KABUL (SW) – “I wished to have a workshop of my own to help people disabilities, girls and women or at least orphaned children”, said Roya, who now finds herself confined to her home.
After completing her studies at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of Kabul University, Roya started working in one of the private legal institutions. She wanted to gain a good position in the society where women have to cross many barriers. While Roya was trying to achieve her goals, her fate changed in a different way with the collapse of the republic, the palace of her dreams also collapsed.
Following the transformation of Afghanistan, Roya lost the job she had been engaged in for three years. On that day, she was told by the managers of the institution where she worked that there is no more work.
At the same time, her father, who worked in the logistics department of one of the government departments in the previous government, also lost his job, something that put Roya and her family in a difficult situation. The income that Roya and her father had could barely cover the cost of living for her family.
Her father, who is now the sole breadwinner of their family, goes out to the street with a single-wheeled cart so that he can earn a little money by pulling other people’s burdens and provide enough bread for his family.
Roya, who after losing her job, knocks on every door to find another job. When she gets no luck with finding an office job, she tries to get busy cooking or washing dishes somewhere to lighten her father’s shoulders from the expensive burden of providing for living expenses; But because she is a girl, all her requests are rejected. “They said: You are a young girl and we cannot give you a job.”
Nadari, who followed the unemployment of Roya and her father, took care of her family, she also brought her younger sisters to sewing workshops; So that they can earn a few Afghanis and help their father. Worrying about the family and poverty makes Roya suffer from mental illnesses, and her illness progressed to the point where her family decides to put him under the care of a hospital for psychotherapy.
She lost hope for the future and decided to end her life, but receiving a call from one of the institutions where she had applied for a job, stopped her.
Roya started working in this institution with a monthly salary of eight thousand afghanis only, but it won’t be long before she is forced to stay at home for the second time with the Islamic Emirate’s order to prevent women from working in domestic and foreign non-governmental institutions.
She now lives with her family of six – her parents, two teenage sisters aged 13 and 17, and her young brother – in a rented house in Dasht Barchi, Kabul city. She looks at her sisters with the sadness that can be seen in her tired eyes and says that seeing them while they are absent from their studies is the most difficult moment of her life.
“There is no hope for the future, work and life,” she said. “The people who are in need are not taken care of, and for now, the only thing we can do is to pray that maybe one day, somewhere, an opening will be found and we can start again. But I don’t think it will be anytime soon”.
ENDS
