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Women Behind the Veil
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Sitting in a corner of her mud-straw hut, Gul Bibi remembers Afghanistan as ‘jannat kada’ (a heavenly place). Her six children, mother-in-law and husband have just left the room after finishing their meal of raw onions, chutney and naan. The dark, windowless room still smells of food. “Back home we would embellish our food with ‘kroot’ (dried curd), orange rind and raisins,” reminisces Gul. Refugees now, Gul and her family struggle to cope with hostile conditions by reminiscing about the past. Sitting together, sharing romanticised memories, provides more pleasure than the bland food shared by the family from a large dish. The majority of the Afghan refugees have chosen to settle in the North-West Frontier Province because of its physical and social proximity to their homeland. Kohat is one of the areas with a heavy concentration of refugees. Sheen Dand, located in the northeast of Kohat, is home to several Afghan refugees who lost their homes and property during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The overwhelming majority of the refugees here are labourers. They have no skills to help them gain employment and support themselves. They are waiting for a change in their situation but are not so sure whether it will materialise in the near future. They suffer from deep emotional pressures which are a result of inadequate living conditions, employment problems and widespread material deprivation. Both women and men have to overcome these every day problems simply in order to make ends meet and survive in a harsh environment. Concerns are work, health, and the future itself. In the mornings, the refugee camp wears the appearance of a woman’s world ? totally devoid of men. Women, clad in colourful clothes, move around uninhibitedly, doing their household chores. The men are struggling outside the camp, trying to make ends meet or sometimes just reclining under the shade of a tree listening to Pushtu music. A visitor to the camp is usually followed by a swarm of children hovering around her/him in excitement and anticipation. A visitor is often seen as a ‘viccine wala’ (vaccinator), especially if he/she is carrying a camera bag. Some parts of the refugee camp have a few desolate mud houses that remind one of shattered ant hills. They were abandoned by earlier inhabitants who left this camp and headed home. But conditions in Afghanistan remained unchanged, pushing them out, yet again, as refugees. Unwittingly, another cluster of mud houses was rebuilt and resettled by a horde of people. The resettled houses are now perched on top of a hill; each terrace is occupied by a number of extended families. The interiors of the houses give a glimpse of the land from where the inhabitants have migrated. One finds a long shelf running along the middle of the wall. It is often covered with an embroidered runner edged with tassels. Besides crockery, this ‘taakh’ (shelf) displays some of the family’s treasured mementos. A few formal photographs of the men of the family taken at a studio usually hold centrestage. Migration has had a different impact on refugee women from different age groups. Little girls are sent to school, but by the time they are 10 or 11, no matter how good they are academically, the parents pull them out of school. They are needed to help out with domestic chores or are engaged to be married off soon and consequently expected to observe purdah. Most little girls see school as a place that brings temporary joy to their demanding lives. They enjoy freedom amongst girls their own age. They are also able to play games like ‘chendrakho’ (hopscotch) and ‘pat patoaany’ (hide and seek). The moment they return home, they are assigned a long list of chores. Germana, aged nine, has been forced to quit school. To her, school was not only a place of learning but of recreation too. She was named Germana because when she was born her parents thought she looked like a German child. She is now expected to cover her head. Her family requires her to preserve family traditions and protect the family’s honour. Germana, still a child, is considered too old to play outside the four walls of her home, while her brother is at liberty to do so. Socially, her brief childhood has come to an end. At this stage of her life, she is expected to serve as a symbol of modesty and chastity: society demands that she put up an appearance that is at variance with her age. A typical day for Germana begins at the crack of dawn when she wakes up to help her mother prepare tea for the family. Later, she assists her with the household chores. Next she is sent to a neighbour Shaano’s house to learn embroidery. Shaano’s own daughter sits there embroidering a cap for her prospective husband. It is customary for the girls to prepare clothes and linen for their weddings with their own hands. Germana anxiously waits for her brother to return home from school for he has a lot of stories to tell her. In the evenings, like other women and girls in the camp she spends her time spinning cotton. The more she spins, the more she can contribute to the family’s income and help them emerge from the cycle of material deprivation. According to her mother, had they been back home in Afghanistan she might have studied further. Here, they are faced with societal pressures. Living with other families in the refugee camp means they are socially dependent on each other. They cannot afford to take a ‘pighore’ (taunt) from anyone in the camp for not observing purdah. Any public appearance by girls who have passed a certain age is seen as improper. Acceptance by other camp dwellers is vital for a family because social solidarity is the only strength they are left with at the end of the day. It is not just girls of school-going age who are confined to the home but women too, avoid stepping out of the camp. Recreational trips are neither encouraged nor affordable. If they could afford it, they’d rather visit their relatives back home. Most of the families in this refugee camp are either from Kandahar or Paktya. At a malik’s (village/camp chief) house, the malik’s newly married daughter was visiting from Naghmaan in Afghanistan, where she now lives, to spend a few days with her parents. Families prefer marrying off their daughters to men in Afghanistan. It is seen as a deterrent against assimilation. It is customary for a newly-wed bride to spend some days without her husband in her parent’s home. Meanwhile, the malik’s daughter-in-law has been brought from Afghanistan as part of a traditional deal called ‘badali’ (exchange marriage). Both the girls miss their parents’ home and feel torn between the two worlds. Zahida, now married in Afghanistan, feels life there is much better. “As long as you are wearing a burqa you are free to move around. My husband takes me for a cycle ride once in a while,” says Zahida. Her sister-in-law hopes one day her husband and her in-laws would be able to return to Afghanistan too. As refugees, while the men take up menial jobs outside the camp, women are busy bringing up children under squalid conditions. Generally, one observes a great sense of dissatisfaction amongst women refugees. Migration has increased restrictions on their movements and actions. Their conditions have worsened. There are a large number of widows, orphans and young women of childbearing age. Women do not space out their pregnancies, and with the unbalanced diet they subsist on, they are increasingly prone to giving birth to premature babies. These children are later susceptible to a variety of health problems. A woman from Kandahar, mother of five, is expecting her sixth child. She did not want any more children but had no clue what to do. She had some preconceived notions regarding birth control methods. ‘Pitchkari’ (injection), she said, ruins your health and ‘golai’ (pills) finish you from the inside. Most of the married women feel it is impossible to feed a large family in their living conditions. One of them even went to the extent of offering her newborn son for adoption. “My heart will tear apart but, at least he will live in comfort,” she cried. For married women, their husband’s inability to provide for the family forces them to spend their free time, if any, in producing handicrafts. Some sell their embroideries within the camp or to a local shop. In some houses, women weave cloth on a rickety wooden machine. Carpet-weaving has been abandoned because they do not have the financers to purchase the raw material for carpets. However, the most common activity amongst women and girls is spinning cotton or woollen yarn. These women have become such experts that one can scarcely tell the difference in quality between the hand-spun and the machine-spun yarn. It is not only a tedious process but also has adverse effects on their health. Eventually, the yarn is sold for 30 rupees a kilo. The tedious procedure earns them precious little, hardly enough to fill their stomachs. I was photographing a woman while she was spinning cotton and she turned her face away and said, “Couldn’t you have brought us some rice or meat?” Although the living conditions for the refugees in this area are difficult, women have devised some survival strategies of their own. They have formed a ‘khaygara committee’ (committee for betterment). This is a network of women that helps keep women and their families’ heads above water. Information is spread through a leader who works as a resource person to the other women in the camp. She is usually an older woman, with enough time to spread awareness within the community. She shares her knowledge and skills with other women of the area. Zainab Jana, highly respected by everyone in the community, is leader of this local network. I was invited to attend a women’s meeting that she had called in her home. The women sat in a circle and discussed embroidery patterns and how and where to get the raw material from. Meanwhile, two women started squabbling over something. Their gestures became more animated and their voices grew louder. It was over some clothes that one was supposed to stitch for the other. The woman whose clothes they were, was accusing the seamstress of cheating her by stitching clothes that were too tight for her and pinching the material for herself. The panel of women, who were careful not to take sides, eventually did manage to make peace between the two. The aim of this meeting was to resolve different problems the women in the camp were facing,without any outside intrusions. Squabbles over water and domestic quarrels were settled; midwives and Quran tutors were provided to those who needed them. One of the women had brought her son, who had injured his arm, to the meeting. Zainab Jana brought out her much treasured first aid kit that had been gifted to her by an organisation and treated the little boy with some of the basic equipment in it. Shen then proceeded to proudly recount several incidents when she had treated people in the camp with the help of her first aid kit. Zainab Jana and her “khaygara committee” are like a beacon of hope
to the Afghan women in their dismal lives |
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