Today, again, I’m sitting in the hospital. On those same stiff, cold chairs in the waiting room—each time they seem to remind me of pain more than before. Here, the scent of disinfectant mingles with the sweat of fear and hopelessness. The white walls are covered with hunched shadows—each one carries a story, stories that, if you stop to listen, will linger in your mind forever.
Next to me sits a boy, maybe six or seven years old. His head is buried in a phone, and his tiny fingers dart across the screen with a strange urgency—like he’s trying to escape, even if only into a mobile game. A few seats away, a woman with sunken eyes presses her calloused hands onto her knees. Now and then, she glances toward the door as if expecting a miracle.
This is a place I never want to return to. Everyone is busy—doctors making rounds, patients waiting for family or discharge from this prison. Some are praying. Some are cheerful. Some are drowning in grief, weeping for lost loved ones. The hospital pulses with stories and sounds. Yet, amid all the noise, Zakia’s silence is the loudest.
Her sister-in-law began to speak—a woman in a black shawl, her face seemingly untouched by light for years. Her voice trembled, as though each word had to be clawed from her throat.
“We’re from Parwan. Life is hard there, but our men are harder. We forced Zakia to marry my brother. She was nineteen. She wanted to study—but in our house, women are only meant for two things: bearing children and farming the land. That’s what we all did.”
She coughed, then continued:
“On her wedding day, she cried. She said, ‘Don’t kill me.’ But who listens to a girl? After the wedding, she became a shadow. She wouldn’t talk. Wouldn’t eat. A month later, one morning…”
Her voice broke. A knot rose in her throat. She clenched her hands together, then with great effort went on:
“We called out, ‘Zakia, Zakia!’ No response. We went to her room and broke the door down. She was lying on the floor. There’s no doctor in our area. An old woman told us to boil wild herbs and feed it to her. We did. But her condition got worse. Three hours later, she woke up—but it wasn’t Zakia anymore. Her eyes were hollow. Like dried-up wells.”
Zakia is now twenty-three, but her eyes look forty. She doesn’t recognize her young daughter—the very child who should bring her joy. Some days, she screams, “Who is this? Get her out of my house!” Other days, she pulls out her own hair and talks to the walls.
Zakia’s sister-in-law sighed:
“Once, she burned her daughter with boiling water. When we asked why, she said, ‘I just wanted to silence her.’ The doctors say it’s postpartum psychosis. But I know—it’s not a disease. It’s a wound. A wound of force. A wound of longing. A wound of captivity.”
I looked over at Zakia, who sat on the floor, playing with her hair. Sometimes, she laughed. Sometimes, she hummed—something that sounded like a lullaby. Maybe in her world, a world free of forced marriages and men’s rules, she’s a student. Maybe there, she can read books, fall in love, and be free.
A nurse called her name. Her sister-in-law pulled her up and led her to the doctor’s room. Zakia didn’t resist, but her eyes seemed to say: You know there’s no cure here.
When the door closed behind her, I looked at the clock. Four hours had passed. From 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., I had sat there—listening to the pain of strangers. Four hours, drowning in a sea where every drop was a tear.
Afghanistan’s hospitals are filled with Zakias—girls whose dreams have been smothered under the ashes of ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts.’ Maybe one day, these walls will collapse. But until that day, these cold chairs are the only place where they can breathe—for a few judgment-free hours.
You can read the Persian version of this Afghan woman’s story here:
