Octogenarian Fatima lives in her 37-year-old divorced daughter Shaheena’s house at Zoonimar. Before moving in into her daughter’s house, the mother of two sons and three daughters lived alone.
“My daughter may provide me the last drop of water on my deathbed, this may be why she came back,” says Fatima. Shaheena is divorced, with two children aged 10 and 15.
The family of four lives in a “two-room” house where only a six by seven foot room is functional and a small corridor serves as a kitchen. The other room is just four walls. The house is bereft of a latrine. A bathroom came after five years of struggle.
Fatima once lived happily with her husband, Khalil Muhammad Bhat, and their children. Khalil used to process Pashmina thread. “Those days such shawls were either exported or bought by rich people as these were very expensive,” says Fatima. Khalil’s earnings were sufficient for the family until he died of a heart attack, leaving Fatima to fend for their family.
Both of Fatima’s sons had dropped out of school when they were still in 5th and 4th grade, and her daughters did not go to school at all. All her daughters started doing embroidery on rugs and clothes from a tender age. For the next ten years, things returned to a relative normal life. Fatima married off her children at very young ages. Her daughters contributed for their own marriages. more
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