Quetta by Hasan Hasrat…Gulshan’s story is the story of nearly every woman in Balochistan. 40-year-old Gulshan from Dera Murad Jamali has recently given birth to her 10th child at the MSF facility. She is one of the hundreds and thousands of docile women who have no say in domestic affairs and cannot take a decision. Unlike urban women are pretty much aware of their rights, these women are ignorant of their basic rights and have no control over their bodies and nobody asks them whether they want children or not. In fact, they are conditioned to give birth to children as soon as they get married. Gulshan was married as soon as she reached puberty – the time when women in Balochistan are usually married off.
“I have been married for 25 years now and I started having children immediately,” tells Gulshan. “Two of my sons work and one daughter is married with two children of her own, but the rest are still quite young,” she adds.
“This is the first time in her 12 pregnancies that Gulshan has come to the hospital,” states Gulshan’s mother. “Last year she lost her baby in the eighth month of pregnancy. Five months later when she became pregnant again, we noticed she became very weak, which is why we thought it was better to bring her here for the delivery,” she informs.
“I lost my two babies because I was undernourished and fragile. My diet consists of potatoes and lentils. And I hardly get to eat meat. After serving my large family, I usually end up eating leftovers. Despite all that I am expected to give birth to healthy children. My family is least bothered about my health. They only care about how many more children I can give birth to. Sometimes I feel as if I am not a human but just a child-producing machine,” says Gulshan with teary eyes.
All men and women are entitled to have basic human rights including the right to decide whether they want children or not. But women in Balochistan are even deprived of their basic rights. In places like Dera Jamali people treat women as commodities and they are not viewed as humans. This is a sorry state of affair. Though we live in technological era, when we look at the pathetic health conditions of women in Balochistan, it seems as if we still live in Dark Ages.
Well, there are organisations like MSF who are doing their job in Balochistan by providing medical assistance to poor women and children; it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that women should live in a safe and healthy environment – and to provide them with all the health care facilities. It seems like a distant dream but not an impossible one!
