Meet 'Sitara Wafadar' the Afghan girl who has been disguising herself as a boy for more than 10 years

She reportedly resides with her poor family in a mud-brick house in a village in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar. She has five sisters and no brothers. As per the repots, Sitara works at a brick factory six days a week with her father as a bonded labour to repay money they borrowed and to feed her family. There are other workers too, who do not have a clue that Sitara is actually a girl. /Image Courtesy: AFP PHOTO / Noorullah SHIRZADA

Most of the girls stop dressing as boys after reaching puberty, but Sitara continued to guise as a boy to avoid risks and to protect herself at the brick factory. She attends funerals too as the eldest son of his father, something she would never be allowed to do as a girl/ /Image Courtesy: AFP PHOTO / Noorullah SHIRZADA

Baccha Poshi is a gender twisting custom of Afghanistan which in Dari refers to a girl “dressed as a boy”. The custom enables families with no male heirs to make a daughter dress as a boy so that she can carry out the work that normally a boy would do, without being harassed in a patriarchal society. /Image Courtesy: AFP PHOTO / Noorullah SHIRZADA

Sitara Wafadar, an 18-year-old Afghan girl, has been living disguised as a boy for over a decade now, because she is compelled partially by her parents and partially by poverty, to do so. /Image Courtesy: AFP PHOTO / Noorullah SHIRZADA

Surprising as it sounds, especially in a conservative country; the girl dares to sport cropped hair, and gets dressed in baggy trousers and shirt. In fact she lives by the country’s disguising custom called ‘baccha poshi’. She compensates for the son who was never born to her parents. /Image Courtesy: AFP PHOTO / Noorullah SHIRZADA

In Afghanistan sometimes girls are pushed in this custom, sometimes they willingly take it up to enjoy the freedom that boys get. /Image Courtesy: AFP PHOTO / Noorullah SHIRZADA