Childhood Memory: Zainab’s Death

When I was ten years old, I was a student in a tailoring shop. In my teacher’s neighborhood there lived a family with one son and one daughter. Their son was 7 and their daughter was 14.

In our culture, girls are not allowed to have boyfriends or relations before they get married. But this family’s daughter had a boyfriend without telling anyone about it. The girl’s name was Zainab; she made a friendship with the boy next door who was 16. One summer afternoon these two went to the trail and slept together. After that the girl got pregnant and everyone knew about that. Her parents became very sad and ashamed for their daughter’s mistake. Unfortunately, most of the time in our culture, when something like this happens, all the suffering and sorrows are for the girl, not for the boy.

Zainab’s mother went to the boy’s family and asked her mother to let his son marry her daughter. The boy’s mother did not accept and said that her son was not going to marry her ugly and bad daughter. She told Zainab’s mother: “If you are feeling sorry for your daughter, why didn’t you teach her not to hang out or sleep with the boys?” The girl’s mother became very sad and angry. At that time Zainab was five months pregnant. The mother came home, took a big stone and put it on her daughter’s belly and killed her.

After killing their daughter, the family moved from that area. Sometimes people saw the boy at the girl’s grave crying. He was a handsome boy with blue eyes, and the girl was cute with brown
skin.

I heard Zainab’s mother became very sorry for killing her daughter, but it was too late. She had not controlled her anger. Now the boy has a wife and children, but the poor girl, she lost her dreams and life.

It was one of my childhood’s bad memories. It makes me very sad. Every day many such cases happen in Afghanistan. People remember these for a while, but very soon they forget everything.

By Marzia