They Killed Their Husbands

They Killed Their Husbands
Acrylic on plywood, 61 x 61 cm,
$2500 (framed)

From Kiana Hayeri’s photo essay, Where Prison Is a Kind of Freedom,
“In 2019, I spent two weeks inside Herat Women’s Prison in northwest Afghanistan, getting to know some of the 119 inmates incarcerated there. These women saw no other way out of abuse and domestic violence but to kill their husbands - an act that put them in even graver danger from their dead husbands' families. That’s why the 15-foot wall and the barbed wire surrounding the prison were there. To keep intruders who might want to take revenge, from getting in, as much as they were there to keep inmates from getting out. While these inmate’s past lives were harrowing, their lives inside prison were peaceful, happy and free. Despite the overcrowded cells, many inmates felt freer in prison than they had been in their marriages.

“On August 12, three short days before the Taliban took the capital of Afghanistan, the prison guards opened the gates of Herat prison, releasing all inmates with no question asked. But for these women, the release was anything but liberating. The freedom they experienced in jail is now taken away and replaced with more restrictions, fear and uncertainty. Today, millions of Afghan women are put away in this larger prison, called Afghanistan.”