The lives of many women have been wrecked during the two-and-a-half years of Taliban rule. Our journalists asked eight women to recount their activities on a typical day living under Taliban gender apartheid in Afghanistan.
Biography: Nilab* is a 22-year-old graduate of a teachers’ college. Before the Taliban took power, she taught in a local high school in Kabul.
Date: February 4, 2024
8:58 a.m.
I am still waiting to see how today will unfold. I feel sorry for my brothers and sisters when we don’t even have bread for breakfast. My old and tired mother wants to use the stove. She burns papers and plastics in a wood stove to boil water and also warm up the cold room a little. She is more absorbed in thought than I am.
I remembered the days when I could buy firewood with my small salary as a teacher. The rancid smell of plastic smoke makes my mother cough. I give her water, but she does not drink; all her thoughts are focused on how to make breakfast. We both sit silently for a moment. There is nothing left of the bread that I collected yesterday. I can feel the lump of pain in my mother’s throat.
9:25 a.m.
Someone started banging on the door while I was cleaning. The person seems angry. I want to open the door, but my mother says, “You don’t go, I’m going.”
I listen to my mother talking to the landlord. “Aunt, it’s been two months since you did not pay the rent,” the landlord says. “I have no option; the situation is not good. Either you pay the rent or vacate the house.” My mother responds, “My child, please give me a few more days, I will pay the rent as soon as possible. You know my situation; I don’t have a breadwinner. I work to clean people’s houses.”
“Aunt, I will give you time this month, you must pay rent next month, otherwise I will not cut any more slack,” he warns. This was another concern being added to the sum of our other worries and sufferings. I worry we may not be able to get this money for another month.
11:12 a.m.
I leave the house with my mother. Both of us are wearing hijabs and are unidentifiable. We knock on the doors of houses one at a time, looking for work but can find no cleaning and laundry jobs.
We only drank black tea in the morning, without even dry bread. So, in addition to looking for work, we ask for dry bread. By around half past twelve, we’ve only collected six loaves of bread – just enough bread for our lunch and dinner.
“I can’t walk anymore, we have to go back home,” says my mother with a hoarse voice, who has diabetes and problems with foot pain.
On our way home, I see little boys with school bags and I remember the days when I taught my students with passion and enthusiasm. When I was teaching, I never imagined a day that I would knock on doors asking for bread.
I am ashamed of needing to do this. I can’t be outside alone, that’s why I bring my mother with me. When I look at her, I am ashamed of how hard she worked while raising her five children on her own. Her small income was enough to send me to school. Now I am a burden to my family and I can’t earn enough for a loaf of bread.
I hate being a girl in this country.
9:30 p.m.
My little brothers and sisters are sleeping. My mother still can’t sleep because of pain in her legs, arms, and back. Her blood sugar has increased today but we don’t have the money to buy proper drugs. She ran out of her medicine three days ago. To relieve her pain, I use Vaseline to massage her legs and hands.
I think again of how confident and happy I felt when I was earning my living as a teacher. With my small income, I used to pay all the household expenses, as well as rent and my mother’s medicine. When I was a teacher, my mother could stay home and didn’t need to work in other people’s homes. We thought we had an opulent life.
But I became unemployed when the girls’ schools were closed. They wouldn’t even hire me in elementary schools, saying they had a surplus of teachers. When I beg at the gates of people’s homes, I worry that I may come across one of my former students, who will recognize me.
I wish I could have a job to rebuild my life.
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewee.
