“I Counted Them and One Child Was Missing”: The Remarkable Story of a Father with 58 Children

Islamabad — Large families are not unusual in Afghanistan, but the household of 57-year-old Mohammad Sadiq, a resident of Uruzgan Province, has become the center of attention. Sadiq has 58 children from four wives, the youngest of whom was born just a few weeks ago. Meeting the needs of such a large family is a daily challenge, where the laughter of children coexists with poverty and a lack of basic amenities.

According to a BBC report, providing for such a large and extended family has become an extremely difficult challenge for Mohammad Sadiq. He says that at times he cannot remember the names of his children and mostly calls them simply “son.”

Sadiq’s routine includes counting his children every night before going to sleep to make sure they are all at home. On one occasion, as he sat around the dinner spread counting the children, he found one child missing — and he says he did not even know whether the absent child was a boy or a girl. It was later discovered, upon inquiry, that the child’s mother had sent him to his grandmother’s house.

Recalling another amusing incident, he said that when a cleric asked him for his daughter’s name to solemnize her marriage, he thought for a while and then gave a name — at which the officiant laughed and told him to go back and confirm the name, in case he had given the wrong one. And so it was: he had given the name of a different daughter.

Amid these moments of joy, the family faces extremely severe economic hardship on a daily basis. Poverty is such that many children often go to bed hungry, and meals for the entire family are prepared only twice a day, in the morning and evening.

In winter, six or seven people share a single thin blanket, and the only bedding available consists of simple mattresses. The rooms in the house have no windows or proper doors; the entrances are covered only by thin curtains.

Two women in the family are responsible for preparing the food. They say there are no separate spaces for bathing, washing clothes, or cleaning dishes — all these tasks are carried out in the same place.

It is not only Mohammad Sadiq who works for this family; several of his young children also labor, collecting usable items such as paper and plastic to use as fuel or sell to contribute to household expenses.

A particularly painful aspect of their life is that 14 children have died over the years. According to medical experts, child marriage and continuous pregnancies are extremely dangerous for the health of both mother and child, increasing the risk of complications during childbirth. Despite all these harsh conditions and limited income, Mohammad Sadiq has only two great aspirations in life: first, that his children acquire knowledge of both religion and the world, and second, that they never have to go to bed hungry.