Nine-Year-Old Tissue Seller in Herat: “The Taliban Have Arrested Me Several Times”

Symbolic image: AI-generated / Zan TV

As soon as I stopped at a red traffic light at one of the busy intersections in Herat city, repeated knocks on the car window caught my attention.

I looked over. A child was waving a packet of tissues in one hand while repeatedly knocking on the window with the other, gesturing for me to roll it down.

There was something between fear and expectation on the face of the nine-year-old girl. She did not know whether the stop would give her an opportunity to make a sale or whether she would face an angry response from a driver. She later said such moments always come with anxiety because violent behaviour by some drivers on the streets has become a repeated experience for her.

I drove a little further and stopped by the roadside, then asked her to come closer. She walked cautiously, as though every movement by the driver could change what she decided to do next.

She introduced herself as “Husnah” and said she had returned to Afghanistan with her family from Iran seven months ago.

According to her, her father worked in Iran, but after returning, the family faced unemployment and financial pressure.

She says: “My father goes to the intersection every day and comes back empty-handed at night... My father says there is no work.”

Alongside selling tissues, Husnah speaks about experiences that have shaped her daily life on the streets. During the conversation, she pauses and asks me quietly in a childlike voice:

“Uncle... you’re not Taliban, are you?”

Once she is reassured that she is not speaking to a Taliban member, she talks about being detained and the treatment she says she has received from Taliban forces.

She says: “Because I am a girl and I work, the Taliban do not allow me to work, and they beat me if they see me...”

Husnah says the Taliban have detained her several times while she was working on the streets and held her for several days in a place she describes as a prison or a detention centre for children.

Still trying to sell her packets of tissues and occasionally bargaining with customers, she describes one of her detentions:

“When we came here, there was no work for my father. My mother is also ill. My younger sister and I come out to work. I sell tissues and my sister sells chewing gum.”

She continues: “The Taliban have arrested us several times. Once they took me to prison, and for three days no one knew where I was. Eventually my father found out and got me released.”

According to Husnah, she was subjected to violence while in detention and the children were not given enough food.

She says: “When I cried, they whipped me.”

She also describes another detention during Ramadan this year: “I was running away, but a Taliban member forced me into the vehicle. When I cried, he hit me on the head with the barrel of his gun. My head split open and started bleeding.”

Husnah says that at the detention facility, food was linked to whether the children were fasting.

She says: “They did not give us food in prison either. They only said dry bread would be given to those who fasted. Because I was little, I could not fast, and they told me I had no right to eat. At night, they would not give me food and would say it was because I had drunk water during the day. There was no food in the prison. We could only drink water.”

She adds: “At night, the Taliban themselves ate meat and rice. Even the girls and boys who fasted were only given leftover food or dry bread.”

As she speaks about these experiences, Husnah’s voice trembles and tears begin to run from the corners of her eyes. She pauses for a few seconds and then talks about her life before returning to Afghanistan.

“I went to school in Iran. I studied, but now I have been forced to work.”

Her main fear now is being detained again.

She says: “Every day I am afraid the Taliban will arrest me again, because they told my father that if I am arrested again, he should not come to get me released and they will not release me.”

But fear has not stopped her from returning to the streets. She explains the reason simply:

“If there is no food on our table at night, I have to work. My father tells me to go and work.”

Husnah’s account is the experience of a child caught between her family’s financial hardship and fear of detention. She says that if she stays at home, she has no income to help her family, but if she comes to the streets to work, she worries every day that she may be detained again.

Our conversation ends by the roadside. Husnah picks up her packets of tissues again and walks back towards the intersection, where cars stop one after another at the red light and she approaches the next driver to try to sell a packet.

But for her, every red light is not merely a few minutes of opportunity to sell a packet of tissues. It is a moment between hoping to find a customer and fearing who may be sitting in the next car.