Teenage girls in Jowzjan pick cotton after being banned from school
Suhila* dreams of being in school with her friends. She’s sitting with her classmates, Sadaf* and Parween*, when the teacher enters the room. He’s smiling and greeting everyone as he begins the day’s lesson: ancient Greek civilization. As history is Suhila’s favourite subject, he asks her to read the day’s lesson. As she starts reading, a voice resonates in her ear, “Suhila, Suhila!”, which causes her to wake up from her dream. “This morning, after I woke up from my dream, I remembered that I wanted to study psychology. I wanted to help women who needed counselling and mental therapy,” she tells Zan Times.
Her eyes fill with tears whenever she thinks of school and remembers her classmates. Seventeen-year-old Suhila was in the tenth grade in Jowzjan province when the Taliban banned girls’ education beyond the sixth grade. Now she picks cotton to help her family earn money rather than learning about ancient Greece. Her school uniform has become her work attire, and instead of a book bag, she carries an orange-coloured sack.
Every day at 5 a.m., Suhila and 13 other women and girls from her village climb into a cargo rickshaw. “There are no covered rickshaws here, and cars charge a high fare. Eight women fit in this rickshaw, but all 14 ride in it since it’s from the employer, and we don’t pay,” she explains. Suhila earns 150 afghani daily for an arduous 11-hour work day. “I have to pick 30 kilograms of cotton per day and get paid five afghani for each kilogram. Given the amount of work, our income is very little. Our backs ache, our hands get wounded,” she says. They are some of the dozens of girls and women who have been working in the farm’s cotton fields, which cover around 25 acres or 11 hectares.
Suhila lives with her elderly father, younger brother, and two younger sisters. Her younger sisters stay home with their father, who can’t work while her 8-year-old brother scavenges trash. Their life used to be better. Her elder brother had provided for his family as a policeman but he was killed in a fight with the Taliban one month before the former government fell. Those two events changed her life forever: “If there hadn’t been a war and my brother hadn’t been killed, I would have graduated from school now.”
Suhila has only a one-hour lunch break, but she and some other workers can’t afford to eat much, so they satisfy themselves with water and dry pieces of bread to endure another five hours of work. “Our hands are torn, we’re hungry and thirsty while working,” she says.
Sameera*, a 19-year-old colleague of Suhila, is one of those who goes hungry while picking cotton. She was in the twelfth grade and about to take a university entrance exam when the girls’ education was banned. Now she’s picking cotton with dirtied hands. “When I couldn’t go to school, I came here to work with the girls from my village and support my brother in meeting our family’s financial needs,” she tells Zan Times. “My clothes, face, and head become dusty. Because I stand too long in puddles, I can’t sleep at night due to pain in my feet and back. Sometimes, my hands and feet tremble because of excessive work and hunger.”
Sameera’s father was a soldier in the national army and was killed in a fight with the Taliban eight years ago. After her father’s death, her elder brother had to do hard labour to support the family. Sameera had dreamed of becoming a doctor in their village clinic to help their family as well as the local population. “I wanted to become a doctor so that in our family of seven, my brother wouldn’t have to work alone. If I became a doctor, our family’s situation would change. My brother wouldn’t have to do hard labour, but now I’m doing it too,” she says.
The economic struggles being endured by so many families mean that some of those working on the farm are former students who have untreated mental health issues, including 14-year-old Nazila*, the youngest labourer on the farm. Her mental issues developed due to the closure of schools as well as her subsequent confinement to her family home. Nazila says that the headaches, which were caused by crying and the stress of being stuck at home, recede when she picks cotton. “At night because I knew I couldn’t go to school the next day, I couldn’t sleep. To escape from these problems, I’ve been working on this farm for two months now. Where else do we have to go?” she tells Zan Times. “From 5 a.m. to 5 p.m., I’m stuck in this cotton field. Our breakfast is only dry bread and water. The dust bothers my eyes and head; my hands are dry and cracked, but I must work – I’ll die if I stay home,” she explains. Still, she wants girls and women to be allowed back into schools and universities.
Fifteen-year-old Hamida*, a former classmate of Nazila, also works on the farm. Like the other girls, she struggles to talk about her previous days in the classroom and her current work on the farm. She works with her mother, Marjan*, who fears that her daughter will repeat what happened to her during the first Taliban regime: “The first time when the Taliban came, they closed our schools, depriving us of education. Now, they deprive our daughters of education. Schools must reopen so that our daughters don’t face our fate.”
Marjan says she brought her daughter to the farm to help her escape growing mental problems and so she can contribute to the family’s finances. Of the dozens of females who pick cotton from morning to night are at least three other mothers and daughters, who must earn money now that they can’t go to school.
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writer. Mahtab Safi is the pseudonym of a Zan Times journalist in Afghanistan.
