Taj Mohammad tries hard to hold back
his tears as he describes the most painful decision of his life. "I had
to sell my six-year-old daughter Naghma to a relative to settle an old
debt," Mr Mohammad says, staring blankly at the tattered tarpaulin roof
of his small mud shelter.
A
shy girl with a smiling face, Naghma is now engaged to a boy 10 years
older than her. Mr Mohammad says his daughter may have to leave for the
boy's home in Helmand's Sangeen district in a year. His wife and
mother-in-law sob inconsolably as they try to protect Naghma and her
seven siblings from the harsh Afghan winter outside.
Naghma is too
young to understand what is happening to her "Everyone in the family is
sad," says Naghma's grandmother, who was herself a child bride. "We
cry. We are in pain. But what else could we do?" she asks before
answering her own question. "The relatives wanted their money back. Taj
couldn't pay, so he was forced to give them Naghma." Silence descends on
the small, one-room dingy shelter, one of hundreds at the Qambar
refugee camp on the outskirts of Kabul.
The
Girl's father says he has no other option. The long pause is broken by
the hoarse cough of a child. "To keep my family alive, I took a loan of
$2,500 [about £1,600] from a distant relative," Mr Mohammad says. Years
of war and poverty forced Mr Mohammad to leave his home in the southern
province of Helmand and take refuge in Qambar's mud shelters. He says he
was struggling to come to terms with the loss of his three-year-old son
and an uncle, both of whom died in the cold earlier this month, when
the distant relative sent a message demanding his money back. "He wanted
his money back.
But I couldn't pay. No-one would lend money to
me," he says. "Then a relative suggested that I give my daughter in lieu
of money."
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