The author of this essay is an Afghan man who worked alongside the U.S. military for many years. Ever since Kabul fell to the Taliban in 2021, he and his family have been on the run. He hoped to relocate to the United States as a refugee, but those dreams ended when the Trump administration came to office and ended refugee admissions. Today, he shares his sister’s story with Lazo Magazine. This essay has been lightly edited for clarity, and identifying details have been changed to protect the protagonist’s identity.
When I was really young, my father arranged for my older sister—who was 19 at the time—to be engaged to a man who was 50 years old. That man already had a wife and kids.
My sister, in a country like Afghanistan where saying no to your father was unthinkable, stood up for herself. She refused to marry him. And that was the beginning of hell for all of us. Violence became part of our everyday life. Every day. Every night. Screaming, beating, crying. It was like we were being eaten alive from the inside. Slowly fading. Slowly dying.
She fought back for 13 years. My father couldn’t force her to go, but at the same time, we lived in a tribal society where breaking traditions was a crime. Relatives kept pressuring us, talking, judging.
In the end, after 13 years of war inside our own home, we finally got her out of that nightmare. We did that by paying the equivalent of $40,000. A fortune. My father had to sell the land he inherited from his father to make it happen.
On babies and divine punishment
But even after all that, my sister’s suffering didn’t end. In Afghanistan, if a woman is over 20 and unmarried, no one wants her. And if she’s divorced? She might as well give up on the idea of marriage altogether. So, in the end, she had no choice. She married another man. A man old enough to be her father. A man who already had ten grown children.
Now, she has many daughters, all under 12. She kept having babies, hoping, praying, that one of them would be a boy.
In Afghanistan, a woman is only “lucky” if she gives birth to a son. That’s when her husband starts treating her like a human being. But she never had a son. And as if that wasn’t enough, her eldest daughter was born with vitiligo.
In a society like this, where women are already treated like nothing, having a skin condition like that, it’s like a curse. It’s a life sentence.
Yesterday, my sister told me her husband told their 11-year-old daughter that her condition was “God’s punishment.” God’s punishment. On a child. What kind of God punishes a little girl like that? My sister lives like a prisoner. Trapped in a room without a bathroom, without a toilet. And that kills me inside.
