{"id":1121,"date":"2017-10-10T22:45:09","date_gmt":"2017-10-11T02:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/salonsyria.com\/?p=1121"},"modified":"2017-12-24T13:27:30","modified_gmt":"2017-12-24T18:27:30","slug":"the-agony-of-absence-wives-of-disappeared-detainees-face-uncertainty-social-pressures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salonsyria.com\/en\/the-agony-of-absence-wives-of-disappeared-detainees-face-uncertainty-social-pressures\/","title":{"rendered":"The agony of absence: Wives of disappeared detainees face uncertainty, social pressures"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“AMMAN: For more than four years, Umm Malak has held on to the hope that her husband Hussein is still alive, sitting in a darkened cell somewhere in Syria.<\/p>\n

Hussein, then 32, was arrested by Syrian regime forces on summer day in 2013 at a checkpoint in southern Damascus. A supermarket employee, he had been providing material support\u2014food and supplies\u2014to opponents of President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s regime, his wife says.<\/p>\n

The summer day he was arrested, Hussein left his house in the town of Aqraba, southeast of the Syrian capital. He, his wife and their three daughters began living there several weeks prior after fleeing regime bombardment of the rebel-held al-Hajar al-Aswad district just south of Damascus.<\/p>\n

Hussein was heading to the family home in al-Hajar al-Aswad. He kept birds on the roof there, and periodically returned to give them food and water. That day, he planned to set them free. As bombings increased and the security situation in and around the capital deteriorated, he was not sure he would always be able to reach and care for them.<\/p>\n

What Umm Malak knows about what happened next\u2014as related to her later by a 15-year-old neighbor who witnessed the arrest\u2014is that a masked man pointed out her husband to regime security forces at a checkpoint leading into al-Hajar al-Aswad.\u00a0 The men put Hussein in a car and took him away to an unknown location.<\/p>\n

Umm Malak, 36, has received no news of her husband since she learned he was taken.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy feelings tell me that he is still alive,\u201d she tells Syria Direct from the apartment in Amman that a charity pays for her and her daughters to live in. The family shares the apartment with another Syrian refugee\u2014a widow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve searched and searched for him, but come up with nothing,\u201d says Umm Malak. Some people in her situation pay lawyers and regime officials for confirmation of whether detained loved ones are alive or dead, but she hasn\u2019t done so.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt costs a huge amount of money, and there is no guarantee that the answer I received would be true,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Umm Malak\u2019s friends and acquaintances talk, whispering that after more than four years with no news, it is unlikely that her husband is still alive. But without proof one way or the other, she holds on to hope.<\/p>\n

For friends and families, disappeared detainees exist in a space between life and death. Prolonged absence forces a difficult choice\u2014assume loved ones to be dead and move on with life, or wait, perhaps for years, in the hope that they are still alive.<\/p>\n

For many women\u2014the wives of the disappeared and detained\u2014that choice is particularly fraught. To divorce an absent spouse\u2014even one presumed dead\u2014and remarry can bring accusations of betrayal and abandonment from extended family, in-laws and society. To remain alone and wait may demonstrate loyalty, but also brings increased scrutiny and judgment from society as a single woman or female head of household.<\/p>\n

An estimated 92,000 detainees are currently\u00a0held<\/a>\u00a0by Syrian government forces as of this year, according to the UK-based violations monitor Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR). Among them are more than 76,000 victims of enforced disappearance since March 2011, according to an August 2017 SNHR\u00a0report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Enforced disappearance, according to the\u00a0Rome Statute<\/a>\u00a0of the International Criminal Court, is the \u201carrest, detention or abduction of persons by, or with the authorization, support or acquiescence of, a State or a political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or give information on the whereabouts of those persons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since Syria is not a member state of the Rome Statute, the country is not within the International Criminal Court\u2019s jurisdiction.<\/p>\n

What enforced disappearance means in Syria is that more than 76,000 people with lives and hopes and loved ones who were detained\u2014at protests, at checkpoints, in their homes and on the street\u2014have vanished.<\/p>\n

The first news following a disappearance may take the form of a phone call from a prison official telling relatives that their loved one is dead, and asking them to come collect their identification documents.<\/p>\n

Others eventually find them online, among the thousands of grim photos of the starved, beaten bodies of detainees smuggled out of Syria in 2014 by a military defector codenamed \u201cCaesar.\u201d Some look through the 28,000 grim images and still come up empty-handed, a bitter relief.<\/p>\n

Many times, detainees who knew the person are released and give loved ones the news that their sister, brother, mother, son has died.<\/p>\n

But thousands of others still do not know what has happened.<\/p>\n

The \u201congoing and daily agony\u201d of these family members, according to an August 2016 SNHR report on detainee disappearances, is particularly deep for \u201cwives, mothers and children who bear the greatest burden from an economic and social standpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n

Financially, this is because those who disappear may be the sole breadwinner for a family. Socially, the decision made by the wives of the missing to either wait\u2014like Umm Malak\u2014or divorce and remarry, is not just personal, but public, with social consequences.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have gone through a lot of suffering and condemnation from society,\u201d says Umm Malak.<\/p>\n

The experiences of two women who chose differently\u2014Umm Malak, a single mother of three, and 24-year-old Naela Fayez, who obtained a divorce after hearing news of her husband\u2019s death in prison and remarried\u2014illustrate a few of those consequences.<\/p>\n

Together, their stories illustrate some of the challenges faced by the wives of disappeared detainees, whichever path they take: to wait and hope, or divorce and remarry.<\/p>\n

\u2018My right to keep living\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Naela Fayez knows her ex-husband Ali is dead, she says. Neither she nor any member of his family has seen his body\u2014or any trace of him\u2014since he was arrested in 2012 at a regime checkpoint in the south Damascus suburb of Babila.<\/p>\n

Ali worked in construction and was on his way to work when he was detained and disappeared one morning, says Naela. He had attended local demonstrations against the government of Bashar al-Assad.<\/p>\n

After her husband, the family\u2019s sole breadwinner, went missing, Naela and her two young sons moved in with his relatives in Syria\u2019s southern Daraa province. In 2014, with violence increasing and living conditions deteriorating in Syria, she fled with her sons to Jordan.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Ali\u2019s family in Daraa received a phone call from the al-Khateeb Branch of the Syrian regime\u2019s State Security in Damascus. A voice told them to go to the branch and collect Ali\u2019s documents. The family understood from this directive that he was dead, likely killed under torture. No one from the family risked going to collect the papers, fearing a trap.<\/p>\n

Naela believes that Ali is dead, but with no body, no proof and no closure, his family refuses to accept that. Stories and rumors of detainees believed to be dead who return years later give them hope.<\/p>\n

Even so, one year after that fateful phone call, and four years after her husband went missing, the now 30-year-old mother of two boys went to a sheikh in Jordan who gave her a ruling allowing her to remarry another Syrian\u2014her cousin. She then did.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the end, I am a human being,\u201d says Naela. \u201cIt is my right to keep living. I will not stay trapped and waiting.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Islamic religious law, which governs the marriages of Sunni Muslims including Naela and Umm Malak, a wife may be granted a divorce if her husband is missing and presumed dead for between two and four years, depending on the school of thought.<\/p>\n

The question of how and when a wife may divorce an absent, presumed-dead husband and perhaps remarry is becoming increasingly important as the war continues and the fates of tens of thousands of missing Syrians remain unknown.<\/p>\n

In September 2017, the opposition Syrian Islamic Council, based in Turkey, issued a religious\u00a0ruling<\/a>\u00a0defining procedures for separations and divorces for the wives of husbands who have been missing for a prolonged period.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0fatwa<\/em>\u00a0clarified that a woman may ask the court to issue a ruling as to the missing spouse\u2019s death or absence and that she may remarry afterwards. However, should the missing husband return, any marriage in his absence would be annulled.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the husband is missing and nothing is known of his whereabouts, as in the case of a detainee, and he is thought most likely to be dead, then the wife must wait four years, then another four-month waiting period,\u201d Abu Bakr, a religious judge in opposition-held Syria told Syria Direct earlier this year. \u201cShe may then remarry, without needing the permission of the court.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pro-regime newspaper Al-Watan reported this past January that some 4,000 requests for separation or divorce had been registered in the state Sharia Court by wives of missing husbands in 2016.<\/p>\n

But although Naela\u2019s second marriage was religiously and legally permissible, her ex-husband\u2019s family accused her of disloyalty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey attacked me, accused me of betraying him,\u201d she says. \u201cThey completely reject my new marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prolonged conflict with her former in-laws about her remarriage and what would happen to the children\u2014under Islamic law they were to stay with her, but the family wanted them\u2014sparked problems with Naela\u2019s new husband. Ultimately, he refused to raise her children.<\/p>\n

In the end, Naela sent her children to live with their father\u2019s family in Daraa and shortly afterward moved to Egypt with her new husband.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy heart burns without my children,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u2018No matter how long his absence\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Umm Malak says she will wait as long as it takes for her husband to return. If Hussein is still alive, he is now 36 years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will wait for my husband no matter how long his absence,\u201d says Umm Malak. \u201cI won\u2019t accept raising my daughters with any man but him. I will not divorce him and become another executioner, while he is suffering terribly under torture.\u201d<\/p>\n

But although Umm Malak has not chosen to remarry, she still says she faces intense social pressures and scrutiny.<\/p>\n

As a single mother, Umm Malak says she is under a microscope, with community members scrutinizing every choice she makes.\u00a0 As the wife of a disappeared detainee, she is held to a high standard, any change in her life bringing \u201clooks of suspicion and mistrust.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am seen as a broken person, easily taken advantage of,\u201d says Umm Malak, \u201cespecially by men.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fadel Abdul Ghany, the chairman of SNHR, emphasized the social impact of enforced disappearances on those left behind in the monitor\u2019s August 2017 report.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mental, physical and emotional toll [that disappearance cases] have on the victims and their families make this crime a form of collective punishment against the community,\u201d wrote Fadel Abdul Ghany.<\/p>\n

As the years drag on, life continues. In Egypt, Naela lives with her new husband. In Jordan, Umm Malak raises her daughters as best she can under the gaze of prying, judging eyes.<\/p>\n

Hanging over it all, Hussein\u2019s absence is a deafening silence, an unfinished story about a country on fire and a man who left home to free his birds and disappeared into a void.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy life is a prison of waiting,\u201d she says.”<\/p>\n

[This article was originally published by\u00a0Syria Direct<\/a><\/em>.]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n