Self-harm is so taboo that there is limited public discussion about how to tackle it.
Jumagul Nosirova, 60, cannot shake the image of her seven-year-old grandchild, Ziyoviddin, waving to her as he left home and saying: “Bye-bye granny.” Some hours later, one evening in July 2015, he and his two sisters, six-year-old Mahina and five-year-old Omina, would be dead. They were thrown into a rushing river by their own mother before she attempted and failed to take her own life. Passersby were able to save Parvina Abdullоyeva, but not her children.
Stories of such dramatic or successful attempts at suicide accompanied by child-killing crop up regularly in the news in Tajikistan. Although the deaths, when they make the headlines, provoke shock and disbelief, the issue of self-harm is such a taboo that there is limited public discussion about how it can be tackled.
“In Tajikistan, we do not yet have the culture of going to the psychologist,” Davron Mukhamadiyev, a psychiatrist, told Eurasianet. “For our women, the role of the psychologist is performed by neighbors and friends with whom you can talk in confidence and honestly.”
Abdullоyeva was 33 when she drowned her three children in a river in Dushanbe, the capital city. After her arrest, she was compelled by the police, for the purposes of filming a piece to be broadcast on television, to revisit the scene of her crime and to provide a blow-by-blow account of her actions. There was little attention given to her motivations.
The outline of Abdullоyeva’s biography is reasonably common for women of her generation in Tajikistan.
After leaving school, Abdullоyeva, whose family is from the town of Yavan, worked on a farm for a few years. At the age of 22, she married, for love. Arranged marriages are common in traditionally minded families, so the distinction is important, especially considering what would happen later.
Nosirova, who is Abdullоyeva’s mother, described her as having been quiet and withdrawn since childhood. Abdullоyeva was not one to complain, but she also never shared her worries and problems.
“Every time we went to visit her at home, she would greet us with a smile. She always said everything with her was well. If we ever asked questions, she would tell us not to interfere in her personal affairs,” Nosirova told Eurasianet.
On the ill-fated day, Abdullоyeva apparently came to suspect that her husband was cheating on her with her cousin. To distract herself, she turned off her phone and took her children for a walk into town. In her angered state, she told nobody of her movements.
By evening, when she decided to return home, she turned on her phone and found a message from her husband: “When you went missing, your mother had a heart attack.”
The message was a lie, seemingly written in spite. But it was enough to push Abdullоyeva to desperate measures.
“She was already in a depressive state. She was tortured by the thought that her husband would throw her out,” Abdullоyeva’s lawyer during the subsequent trial, Matlyuba Bobojonova, told Eurasianet. “What would she do without a job? On top of that, she was terrified by the text message, which convinced her that she had caused her mother’s heart trouble. This all combined to put pressure on her. Her mind switched off altogether. She saw salvation in death.”
How Abdullоyeva’s case then developed further speaks volumes as to the way this kind of seemingly inexplicable act is viewed by a justice system ill-equipped to deal with or understand the consequences of mental breakdowns.
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