Rigmarole of Perpetual Servitude of Women: Reflections on Atiq Rahimis the Patience Stone

Running my eyes over the annoying news report Rape Victim Faces Honour Killing in The Hindu dated July 21, I was dumbstruck and reminded of the most woeful existence of women in Afghanistan depicted by Atiq Rahimi in his novella The Patience Stone and the poignant statement of the popular novelist Khalid Hosseini about forlorn Afghanistan women in his introduction to the novel. In The Hindu, it was reported that at Kunduz in Afghanistan, a ten year old tiny girl was raped by a Mullah in the sanctity of a mosque after Koran recitation. It was highly abominable and calamitous that the anger of the public was not against the rapist but on the pitiable victim and her well wishers. The Mullah, even without slightest compunction, nonchalantly claimed that he had thought that the girl was seventeen and offered to marry her. The activists who sought justice for the forsaken victim were intimidated by the supporters of the Mullah and the Government alike. It is daunting that, the girls aunt declared that they wanted to take her and kill her and dump her in the river (Rod Nordland 12). The girls mother, the only human being with some sympathy for her bemoans and wails in agony the heart rending words, We will make you a bed of dust and soil. We will be safe (12).