Growing Up In Prison

I first read about Meena Gul in the New York Times. We were having breakfast and I asked my mom about the little girl in the green shalwar kameez on the front page of the paper.  I was surprised to learn that Meena was only 11 like me. After reading the article, I wrote to the journalist to learn more about Meena. Although Rod Nordland did not write back to me, I kept thinking about Meena. In my letter I had asked Mr. Nordland if journalists ever gave things to the kids they met - I thought Meena needed a real doll and a book of fairy tales. The doll because she created a doll from some cloth and string and a book of fairy tales because she could read them over and over.  I couldn't get a book of fairy tales written in Arabic, but I found a small soft doll with a scarf on her head, that I thought she might like. I mailed it to her. If you want to send something to her or to the other children in prison with her, she is in the women's wing of the Nangarhar provincial prison in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. I used google translate to send her a letter in Arabic. 

11-Year-Old Has Spent Her Life in Jail, a Serial Killer as a Cellmate

By ROD NORDLANDDEC. 3, 2017

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Shirin Gul and her daughter Meena, 11, in the women’s wing of the Nangarhar provincial prison, in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, where Ms. Gul is serving a life sentence. CreditMauricio Lima for The New York Times

JALALABAD, Afghanistan — Meena got chickenpox, measles and the mumps in prison. She was born there, nursed there and weaned there. Now 11 years old, she has spent her entire life in prison and will probably spend the rest of her childhood there as well.

The girl has never committed a crime, but her mother, Shirin Gul, is a convicted serial killer serving a life sentence, and under Afghan prison policy she can keep her daughter with her until she turns 18.

Meena was even conceived in prison, and has never been out, not even for a brief visit. She has never seen a television set, she said, and has no idea what the world outside the walls looks like.

Her plight is extreme, but not unique. In the women’s wing of the Nangarhar provincial prison here, she is one of 36 children jailed with their mothers, among 42 women in all. But none of the other children have spent such a long time in custody; most of their mothers’ sentences are much shorter.

Locking up small children with their mothers is a common practice in Afghanistan, especially when there are no other close relatives, or fathers are absent or estranged. Child advocates estimate that there are hundreds of imprisoned Afghan children whose only crime is having a convicted mother.