Word: dehdadi
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...Squatting beside his wife's unconscious body, his 12 children and grandchildren huddled around him in a tiny, open tent of sticks and stitched sacks, the 65-year-old brushes away tears as he describes his prospects in the coming Afghan winter. Freezing rain and snow will cover the Dehdadi camp on the southern outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif, home to 15,000 refugees. Temperatures will drop to 5[degrees]F, and the filthy roadside ditch from which the refugees fetch their gray fetid water will freeze...
...years of failed harvests and 22 years of war, the refugees have exhausted their meager savings and killed their livestock. In August the camps around Mazar-i-Sharif had a two-week supply of food. After Sept. 11 all aid was suspended as agencies withdrew; 230 have died in Dehdadi since then. Others have fled into the frozen mountains rather than live in a war zone. Without food or water, many have surely perished. Now, with the Taliban's retreat, the way to better-supplied camps near Pakistan is open--but many of the refugees are too weak and poor...
...Mohammed, 75, has already watched a daughter-in-law, a 13-year-old son and a 10-year-old grandson starve in Dehdadi. By day his wife works as a baker in the city, returning with a few carrots or turnips that she divides between her remaining family of eight. "I used to be fat. I had a great fat neck," Sah Mohammed says, rubbing his scrawny nape. "After a while we ate leaves, but even those are gone now. Hunger has taken everything from us. Our family, our neighbors, our lives--and our hope...
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