For the Love of a Son: One Afghan Woman's Quest for Her Stolen Child

her.’ I winced in pain when he deliberately nicked
my neck with the sharp blade. I felt blood stream down my neck.
Kaiss’s eyes widened in excitement at the sight of blood.
    He’s really going to kill me this time, I
thought, desperately casting around for what I might do to save
myself and Duran.
    At that moment my baby shrieked from his
crib. He was hungry.
    Kaiss slapped me in the face and kicked me in
the leg. ‘Go take care of your baby,’ he ordered roughly.
    Duran had saved his mother’s life.
    Holding my hand over the slash wound, I
rushed to my son. He gurgled at the sight of me. I grabbed him with
one hand and ran to the bathroom. There I bound a small hand towel
around the cut with my free hand. I took Duran into the kitchen and
fed him. Then I comforted him until he slept.
    I returned to the bathroom and studied my
neck with a hand mirror. The skin around my throat was bruised from
Kaiss’s tight grasp. But the cut was not very deep and the bleeding
had stopped. I breathed a sigh of relief, for even had I needed
stitches, Kaiss would have never allowed me to go to the emergency
room.
    When I tried to tiptoe back into Duran’s
room, where I planned to sleep, Kaiss leapt from behind a door and
dragged me struggling to our bed where he slapped me around some
more, then raped me painfully.
    The following morning Kaiss awoke in the same
foul mood. He got on his knees in our bed, grabbed my face in his
hands, slapped me around for a few minutes, then forced himself on
me. His only sexual pleasure seemed to come from raping me. I
attempted to push him away, to fight back, but when he started
choking me I gave up and submitted to his indignities. I must live
for my son. If Kaiss murdered me, my little baby would be left
defenseless.
    Finally Kaiss had to leave me alone when it
time for him to get his shower and prepare for work. Only after he
left our apartment did I break down and weep. But I pulled myself
together for the sake of my baby, and pushed my intolerable
existence to the back of my mind.
    Later that day I ran into one of our
neighbors who studied the huge lump on my forehead and the cuts on
my lips. That same neighbour had mentioned other bumps and bruises
in the past. ‘What happened to you?’ he asked.
    ‘Oh, I fell,’ I replied in a quiet voice,
looking away.
    ‘Again?’ he asked. ‘You sure are clumsy for a
young person.’
    ‘I guess so,’ I said, embarrassed, and turned
away.
    His voice became stern. ‘This is not right.
You must get away from him.’
    I blushed red with shame. I walked away
quickly, humiliated by my pathetic helplessness. Tears rolled down
my cheeks. It brought back a memory of a woman in a similar
situation and a long-forgotten face rose in my mind.
    When I was sixteen years old, a lovely lady
named Jamila who lived next door came running to the front door of
our home. I was standing in the sitting room when she came crashing
in without knocking. I thought for sure a pack of wild dogs was
chasing her. I grabbed Jamila and sat her down in a chair. ‘What on
earth?’ I said. I called out for Nanny Muma to bring a glass of
water. ‘Hurry!’ I shouted.
    Aging Nanny Muma tottered over to us, a glass
of juice in one hand and a cold wet cloth in the other.
    ‘Here, here,’ Nanny Muma said, her soft voice
a comfort.
    ‘What happened?’ I blurted, even though I
could see she had been beaten up. There had been whispers between
my parents about her pitiful situation, but her wounds had never
been as bad before. Always Jamila had suffered in silence, making
up one pretext after the other about tripping over one of her
children or snagging her foot on the edge of a doorway, her
clumsiness a cover for her bruises and scratches. But despite her
excuses, all knew that Jamila’s husband was a wife-beater.
    This was the first time Jamila had sought
refuge at our house. She whimpered, ‘He is going to kill me for
sure. Can I please stay the night?’
    ‘Of course. Of course,’ I told her, wondering
what we might do to get her brute of a husband locked up. In those
days I was naive enough to believe that all a woman had to do was
seek justice to receive justice.
    By this time Nadia was away in India in
medical school, and we were living in the apartment where I enjoyed
my own bedroom. ‘You will sleep in my room, Jamila,’ I said. ‘Your
husband will not dare show his face in my room.’
    She nodded her relief, but still wept. I
studied her face. On the day of