By the time chubby blond toddler Rahimullah can talk, he probably won't remember his dead mother. Last month, she became one of the 50 Afghan women who die every day giving birth.
'We tried to get help,' Rahimullah's father, Mohammed Tamur, said, holding the little boy who clutches a blue plastic Wellington boot in his hand like a teddy bear. 'We tried to get a car, but by the time we found the money to rent one and drove her to the hospital it was already too late. She died on the way.'
Rahimullah's baby brother became a statistic too, dying on the two-hour drive to hospital in Badakhshan's provincial capital, Faizabad, one of the 600 children under five who die every day in the country, according to Unicef.
Nestling in the shadow of the snow-capped Pamir Mountains, the village of Deh Magas looks at first glance like one of the most peaceful places on Earth.
But although there is no Taleban insurgency in the northeastern Afghan province of Badakhshan, it remains one of the most lethal places in the world to be a woman. Here, pregnancy can be a death sentence.
'In our village at least five or six women die every year having a baby,' said police chief Commander Wahajuddin, a tall, bearded man anxious to talk about the problems women and children face in the village.