By Atia FarAzar* and Mahsa Elham*
As I enter her room, Golchehra* turns her face away, unwilling to talk. Her young forehead should be smooth but is creased with wrinkles. Immediately, she leaves holding a book. I can read part of its title: “Biology, Grade Ten.”
Golchehra was a 16-year-old student in the ninth grade when the Taliban prohibited female students from attending school. Golchehra occasionally cries because she can no longer attend school, study, or see her friends. Sometimes, she gets angry or even despises herself.
She lives with her family in a remote village in the Samangan province of Afghanistan. One evening in February 2022, when she was supposed to prepare dinner, she tried to leave their home. Her father got angry and struck her a few times. Upon seeing her father’s behaviour, Golchehra tried to harm herself by hitting her face, but her mother stopped her.
Her mother, Anisa*, is concerned about her daughter’s changing behaviour and deteriorating mental state. So, in April 2022, after seeking advice from neighbourhood women, she took her daughter to a cleric in the city of Aybak. Anisa tells Zan Times that they had to pay a fee to the cleric and provide food. They were there for two days and two nights. “The cleric prayed for her for two days and said she was scared and would get better soon. He took his fee and left,” she explains.
Those prayers didn’t help Golchehra, whose condition worsened. So her family sought out medical help. “We took Golchehra to a doctor in our neighbourhood, who was a women’s specialist,” said her mother, explaining that their area doesn’t have a mental health specialist. “After examining her, she said that Golchehra had no specific health problems and would get better without medication.”
Golchehra continued to experience frequent nervous breakdowns, which her father thought meant she was possessed by evil spirits. They paid between 500 to 10,000 afghani per session to more than 100 clerics who promised to exorcize the ghosts from her body. A cleric in Balkh province poured water into her daughter’s mouth to make the jinn leave her body. “Several clerics beat my daughter with a cable. She would cry, saying don’t hit me, my body hurts, but with every cry, the clerics would beat her even more and say, ‘This is not you; these are your jinn showing their reaction,’” Anisa recounts.
Three months ago, Golchehra’s family finally took her to a neurologist in Kabul. “When we went to the doctor, he prescribed medication for her and said she had neurological disorders and severe depression,” her mother explains, adding that her daughter shows signs of improvement.
Although the phenomenon of people seeking help from clerics for their medical issues has existed for a long time in Afghanistan, the current lack of female doctors and specialists as well as severe financial difficulties have led even more families to seek out religious leaders.
The Taliban recently initiated campaigns to close down shops of sorcerers or mullahs performing those acts, claiming that what they are doing is un-Islamic. Videos are circulating on social media that expose these individuals as fakes and charlatans.
Sociologists argue that the Taliban’s approach to dealing with clerics and sorcerers is irrational because, by shutting schools, crippling modern education, and making it impossible for medical personnel to work in many parts of the country, they are actually contributing to the proliferation of this phenomenon.
Habib Farzad, a Ph.D. student at South Asian University in India, tells Zan Times that, due to their opposition to modern and rational education, The Taliban have created the conditions for promoting clerics and sorcerers as healers. “By closing schools, censoring knowledge, and restricting access to information, the Taliban are pressuring society to turn to superstition,” he explains. “Rationality, free knowledge based on one’s intellect, is in conflict with the rule of the Taliban, their ideology, and the intellectual foundation of their group. They understand this. If they are sincere in their actions, which I doubt, they will not achieve any results because their main policy is to produce superstition and push society towards superstition.” In addition, when public services and access to education are not available, the people are forced to turn to superstition for help, he states.
Shukria*, a 46-year-old heart and vascular patient, went to a cleric when her family couldn’t obtain the desired results from doctors in Sheberghan city in Jawzjan province. She believes the prescribed medicine didn’t relieve her pain because the doctor misdiagnosed her condition. “In Jawzjan, there is no government clinic that provides services in the Mirwais area, and there are no female specialist doctors in this province. There are only one or two men, I don’t know if they are specialists, who gave me many medicines, but none had any effect,” she says.
When the medication proved ineffective, her husband’s family thought she’d gone insane and was possessed by evil spirits, explains Shukria to Zan Times. So they took her to a cleric in Sar-e Pul province. “The cleric tied my hands tightly with a piece of string, then he beat my shoulders and back with a stick, saying he would drive out the jinn,” she recounts. Her heart pain and shortness of breath worsened significantly after several clerics attempted to treat her illness. In addition, she had trouble sleeping. She asked her husband, then working in Iran, to return home and take her to Balkh or Kabul. “My husband, who came, took me to Kabul. We went to a doctor, who recommended a heart specialist. When we went, the doctor diagnosed that one of the valves of my heart was blocked. Now I’m taking medicine, but I might need surgery,” she says.
Sara’s family also used clerics in an attempt to heal her illness. The 15-year-old in Ghor province had suffered from severe stomach pain for a year. After doctors failed to diagnose her illness, her family took her to a cleric. She stayed in a dark room for three days while a cleric prayed for her three times a day in an attempt to ease her pain. Only her mother, Zarlasht*, is allowed to enter her daughter’s room. She believes that clerics will heal her. “There are no good doctors; all the doctors have fled. I have lost hope because I have visited the doctors many times, and I even took my daughter to Herat once, but there was no result,” she tells Zan Times.
In addition to paying fees, which ranges from 7,000 to 10,000 afghani per session, Sara’s family also have to provide food and living expenses for the cleric during those three-day sessions. Still, Zarlasht is optimistic: “For now, my hope is with the cleric because people speak highly of him and say he produces results. Clerics treat by placing their hands over the patient’s head, muttering something under their breath, and then performing a charm at the end.”
Even those who can afford proper medical care are finding it increasingly hard to find. Many qualified medical personnel left the country after the Taliban takeover while many of those who remained were forced to abandon their practices due to the Taliban’s strict laws and restrictions. In addition, many in Afghanistan cannot afford to transport the ill to the capital, where specialists still practice. As a result, women like Shukria, Golchehra, and Sara are at risk. Shukria says that if her husband had not acted, she could have died: “I realized my heart would stop beating soon. I don’t know how many other women face the same situation.”
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writer. Aatia Faraazar and Mahsa Elham are the pseudonyms of Zan Times journalists in Afghanistan.
