Hajira is a thirty year old mother with a son and four daughters. She was only a child when she was married to a man who already had a wife, and who was the age of her own father. But Hajira still considers that she has a happy life! She says, "I don't like the tradition of ours that allows parents to marry their daughters at such an early age - like my father did to me. In spite of my desire, I never could go to school. I believe we must be given the right to be able to choose our husbands. You asked me if I am happy with my life? I really don't know what to say. Yes, I am happy because at least my children have enough food to eat while I can see that many others do not. Nevertheless, should I be happy when I remember the previous thirty painful years of my life and I still do not know what the future will bring?"
Hajira was five when her family fled to Pakistan. She really doesn't remember how many refugee camps and places she has lived. She now has a "house" in Kacha Abadi. "Yes, a house where dogs will not accept to live," she says. When she was asked why she and her family don't go back to "liberated Afghanistan," she smiled knowingly. "We will never go to such an Afghanistan. It is not liberated. There is still fighting, killing and no work and jobs for our men. We don't have homes. Who will build them for us?"
It is not her first time in Malalai Hospital. She calls it "our hospital." She is impatient to see the doctor for two reasons; her daughter Shazia (two and half years old) has a bad fever and diarrhea, but also because she has brought a gift for her favorite doctor - Atta. She was very shy to say something about her gift but not to say something about the doctor, "It is our hospital and he is our doctor!"
