At Their Stopover, Syrian Women Decide to Prevent Pregnancies

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Posted on Dec 01 2018 8 minutes read
At Their Stopover, Syrian Women Decide to Prevent Pregnancies
© Alia Haju
The high number of births in societies experiencing disasters and wars is a natural and recurrent corollary according to sociologists. Throughout history, there have been spikes in the number of births after the end of wars, as was the case in Iraq, for example, or in the United States and Europe after World War II between 1946 and 1964, the period of the demographic phenomenon known as the «baby boom». However, that is a bygone era. Today, in the era of nanotech, social media, digital awareness and the precedence of the individual over the group, assumptions have changed. Nevertheless, passed-down customs and traditions encourage two births at least, especially in Arab societies, and particularly among Syrian refugees who now stand at 1.3 million in Lebanon, according to the General Directorate of General Security.
Procreation is a natural law, the key to the continuation of life and the dream and right of any couple. But this continuation of life is at risk and the dream falters from the first cry of a newborn who comes out of his mother’s womb in a strange land. This strange land has no home for him and no country to protect him. His family lives there below the poverty line, without healthcare or social security and without international protection and faces legal problems relating to travel documents, marriage and birth registrations, etc.
Contrary to the accounts about Syrian refugees being «settled» and comfortable, wishing to remain in Lebanon for the rest of their lives, Syrians in Lebanon actually realize that this is not their destiny. They have been forced to live in these harsh conditions, which have left them in a dark tunnel just for demanding their freedom and fleeing oppression, killings and hunger. They know full well that Lebanon is just a stopover, even if it is going to be a long one. Based on this, a significant number of Syrian refugees refuse to have more children so as not to turn this joy into misfortune to be suffered by angels by no fault of their own, who were born in the diaspora without schooling or employment.
Amna, Fatima and Manar are three exemplars of this group not covered by the Lebanese media. They refused to have their children lead a harsh life and be born in a country that is just a stopover where no one knows when the train makes it to safety.
When Amna, 25, fled Rif Dimashq with her husband Ahmad and her mother-in-law in 2011, she was a newly-wed bride. With an expanding belly, she writhed in pain between the military checkpoints and under the bombs to save her life and that of her unborn baby. Amna suffered severely during her first childbirth, and had it not been for volunteers in the Shatila camp where she lived, her daughter Salam would have died in her womb, a victim of poverty and destitution. She was born in UNRWA’s Burj al-Barajneh refugee hospital, after all hospitals in Beirut had turned her down because she had no money to offer.
«I tried to kill myself more than once to rid myself of mental and physical torment and spare my unborn baby the life of destitution awaiting it,» says Amna. «But I persevered and cleaned houses, and endured the insults of strangers and my husband,» she continues. «We suffered a lot before my husband found work, we used to eat and drink whatever good samaritans would bring us, and sometimes we would go to bed hungry.» When things «got better», Ahmad was making LBP 200,000 to support them. After a while, the landlords got angry with the husband and expelled him. «We went back to the house of out relatives in Shatila until my husband found a second job and it was then that I conceived with my second child!»
They were forced to move to the Dalhamiyah camp in Bekaa where Amna began working with an organization distributing food and clothing to newly arrived refugees. «In this organization, I met a woman who would sit with us after we would finish packing clothes and food, and enlightened us in matters of life that we knew nothing about.» This woman changed Amna’s life, who decided to take birth control pills so she would not have another baby, as she did not have the money for the schooling of her two children being the only breadwinner of her family after her husband left work again. Ahmad had a difficult temperament, according to Amna. She can never forget the beatings with his belt or his insults to her «in public in front of other people». A year had passed after the birth of Mohammed and Amna did not get pregnant. Her mother and mother-in-law started analyzing this, saying that the girl was sick and should see a legal midwife, while Ahmad fretted about his manhood. «Are you taking oral contraceptives?» he asked his wife. At first, Amna was scared and denied it. But soon the secret was out and he beat her and left her with a bleeding nose. Amna refused to have a third child «because I do not want to give birth and leave my children on the street, begging and being harassed by everybody.» But Ahmad and his mother gave Amna an ultimatum: give birth or divorce! Amna was at a loss and dejected, thinking about giving her children an education and providing the necessary food, clothing and heating, «so as they would not die as others have of the bitter cold Bekaa weather.» But after two years of marital rape without bearing a child, the dear husband decided to stop Amna from working and take the children out of school. «I did not go to school, and look at me, I’m am no less a man because of it. I will go back to Syria and work there in agriculture and I will teach them how to get money from their land.» This is what Ahmad decided after Amna’s great suffering, enduring his beatings and berating. Nevertheless, after the mediation of relatives and Amna’s brothers, Ahmad agreed to leave the daughter Salam to Amna, to be brought up in Lebanon, while he would return with his mother and son to Syria and re-marry another woman who would bear him more children. «So I paid for my decision not to give birth twice with divorce and my son being taken away from me,» says Amna, tearful.
Women like Amna are treated unjustly by their insular community. They either give in to the rule of the group or they rebel and win. The latter is the case of Fatima, 35, who carried a gas tank to induce a miscarriage of what was to be her fourth child. She convinced her family and neighbors in Muhammara camp in North Lebanon that she had had a miscarriage in the second month of her pregnancy. She agreed to this with her husband Hossam, who worked as a painting teacher in Syria before rebelling against the Ba'ath regime and being arrested and prosecuted, and eventually fleeing to Lebanon. «God blessed us with three children and gave us a brain to reason with it,» says Fatima, who worked as a sales assistant in a textile shop in Aleppo before becoming unemployed in Lebanon. «One child’s registration at government agencies costs us a figure we cannot afford, so what about milk, food and school expenses?» says her husband. «God will forgive us because he knows our situation. We cannot guarantee that this child will survive a week. He has no country now, no passport. So do we implicate it in a cruel and unjust life as we have implicated our families and our other three children?»
Manar, 19, on the other hand, who has been married for two years, set out the condition to her family and husband that she would not give birth before returning back home in Homs. She fled to Lebanon as a child, her memories filled with death after her brother was killed in front of her by unknown gunmen – from that day, she has difficulties sleeping. This beautiful girl, who completed her education at a public school in Saida (South Lebanon) where she lives with her mother, father and her younger sisters, knows what she wants. «I got married to fulfill part of my religion duties, but religion tells us to balance things and I have many projects today, first that I graduate from university where I’m studying psychology. And then go back home to bring up my children there in the shelter of a real home where they have the right to play, sleep and warmth. Here, I can’t even rent a house because I live with my husband’s family [nine people] in a small apartment.» Her husband Rami, who works as an electrician, agrees with her plan, saying that he does not want his children to be born in the dark as if they were street children. «We will soon return to Syria and build a life far from humiliation; the war will not go on for longer.» Manar concludes: «Either my son is born free or he will not be born.»

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