Saman Abbas has disappeared into thin air for more than a month. The last time she was seen was on April 11, when she walked away from protected center near Bologna where he had lived since last December. She had gone out to go home, probably to get some documents. Since that moment, all traces of it have been lost.
Saman, 18, Pakistani, turned to social workers in Novellara, the city where she lived with her parents, to escape a forced marriage. His family wanted him to join a cousin residing in Pakistan.
And everything was ready for this to happen. But it wasn’t the future Saman dreamed of for her. She wanted to be free, to be able to attend high school, to build a future, to travel. But his father did not want her to leave home and above all to leave Novellara to attend a school. Those who know the family tell of an almost invisible mother and daughter, sometimes seen walking in the fields surrounding their home and nothing more. They tell of Saman asking neighbors to buy her sheets and colors and how beautiful her drawings were.
The hypothesis that investigators are following is that Saman Abbas was killed by her family and then made to disappear. Now, the mother and father, both investigated for murder and concealment of bodies along with other family members, appear to have arrived in Pakistan, together with his younger brother to visit a dying aunt. This is the thesis told to the employer who wrote a message to father of Saman, Shabbar Abbas, last May 2nd. “My daughter is in Belgium and she is fine,” said the father who was contacted by the authorities.
But there is no trace of Saman. As often, we have no news of the many girls who try to escape forced marriages in our country. Destinies they don’t want to belong to but that someone has decided to write for them. In Italy he takes care of them the Trama di Terre association which is based in Imola and is responsible for supporting migrant women who arrive here.
“Unfortunately, there are no data that tell of this phenomenon,” he explains Tiziana Dal Pra, psychologist and president of the association. «It is difficult to imagine, in this uncertainty of numbers and histories, what the roots of the problem are. As we are seeing with the case of Saman, it is still a very risky situation that must be investigated and taken care of both by civil society but above all by politics. It is one of the violence to be countered at the moment, we must respond to these girls».
The images of the surveillance cameras placed near the company where Saman’s father worked, show on the evening of April 29 three people with a bucket, a black garbage bag and a shovel heading towards the field surrounding the Saman’s home. “Forced marriage is considered a crime but there is no awareness campaign, no interventions are made in schools, there is no real networking “.
And the girls sometimes try to ask for help in a veiled way but are not always heard. “They try to talk about it at school, to identify a reference adult. Those who rebel against families experience enormous loneliness, they feel the weight of a very great responsibility, which is to know that the concept of honor and dishonor in their families is very strong. They feel not only disobedient but also those who risk tearing up families. They are moved by a desire for choice, for freedom, to be able to look at their future in another way but they do not yet have someone to accompany them to face this new one with suitable tools, because the whole society that surrounds them is not yet prepared. “.
The Pakistani community is very present in the Reggio Emilia area. “Pakistan is the third country in the world for insecurity, violence and lack of rights for women. It is a question of patriarchal control of the body and life of women. Without criminalizing it is necessary to take into account this presence in the territory, to implement prevention strategies, to impose that girls go to school, to support their desire to self-determination, which is too often repressed “.
To help them, there are protected shelters and associations, such as Terre texture, which girls can turn to. “We have to help them believe that what they have is not an adolescent crisis but the will to grow as free women. They must be welcomed by trained female workers, as well as the mediators themselves. They must be believed, the truth must be told to them: that it will be a very long, painful journey, which will come to their mind a thousand times over to return home ». As perhaps it was for Saman.
“At the age of 18, if the risk of staying at home is assessed too high by the competent bodies, it must be found together with the courts the possibility of staying in a protected place. If this is not possible, every situation must be monitored immediately and day after day with home visits. We must show the family that we are not willing as a civil society to leave these girls in their hands so that they are prevented from growing up and living free ».
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