My Guantanamo Diary by Mahvish Khan

Author:Mahvish Khan [MAHVISH RUKHSANA KHAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2011-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Next to Wazir Akbar Khan’s megamansions are Kabul’s slums, lined with mud houses and open sewage canals. They have no electricity, no running water, not even any heat to stave off the subzero temperatures. The average Afghan lives in abject poverty. As we drove through this neighborhood, I watched children pushing each other in a wheelbarrow and playing in mounds of garbage. They had no playgrounds, day care, or clean clothes like American children. Little boys and girls ran to the car, holding up a finger in a request for some change. Some were so young they could barely reach the window.

Afghanistan’s children bear the brunt of the nation’s poverty. While there have been improvements since the Taliban were ousted, the country still has the second highest infant-mortality rate in the world, preceded only by Sierra Leone.1 The great majority of Afghan women do not receive any prenatal care and give birth at home without the help of a midwife or a doctor. As a result, Afghanistan has the distinction of having the highest life risk for maternal mortality. One in six Afghan women die in child birth every day. One in four children dies before age five.2 The life expectancy for men is forty-five; for women, forty-four. Almost 90 percent of Afghan women are illiterate.3 Most Afghan women are married before the age of eighteen. Many are forced into marriages for various reasons, including to settle feuds or repay debts.

When I saw the scale of deprivation, I was again reminded of my own good luck that I was born and raised as an American. What if my parents hadn’t been educated, had never emigrated to the United States? For the first time, I understood that the opportunities in my life were a windfall. The old taxi driver had been right about my good fortune.

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