“They want me to marry a man 10 years older than me. I am only 15 years. I do not want. I do not love him. I do not even know him.” The dramatic call by Rashida, Egyptian young girl to the child emergency number (114) goes something like this.
The girl is scared. The arranged marriage, decided by her family, fell on her in the first year of high school: “My mother said that I will leave the school because a wife doesn’t need education.”
The police moves quickly and meets the girl at school with the head teacher. Rashida tells her story in detail. She has been promised in marriage by her family. “At home is all ready for the engagement ceremony. It is in three days.” When she saw placed in her room the red wedding dress bought by her husband, she attempted suicide by slashing her wrists. Rashida has tried in every way to protest against the decision of the family.
The girl doesn’t want to leave the school as the mother said, does not want that man to look after her by sending her to Egypt in the house of the future mother-in-law. In agreement with the “Minors Tribunal” the girl was placed in a community.
Few days later the Commissioner officers went to visit Rashida in community and were able to verify that the girl was happy and serene, and had also resumed going to school accompanied by the educators, in that classroom where she had found her savior in the friend and mate Sofia who, after listening her terrible story, had handed the phone convincing her to seek help.
“I want to study because I want to change my life. I do not want to marry a man whom I don’t know and whom I don’t love.” Said so to the police the fifteen years old girl of Egyptian origin, that the Turin’s “Minors Tribunal” has entrusted to a community, away from her mother, who wanted her to marry off a ten years older unknown man. Her fiancé, now untraceable, had attended a few time the girl’s house.
Source: Repubblica