I have recently become friends with a Syrian lady named Kara*. She lives in a refugee camp not far from the Lighthouse. She's come to our game nights, ladies' cooking day and German language classes. Slowly I have been able to find out about her story and it is truly heart-breaking. Her parents gave her to a man 14 years her senior to marry at 10 years old. 10 years old!! The man threatened her father that he would kill him if he did not give him his daughter. Turns out the man that married her was her first cousin. (which is normal in the Arab world) At 10 years old, Kara was petrified of her husband and hated him from the first day of their marriage. She had her first child at 14. She loved to cook and entertain guests as she grew older but her husband hated guests and always embarrassed her in front of them. He was a cruel and crude man. One day she came home to find him dead of a heart attack. I asked her if that was a traumatic thing to find her husband dead and she said it was the happiest day of her life! That was 13 years ago. Kara made the dangerous trip by raft through the sea last year to come to Germany, thinking that her life would be better somehow. She brought her 13 year old granddaughter with her. She's been living in a refugee camp (like a big dormitory) for the last year under miserable conditions. She has to walk 10 minutes to a community bathroom, forced to eat horrible institution food that makes her sick, (most of the time she says she eats tomatoes and bread in her room), has to walk miles with knees that are both rubbing bone on bone. She's been told she needs immediate surgery on her knees but there is no one to take care of her so she keeps putting it off. She misses her children and grandchildren back in Syria and wonders if she'll ever see them again. When she comes to the Lighthouse, she seems to forget her troubles briefly and you can even find her laughing at times. In the photo here, Kara is the one in black at the end of the table. Interesting that when she takes her veil off, she has blond hair and looks 10 years younger. She's only 53 but looks so much older because of the miserable life she's had. Right now we are trying to help her find a small apartment so she can move out of the refugee "dorm" and be able to have her own place to cook and live a semi-normal life. Housing for refugees is a huge problem here and threatens to undo this country. They are beginning to rise up and demonstrate now. One of the camps went on strike and everyone slept out on the street one night. Another is striking against the dining room and the gross food they feed the people. The problems are never-ending and it gets downright depressing trying to help them wade through the complex, difficult lives that many of them lead here.
