{ "id": 3864, "date": "2018-07-25T11:12:54", "date_gmt": "2018-07-25T09:12:54", "guid": { "rendered": "https:\/\/sboverseas.org\/?p=3864" }, "modified": "2018-07-25T11:12:54", "modified_gmt": "2018-07-25T09:12:54", "slug": "life-at-thirteen-years-old-a-future-stolen", "status": "publish", "type": "post", "link": "https:\/\/sboverseas.org\/en\/life-at-thirteen-years-old-a-future-stolen\/", "title": { "rendered": "Life at Thirteen Years Old – A future stolen" }, "content": { "rendered": "

Written by\u00a0Nile Watson-Batista, a volunteer in Lebanon, with the help of SB staff.<\/em><\/p>\n

Amara\u00a0was the girl in the front row of every class, hand always raised begging to answer the teacher\u2019s question. She had little inside jokes with her teachers in both English and in Arabic. The head of the organization saw in her a chance to show to the world how hard they had been working to make a difference. Amara\u00a0was the \u2018difference\u2019 – the change SB OverSeas sought to make in the community. At 13 years old, she was intelligent, respectful, and gaining the skills she needed to be independent. Then she stopped coming to school.<\/p>\n

There was no warning, no explanation, no compromise. She had always been in class, and if not in class, just outside the entrance playing games and running free. She adored the school and the staff admired her; it was unfathomable to think that she would just not show up, but everyone falls ill now and then. Or maybe she had to take care of her younger sister. Or maybe her mother was ill. Or maybe she went to join a relative in Germany. Or was it England? Any one of the rumors that started to float around during the early days of her absence would\u2019ve been easier to swallow then the truth: Amara\u00a0was getting married.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Marriage in the shelter is always a party. It\u2019s pure happiness, dancing, the best food. It\u2019s the beautiful outfit, the laughter, feeling gorgeous. It\u2019s a slight glimmer of pre-war normalcy, a return to a time many of the children will never know, a time the adults will never forget. Growing up in the shelter, Amara\u00a0dreamed of her day, her moment, dancing and crying tears of joy at the sight of her Prince Charming. She wanted to be \u201clike a princess from the movies\u201d, but whenever someone asked which one, she\u2019d shrug and say, \u201call of them!\u201d She dreamed of her \u201cpretty pink dress with all the sparkles\u201d and her makeup rivaling that of a celebrity. On her wedding day she got everything she wanted. She was Jasmine, she was Cinderella, she was stuck.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Amara soon moved into her husband Ali\u2019s family home kilometers away from the shelter she\u2019d come to love. Ali was 6 years older than her and possessed no real education. With a full-time job in Saida, he lived with his parents and was more than ready to consummate the marriage. Within days, her 13 year old innocence was invaded and conquered and replaced by new life. In a community where the thought of contraception and family planning are more foreign than a foreign language, her first painful night with him led to pregnancy. Her mother never wanted her to get married. She saw such beauty in Amara’s\u00a0mind that to her Amara\u00a0was the future of Syria. Her father saw her marriage as a way out of a situation he still couldn\u2019t wrap his head around. He saw it as one less child to provide for, one less mouth to feed, and maybe even a better future than what he could provide her on his meager wage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Amara\u2019s perception of the marriage at 13 didn\u2019t extend much farther beyond the wedding day itself. She didn’t understand that she\u2019d now be responsible for cooking and cleaning not only for her husband, but for both of his parents. She didn’t understand that she\u2019d rarely get to see the people that made her laugh and smile, that she\u2019d never get to make silly faces at her favorite teacher again. She didn\u2019t understand that her immature body couldn\u2019t physically handle the pregnancy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As her stomach grew each day, she grew weaker. She wasn\u2019t allowed out of the house much and was still expected to cook and clean like a maid. Her mother had never really taught her how to cook, or how to clean, and she had much difficulty figuring it out on her own. That\u2019s where the beatings from her husband started, not gradually, but suddenly, receiving blows from the fists of a now 20 year old man at the slightest mishap in her spousal duties. His parents didn\u2019t care. They never intervened, they encouraged and enabled. To them she deserved it. The girl that every volunteer used to see a light in, had that light extinguished by black and blue bruises and busted lips.<\/p>\n

Less than a year before this, Amara\u00a0used to sit outside with the girls playing with baby dolls, sometimes swinging them at the boys that would bother them, if necessary. She used to squeeze them and hug them close to her chest, wondering what it would be like to have one of her own. She wasn\u2019t a stranger to babies at the shelter. When her younger sister was still a baby Amara would often carry her outside to meet her friends. She played with the babies in the school and knew every trick to make them stop crying. Now she was crying in the hospital after receiving the news that she wouldn\u2019t be having a baby after all. Six months into her pregnancy, she suffered a miscarriage; a miscarriage at 14 years old.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This worried Ali\u2019s family even more, as to them and to many in the community, a miscarriage meant something was wrong with her and that she\u2019d never be able to bear children for them. She became ill afterwards and spent even more time in the house isolated. She stayed in bed for entire days, sick and barely able to stand on her own. The moment she gained some of her strength back, she was pregnant once more. During this pregnancy Ali decided that she wouldn\u2019t be allowed out of the house at all, and she obeyed him. Her parents were allowed over sometimes, which gave her a few hours of happiness a few times a week. The months passed and she was back in the hospital. This time, she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl with light brown eyes – Amina.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now that she\u2019d have the responsibility of cooking, cleaning, and taking care of Amina, Ali made the decision to have her spend more time at home learning how to be a housewife from her mother. Walking back into the shelter was hard for her. She felt alien in a place that was once her home. People stared, the new volunteers didn\u2019t even look twice at her as they never got the chance to know what an amazing girl she was. She was happy to be home though. She was delighted to hear how well her little sister was doing in school, and enjoyed being able to confide in her sister how much she regretted her marriage, but she always had to go home to Ali.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Her father was proud, and her mother wasn\u2019t as angry about it as she used to be. Amara\u00a0herself was starting to get used to it, but she still wasn\u2019t happy with him. The time she got to spend at her family home became the world to her once more. She sat in the kitchen eating fruits, learning her mother\u2019s recipes, and even listening to the songs she liked to dance to but soon enough, her parents started to argue often. Although the arguing seemed to appear out of nowhere, it didn’t take long for her to overhear: her father was making plans for her little sister to get married.<\/p>\n

9<\/span><\/p>\n

SB OverSeas is\u00a0working to end child marriage. Read more about our advocacy here<\/a>. The artwork\u00a0used for\u00a0this post are created in our centres as part of our empowerment<\/a> programs.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>", "protected": false }, "excerpt": { "rendered": "

Written by\u00a0Nile Watson-Batista, a volunteer in Lebanon, with the help of SB staff. Amara\u00a0was the girl in the front row of every class, hand always raised begging to answer the teacher\u2019s question. She had little inside jokes with her teachers in both English and in Arabic. 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