained that Sharifa was upset and my mother accepted this without further question. I made some sweet tea and as we sat down on the carpet, I tried to calm Sharifa down. As I did so, I wondered what kind of society we were living in. How could it make any sense that an innocent baby girl could bring so much pain and suffering to Sharifa and her family?
    I could only imagine that Sharifa’s mother was even more distressed than her daughter, and struggled to understand how a lovely baby girl could come into the world and not be wanted by anyone. She was being judged for her gender and it seemed bitterly unfair. Struggling to say the right thing to Sharifa, I ended up saying the first thing which sprang tomind, and it was far from helpful. ‘You should be happy, Sharifa. You have a little sister who will bring laughter and happiness—’
    ‘No,’ Sharifa shouted, ‘that baby has brought nothing but pain and sorrow, and my mother’s life is a living hell now. My dad is not speaking to her and no one has even congratulated her for bringing a healthy baby into world. My mother is not feeding her and I can’t even hold her.’
    She lowered her voice and mumbled, ‘My family will be scarred for ever by this, and now I have to marry some stranger that my father has chosen for me, because he is marrying a girl from that family in the hope of bringing a son to our family.’
    I ventured some more useless advice: ‘Why don’t you show your father how upset you are and ask him not to make you go through with this?’
    I knew even as I spoke that this would be impossible. In our culture fathers take no notice of what their daughters say, and once their decision is made about a daughter’s marriage, it is final.
    I knew not only that Sharifa had no choice but to accept her father’s decision, but also that Sharifa’s mother would have to live with her husband’s new wife, a girl half her age. The usual practice was for a man to pay for a wife by giving her family money, but Sharifa’s father didn’t have enough money to buy a new bride so he had to exchange one of his daughters instead. For Sharifa’s father this arrangement would kill two birds with one stone; he would marry off one of his daughters and get a young bride who would give him a son.
    After we’d spoken for a while Sharifa calmed down, we drank more tea and then I walked her home. When I got back it was clear my mother knew what had happened, so I asked what she thought Sharifa