Nuha

A quick turnaround after the wedding weekend, and I found myself driving back to the Jordanian border once more - this time to plan a workshop for Syrian and Jordanian teenage girls we're doing next week, and to do some more interviews with Syrians girls in a town called Ramtha on the Jordanian border with Syria.

The landscape has turned to desert after a quick burst of springtime. At 7.30am, the dry hills that roll down towards the Dead Sea could have been in Arizona. It was just an overnight trip so I had no dwarves in the back - which meant no drinks, no snacks, no iPad and no noise, meaning I could actually listen the lyrics of the music, and get to choose the music myself. I flipped between the Barber of Seville and Neil Young - just because I could. 'Driving down a desert highway....she rides a Harley Davidson' well, not quite, but the feeling was similarly free-ing.

The Jordanian border officials asked: 'Wain al awlaad?' Where are the boys? 'We're coming back on Sunday,' I replied, and wound my way up the familiar road to Amman from the town of Shuna, on a level with the Dead Sea. Initially the road is full of potholes, the roads lined with orange, red and purple bougainvillea, acacia and pepper trees. Men with coal black moustaches and red and white keffiyeh head gear wandered slowly to the little 'food and beverage supermarket,' and the heat had started to wave above the banana plants and palms. Unmistakably Jordan.

We had probably put too much into the 2 days, but we did our best. The second day we spent talking to Syrian girls about marriage. The growing economic pressure means that fathers of daughters are marrying them off even earlier than normal. We interviewed 3 girls of 15, 16 and 17 years old. And as often happens when you start asking people about their lives - the story becomes something you hadn't foreseen.

The third of the three girls lives in a house with her husband who is 20, and many of his sisters. Unlike many of the makeshift accommodations we've visited, this house seemed unloved and messy. There was an absence of a mother figure, and a tangible tension between the members of the household. 

We entered the little house with green tinted windows and no furniture but for some floor cushions and six of the sisters stood up to greet us. On the ground sat a frail looking young girl, with beautiful brown eyes and an uncertain smile. Nuha was the one we had come to meet, and she slowly stood up, offering a cool cheek for us to begin the typical Syrian female greeting of one kiss on the right, followed by at least four on the other side.

Nuha is 17 and married her husband 2 years previously. She was living in Dera'a, on the Syria-Jordan border and was 7 months pregnant with her first child. In her village they were bombarded with heavy shelling from the Syrian government. She and her mother were running for cover when the shell hit. And within a matter of minutes, Nuha had lost her mother, her right leg, and her unborn child, from the side of her stomach. She's been in Jordan for a year and a half, walks awkwardly with a basic prosthetic leg. Now her husband is looking for a second wife. 

She sat, with her prosthetic leg, reminiscent of a shop mannequin, sticking straight out in front of her and sang us a song about her mother. She said to us: 'I can't have my mother back. But all I want is to try to have another baby, to live with my husband and for him to be mine only. But there is nothing I can do to control my own destiny.'

I returned to Jerusalem that evening - her face and her story imprinted in my mind.