“When the LORD saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb…” Genesis 29:31
‘Leah’ is the mother of my host family. Hers is a story of both hardship and blessing.
Leah and a daughter.
Leah proudly claims that she is from the North, but she has never lived there – she was born in the East. Her father was from Turkey and had three wives and about twenty-two children. Leah has an assortment of exciting childhood stories about living with her mother then running back and forth between her half-siblings houses. When Leah was about six or eight years old she was fully circumcised, according to tradition. Islam teaches that women are very sensuous and must be protected from carrying out their lusts – circumcision is the folk religion way of guarding a woman’s modesty (and if you’ve never heard of a girl being circumcised I promise that it’s even worse than it sounds). She went to school until about fifth grade when her parents had her drop out to prepare for marriage. School is unimportant for a girl, her father told her - it is better to learn to cook and clean well.
When Leah was fourteen years old her parents married her to a cousin, John who was twenty-three years old. She barely knew John but he was her father’s brother’s son which was (and is still) viewed as the ideal marriage partner in this culture. When she was fifteen she had her first son. Soon after this they moved to Libya for five years or so where Leah gave birth to three more children.
In Libya they lived comfortably, they had a simple but nice house and many clothes and nice things. One day when they were out a thief came and stole all that they had, including the family photos, leaving them to start their lives over with nothing. They no longer ever leave their house unattended – there is always someone home to make sure a thief doesn’t come. That means that if there is a family outing someone always has to stay behind.
Leah’s fourth child was a boy named Aladin. When he was a year and a half old he was accidentally electrocuted and died. Soon after that, in their sorrow the family moved back here, to their home country. I have only heard about this boy’s death from the girls in the family, none of which were born at the time, Leah has never mentioned it to me before. The death of a child is both heart-wrenching and tragically normal in this part of the world. Nearly every mother has lost a child or two to disease or accident.
After a few more years and another child in this country their family moved to Saudi Arabia for several years. Their life there was also nice – John made good money and they lived in a very nice house. After a few years there they moved back again to their home country.
It was around this time that things in Leah and John’s marriage came to a breaking point. Leah has never told me what her relationship with John was like in the beginning or middle, but I can guess based on what it is like now and what nearly every local marriage is like here. There was probably never a real ‘relationship’ at all. Marriage in this country is a set of roles and duties – the wife has children and takes care of the home, and the husband provides financially for the house. There is very rarely any sort of communication or life sharing. Roles in marriage are strictly limited physical things – there is little if any obligation (or expectation) of emotional support. This particular marriage broke because John was no longer fulfilling his role – he was no longer providing for his family’s needs.
Drinking alcohol is illegal in Muslim countries, but it still exists ‘underground’. John had drank their entire marriage, but it got severely worse around the last time they moved back to this country and their seventh child was born. Around this time Leah finally confronted John about not providing for his family and for causing problems in their life. Leah has told me, “I told him that if he didn’t care about our children and if he was going to be drunk around them all the time that I wanted him out of my house. I told him to go find another wife and to leave me alone.”
And he did. In Islam it is acceptable for a man to have four wives as long as he provides for them all equally. So John took a second wife and moved into a second home. He still provided for them financially, but it became less and less over the years. It has been eight years since John took a second wife. Leah and her children have progressively moved into smaller and smaller houses. They now life in a house with a large walled in yard, one bedroom, one small kitchen and two shaded areas. It is as simple as you can get.
Leah had an eighth baby seven months ago. When she told me about this child she worded it much in the way that Leah from Genesis did – “God had mercy on me and blessed me with this child even though my husband does not care about us”.
Everyday is a struggle for Leah. She has strong faith in God, but she struggles to keep up with her daily prayers. She is always keeping in mind the thirty days of Ramadan that she could not fast last year because she was breastfeeding – and she is bound to the goal of making them up. Leah is tired. She has stomach pain and back pain but no money to go to the doctor. There is never enough money in her house for food – and she struggles each day to figure out how to feed her family. She works as much as she can – doing henna (a design women like on their arms and feet) and halawa (a way of waxing women’s legs with a sugar mixture) for neighborhood women. But because of the baby it is difficult.
Whenever I ask her how she is she always answers “Alhamdilillah” – “Praise God”. It is a cover because someone can’t say they are ‘bad’ and “Praise God” is vague. But sometimes late at night when everyone else is in bed Leah pours out her heart to me. She worries about her children and about food and about the future. She tells me she wants to go to America because there are too many problems here, but when we dig down to the root of it both her and I can see that it’s not “America” she wants, but it’s peace. “There is not peace in this country, there’s no peace in this house, there’s no peace in my heart”, she has told me.
And I hurt for Leah because if I were in her situation I think I would be doing the exact same thing. There is no way out for a ‘single’ mother in this culture. There are no other options. She is stuck in an endless cycle of trying to provide for her family’s needs while they daily come up with new and bigger needs.
Leah and her last child.
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