I fled my husband's injustice and found my family's injustice

Gaza: my story began when I was a girl of twelve, when one of my neighbours harassed me and I came to my father for protection, and he placed full responsibility on me and threw me into the hands of a man thirty years older than me. I spent ten years with him of humiliation, insults and abuse, to the point of my honour being impugned, and despite that I would console myself with the saying: "Be patient for the sake of your children so that they may have a life", and so as not to return to my father dragging behind me the word "divorcee" and become the talk of society. But the problems grew worse, and my husband became unable to give me all my lawful rights, and began using unlawful ways with me in marital relations, which was beyond what I could bear. What made matters worse was that one day he brought his son by another woman in to me in the bedroom to harass me. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I left for where I ought to be, my family's house, but they refused to take me in because I would remain in limbo and not divorced. So I found no refuge to shelter in but my brother's lifeless body in its earth, and I went to the cemetery and sat beside his grave for two days without sleep, food or drink, until my maternal uncle came and took me in. From here a new story began with the court, where I went to ask for a divorce, but sadly the court kept putting me off, and I could not even see my children, and here I found myself in a dark trench between the injustice of my husband and the injustice of my family. At last I turned to the Centre to ask for help and assistance and to be given my most basic right, the divorce paper, which had become the only hope for bringing my life back to life again.
The Centre's counselling and guidance team intervened and provided counselling, psychological, social and legal assistance, and was able to speak to her husband to give her her freedom. After a year in limbo, she was able to obtain the divorce paper, and that day was for her a new birth.