ATAREB, Feb 14 (AP): Draped in a heavy wool shawl against the cold, Ayesha dragged her feet, her toddler granddaughter trailing behind her, as they made the 15-minute walk from her tent to the nearest bathroom in a nearby building, the only place they have to wash.
Seven days after the earthquake levelled their home in the northwest Syrian town of Atareb, the 43-year-old still has no access to water, electricity or heat for her and 11 family members, all crammed into a single tent.
“When I look at our house, I wonder how did anyone come out alive?” Ayesha said. “Maybe it would have been better if I died,” she added. “I came from under that rubble carrying the rubble of the whole world on my shoulders.”
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She doesn’t know how much more she and other Syrians can take. Women in particular have shouldered the responsibility of keeping shattered families together during the past 12 years of civil war.
The conflict and economic collapse left millions of people dependent on international aid. Now added to the litany of hardships is destruction from the earthquake, which killed tens of thousands and left millions homeless in southern Turkiye and northern Syria.
With hospitals swamped by quake victims, Ayesha can’t get medical services to treat and monitor her liver disease. She and her husband both lost their sources of income in the quake. His taxi was crushed, and her stock of clothes that she once sold to neighbours was destroyed.
They have nothing to provide for their six children and their five grandchildren, including two she took in after one of her sons was killed in the war. They have to share mattresses to sleep in their tent.
“If hardships are a sign of the love of God, it means God really loves the Syrian people,” Ayesha said, breaking out in tears. Like most women in this conservative community, she spoke on condition her last name be withheld.
Their tent is in a camp for quake victims in Atareb, part of the last opposition-held territory in northwest Syria, which has seen bombardment and fighting for years. Walking between rows of destroyed homes in the town, it is hard to distinguish which collapsed from the quake and which from intense military operations at the height of fighting.
Syria’s war has loaded a particular burden and isolation on women, with so many men who were killed, detained, maimed or forced out of the country. The number of female-headed households across Syria increased by around 80 per cent to comprise more than a fifth of households in 2020, according to the UN.
Even before the quake, over 7 million women and girls across Syria needed critical health services and support against physical and sexual violence. Child marriage was on the rise, and hundreds of thousands of girls were out of school.
The immediate impact of the earthquake put at least 350,000 pregnancies in Syria and Turkiye at risk, according to UN figures.
Women in the opposition-held northwest are especially vulnerable. Most of the territory’s population of 4 million fled there after being displaced from other parts of Syria. Health care was already stretched thin and dependent on foreign aid. Now non-emergency medical services have been suspended to deal with the earthquake.
