Chapter XV
Afghan Women
Their inferior position—Hard labour—On the march—Suffering in silence—A heartless husband—Buying a wife—Punishment for immorality—Patching up an injured wife—A streaky nose—Evils of divorce—A domestic tragedy—Ignorance and superstition—“Beautiful Pearl”—A tragic case—A crying need—Lady doctors—The mother’s influence.
In all Muhammadan countries women hold a very inferior, almost humiliating, position, being regarded as very distinctly existing for the requirements of the stronger sex. In Afghanistan they labour under this additional hardship, that the men are nearly all cruel and jealous to a degree in their disposition, and among the lower sections of the community the severe conditions of life compel the women to labour very hard and continuously—labour which the men think it beneath their dignity to lighten or share.
The wife has to grind the corn, fetch the water, cook the food, tend the children, keep the house clean—in fact, do everything except shopping, from which she is strictly debarred. The husband will not only buy the articles of food required for the daily household consumption, but he will buy her dresses too—or, at least, the material for them—and the lady must be content with his selection, and make up her dresses at home with what her lord is pleased to bring her. How would their sisters in England approve of that?
The fetching of the water is often no sinecure. If the well is in the village precincts it may be pleasant enough, as it no doubt affords excellent opportunity for retailing all the village gossip; but in some places, as, for instance, during summer in Marwat, the nearest water is six or seven, or even ten, miles away, and the journey there and back has to be made at least every other day. In Marwat the women saddle up their asses with the leathern bottles made from goatskins long before daybreak, and the nocturnal traveller sometimes meets long strings of these animals going to or returning from the watering-place under the care of a number of the village women and girls. The animals in these cases have to be satisfied with what they drink while at the source of the water-supply.
When the women get back to their houses it will be still scarcely dawn, but they have a busy time before them, which will occupy them till midday. First the grain has to be ground in the hand-mills; then yesterday’s milk churned; then the cows and goats milked; then the food cooked, the house cleaned, and a hundred and one other duties attended to which only a woman could describe.
When on the march the women are heavily loaded. They can often be seen not only carrying the children and household utensils, but driving the pack animals too, while the lordly men are content to carry only their rifle, or at most give a lift to one of the children. Yet it is not because the men are callous, but because it is the custom. Their fathers and forefathers did the same, and the women would be the first to rebuke a young wife who ventured to complain or object.
Some of the women of the Povindah tribe are splendid specimens of robust womanhood. These people travel hundreds of miles from Khorasan to India, carrying their families and household goods with them, and the women can load and manage the camels almost as well as the men, and carry burdens better. The outdoor, vigorous, active life has made them healthy, muscular, and strong, and buxom and good-looking withal, though their good looks do not last so long as they would were their life less rough. But when a baby is born, then comes the suffering. The caravan cannot halt, and there is seldom a camel or ox available for the woman to ride. She usually has to march on the next day, with the baby in her arms or slung over her shoulder, as though nothing had happened. Then it is that they endure sufferings which bring them to our hospital, often injured for life. If there is no hospital, well, they just suffer in silence, or—they die.