«My name is FatimaI am a child and I don’t want to get married. His name is Ahmed, he never smiles. How strange, I’m getting married to a stranger. It’s absurd, and it’s certainly dangerous.” The story of Fatima (the name is fictitious) is that of one “child bride” which goes beyond the borders of Africa and reaches Turin. A girl, Fatima, who was under the Mole saved by the police and now she is forced to live in hiding.
From Africa to Turin
Fatima was born in Egypt, to a poor family. Since she was a child, she has known the violence that was cruelly inflicted on her by her aunt Saba, to whom she was sold while still in swaddling clothes. But her indomitable spirit is further tested when, at 13, she was married off to Ahmed. A man much older than her, who came specifically to Aunt Saba’s brothel to buy a wife. Fatima changes jailer, but the abuses remain the same: Ahmed is violent and doesn’t think that Fatima is just a child. That at 15 he already has three children, his only joy, but despite this he feels more trapped than ever. She is torn, but in the end she makes a decision: she runs away from Ahmed in search of a new life, even if it means abandoning her children. Years pass and Fatima, after a thousand vicissitudes, finds a partner who loves her and he finally returns to live in Europe, in Turin. Here, however, she is caught up and, if it had not been for the intervention of the police who were investigating the phenomenon of child brides and who saved her, she would have returned to Africa, and perhaps been killed. But Fatima was saved and now, after a few years, she can tell her story: «I want to study, and thanks to studying be less poor. Maybe I could get a job to pay for school. I am a child, I know nothing about life, but I am certain of one thing: I am not forced to marry a stranger to get out of my condition. I’m sure that getting married to a stranger doesn’t mean getting out but ending up trapped.”
Why are there child brides?
Given to husbands very young, some just after their first menstruation, others “promised” even at birth. They are the “child brides”. In general, we talk about early marriages when they occur at an age that is inadequate for the person’s regular psychophysical development. A widespread practice? More than you think: every year, around the world, 12 million girls and boys under the age of 18 are married off. And always in the world one in five women, around 650 million in total, was married before the age of 18. «Ahmed didn’t stay long without touching me. Since Hanè (one of his sons, ed.) turned two months old, he resumed his habits of being an aggressive husband. None of his women use contraceptives. As long as they are of childbearing age, he honors them with children without asking for their consent,” Fatima revealed. An “undergrowth”, that of child brides, that gives you shivers: girls are denied the possibility to decide about their own bodies and of one’s existence, with immediate consequences, the effects of which will last a lifetime. Girls who stop studying prematurely. And their low level of education prevents them from emerging from poverty and they risk being exploited by their husband’s family. As a result, the possibility of domestic violence increases. Without forgetting early and often close pregnancies, in fact girls under 15 are five times more likely to die during gestation than women between 20 and 29. Newborns can also be born prematurely, with a high mortality rate and a high risk of having cognitive problems. Poverty and conflict situations justify the phenomenon: a daughter is advantageous and the “dowry” is a necessary means to survive.
