My name is Mehria. I am 16 years old and I live in northern Afghanistan. Since birth, I have had a disability in one of my legs, which becomes more apparent when I walk. My mother says my disability is congenital and cannot be cured with treatment.
I have three brothers and one surviving sister. One of my brothers was born with a hole in his heart. Ten years ago, my father, with the help of his brothers, took my brother to India for treatment, and fortunately he recovered. Six years ago, one of my sisters was also born with a hole in her heart. She died after only a few months.
When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, I was in grade six. After I completed that year, I could no longer continue my education.
While I was going to school, I never thought about my disability or my future. I was at school from eight in the morning until noon. Then, from two to four in the afternoon I would go to the madrasa with my sister. When I came home, I helped my mother with housework. At night, I reviewed my school and madrasa lessons. I had no time to worry about my disability. I had a goal that I was working toward: I thought my studies could compensate for my physical impairment.
After the schools were closed, I have become a source of worry for my mother and family because of my disability and because I am getting older. My father and mother, my grandmother, my aunts, and my mother’s sisters all feel ashamed because of me. According to them, with the problem I have, no one will be willing to marry me.
I always thought my disability was not very serious. After all, I can walk, work, and play. But my family is deeply worried about what people will say. They do not like taking me with them to gatherings. At my uncle’s wedding, I wanted to dance, but my aunt stopped me and said, “You want to dance with that leg and draw everyone’s attention to yourself?”
A year ago, when I turned 15, my father said to my mother, “You and these two daughters of yours are your own responsibility. I have nothing to do with their lives or their future. Whether they grow up well or badly, whatever happens to them, it is only your responsibility. My sons are enough for me.”
My father’s words made my mother even more worried. Sometimes I feel like an extra, heavy burden on her shoulders.I even feel that my mother treats me differently from my other siblings.
My father does not have a regular job, nor does he have a steady income. Sometimes he gets money through the help of his brothers, which he spends however he wants. He is not kind to me, or to any of my siblings.
When other people talk about their fathers’ love, I wish I had experienced that kind of love, too. I do not know at all what a father’s love feels like. I am very afraid of my father. I cannot even sit and eat at the same tablecloth with him. Sometimes I think my mother loves me, but her constant worry about my future makes her resent me. My mother is afraid no one will marry me because my leg is crooked, and I will remain unmarried for the rest of my life, which would be a constant burden on her.
When I was about six years old, I was hit by a car. Fortunately, I was not seriously injured. But what has remained in my mind more than the accident itself is something my mother said to me years later, “I wish you had died in that accident, so all this suffering and worry would not have been created for you and for me.”
My mother said those words after my aunt advised her to marry me off as soon as possible, because she believed that the older I became, the more visible my disability would be.
About three months ago, my mother, along with my aunt, said she wanted to speak to me about something important. I did not have a good feeling. My mother had never been kind to me, or perhaps she simply could not show her affection. She always made me feel that I was a heavy and unnecessary burden on her shoulders.
My mother said, “We have decided to marry you off, and you have to accept it because this is the only proposal you have, and perhaps it will be your last. With your condition, no one else is willing to marry you.”
The man is a friend of my maternal uncle. He lives in a remote village and is a wealthy man. He has two wivesHis first wife gave birth to four daughters. Hoping to have a son, he married a second wife, but she also had daughters. That man had told my uncle to find him a wife, saying that it did not matter how much money her family wanted, as long as she could give him a son.
My uncle discussed the matter with his family. My grandmother suggested that they marry me to that man.
I was terrified and felt as if the world had collapsed on me. I did not know who to turn to for help because the people closest to me wanted to punish me because of my disability. No one had asked me whether I agreed to this marriage or not. Instead, they told me I had to accept it because I was disabled and no one else would be willing to marry me.
All the members of my family had agreed to my marriage to a man who is the same age as my father. The only obstacle was my uncle. Because he was the man’s friend, he felt ashamed to offer his 16-year-old niece to him as a wife, and for that reason he did not pursue the matter. In this way, I was saved from that marriage.
Even so, the fear of being forced into a marriage remains one of the greatest fears of my life. Every day I live with the fear that my family will order me to marry someone I have had no role in choosing.
When I still had the right to go to school, I was happy because I could study and build my future. I wanted to become a teacher. My mother was not worried about me at the time, perhaps hoping that I would be able to build my own future through my studies.
Now, my mother is always thinking about my future and my marriage.
I wish the schools would reopen so that I could study, become independent, and build my own future — and so that my mother would no longer worry about my future or constantly think about marrying me off.
Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewee and writer.
Raha Malik is the pseudonym of a Zan Times Fellow in Afghanistan.
