"He Tricked Me with His Charm… So I Left Him"

“I didn’t marry young. I lived with my four sisters, my brother, and our mother. My father left for Brazil when we were still kids—and never came back. My mother raised us alone, and I stayed by her side until she passed away. I refused to marry just to stay with her.” This is Amina, a 56-year-old mother from a village near Ramallah, who has been divorced for seven years. Before her marriage, Amina served in one of the security forces. In 1997, she met a man who seemed kind and trustworthy, and they got married. But within just one month, her husband demanded she leave her job—his first act of control. It was only the beginning of a long path of disappointment and deceit. “My ex-husband had already been married before me, and today he’s with a third wife and has four children with her. He lives nearby and is regularly pursued by the police for fraud and scams—and his current wife is involved too.” “I didn’t ask for anything when we got married,” Amina continues. “I built our home from my savings. I even sold my jewelry for it. But his dishonest behavior—lying, scamming, stealing—is what ultimately made me leave him. People ask why I left since he wasn’t abusive, but to me, fraud and dishonesty are serious forms of abuse. I was raised on honesty and integrity.” For the sake of her son, Amina even moved from Ramallah to a nearby village. She never denied him access to his father, and would even send money for the child to take with him. “Then I found out his father was taking the money from him and sending him back without even covering his bus fare,” she says. Today, Amina supports her household with payments from the Palestinian Maintenance Fund and by taking on small jobs whenever possible. But her income is unstable, and she never completed her formal education. “I’ve tried for more than ten years to return to my previous job in the security forces—but every door has remained closed.”