Hayam is beautiful, but nobody can tell at first sight. You have to look again to see the smooth olive skin, the big brown eyes she has generously bequeathed to her two sons and daughter and the long eye lashes. Hayam is broken, and that you can tell without much effort.
She stood at a shady corner, with her three children hanging to the hem of her maroon Abaya. She looked on as Oasis –one of UN Women’s centres in Zaatari- flowed with color and life. Jordanian architecture students and Syrian refugees were painting the white, tin walls of the centre’s caravans with pictures from Syria as part of UN Women’s social cohesion initiatives between refugee and host communities. Soon, colorful maps, trees, old houses, empty streets and mosque tops overpowered the dusty, yellowish background for once. Children were everywhere, playing on the slides and swings of the centre, laughingly climbing up and down the tires of the students’ bus and trying very hard to cover themselves with paint. All children except for Hayam’s.
Her ex-husband has abused her and her children for years. She lost two pregnancies to beatings and malnutrition- one of them at 8 moths. Another beating sent her into emergency delivery only for the baby to die 5 days later. She tried to seek support from her family, but they would not take her back. She tried working, but her husband stopped her. She tried the police, but her husband needed only “promise” he would not hurt her again and then almost killed her once the police left.
Her life until she came to Zaatari mirrored the gender inequalities women are forced to live with in many Arab communities.
Her father died at 29 when she was still in first grade. Her mother left her girls behind to marry again, so Hayam and her two sisters were raised by their father’s brothers.
Hayam was forced out of school after finishing elementary education. She didn’t need it because “a woman is meant for her husband’s household”- or so goes an Arabic proverb spoken in all dialects across the region.
Hayam couldn’t leave her abusive husband and live alone, because divorced women only live alone to engage in illicit relationships- or so rules the social stigma attached to single mothers.
Her husband raped her for years, resulting in unwanted pregnancies that she ended up losing anyway due to his constant physical violence. But only an unvirtuous woman would deny her husband his unconditional “right” to her body- or so say ultraconservative TV preachers and the law. No Arab country recognizes marital rape.
“When I didn’t let him touch me, he yelled and accused me of cheating with someone else. Then he stripped my clothes and raped me,” Hayam cried.
At the end of it, Hayam’s husband locked his elder son and daughter in a septic tank for hours before the neighbors saved them. They were 6 and 5 years old at the time. A few days later he poured boiling water over his daughter in a fit of rage- scars still cover much of her back.
When the war raged through Syria, he beat Hayam and the children all the way to the border because the authorities wouldn’t have let him cross without a family. He later married another woman in the camp and took her back to Syria. Hayam and her children have not seen him since.
She joined one of UN Women’s Oases where she participated in a cash-for-work programme which enabled her to support her children. A few months later, she shared her story with UN Women’s workers to seek their support for her children. At the time, the three children hardly interacted with other kids, could not keep up with school and she seemed to be the only one able to understand their broken speech. UN Women has been providing psychological support to the children and their mother ever since.
Women in the Crisis
Supporting Women Survivors of Violence in Refugee Communities
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