For Yasmin, those realities became clear soon after her husband died.
“We only ate bread for weeks and months,” she says. Her brother helped when he could, but he did not have the means to support a household of seven. It quickly became clear that if nothing changed, Yasmin and her children would not survive.
“I found work for myself,” Yasmin says. “I went to the fields to harvest crops, even though my husband’s family did not allow this. They did nothing to support us or make sure we would not starve, so I went to work despite them. There was no alternative.”
Her brother tried to step in when conflicts arose. One day, her husband’s family saw her climbing onto the back of a pickup truck taking workers to the fields. They told her to stop working immediately, calling this sort of behavior shameful for a woman. Her brother intervened, telling them she could do whatever was necessary to survive. After that, her husband’s family cut off all contact.
“Everything I do is for my children,” she says, straightening her back. “They were hungry all the time. I could not help them, and I could not watch them die!”
Years later, as violence intensified, Yasmin and her children were displaced once more, forced to live in small tents in a camp near the Turkish border. Her husband’s family, now displaced themselves, finally understood the hardships she had been navigating alone.
“They experienced for the first time what it meant to be hungry and to struggle to find food and money,” she tell us. “They understood that I had to do whatever was possible. That I had to find work or die.”
In 2023, Yasmin made another difficult choice. Life in the camp was no longer sustainable. There was not enough work, not enough income, and not enough food. She decided to return to her hometown with her family, even though it would be dangerous.
“I had to hide my children, or they would have been taken from me and conscripted,” she says.
For two years, her older sons stayed inside, unable to leave the house for work or school for fear of conscription.
“It was me who did everything outside. I worked in the fields. I found the food. I took care of them. Being a woman was a benefit this time, as I was able to move freely to find work opportunities,” Yasmin says. “It was dangerous, yes, but it was our way of survival.”