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
31
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
Thehealth-careeconomyisrepletewithunusualandevenuniqueeconomicrelationships.Oneoftheleastunderstanding【S1】______
Thehealth-careeconomyisrepletewithunusualandevenuniqueeconomicrelationships.Oneoftheleastunderstanding【S1】______
(1)FrankhaddrivenhismotherintoWahinetobuyMeggie’sdoll,andhewasstillwonderingwhathadpromptedhertodoit.She
(1)FrankhaddrivenhismotherintoWahinetobuyMeggie’sdoll,andhewasstillwonderingwhathadpromptedhertodoit.She
(1)Afteralongdayattheoffice,manyofusfindourselvestakingoutourstressonfriends,children,orsignificantothers.
PassageOne(1)Mrs.Sowerberryburstintoafloodoftears.ThisfloodoftearsleftMr.Sowerberrynoalternative.
随机试题
胃痛急剧而拒按,腹胀便秘,舌苔黄燥,脉滑实有力者,治疗应首选的方剂是
肠上皮细胞由肠腔吸收葡萄糖属于
首次提出“在正式组织中存在着非正式组织”观点的是()
患者,女,20岁。左前臂圆形肿物如指头大小,质硬,表面光滑,边缘清楚,无粘连,活动度大。应首先考虑的是
在体格检查中,医生应遵循的道德要求不包括
现行《水利水电基本建设工程单元工程质量等级评定标准》中有部分标准将中间产品质量标准纳入了正文,中间产品只有在检验合格后才能在()中加入应用。
某科学家向汽车公司提供一项非专利技术,获得收入30000元,该收入应缴纳个人所得税额为( )元。
()指在现成的教学班级内进行,没有随机分派被试,不能完全控制误差的来源,只能尽量减小误差的实验。
“土豪”
Researchhasshownthat—inbothsexesandacrossnumerouscultures—attractivepeoplearejudgedtobesmarter,kinder,morehone
最新回复
(
0
)