A son’s birth occurred in a mud home nestled in the rough hills of rural Afghanistan during the severe winter of 1998. The distant echoes of gunfire were momentarily drowned in the cry that filled the room as the infant finally arrived. The 31-year-old father, who was pacing frantically outside in the snow, stopped in his tracks on hearing the news of his firstborn. He looked up at the sky, changing into a palette of subdued but beautiful hues; softer tones of pink and orange progressively replaced the solid purple and blue tones over the horizon as the first light peeked through.

“Alhamdulillah. Ya Allah shukr.” _____ All praise to Allah. I thank you, my Lord. ______The father spoke impulsively, overwhelmed by relief, a rare sentiment in an Afghan’s life during those difficult times.

And then, in those little moments of joy, tragedy struck with all the ferocity of its bite.

The 26-year-old mother, an exceptionally energetic and resilient Pashtun of the Paktika province of Afghanistan, situated along the Pakistan border, looked ominously unwell to the old midwife. With years of expertise delivering infants, she was alarmed by the eerie pallor and cold skin of the young mother and, upon removing the quilt, discovered, to her horror, that she was bleeding continuously.

“Come here, Khan!” she sounded anything but happy. His feet skidded, and he almost fell as the father ran towards the door where the older woman stood. Her pensive eyes said it all.

She held his forearm to comfort him and looked into his eyes.

“She is not well”, she muttered sorrowfully.

“No,” Khan heard himself saying.

“She is bleeding. I cannot stop it. She needs to be in a hospital.”

“Hospital?” he mumbled, as it struck him that his beloved was leaving him…..

Stolen novel; please report.

The country’s infrastructure was shredded to pieces by two decades of war, and during this time, the most heinous forms of human rights abuse predominated. The Taliban had now taken control of the country.

As the twentieth century came to an end, the superpowers had spent billions of dollars killing and maiming the men, women, and children of this country in their rivalry to uphold socialist norms and defend the American way of life.

Yet, there was no hospital in the vicinity to save the life of a young mother.

As the father entered the room, the female attendants burst into tears. The young mother looked like a wax doll that was melting in the light of dawn; her cheeks had lost their pink lustre, and drops of perspiration were dripping along the contours of her face, which was fixed in a gaze at a portrait of her deceased father on the wall opposite her bed.

Her husband, kneeling beside her and clasping her hand, reassured her in a broken voice, “You will be fine. I have to take you to the hospital so that you are well and ready for our son.”

“Why did you give me so much love, father?” the pallid figure spoke in her mind to her father’s portrait, insensible of her surroundings. “Life could have been so explicit if you had treated me and my mother like your snow boots, stomping us on the ground when you came back from work and then leaving us in the shed outside till it was time to set off again.”

“When I ran outside to the balcony with my head uncovered, hearing the terrible blast, you should have pulled me inside by the hair and given me a loud and annoying lecture on how to behave like a lady. Instead, you hugged me and my brother and comforted me with a covering story.”

“Hating you would have prepared me to hate every male on the planet; my choices would have been clearer, and the acceptance of the harsh realities of this painful life would have been unambiguous. I would have been liberated from the notion that, despite the majority of men in my land keeping their women within the confines of a small mud house, there will come a time when earnest gentlemen, speaking my language and followers of my faith, will walk their daughters to schools and universities on the town streets and the country roads.

The young lady was never known to have been ill. She seemed energised and empathetic; she cared about other people and ensured they didn’t have to bear her burden. Today was no exception; she departed silently in an hour or so, relieving everyone of the responsibility to tend to her in those formidable times.