Three forced marriages, war, and patriarchy
Salima is a woman with a deep voice. She has been in four marriages, and all, except for the first, were forced on her. She is 65 years old. Her back is bent. The wrinkles on her neck are a testament to a difficult life.
I saw Salima at my mother’s house. They were friends. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I sat next to her and asked her how many wars she remembers. “I remember many wars,” she responded without thinking. “Every time there was a war, one of my loved ones was killed. Three of my husbands and one son were killed in the war. I did not count nieces and nephews. My son’s death was enough.” Anger crept into her throat when she talked about her son’s death but her voice was not loud. She cried bitterly, pain filling her entire being.
She went silent. My mother brought her tea and chocolate and after a chat, she and I were alone again. I wanted to know about the three men who were her husbands and who had been killed in a war. She wanted to talk. Maybe she had previously told stories about those three men, but people did not listen. After all, the story of war and death in our country is tiresome and many do not want to talk about it.
“How did your first husband die?” I asked. “It was a war. My husband was a gunman for his uncle. He was his uncle’s bodyguard. His uncle had looted and killed. When my husband’s uncle died, his enemies cut my husband to pieces. I had two children. I returned to my mother’s house,” Salima told me. Her brother told her that she should get married but she begged to be left alone. But her brother married her to another man without consulting with Salima and got 20,000 afghani for his sister and her children. Salima was still mourning the death of her first husband but had no choice but to reluctantly go to another man’s house and become a bride and wife.
She lived with this man for a year. Then her husband was accused of being a member of the PDPA [a Marxist political party] and was killed by a group of mujahedeen. Salima, who now had three children, again went back to the house of the same brother who had sold her to her second husband. She stayed there six months, again begging and insisting that her family not give her away to a husband. Salima’s pleas go nowhere.
They give her and three orphaned children to another man in exchange for money and grain. Salima cried and wailed as she went to that man’s house. For two years, she warmed his bed with a sad heart until another war broke out in the region and he was also killed.
This time, Salima stayed in her third husband’s house and refused to return to her family. Her brother came, threw her in the back of a car with her children and belongings, and forced her back to their family home. Again, he sold her to a man. Salima does not remember how much money they received the last time they gave her her fourth husband. Salima became a second wife to an angry, violent man prone to violence.
Salima worked like a slave and gave birth to more children. After each child was born, the first wife of her husband interrogated Salima, asking from whom she gave birth to that child because the first wife never let her husband sleep in Salima’s bed. Then, three days after giving birth, Salima would be forced to again do housework. For 35 years, Salima had to live with this man. She gave birth to seven children, two of whom died. Another son from her second husband became a soldier for the previous government and died fighting in northern Afghanistan.
Throughout her life, Salima has suffered through war and patriarchy. Now that her husband is old and needs Salima more than ever. His first wife passed away years ago, while her sons are gone with their own wives and children and her daughters are married off. Salima is left with a husband who used to punch and kick her. “What’s the point? He is still a problem for me,” she says. “He depends on me for his survival.”
Of all the people who hurt her, Salima complains the most about her brother. “He sold me many times,” she says. The result of marrying four times and becoming a mother 12 times is a long tale of suffering for Salima.
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewee and writer. Alma Begum is the pseudonym of a journalist in Afghanistan.*Alma Begum is the pseudonym for a female writer in Afghanistan.
