The Hidden Half: A Photo Essay on Women in Afghanistan
Afghanistan has more than 2 million widows, and these and other desperately poor women often turn to prostitution, despite the risk of being killed by their families if they are discovered. So they remain in the shadows, beneath a double veil of tradition and shame. This woman’s husband is too old to work. She sold her daughter into marriage before the girl was 10, and now she sells herself.
Malalai Kakar became a police officer before the rise of the Taliban. It helped, she says, that her father and brother were also police officers, and her grandfather a tribal elder. When the Taliban rose to power, she fled to Pakistan. When she returned to work after they were ousted, she received death threats. To "protect her honor" and her family, the mother of six patrolled with her brother and wore a burka in the field. But she goes uncovered now, so as to "tell women about their rights."
Self-immolation has long been the preferred method of suicide in Afghanistan, but "the trend is upward," says Ancil Adrian-Paul of the women's nonprofit Medica Mondiale. Girls as young as nine set themselves ablaze, typically with cooking oil. In Herat Province, where last year 90 women lit themselves on fire, Zahra spent 93 days in the burn unit. Her husband beat her regularly, told her she was worthless and should just light a match. So she did. She is, by some accounts, lucky: More than 70 percent of victims of self-immolation do not survive.
The waters of Band-i-Amir Lake are thought to cure many ailments, including infertility. If a woman has not conceived soon after marriage, her husband’s family will often travel for days-by car, donkey, camel, or foot-to bring her here. Most Afghans don't know how to swim, so the woman is tethered around the waist as she enters the lake. The husband follows behind and, as is the custom, pushes her into the frigid water three times.
Twenty-four-year-old Shaima Rezayee hosted a popular music show on Tolo TV. She was strong, independent, unmarried, and she refused to wear the burka. In 2005 her sister found her dead in her Kabul apartment, shot in the head. Rezayee's brothers were charged with her murder-a rarity, as few are ever prosecuted for honor killings.
Source: MotherJones