The Women of Afghanistan

"The women of Afghanistan have endured quite a lot of adversity and suffering by the hands of men. The women have faced sexism, spousal abuse, and even death because of little things like having their ankles exposed and seen by another man. In A Thousand Splendid Suns Refer to your citation style to see how this title should be formatted; some styles require the title be in quotation marks, others that it be italicized. by Khaled Hosseini, women are depicted quite accurately and Change to "as well as" their struggles. The book shows the struggles of 2 Spell this out: "two" young Afghan women, Laila and Mariam, in war riddled Afghanistan. Both women are years apart in the book by age, but are forced to marry an older man, Rasheed, who they don't know. The women learn to co-exist as they endure Rasheed's mental and physical abuse. That's the story of many women in Afghanistan, who live the life portrayed in A Thousand Splendid Suns See my earlier note. The women in Afghanistan have to face marriages, poor education and restrictions brought on by the Taliban, all which are talked about in A Thousand Splendid Suns See my earlier note. These Afghan women deal with punishment on a daily basis, a sad and a tough life they live.

Marriage is the voluntary union of two people, who choose to be together and nobody else for the rest of their lives. In the case of the Afghan women, they deal with forced under-age marriages. Some Afghan women have been wed off at a very early age, some at the age of thirteen to men much older then them. Although the legal age for marriage in Afghanistan is sixteen for females and eighteen for males, many people, particularly in rural areas, either ignore the law or claim they are not aware of it. "According to the Women's Ministry and Women's NGOs, approximately 57 percent of Afghan girls get married before the age of 16." (www.afghan-web.com) These marriages affect young girls badly in many ways. It blocks them from an education and causes pregnancy." Afghanistan has the world's second worst rate of maternal death during childbirth. About 16 out of every 100 women die giving birth." (www.state.gov) Childbirth before they have reached physical maturity at such a young age can lead to serious physical trauma, psychological disturbance, and sometimes lifelong physical and/or emotional inability. At such a young age these women are being wed off and it's obvious these women are being forced to marry, since they are too young and uneducated to make such huge decisions. "The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) estimates that up to 80 percent of all marriages in Afghanistan are conducted without the consent of the parties involved." (www.afghan-web.com) The practice of forced marriages is carried out for many different reasons, including giving a girl in marriage as repayment for a debt, to resolve a feud, or even to just get rid of her. Many Afghan families determine whom a daughter should marry without her consent. It's not bad enough these women are too young and forced to marry older men, some of the women must deal with their men marrying other younger women. Islam allows men to have up to four wives as long as they can treat them equally. This rule lets men marry younger women when their first wives get too old, say thirty. This is quite awful and very devastating to a woman who has devoted all her life to her husband to end up playing second fiddle to some 13 to 16 year old girl. It's a sad case for these women, they must devote their entire lives to a man they were forced to marry without even accomplishing a goal or a dream.

The women in the book, Mariam and Laila are both married off at a very young age to the same man, who is twice their age. In Mariam's case, she was a burden to her family and so they just took the first offer for her. "Rasheed is here, in Heart; he has come all the way from Kabul. The nikka will be tomorrow morning, and then there is a bus leaving for Kabul at noon" (Hosseini 45). Mariam was not even consulted in whether she wanted to marry Rasheed, let alone she had never seen or met him before. She was forced to marry at the age of 15. The other woman in the book, Laila, had no choice but to marry Rasheed. Laila has no body One word: "nobody" left to take care for her; all her friends and family had died or moved because of war. She had to think of her baby and to avoid the stigma of being an unwed mother; Laila agreed to marry Rasheed, who was eager to have a young and attractive second wife. "I am too old. Too old for you to do this to me. For you after all these years, to make me an ambagh" (Hosseini 192). This was heart breaking One word: "heartbreaking" for Mariam, for her husband to marry another woman, after she had spent her youth trying to be a good wife to him.