Half of domestic violence victims are living with their attackers.
The UK Crime Research Center has found out that half of the victims of domestic violence are living with their attackers (McGuick, 1394: 88).
While it can be said that in Afghanistan, more than 95% of the victims of these violence are continuing to live with their violent family members.
In the traditional society, women are considered as passive and helpless people whose repeated violence has destroyed their motivation to react and they are unable to do anything about their situation.
The narrative of Negar’s life with her addicted husband shows her endurance of violence for many years and is an example of the life of other women in Afghanistan.
Twenty-five years ago, Negar married her uncle’s son with hundreds of wishes. Their life together was going well until Negar’s husband went to work in Iran and became addicted to drugs there.
Negar’s drug addict husband has beaten her and her children many times for money to buy drugs. Negar says that he even attacked her with an ax and several times with a knife.
“Many times he kick out me and my children from home, But we would endure and we would return to our home again.”
Was asked from her about why she didn’t complain about her husband for violence and beating and didn’t go to the security departments?
she said that we have been brought up in the society and family in such a way that complaining in the police station or other government departments is a shame for us, and a woman who talks about her family issues in the police station and government departments is a very bad thing in the eyes of our people.
I asked her about divorce that if she ever thought about divorcing her addicted husband.
She says, I have thought a lot, but the society and our family do not accept such a thing. If I were to get a divorce, firstly, they would not allow me to do this, and secondly, our family relations would be ruined.
Negar added, “In the society and from the eyes of the people, a woman should be responsible for her wasted life and that of her addicted husband and make up for it with all kinds of misery and violence”
Negar says that the roofs of the houses are covered and no one except the women whose husbands are drug addicts can’t understand me because the pain and suffering we suffer and every moment we spend with a thousand miseries cannot be expressed in words.
Negar had hate was in her throat when she talked about her addicted husband and continued with tears in her eyes:
“My husband himself has cried several times and says that I cannot save myself. We have always lived alone. My husband never gave my children a father’s love. He was away from home for a year, two years, when he came home after several months, he did not recognize my little son”
Negar tried many times to treat her husband. She says that “when we had a little money, we admitted him to several private hospitals and we also admitted him to public hospitals in Jangalg in Kabul, but he did not quit his addiction Because according to him, when you are caught in this act, you have no way out”
Forty-three-year-old Negar is the mother of four boys. She says; she has worked in different offices for seventeen years and has found the expenses of living by herself, encouraged her children to school, study and educate and did not let their father’s addiction affect on her children.
The Negar’s son is 19 years old, he is studying medicine in a university and works half a day in a hospital.
Negar says that I am not the only one living in Afghanistan with this pain and suffering, there are other women whose days and times are worse than mine.
