Mazar E Sharif— My name is Nasira and I live in the Khorasan area. Our biggest challenge during Ramadan is the rotten melons we eat for Suhari because only these are cheap enough to buy. We are poor.
Each day I walk the streets looking for work. I wash people’s clothes. I would like a good life; I’d like something to eat and drink. My stomach aches with hunger. My children are small, but when they get older they will be the bread winners of the family. Now our family’s bread winner is my husband. But he is sick and sometimes he goes to work and sometimes he cannot. So I wash clothes in people’s homes.
I have four sons and two girls. There is no help for poor people. Our biggest need in Ramadan is help with paying for cooking oil, rice, and flour. This is enough. I have no wishes to have some kind of special food during Ramadan for breaking the fast. If I cook rice tonight I will keep it downstairs and use what is left tomorrow night. I can buy ten tomatoes and ten black tomatoes. I use the worst to cook with the rice.
My message for those who hear my voice is to help me a box of cooking oil, and a bag of rice and flour. It’s enough.
The government could help us if they gave us a piece of land to farm. We would plant tomatoes and wheat and then we could live without any help.
By Nasira as told to Nilofar