首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
(1)Khalida’s father says she’s 9—or maybe 10. As much as Sayed Shah loves his 10 children, the functionally illiterate Afghan fa
(1)Khalida’s father says she’s 9—or maybe 10. As much as Sayed Shah loves his 10 children, the functionally illiterate Afghan fa
admin
2021-08-05
32
问题
(1)Khalida’s father says she’s 9—or maybe 10. As much as Sayed Shah loves his 10 children, the functionally illiterate Afghan farmer can’t keep track of all their birth dates. Khalida huddles at his side, trying to hide beneath her chador and headscarf. They both know the family can’t keep her much longer. Khalida’s father has spent much of his life raising opium, as men like him have been doing for decades in the stony hillsides of eastern Afghanistan and on the dusty southern plains. It’s the only reliable cash crop most of those farmers ever had. Even so, Shah and his family barely got by: traffickers may prosper, but poor farmers like him only subsist. Now he’s losing far more than money. "I never imagined I’d have to pay for growing opium by giving up my daughter," says Shah.
(2)The family’s heartbreak began when Shah borrowed $2,000 from a local trafficker, promising to repay the loan with 24 kilos of opium at harvest time. Late last spring, just before harvest, a government crop-eradication team appeared at the family’s little plot of land in Laghman province and destroyed Shah’s entire two and a half acres of poppies. Unable to meet his debt, Shah fled with his family to Jalalabad, the capital of neighboring Nangarhar province. The trafficker found them anyway and demanded his opium. So Shah took his case before a tribal council in Laghman and begged for leniency. Instead, the elders unanimously ruled that Shah would have to reimburse the trafficker by giving Khalida to him in marriage. Now the family can only wait for the 45-year-old drug runner to come back for his prize. Khalida wanted to be a teacher someday, but that has become impossible. "It’s my fate," the child says.
(3)Afghans disparagingly call them "loan brides"—daughters given in marriage by fathers who have no other way out of debt. The practice began with the dowry a bridegroom’s family traditionally pays to the bride’s father in tribal Pashtun society. These days the amount ranges from $3,000 or so in poorer places like Laghman and Nangarhar to $8,000 or more in Helmand, Afghanistan’s No. 1 opium-growing province. For a desperate farmer, that bride price can be salvation—but at a cruel cost. Among the Pashtun, debt marriage puts a lasting stain on the honor of the bride and her family. It brings shame on the country, too. President Hamid Karzai recently told the nation: "I call on the people(not to)give their daughters for money; they shouldn’t give them to old men, and they shouldn’t give them in forced marriages."
(4)All the same, local farmers say a man can get killed for failing to repay a loan. No one knows how many debt weddings take place in Afghanistan, where 93 percent of the world’s heroin and other opiates originate. But Afghans say the number of loan brides keeps rising as poppy-eradication efforts push more farmers into default. "This will be our darkest year since 2000," says Baz Mohammad, 65, a white-bearded former opium farmer in Nangarhar. "Even more daughters will be sold this year." The old man lives with the anguish of selling his own 13-year-old daughter in 2000, after Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar banned poppy growing. "Lenders never show any mercy," the old man says. Local farmers say more than one debtor has been bound hand and foot, then locked into a small windowless room with a smoldering fire, slowly choking to death.
(5)Efforts to promote other crops have failed. Wheat or corn brings $250 an acre at best, while poppy growers can expect 10 times that much. Besides, poppies are more dependable: hardier than either wheat or corn and more tolerant of drought and extreme heat and cold. And in a country with practically no government-funded credit for small farmers, opium growers can easily get advances on their crops. The borrower merely agrees to repay the cash with so many kilos of opium, at a price stipulated by the lender— often 40 percent or more below market value. Islam forbids charging interest on a loan, but moneylenders in poppy country elude the ban by packaging the deal as a crop-futures transaction—and never mind mat the rate of return is tantamount to usury.
Which of the following is NOT true about "debt marriage" in the third paragraph?
选项
A、It forces the girls to marry old men.
B、It is a shame for the girls and their family.
C、It enables the girls to pay off their debts.
D、The girl’s family can get much money from it.
答案
C
解析
根据第3段首句可知,“debt marriage”是用来清还女孩子父亲们欠下的债,而非女孩子们欠的债,所以C说法错误,选C。由该段第3句可知D正确;由该段中的stain on the honor of the bride and herfamily可知B正确;由该段中总统的话可知A正确。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/bXIK777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Thelandofapplepieandbaseball—theUnitedStatesofAmerica.OfcourseweallknowthereismoretoAmericathanapplepie
Thelandofapplepieandbaseball—theUnitedStatesofAmerica.OfcourseweallknowthereismoretoAmericathanapplepie
Thelandofapplepieandbaseball—theUnitedStatesofAmerica.OfcourseweallknowthereismoretoAmericathanapplepie
HereintheUnitedStates,beforeagriculturalactivitiesdestroyedthenaturalbalance,thereweregreatmigrationsofRocky
Thehealth-careeconomyisrepletewithunusualandevenuniqueeconomicrelationships.Oneoftheleastunderstanding【S1】______
(1)FrankhaddrivenhismotherintoWahinetobuyMeggie’sdoll,andhewasstillwonderingwhathadpromptedhertodoit.She
(1)Afteralongdayattheoffice,manyofusfindourselvestakingoutourstressonfriends,children,orsignificantothers.
CulturalDifferencesbetweenEastandWestI.FactorsleadingtotheculturaldifferencesA.Differentculture【T1】______【T1】_
PassageOne(1)Mrs.Sowerberryburstintoafloodoftears.ThisfloodoftearsleftMr.Sowerberrynoalternative.
To______istospeakwithdifficulty,hesitating,andrepeatingwords:"Ican’t--can’t--don’tknowhowtothankyou."
随机试题
卫生法律责任具有以下特点,除了
管道标准为W1022—25×2.5B,其中10的含义是()。
A.合理有效使用抗生素B.关节腔持续灌洗C.经关节镜灌洗D.关节切开引流+关节腔持续灌洗早期治疗髋关节化脓性关节炎的最好方法是
上述生物碱的混合物,可用水蒸气蒸馏法分离的是滤去沉淀物后的母液中含有的是
评估某写字楼在建工程的价值,其土地是3年前通过挂牌方式取得的50年建设用地使用权,预计该写字楼2年后建设出租的月毛租金为50元/平方米,空置率为10%。运营费用为毛租金的40%,报酬率为8%。根据以上资料,回答下列问题:该写字楼建成后的年净收益为(
论述维果斯基的心理发展观及其教育意义。
学习者持续一贯的带有个性特征的学习方式是()。
学生选修课程的关系模式为SC(S#,Sn,Sd,Sa,C#,G)(其属性分别为学号、姓名、所在系、年龄、课程号和成绩);C(C#,Cn,P#)(其属性分别为课程号、课程名、先选课)。关系模式中包含对主属性部分依赖的是()。
Alandfreefromdestruction,pluswealth,naturalresources,andlaborsupply—allthesewereimportant(1)_____inhelpingEngla
A、Itwashergrandfatherwhogaveherthename.B、Shehadaveryhappychildhoodinalargefamily.C、Hermarriagewiththesail
最新回复
(
0
)