Portrait of a rural Afghan woman

This publication is part of the “Towards Equality” Sparknews-led program, a collaborative alliance of 16 international news outlets highlighting the challenges and solutions to reach gender equality.

Laila calls this remote corner of the Afghan desert home; here, water and greenery are mere mirages. This desolate stretch isn’t far from a security outpost in the Baghlan Province, which for years has witnessed relentless fighting.

Laila’s house, like all the others here, is crafted from mud and straw and is the same colour as the harsh arid landscape. At age 30, her face already has more creases than her long, worn skirt; each line tells the painful story of a youth of deprivation and yearning.

For Laila, life should revolve around “water, books and being by the side of her lover,” yet all these fundamental rights have been denied to her. The only place water can be found near her settlement is the local mosque, which supplies brackish, undrinkable water, so she fetches potable water from a township farther away. Every drop is precious, life sustaining.

In the village where Laila’s father lives, girls’ education is limited to memorising a few verses of the Quran, and it is rare to find a girl over the age of 20 who is unmarried.

“Every day, a girl gets engaged in our village,” she says.

Laila herself was engaged — and, in a way, sold — at the age of 15. After memorising a few chapters of the Quran and learning how to wrap her scarf around her neck, her father handed her over to his nephew, a man twice her age.

On the day the suitors came, Laila listened to her father’s conversations from behind the door. Despite knowing that her father had secretly sold her for 350,000 Afghanis (around $4,700), she somehow still hoped he would tell them no. Laila reflects on those days with heart-wrenching grief.

Wedding day

“Back then, I didn’t dare enter the house and disrupt the engagement. A person who doesn’t marry for love becomes severely ill. During my three-year engagement, every time they spoke my fiancé’s name and said, ‘your husband has arrived,’ I would be bedridden for days with fever and vomiting. Even on my wedding day, when I entered the house, I smelled a foul odour.”

As a child, Laila knew her fate wouldn’t be better than that of her sisters, but she found solace in her father’s words. He had told her that he would arrange her marriage in such a way that she could feel that she had chosen her husband herself. He did not keep his word. Then one day, despite witnessing her misery in her marital home, her father said, “If you can’t make it work, I might as well suffocate you myself.”

Thirteen years have passed since Laila’s marriage, during which she has given birth seven times; five of her children were stillborn.

The cycle of pregnancies and childbirth, accompanied by a mix of hope followed by depression and ill temper after the loss of yet another baby, has woven a tapestry of poignant stories. She holds back tears, takes a deep sigh and says, “If I don’t grow old, then who will?”

She feels intensely lonely. The sole means of connecting with the outside world is a small television. Illiterate, she has always harboured a wish to attend school and learn.

“Wearing a white school uniform has always been one of my dreams. Girls didn’t go to school in our area. We didn’t have a girls’ school, but I understood that education isn’t exclusive to boys. When I got married, there was an elementary school in a distant area, but my husband wouldn’t allow me to attend. He thought I was seeking an excuse to escape.”

When Laila’s husband denied her the right to read and write, she turned to Baluchi embroidery to alleviate her distress. She quickly mastered the craft and started making clothes for others.

Attend school

She found a few customers in the city — something that did not go unnoticed by her husband.

With a wry smile, Laila says: “He had troubled me so much that he thought I’d escape as soon as I had money in my hands.”

Fed up with her husband’s oppression and other people mocking her for her unsuccessful pregnancies, Laila finally decided to seek a divorce. She sought help from friends who were also her customers, but her husband became aware of her plans and made her life so miserable that she could not speak for a week.

Still, she did not back down. She had saved money for the day of her departure and intended to follow through with her plan. Then fate intervened. The Taliban, which had turned this region into a battlefield for years and made life a living hell for its residents, came back into power.

“It felt like a bucket of ice water had been poured over my head,” says Laila. “I was forced to reconcile with my husband; there was no way to escape.”

Now, Laila awakens every morning next to a man she despises, goes out to milk the cows, checks on her sheep and feeds her chickens. She has no opportunity to attend school and no permission to use her skills to earn money; she has neither a supportive family nor a government that advocates for women like her. Yet Laila has never resigned herself to all the hardship and violence — she still yearns for an ordinary life.