Everybody ‘doesn’t’ count yet

FAISALABAD: As the world celebrates International Population Day, with the theme ‘everybody counts’, in Faisalabad, a father of eight daughters has lost his mind out of depression for having failed to produce a son.

Pratap Nagar resident, 40-year-old Muhammad Sadiq lost his senses and became mentally ill after he could not father a son after eight daughters. Sadiq is a construction worker and lives in a single room broken house with his family. Muhammad Sadiq wished that he could father a son but laments the fact that every year a girl was born. “It was always a girl,” his wife, Najma says, adding that her husband began to fall into severe depression about six years ago.

“He got tuberculosis and is being treated at Allied Hospital, his monthly medicine costs us Rs 500 but we can hardly afford that,” Najma said.

“Four years ago, when our fifth daughter Saima was born, he lost his mind. He kept threatening to kill her and started weeping hysterically,” Najma said, adding that Sadiq became extremely quiet afterwards.

“A few months later he refused to recognize any of us and became a recluse, sometimes he has severe attacks and threatens to kill everyone in the house and other times he merely remains mute and cries,” she said.

Najma said that her family feared for their livelihood as the only breadwinner of the impoverished family was no longer able to work. “I have considered selling my youngest daughter but I cannot bring myself to do it,” she said, adding that she was looking to sending some of her daughters to the city so that they could work as maids and provide something for the family. “Since I don’t have a son, they will have to act as breadwinners for the family,” she said. Najma says that the thought of her daughters’ marriage and the expense involved in it had tortured her husband for years. “Now that he is no longer capable of worrying about their weddings, that trouble falls on to me and I have to think about their future but there is no future in sight,” she says.

Sadiq’s wife and daughter’s began working several years ago to support their families. His older daughters work as scavengers and earn Rs200 a month. The family can hardly make ends meet and serve three meals a day. Sadiq’s eight daughters include Nazia (24), Rabia (23), Razia (20), Sadia (18), Tehmina (16), Bushra (14), Sara (12) and Mehek (10).

Published in The Express Tribune, July 12^th, 2010.