Setareh's Mother

Persian

‘Mohajerin-e-Ansar’, is a refugee camp somewhere a bit farther than Herat downtown in Afghanistan. It’s a temporary residence for families who came back from Iran and are heading to a destination other than Herat. 

Setareh’s mother, carrying her sleeping daughter and a heavy bag on her back, enters the camp. She had just been back from Iran and as she stated, her husband is drug addict so she had left him and had come back to Afghanistan. While she was there, neither her nor her husband had a residence card and so she couldn’t get one for her daughter. Setareh was 9 months old but looked much smaller than a 9-month-old child. Every now and then she wailed and it was nearly impossible to calm her down. After I carried Setareh in my arms a few times, I noticed she had a physical defect. I spoke with her mother and realized that Setareh had an unusual illness that her mother didn't know what it was! Sometimes when she cried, her facial muscles contracted. Her mother couldn’t take her to a specialist in Iran because she didn’t have a card. She could only take her to a few GPs but they couldn’t diagnose her illness. 

Her eyes betrayed a wave of anxiety but still she was tranquil. Setareh’s mother wasn’t older than 23 or 24. She laughed heartily with wickedness. She often jested and sometimes remained so cool in dealing with Setareh’s illness that her calmness made me anxious. 

One night when she was settled in the camp she called me and said that Setareh was feeling sick. It was 11 at night and there was no one in the camp to take Setareh to hospital. At around 11:30 I, alongside Setareh’s mother who had unbelievably kept her calm smile, arrived at the hospital. Setareh had cried so much that her facial muscles had cramped and her eyes wouldn’t open. She calmed down for five minutes and again started to wail as if a sudden pain took over her body. 

Herat Hospital, the one and only equipped hospital of this city, was full of patients who were sleeping here and there on the floor on a blanket. The hospital had a cold atmosphere. All the doors and walls were gray. We took Setareh to the children’s ward. A doctor came to examine her but because no one knew about her illness, he prescribed sedative so that she could sleep. We had to hospitalize her that night since the doctor had also prescribed a few other medicines. 

After a week, Setareh was still distressed but her mother had nevertheless kept her tranquil smile and all her worry was that her husband would appear out of the blue and take her back to Iran. She lived in the camp for a while and participated in crafting classes held by an NGO. She was an avid learner, full of life. Despite Setareh’s illness, she was always present at classes and did her work well. 

After a while when I asked about her, I realized she had left the camp. She had left the education unfinished and had gone away. People told stories about her; a lonely woman, without a husband, with an ill infant... 

Someone said that she might have gone to Kabul and I thought she had gone to get lost in the crowd and chaos of that large city, far from all the stories and gossips behind her back. Someone said: “she was a woman of ill repute!” and I remembered her tranquil eyes and a calm day when she laughed with other women while Setareh was resting in her arms. 

Another one said that her husband had come and taken her with him back to Iran and I thought what has happened to little Setareh now? 

Herat is a calm city. There is no gunfire, no blast. Even if there is, it’s an explosion of a land mine which was not demined. People work during the day and come back home at night; women and men shop in the hustle and bustle of markets and bargain with vendors; children play with marbles in dusty alleys; girls go to school. In this hubbub full of life, I think of mothers like Setareh’s mother: where is the sky under which they count the stars of their life, without any fear of judgement and loneliness?