By

M. S. Shah Jahan

“Feet stumbling in the pitch darkness over the uneven ground we make our way with a group of women to one of the bathrooms in the Zaatari camp. There is no light, if we come in here there could be a guy hiding or something,” one woman said. What she meant by some thing, is a rape attempt.

Zaatari is a refugee camp in Jordan, located 10 km east of Mafraq. It was first opened on July 28, 2012 to host Syrians fleeing the violence in the ongoing Syrian civil war that erupted in 2011. The present refugee population here is estimated to be 160,000, making it Jordan’s fourth largest city.

It is connected to the road network by a short road which leads to the highway. The camp features market-like structures along the main street where goods like vegetables, basic household equipment and clothes can be purchased. Furthermore, coffee shops exist where shisha can be smoked.

There have been various stories of sexual harassment and rape in Zaatari camp — teeming with masses who continue to stream across the border. These stories force families unable to safeguard their daughters, marry them off to protect them: marriages for protection.

This dark underbelly of crisis has led to a disturbing growing phenomenon: “sutra” marriages, or marriages for protection. In a culture where conserving honor is central, everyone says they had no other choice.

13 year old Najwa is the youngest of three. Her two older sisters in their late teens are also recently married. She curls back in the corner next to her husband, 19-year-old Khaled and her mother, hardly saying a word. “I swear to God, I would not have let her get married this young if we were still in Syria.” “I swear I wasn’t able to sleep, I was afraid for the girls.” Her mother tells.

“There were rapes,” Khaled adds. “It’s okay, I do not want children now,” Khaled says. “I will make it up to her, I will make up for not having a wedding party.”

Reem, 16, has a tiny voice diminished by illness brought on by camp dust. She is from Dara’a, an agricultural area where the Syrian uprising began in the spring of 2011. Reem’s husband, a 25-year-old Libyan food distributor, came to Zaatari seeking a bride three or four months ago.

He gave Reem a watch, perfume and water. They married in front of a couple hundred guests at a wedding hall in the nearby town of Irbid, staying there for a month before Reem returned to Zaatari.

Now she’s waiting for him to return; he’s busy in Tripoli securing her a passport, she says. He calls every couple of days and indicates he actually plans to return. But it is also said many men pass through Zaatari taking on brides for just days or a month or two. Alas!

Wearing only a dented gold wedding band for jewelry and with her hair covered by a pink leopard-print hijab, Reem shyly smiles when asked if she wants to go to Libya. Yes, she says, she does—because her husband tells her it’s like Syria: “green, with lots of water.” Will she miss her family when she moves to Libya? “Definitely,” she says.

But marriage, Reem says, is “better than being single.” Like many of the girls at Zaatari, she does nothing all day; she stopped school in ninth grade because of the war. And, again like many of the girls a veil of depression hangs over her face.

“Because of the situation, it’s better,” she says flatly of marriage. “It changes your life. When I went to Irbid, everything was so different from the camp. We’re not used to these circumstances at Zaatari. There’s so much dust; it’s so hot here. The bathrooms are so far—it’s not like being in your own house.” Reem’s mother, who has been sitting quietly a few feet away says “Her life is better now.”

Said’s daughters, aged 15 and 16, got married a month ago. “I am jobless, paraplegic and I cannot support my family,” said the father-of-10. “What can I do? The camp is a dangerous place and I feared for my daughters. I felt marriage was the solution.”

15 year old Nada married Mazen of 18 years on the 4th May 2013 in Zaatari style. The celebration was going on. Unlike the custom in the Syrian town of Dara’a, where the couple is from, there will be no lavish spread of food, no music, no throngs of joyous relatives, few gifts. And since there is no light for an evening celebration, everything will happen before sundown.

“We’re celebrating, but the joy doesn’t come from the heart,” the bride’s father, Mohamed, 35 said.

This is not a wedding Mohamed wanted just yet. But after five months in Zaatari and no better future in sight, he can no longer provide for Nada, so he has decided to accept the bride price of 125,000 Syrian lira (about $1,280) and allow his daughter to marry an 18-year-old Mazem.

Mohamed has many other children to feed, including a 2-month-old girl whose shirt he yanks up, revealing more ribs than a baby should show. “It is like Somalia here,” Mohamed says, pointing at his daughter. “We are dying slowly.”

Is Mohamed happy about his daughter? He tears up. “If we were in Syria, we would have gotten more money in gifts,” he says. What else was wrong with the wedding? “There would have been shooting…the contract should have been written on a bigger piece of paper,” he says. He quickly clarifies that he’s not focused entirely on the physical: “It’s about pride.”

Does he approve of the groom? Mohamed grimaces. “I don’t know yet,” he says. He does think the groom’s family was a little stingy on the bride price. “I would have gotten more money for her if we were in Syria,” he says. Why did he allow Nada to be married so young?

He says he wished he could have waited longer but that she wanted it—she was excited. Also, there was a lot of pressure all around, he says. “Getting married is protection for her,” he says. “Now she’s her husband’s responsibility.” When would he like to marry off his 10-year-old daughter. He laughs sadly, shakes his head and says, “Inshallah, not for ten years.”

Like many men in the camp, Mohamed decided to hand over his eldest daughter early for marriage to protect her as well as to get a little money for his family. He says he worries about the girls Nada associates with: there are rumors that many are turning to prostitution to feed themselves. He worries that Nada will be raped if she remains single. And he fears she’ll lose her childhood no matter what he decides.

Here is Abu Mohammad. He says he reluctantly opted to marry off his teenage daughter to a rich 40-year-old Saudi man, hoping to give her a better life and ease his family’s financial hardships.

“It was the last thing I wanted to do. This big prison we live in. It’s unbearable” said Abu Mohammad, 50, outside his tent at the northern Zaatari refugee camp. The father of six said that his daughter’s Saudi husband “promised to help us until the crisis ends and we go home,” after the marriage three months ago. “Allah knows when this is going to happen,” he said.

Situation out side the camp is not different. Meet 14-year-old Eman. She has such a sweet young face, flushed with exhaustion as she cradles her baby. “I wouldn’t have gotten married, it’s because of the situation.” She speaks softly, her eyes filled with regret and pain well beyond her years. “I told my son not to consummate the marriage, but he didn’t listen,” her mother-in-law whispers. She too was wed for protection.

One woman has 13 children. Two of her daughters are teenagers and she’s so afraid of leaving them at home alone that she hasn’t been able to leave the house to vaccinate her baby.

The authorities have recorded 1,029 marriages between Jordanian men and Syrian women since refugees started to flee to the kingdom in 2011. “Non-Jordanian men have married 331 Syrian women.

One teacher in Zaatari says that men from Gulf countries have asked her where they can find young girls for marriage. “Jordanians and other Arabs frequently come to ask me about Syrian refugee women to marry,” said Fares Hosha, a 42-year-old former post office employee who now owns a shop selling household appliances.

“Two men from outside Zaatari recently asked the same question. One customer told them he has two daughters. The three left the shop together and I don’t know what happened later.” Hosha thought that refugees accept such “urgent unconditional marriages because they fear the unknown and want to make sure their daughters are safe.”

On the main street in Zaatari, Abu Ahmad opened a wedding shop six months ago. “When I came here, I thought that opening the shop was a good idea,” the 40-year-old bearded man said, as a couple looked at wedding dresses. “Each day I rent at least one wedding dress for around 20 Jordanian dinars ($28, or 21 euros).” “In all emergencies we know that women and girls are at increased risk of exploitation,” she said.

“Syrians have reported that though early marriage was common in Syria prior to the crisis there have been changes in practises since their arrival in Jordan. Most notably, wide spousal age gaps.”

“Families have so many kids, they just marry off the daughter to whoever comes,” says Masarra Sarass, head of the Syrian Women’s Association in Amman, which processes 400 new refugee families a week.

A 15-year-old Syrian refugee in Beirut has said that an “old Lebanese man,” a local mufti, comes daily to ask her mother for her hand in marriage. Every day, he shows up and tells her sick father that he would be happy to take the burden of this daughter off the family’s hands; every day, her mother says no. Every refugee girl in Amman or Beirut has either been considering early marriage or knows a friend or a neighbor who has.

A group of Syrian activists, calling themselves the National Campaign for the Protection of Syrian Women are trying to fight these marriages, and have set up a Facebook page which has more than 20,000 followers.

“Syrian women are not slaves. We cannot remain silent about such hidden slavery and sex trade,” they said on their page. “Calls for these marriages by Arabs from the Gulf and other regions are motivated by purely sexual instincts.” But some Syrian refugees have defended early marriages.

“We left Syria to escape death and we found something worse than death” Mariam says, hugging her daughter close. “If we had stayed in Syria to die, it would have been more honorable. There death is fast, here it is slow.”

Finally, this is just sad going from one hell to another. They don’t know how worse the groom’s family might treat their daughter. It’s a hope. Who knows may be the groom’s family will treat her well. According to Islam she can’t be forced to have sex. She has to consent to the marriage. If only Muslims followed Islam, we would be in a better world.