Sakina is 33 years old and is the mother of a six-year-old girl. In Afghan society, having sex before marriage leads to stoning and murder. No girl can have sexual relations before getting married.
This is not the case with men. Although the sentence of stoning is the same if a man has sexual relations before marriage, men can simply say they never had them. This is another of the gender inequalities that Afghan women suffer from, because if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night and does not bleed a little during the first sexual encounter, it means that she has already had an affair with someone else.
This is not the case for many women, although there are those who can bleed a lot, there are also virgins, who do not bleed at all, but due to the lack of information about it, most young girls are worried about what will happen that night before getting married.
The bride’s family gives their daughter a white handkerchief so that if she bleeds, she can wipe it with it. The next day, the bride and groom’s family waits for them to receive the handkerchief with or without blood. If you wear a white handkerchief, it is a great misfortune for the girl and her family. Some families send the bride back to her father’s house, and in others they insult the bride all her life.
Most men choose to take a second wife because the first woman was not a virgin. From the perspective of the law, men have the right to have four wives. Some look for different excuses to have several.
Sakina was forced to running away with the same person who attacked her after being raped and, after a while, they got married. Sakina says her husband worked in the interior ministry of the previous government. Sakina studied to be a midwife and worked for a time in a hospital in the province of Kabul.
Account that frequently saw the effects of violence on women’s bodies and he understood perfectly what they were suffering. When they spoke, they recounted the violence and beatings of their husbands, which they had to endure due to the shame and rejection of the family. Sakina also experienced various forms of torture and beatings for nine years: “I remember the days when I went to the service with a bruised body and black eyes and I had to hide from my colleagues, giving different lies about what had happened. I couldn’t tell that my husband was hitting me.
She explains that she repeatedly addressed the authorities and institutions that support women: “But every time I complained, my husband arrived before me, preventing them from cooperating. EHe had a lot of power at that time and he used it to defeat me“. He also threatened to kidnap and rape her little sister, Sakina’s weakness, if she divorced.
“I had to endure their cruelty for years for the sake of my sister. There was no way to escape the hell he built for me. After the government collapsed, its violence doubled because I lost my job. “I was fired from my duties after protesting for the rights of women and girls in my homeland and taking to the streets of Kabul with other women to demonstrate.”
Sakina is one of thousands of women who attempted suicide several times to escape the hell created by their husbands: “Every time I tried to end my life I failed and my life got worse.”
She remembers that her husband associated himself with the Taliban and his threats increased, He even prevented her from going to her parents’ house.: “He told me that if I left home he would tell the Taliban that I had fled and he would stone me. Finally I decided to run away from home, but if I left home alone, he would kill my family. I had to send my family to Iran. My sister, one of the female protesters, was able to go to Germany and hide there.”
With his sister and the rest of the family safe, he decided to flee with his uncle and six-year-old daughter to Iran. Now that the situation in Iran is getting worse every day, she doesn’t know what will happen: “I live in fear that my husband will come to Iran and find me. Iran is also one of those countries where women must be subordinate to their husbands. I did not manage to get a divorce during the republic or during the time of the Taliban. Each regime that is imposed gives me fewer rights because I am a woman. “I am completely disappointed and living with my daughter in the worst circumstances.”
