Afghan war widows show moral courage
When war widows find life unbearable in relatives houses, they prefer to move to a cluster of mud huts on a hill near Kabul where life is hard but living is mentally comfortable. No jibes of other women about their widowhood and allied problems.
DON’T FORGET this is war, said an Afghan student who had grown under the shadow of war machines and sound of whistling gun shells. He played with empty shells as if these were toys. However, he was a growing man who had been saddened by the increasing number of war widows in and around Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.
DEPRESSION AT BAY
A cluster of mud wall houses with thatched roofs and hardly any amenity like electricity or piped running water was all that the war widows could call as their own property. War widows shunned by society live in these mud huts. They have developed deep emotional liking for each other when they share a hutment.
Generally speaking they are now fond of company of all war widows in this cluster of mud huts and do not wish to go back to Kabul or any other city or village in the land of Afghans. It is a helping community of women only of all ages who live on meagre pension granted by the parent organisation of their late husbands.
Are they depressed because they have no male company? No, not at all, said a youngish widow. I keep myself occupied with reading, knitting and teaching children who are not yet teenagers. Once boys grow into manhood, they have to move out to avoid sex based scandals.
The women are dead tired doing household chores and when night falls they are fast asleep the moment they hit their beds. The thought of male company is a taboo for widows. To lead a scandal free life, they discourage male relatives from visiting them in the war widows hut cluster.
SELF HELP
Most of the mud huts built with their own hands are leak proof. Since sweat has gone into building it, the war widows feel a greater degree of attachment to them than to rented houses. Self-help came handy when they were forced to leave houses of relatives as they were fed up of taunts of other women in the neighbourhood.
Sometimes women in family household did not tolerate their presence within the four walls as they suspected war widows would entice their husbands away and marry them. In any case Muslim men are permitted to have four living wives at a time.
The war widows preferred to move out of relatives houses after they got fed up of listening to taunts and unpleasant remarks about their own character.
One may be aware of the fact that the Afghan social order is rather rigid and conservative. Women play a second fiddle. a war widow has no fiddle to play on. A widow is supposed to lead a sober and austere life and make no endeavour to attract other men, what to say of enticing away.
Therefore, war widows who live in the mud walled thatched huts built through their own sweat find their living more comfortable. The young man who gave information about such a cluster did not venture to have his foot falls heard in the vicinity there. it is just not done.
Life is hard physically speaking but more than comfortable mentally and socially speaking.
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