sainaba's story..

Abdu had taken to weeds,.No, he was not a gardener, by profesion he was a butcher. He had a small shack which he used as his slaughter house,but now stray dogs sleep there.. He had found a new dealer, who sold grinded poppy leaves. After all poppy was abundant in Kabul. Its not like abdu was a gentlemen before the dealer came to town. His wife had taken to begging two years back itself. Their five kids included four girls. The eldest one was the most beautiful. The only one who had studied till fourth grade. She was sixteen now. Abdu cared only for her in the whole world.


One day the drug dealer stopped coming to his usual tea shop.The villagers thought Abdu had gone mad. He bet his wife uncontrollably. He threw all the pots and dishes outside. He thrashed the youngest one, the boy. He never hit his girls. He threw a big tantrum, he wept, he bit himself. After all this noise,when he was lying outside his hut his wife came out and told him, his eldest daughter had eloped. Sainaba had eloped with the drug dealer.

This news had a profound impact on abdu. He wept inconsolably.



He went to his shop , cleaned it, cut open his only remaining goat. He did not return home for two days. He worked in the carpenters shop for extra few shillings. He avoided speaking to everybody. The fifth day sainaba returned, with bruises and burns all over her body. Her long tresses now looked like a hen’s feathers. But she went missing again the next day. The villagers didn’t know what had happened to her. They also didn’t know that some among them had eaten a part of her for dinner. But abdu’s wife knew everything because among the left over meat in the shop, which abdu had bought home for the youngest boy was a small ear-ring which she recognized.