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my sibling who was back then in Kabul.
Yes, those blackmailing and threats worked because they scared me. I was filled with fear from
all those threats. And why I should not be. I had never experienced living even a night out
without my family and their protection, He was the first man in my life and that was an
experience which I wish to no one.
And of course being brought up in a cultural Afghan family we are taught and reminded
throughout our life’s that as a girl our parents’ house is a temporary place we are living and one
day we will marry and leave our paradise. We will have to then obey and survive whatever
comes across our marriage lives, we can never leave our husbands house, we shall never
complain about no matter what happens with us and only our death can separate us from our
husbands and problems.
I never understood this ideology, why is that so? Why are we taught as a girl that we have to
tolerate even though if we have to suffer throughout our lives? Why because we are girls!!
What if we are girls, are we not human? Don’t we have feelings? are we just robots who has to
follow instructions first from our parents as a child, then our brothers when we grow up as
teens, after marring obeying all the laws and instructions of our husbands and then even when
we get old we have to follow what our kids want and especially if it’s a son then things have to
be according to him. Why is that so? how long and how much more we as a girl, women need
to tolerate.
I was abused orally and physically, he beat me up to a point where I got a fracture in my left
lumbar vertebrae and at some point I broke, I could not take the pain anymore and I
mentioned just a few things to my mother and at first she told and advised me to tolerate but
soon she realized that things are far beyond imagination and she tried to talk to my ex-husband
and his family to solve the issues but of course how dare I as a woman mentioned things to my
family and now they wanted to accuse me with whatever they could in order to blame me for
their own behavior and to cover up their guilt.
And they started accusing me of many things my character, my behavior. I was called as
someone who has a loose character and thrown out of the house. I wish I could explain the pain
and feelings of that night, there are no words to explain what I have gone through that day.
After that, I spent months in hospitals, years in women shelter house. Suffered pain, tears and
kept asking myself why it had to happen. My heart was broken. I was in a mental situation
where I was not capable to think about anything. I used to sit on the window site and spent
hours looking at the sky without thinking anything else with an empathy, frozen, shocked and
traumatized mind. I used to cry for hours and often I witnessed the sun rise without even
realizing the time.
I have to say there was a time when I had only one question WHY is that all happened to me,
why me and why I was treated like this!! Believe me, I asked this question may be with every
single breath I took for a very long time. I was unable to stop my tears my heart was feeling
nothing but pain.