WUNRN
The
Yezidi, Kurdish:
ئێزيدي or Êzidî are members of a
Kurdish religion with ancient Indo-Iranian roots.
ARMENIA - YEZIDI GIRLS FATED FOR
TEEN MARRIAGE
Custom
of early weddings which put an end to girls’ education still strong in
traditionalist community.
By
Lusine Avagyan - 16 Dec 2011
At her wedding in the Armenian village of
Mushakan, Sona Amoyan, 15, stands barefoot on a cold floor for half a hour
while the wedding guests file past.
The traditions of her Yezidi community
dictate that she cannot speak, sit or eat in the presence of her new in-laws.
Sona met her husband Omar, 16, for the
first time at someone else’s wedding.
After marriage, she will stop going to
school and will move in with his family.
“It is shameful for a married woman to go
to school,” Sona’s mother explained. “Anyway, what young man would want his
wife to go to school?”
Sona’s story is common among young Yezidi
women in Armenia, who regularly finish school as early as 14 to prepare for
marriage. Boys staying on a little longer before leaving to become shepherds, a
traditional Yezidi role within Armenian society.
Activists worry that it is a practice which
risks marginalising another generation of Yezidi women, but traditionalists say
that marrying off girls young is a time-honoured tradition.
“It is a commonly-accepted law, and it’s
going to continue like that. If a girl is mature, then I’m in favour of her
getting married at 16,” Aziz Tamoyan, head of the National Union of Yezidis,
said.
Even when mothers are unhappy about their
daughters repeating their own experience, they say they are unable to stop the
custom.
Lilia Avdoyan, 38, one of the guests at the
wedding, said she always dreamed of becoming a doctor. When she was 16,
however, her grandfather forced her to leave school and get married. The same
prospect now awaits her 14-year-old daughter.
“My husband made our daughter leave school,
and I was powerless,” she said. “The children often complain that they have to
go and live in a different family. They are still too young, and everything is
piled onto their shoulders,” she continued.
“Teachers at Armenian schools often try to
persuade the parents of Yezidi children to rethink and not make their children
leave school or at least postpone it for a while. But parents always have a
ready-made answer, like ‘my child is ill’ or ‘she isn’t suited to school and
doesn’t want to study,’” Avdoyan continued.
The Yezidis are a tightly-knit group who
practice a unique faith and speak one of the Kurdish languages, are a growing
community in Armenia, with families often having eight or ten children.
In the 2001 census, they numbered 40,000,
accounting for just over one per cent of Armenia’s population, but according to
Tamoyan the figure has reached 60,000.
At the wedding, Sona stands waiting for the
guests to review her dowry. Only after that can Omar come into the room. He
places a ring on her finger before leaving to celebrate with the other men. He
has time, however, to forbid the women around his new wife to make up her face
with cosmetics.
“Without her husband’s permission, a woman
cannot use cosmetics or buy anything,” said Avdoyan. “She cannot deliver a
toast, speak in the presence of her father-in-law, study or work.”
Inessa, 23, is proof that not all Yezidi
parents insist on the old ways.
She has a university degree, and said her
mother and father had supported her wish to gain an education. She said she
advised others to try to finish high school as a minimum, but added that it was
impossible to change the mindset of families that adhered to the old
traditions.
Sona seizes a moment when Omar’s relatives
leave the room to sit down for a while and rest her legs. Then she is taken to
her husband’s home in the village of Mkhchyan.
Omar looks out of the window of the
limousine as they move off, calling out to his bride’s neighbours, “We’re
taking away a girl from your street.”
Back in Mkhchyan, before entering his
house, Omar climbs onto the roof to try to hit his wife’s head with an apple –
but fails. The ritual is intended to ensure a happy marriage and an obedient
bride.
One of the onlookers, Arif, said that after
his own wedding he threw an apple so hard he knocked his then 14-year-old wife
unconscious and bloodied her nose.
“They gave her water, but she only came
round after 15 to 20 minutes,” he recalled. “Why should I feel guilty? The law
is the law. You need to hit their head with an apple. That is our custom. Even
now if, for example, my wife doesn’t listen to me, or if she’s slow about
bringing me a glass of water, I will beat her,” he continued.
At 33, Arif will become a grandfather early
next year.
Anush Poghosyan, who works for the Women’s
Resource Centre in Yerevan, said early marriages were a blight on the Yezidi
community, but that it was very hard to do anything about them. She did not
remember a Yezidi woman ever having appealed to the centre for assistance.
“A marriage sealed between teenagers is a
violation of a whole series of rights,” she explained. “Specifically, it’s the
right to control your own body, since often adolescent girls aren’t physically
or psychologically ready for a sexual relationship.”
“Teenage marriage between teenagers is also
a violation of the right to free choice,” she continued. “A teenager cannot
take an informed decision, and often parents don’t listen to their children’s
views and force them to get married.”
Hranush Kharatyan, an ethnographer in
Yerevan who has studied the Yezidis, said there was little chance of change.
“The Yezidis are a closed society as a
matter of principle,” she said. “Their traditions are important symbols for
preserving their ethnic identity, which is ancient and changes very slowly. But
prestige factors like taking the bride away from the wedding by limousine have
become part of their customs, and sit side by side with the older traditions
without changing them at all.”
After arriving at her new home, Sona stands
in the centre of the living room and waits for the next part of the ceremony,
in which her new mother-in-law gives her a gold ornament.
Finally, she is allowed to sit down.