When they wake in the morning, the women try to steal a few moments of peace for themselves before the children rise.
They drink tea, not coffee. Before it’s allowed to pass their lips though, they spend a few quiet minutes kneeling, their foreheads pressed down onto colourful prayer mats.
When the carpets are rolled up, the predictable family frenzy of morning begins – even in Kandahar.
Although the continuing war renders conditions on the city’s streets unpredictable, the rhythms of daily life on the other side of its walls – inside the mud compounds that are the women’s domain – are not entirely different from those in more peaceful parts of the world. There are children to shoo out the door, pots to scrub, meals to ponder for when the hungry brood returns home.
“After I wake up, I pray, I read the Koran and then I prepare breakfast for my children and send them to school,” said Suhaila, a 39-year-old mother of five who sat for a recent on-camera interview with The Globe as part of the Behind the Veil series that examines the lives of women in Kandahar. “My husband is a teacher. I prepare his clothes and he goes to his school,” Suhaila continued. “And then I prepare lunch because my mother-in-law is old. And then, I put on my clothes and leave for my office.”
Suhaila is a rare female professional in Kandahar, employed by the provincial Department of Women’s Affairs as chief of economics. When she finishes her workday at 1:30 p.m., she scurries home to the rest of her domestic duties. The fact that she’s employed outside the home doesn’t mean she gets a break.
A woman gets her makeup done at a beauty shop in preparation for a Naw Rooz (Persian New Year) celebration later that day. Despite having to hide her beauty shop embellishments under a burka when she goes out on the street, her appearance at the festive event is important to her. Photo: Paula Lerner/Aurora Photos
Although her family relies on the money she makes, in Kandahar, the fact that she works is viewed as a privilege bestowed by her “open-minded” husband and mother-in-law.
Women who don’t generally have permission to leave their compounds in the daytime still manage to pack their days full of work, rounding nubs of dough into balls to be fried into flatbread, or stitching embroidery, a common form of work many housebound women in Kandahar have taken up to make extra money.
“After we finish the household work, my daughters and I sit down and make hats,” explained Shukria, 32, of her routine. “With that, we can buy a bread or two.”
“I’m a housewife,” explained 40-year-old Homaira. “When I wake up in the morning, I pray, and then I prepare breakfast for my children. When my children leave for school and work, I prepare lunch, dinner, I clean. These are my duties until the night,” she said.
Sitara, a 15-year-old, has been married to a strict, conservative-minded husband for about one year. He prefers she not attend school.
“I do household work – for instance, washing clothes, washing dishes … cleaning the house and other such things,” she said. While her husband is selling wares at the market, the task of minding the family’s animals falls to her.
“We have cows, we have sheep, we have everything,” she said, adding: “And all the work is on me. ...”
Bibi Gul is a 50-year-old mother of eight who outlived her husband. For money, she panhandles in the same spot every day on Kandahar’s streets.
