For the Love of a Son: One Afghan Woman's Quest for Her Stolen Child by Jean Sasson

For the Love of a Son: One Afghan Woman's Quest for Her Stolen Child

One of our neighbour boy, who used to come to us for tuition’s once asked, “when husband and wife separates, we call divorce, what do we call when mother and son want to separate?”

Any word for it? I could not think of any. So I told him, the bond is so divine that it cannot and should not be separated. 

What would a mother do, when her son is taken away from her? There is no solace for her grief. 

Here is one such story. Jean Sasson in ‘For the Love of a Son’ as the named indicates takes us through ‘One Afghan Woman's Quest for Her Stolen Child’. It offers such a brutal window into life in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. So full of suffering, it is incredible that this is a non-fiction.  Well truth is harsher than fictions. 

I cannot fully describe the devastating scenes that unfold in this true story – from the rape and abuse many women suffer at the hands of their own husbands, while the rest of their families turn a blind eye, to the injustice of gender discrimination in countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. The book’s dedication, by Khail, states: “These memories of Afghanistan are dedicated to three people who loved Afghanistan with all their hearts: To my beloved parents, and to Farid, my ‘big brother’, I miss you every day of my life.” Sasson adds, “For every woman in Afghanistan who silently suffers unimaginable abuse at the hands of the men who should love and respect her. I’m sure these women wonder if anyone in the world cares – I care.”

From the time she was a little girl, Maryam rebelled against the terrible second-class existence that was her destiny as an Afghan woman.

Maryam had witnessed the miserable fate of her grandmother and three aunts, and wished that she had been born a boy. As a feisty teenager in Kabul, she was outraged when the Russians invaded her country. After she made a public show of defiance, she had to flee the country for her life.

A new life of freedom seemed within her grasp, but her father arranged a traditional marriage to a fellow afghan, who turned out to be a brutal and violent man. Beaten, raped, and bused, Maryam found joy in the birth of a son Duran. Junaid Safdar. But then her cruel husband stole him away far beyond his mother's reach. For many long years she searched for her lost child, while civil war and Taliban oppression raged back home in Afghanistan.

Set against a landscape littered with tragic tales of horrific suffering, Jean Sasson, chronicles the story of one resolute but tormented woman Maryam Khail's who is determined to achieve freedom and equality with men. She takes us through her journey in Afghanistan, US and Saudi Arabia and how the life is different yet the same to some of them.