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Khan Yunis, Gaza – The face of Samar Ahmed, 37, shows clear signs of exhaustion.
It’s not just because they have five children, nor because they have been displaced several times since the start of Israel’s brutal war in Gaza 14 months ago and now live in cold, cramped conditions in a makeshift tent in the area. Mawasi by Khan Yunis. Samar is also a victim of domestic violence and has no way to escape from her abuser in the overcrowded conditions of this camp.
Two days ago, her husband hit her in the face, leaving her with a swollen cheek and a blood stain in her eye. Her eldest daughter clung to her all night after that attack, which occurred in front of the children.
Samar does not want to separate his family (they have already been forced to move from Gaza City to Shati camp in Rafah and now to Khan Younis) and the children are young. Their eldest daughter, Laila, is only 15 years old. He also has to think about Zain, 12, Dana, 10, Lana, seven, and Adi, five.
On the day Al Jazeera visits, she tries to keep her two youngest daughters busy with schoolwork. Sitting together in the small tent, made of rags, the three of them have spread some notebooks around them. Little Dana is snuggled close to her mother, apparently wanting to give her support. His younger sister is crying from hunger and Samar doesn’t seem to know how to help them both.
As a displaced family, the loss of privacy has added a new layer of pressure.
“I lost my privacy as a woman and wife in this place. I don’t want to say that my life was perfect before the war, but I was able to express what was inside me in the conversation with my husband. I could scream without anyone hearing me,” says Samar. “I could control my children more at home. “Here I live on the street and the cloak of concealment has been removed from my life.”
From the next store you can hear a loud argument between husband and wife. Samar’s face turns red with shame and sadness as curse words fill the air. She doesn’t want her children to hear this.
Her instinct is to tell the children to go outside and play, but Laila is washing dishes in a small bowl of water and the argument in the house next door once again highlights her own problems.
“Every day I suffer from anxiety due to disagreements with my husband. Two days ago it was a big shock to me that he hit me like this in front of my children. All our neighbors heard my screams and cries and came to calm the situation between us.
“I felt devastated,” says Samar, worried that the neighbors will think it is her fault that her husband yells so much because she is a bad wife.
“Sometimes when he yells and curses, I stay silent so that those around us think he is yelling at someone else. “I try to preserve my dignity a little,” he says.
Samar tries to anticipate her husband’s anger by trying to solve the problems facing the family herself. He visits aid workers every day to ask for food. She believes that it is the pressures of war that have made her husband this way.
Before the war he worked in a small carpentry shop with a friend and this kept him busy. There were fewer arguments.
Now, she says: “Due to the seriousness of the disagreements between my husband and I, I wanted a divorce. But I hesitated for the sake of my children.”
Samar goes to psychological support sessions with other women to try to release some of the negative energy and anxiety that accumulates inside her. It helps her to know that she is not alone. “I listen to the stories of many women and try to console myself with what I am going through, through their experiences.”
While talking, Samar gets up to start preparing the food. She worries when her husband will return and if there will be enough food. A plate of beans with cold bread is all you can prepare at this time. He can’t light the fire because there is no gas.
Suddenly, Samar falls silent, afraid that a voice outside belongs to her husband. It’s not like that.
She asks her daughters to sit down and look at their math problems. She whispers, “He came out shouting at Adi. I hope you are in a good mood.”
‘The war did this to us’
Later, Samar’s husband, Karim Badwan, 42, sits with their daughters, crammed inside the small tent where they live.
He’s desperate. “This is not a life. I can’t understand what I’m experiencing. I try to adapt to these difficult circumstances, but I can’t. “I have gone from being a practical and professional man to a man who gets very angry all the time.”
Karim says he is deeply ashamed for having beaten his wife several times since the war began.
“I hope the war ends before my wife runs out of energy and leaves me,” he says. “My wife is a good woman, so she tolerates what I say.”
A tear rolls down Samar’s bruised face as he listens.
Karim says he knows what he is doing is wrong. Before the war, he never dreamed that he would be able to hurt her.
“I had friends who used to beat their wives. I used to say, ‘How do you sleep at night?’ Unfortunately I do it now.
“I did it more than once, but the hardest moment was when I left a mark on his face and eye. I admit that this is a big failure in terms of self-control,” Karim says with a trembling voice.
“The pressures of war are great. I left my home, my job and my future and I am sitting here in a tent, defenseless in front of my children. I can’t find work and when I leave the store I feel like if I talk to someone I will lose my temper.”
Karim knows that his wife and children have endured a lot. “I apologize for my behavior, but I continue to do it. Maybe I need medication, but my wife doesn’t deserve all this from me. “I’m trying to stop so she doesn’t have to leave me.”
Samar’s desperation is compounded by the loss of her own family, whom she left in the north to flee the bombing with her husband and family. Now she feels desperately alone.
Her biggest fear is that she will completely burn out and be unable to care for her family, as she worries her husband already has.
The responsibility of finding water and food, caring for the children and thinking about her future has taken its toll and she lives in a constant state of fear.
‘Trying to be strong for my mother’
As the eldest daughter, Laila is developing severe anxiety due to the fights between her father and mother and fears for her mother.
She says: “My father and mother fight every day. My mother suffers from a strange nervous state. Sometimes he yells at me for no reason. I try to endure it and understand her condition so as not to lose her. “I don’t like to see her in this state, but the war did all this to us.”
Laila still sees Karim as a good father and blames the world for allowing this brutal war to continue for so long. “My father yells at me a lot. Sometimes he hits my sisters. “My mother cries all night and wakes up with her eyes swollen with sadness for what we are experiencing.”
He sits on his bed for long hours thinking about his lives before the war and his plans to study English.
“I try to be strong for my mother.”
‘Unimaginable conditions’
The family is not alone. In Gaza, there has been a marked increase in domestic violence and many women attend psychological support sessions offered by aid workers in clinics.
Kholoud Abu Hajir, a psychologist, has met many victims since the beginning of the war in clinics in the displacement camps. However, he fears there are many more who are too ashamed to talk about it.
“There is great secrecy and fear among women when it comes to talking about it,” she says. “I have received many cases of violence outside of group sessions: women who want to talk about what they are suffering and ask for help.”
Living in a constant state of instability and insecurity, enduring repeated displacements and being forced to live in closely spaced tents have deprived women of privacy, leaving them with nowhere to turn.
“There is no comprehensive psychological treatment system,” Abu Hajir tells Al Jazeera. “We only work in emergency situations. The cases we deal with really require multiple sessions and some of them are difficult cases where women need protection.
“There are very serious cases of violence that have reached sexual assault, and this is something dangerous.”
The number of divorces has increased, many of them between spouses who have been separated by the Israeli armed corridor between north and south.
The war has taken a terrible toll on women and children, in particular, says Abu Hajir.
Nevin al-Barbari, a 35-year-old psychologist, says it is impossible to give Gaza’s children the support they need under these conditions.
“Unfortunately, what children experience during war cannot be described. They need very long psychological support sessions. “Hundreds of thousands of children have lost their homes, they have lost a family member and many of them have lost their entire family.”
Being forced to live in difficult (and sometimes violent) family circumstances has made life enormously worse for many.
“There is very clear and widespread family violence among the displaced in particular… The psychological and behavioral states of the children have been very negatively affected. “Some children have become very violent and violently hit other children.”
Recently, al-Barbari came across the case of a 10-year-old boy who had hit another boy with a stick, causing serious injuries and bleeding.
“When I met this kid, he was still crying,” she says. “He thought I would punish him. When I asked him about his family, he told me that his mother and father fight a lot every day and that his mother goes to his family’s store for days.
“He said he missed his house, his room and the way his family used to be. “This child is a very common example of thousands of children.”
The road to recovery for these children will be long, says al-Barbari. “There are no schools to occupy them. Children are forced to take on heavy responsibilities, filling water and waiting in long lines for food aid. There are no recreational areas for them.
“There are so many stories that we don’t know that these children live every day.”
