Afghan girl spends life disguised as ‘son’ her parents wanted

Sitara Wafadar yearns for long hair like other girls. Instead, the Afghan teenager has disguised herself as a boy for more than a decade, forced by her parents to be the “son” they never had.

With five sisters and no brothers, Sitara lives by the gender-twisting custom known as “bacha poshi,” which in Dari refers to a girl “dressed as a boy,” enabling her to safely perform the duties of a son in the patriarchal country.

The 18-year-old, who resides with her impoverished family in a village in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar, has pretended to be a boy for most of her life.

“I never think that I am a girl,” Sitara tells AFP at the brick factory where she and her elderly father work six days a week as bonded laborers to repay money they borrowed from the owner and feed the family.

Bacha poshi has a long history in deeply conservative Afghanistan. Normally it is families with no male heirs who make a daughter dress as a boy so she can carry out the duties of a son without getting harassed, or worse.

But some girls choose to pose as boys so they can enjoy the freedom their male counterparts take for granted in a country that treats women as second-class citizens.

While most bacha posh, as they are known, stop dressing as a boy after reaching puberty, Sitara says she keeps wearing male clothing “to protect myself” at the brick kiln.