Zarghona wanted to be the first person a new life encountered.
She became a midwife in Kabul in 1977.
She delivered babies through the Soviet invasion, the civil war, the Taliban regime, and the war that followed.
Her husband Daoud died in 1998 — not from violence, but from a heart that had been carrying too much for too long.
Her son Tariq is in Germany. He calls when he can.
Zarghona is 71 years old. She keeps the curtains drawn. She tends her herbs. She sits with what she has.
Some evenings that is enough.
