Letters to My Daughters Read Online Free
melted into maternal instinct. She took me in her arms and held me. When I finally stopped crying she began to weep silently, promising herself that no harm would ever come to me again. She knew that for some reason God had wanted me to live and that she should love me.
I donât know why God spared me that day. Or why he has spared me on the several occasions I could have died since then. But I do know he has a purpose for me. I also know he truly blessed me by making me Bibi janâs favourite child from that moment on, forging a permanently unbreakable bond between mother and daughter.
Dear Shuhra and Shaharzad,
Early in my life, I learned how difficult it is to be a girl child in Afghanistan. The first words a newborn daughter often hears are the commiserations given to her mother. âItâs just a girl, a poor girl.â That is not much of a welcome to the world.
Then, when a girl reaches school age, she does not know whether she will get permission to go to school. Will her family be brave or rich enough to send her? When a brother grows up, he will represent the family and his salary will help feed them, so everyone wants sons to be educated, but usually the only future for girls in our society is marriage. They make no financial contribution to the family, and so in many peopleâs eyes there is little point in educating them.
When a girl reaches the age of twelve, relatives and neighbours may start to gossip about why she isnât married yet. âHas someone asked her for her hand?â âIs anyone ready to marry her?â If no proposals are in the offing, gossipmongers will mutter that it is because she is a bad girl.
If family members ignore this chatter and let the girl reach sixteen, the legal age for marriage, before finding a partner for her and if they allow her to marry someone of her choice or at the very least allow her to disagree with her parentsâ choice, then she stands a chance of experiencing some happiness in her life. If, however, the family is under financial pressure or swayed by gossip, they will marry off their daughter before she reaches the age of fifteen. The little girl who heard âjust a girlâ at her birth will become a mother herself; if she delivers a girl child, the first words her baby will hear will also be âjust a girl.â And so it goes on, generation after generation.
This was my beginning. âJust a girlâ born of an illiterate woman.
âJust a girlâ would have been my life story, and probably yours too. But the bravery of my mother, your grandmother, changed our path. She is the heroine of my dreams.
With love,
Your mother
· · TWO · ·
Stories of Old
{ 1977 }
THE EARLY PART of my childhood was as golden as the mountain dawnâthe light that tumbled directly from the sun across the Pamir mountain range and down through the valley onto the roofs of the mud houses in our village. My memories of that time are hazy, like images from a film. They are bathed in the colours of orange summer sun and white winter snow and suffused with the smells of the apple and plum trees outside our house and the scent of my motherâs long, dark plaited hair, all lit brighter by her radiant smiles.
The Koof Valley, where we lived, is known as the Switzerland of Afghanistan. It is lush and fertile, banked with trees of rich greens and yellowsâcolours I have never seen anywhere else. Our house looked out onto a sparkling blue river, and pine and elm trees grew tall along the grassy banks that rose steeply into the mountains.
The noises I recall from my early childhood are of a donkey braying, the sound of hay swishing as it was cut, the trickling of river water and the peals of children laughing. Even today, my village sounds just the same. Koof remains the only place in the world where I can close my eyes and fall into blissful, peaceful sleep within seconds.
In front of our house was a garden, organized
I donât know why God spared me that day. Or why he has spared me on the several occasions I could have died since then. But I do know he has a purpose for me. I also know he truly blessed me by making me Bibi janâs favourite child from that moment on, forging a permanently unbreakable bond between mother and daughter.
Dear Shuhra and Shaharzad,
Early in my life, I learned how difficult it is to be a girl child in Afghanistan. The first words a newborn daughter often hears are the commiserations given to her mother. âItâs just a girl, a poor girl.â That is not much of a welcome to the world.
Then, when a girl reaches school age, she does not know whether she will get permission to go to school. Will her family be brave or rich enough to send her? When a brother grows up, he will represent the family and his salary will help feed them, so everyone wants sons to be educated, but usually the only future for girls in our society is marriage. They make no financial contribution to the family, and so in many peopleâs eyes there is little point in educating them.
When a girl reaches the age of twelve, relatives and neighbours may start to gossip about why she isnât married yet. âHas someone asked her for her hand?â âIs anyone ready to marry her?â If no proposals are in the offing, gossipmongers will mutter that it is because she is a bad girl.
If family members ignore this chatter and let the girl reach sixteen, the legal age for marriage, before finding a partner for her and if they allow her to marry someone of her choice or at the very least allow her to disagree with her parentsâ choice, then she stands a chance of experiencing some happiness in her life. If, however, the family is under financial pressure or swayed by gossip, they will marry off their daughter before she reaches the age of fifteen. The little girl who heard âjust a girlâ at her birth will become a mother herself; if she delivers a girl child, the first words her baby will hear will also be âjust a girl.â And so it goes on, generation after generation.
This was my beginning. âJust a girlâ born of an illiterate woman.
âJust a girlâ would have been my life story, and probably yours too. But the bravery of my mother, your grandmother, changed our path. She is the heroine of my dreams.
With love,
Your mother
· · TWO · ·
Stories of Old
{ 1977 }
THE EARLY PART of my childhood was as golden as the mountain dawnâthe light that tumbled directly from the sun across the Pamir mountain range and down through the valley onto the roofs of the mud houses in our village. My memories of that time are hazy, like images from a film. They are bathed in the colours of orange summer sun and white winter snow and suffused with the smells of the apple and plum trees outside our house and the scent of my motherâs long, dark plaited hair, all lit brighter by her radiant smiles.
The Koof Valley, where we lived, is known as the Switzerland of Afghanistan. It is lush and fertile, banked with trees of rich greens and yellowsâcolours I have never seen anywhere else. Our house looked out onto a sparkling blue river, and pine and elm trees grew tall along the grassy banks that rose steeply into the mountains.
The noises I recall from my early childhood are of a donkey braying, the sound of hay swishing as it was cut, the trickling of river water and the peals of children laughing. Even today, my village sounds just the same. Koof remains the only place in the world where I can close my eyes and fall into blissful, peaceful sleep within seconds.
In front of our house was a garden, organized
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