Aze.Media
Who we are
Donate
No Result
View All Result
  • Opinion
  • News
    • Economy
    • Energy
    • Ecology
  • Culture
  • Diaspora
  • Interview
  • Science
  • Logistics-Transport
  • Gender
  • History
  • Defense
  • Karabakh
  • Home page
  • Culture
  • Defense
  • Diaspora
  • Gender
  • History
  • Interview
  • Karabakh
  • Logistics-Transport
  • News
    • Ecology
    • Economy
    • Energy
  • Opinion
  • Science
No Result
View All Result
Aze.Media
Home Gender

‘They gave me a chance’: refuge where abused Azerbaijani women find hope

The Baku shelter, run by someone who spent years homeless and on the streets, helps 650 mothers and children annually.

Author: AzeMedia
April 5, 2022
in Gender
Reading Time: 5 mins read
4000-2

Mehriban Zeynalova, founder of the shelter, was once sleeping in yards and park benches. Photograph: Ismayil Fataliyev

Agreen-painted four-storey house near the main bus station on the outskirts of Baku is where Roza Huseynova and her children found refuge. “Until I came here, I thought there were no good people in this life,” says Huseynova, 38, who escaped an abusive marriage last year.

“But my children and I have learned how to feel joy, how to laugh,” she says.

The shelter is run by Mehriban Zeynalova, 66. “I would have never received an ID on my own,” says Huseynova. “My husband would never have let me change the school of my children.”

Domestic abuse is estimated to account for 5% of crimes in Azerbaijan, and femicide is on the rise, but a culture of secrecy means the true statistics are unknown.

“When a woman is beaten, she is expected to keep silent and not give away family secrets,” says Zeynalova.

There is often nowhere to go. In 2010, the law demanded the establishment of state-run shelters, but little happened. The State Committee for Family, Women and Children Affairs admits as much, while adding that even most of the 13 charity-run shelters do not meet proper criteria.

Zeynalova’s house is painted light green, with a garden and walls decorated with cartoon characters. It is now home to 60 women and children.

The top floor of the shelter has been made into an activity area for the women and children. Photograph: Ismayil Fataliyev

The kitchen and classrooms are on the ground floor with offices for social workers and lawyers above. The women and children have dormitories on the second floor, while the attic has been converted into a play and activity zone.

Zeynalova has moved her shelter five times over the years and there have been setbacks. Restrictions on foreign funding of charities and other organisations introduced in 2015 almost resulted in closure but Zeynalova borrowed money to buy land and build the first two floors. Then she put out a call for help on the shelter’s Facebook page.

“One person brought bricks, another some sand, the third wood, and so on,” she says. “I sold my car and some stuff to pay the builders.” In September 2020, the shelter was completed.

Now the International Organization for Migration pays staff salaries, while Zeynalova appeals for donations via Facebook for bills and food. She uses her own pension and the stipend she gets as the chairperson of Azerbaijan’s Foundation for Assistance to Victims of Human Trafficking.

Zeynalova was herself homeless for seven years, two of them on the streets with two children aged seven and six.

After leaving her abusive husband, she lost all her money to fraud and then the roof over their heads was taken away when the friend the family had been staying with died.

“We stayed at another friend’s house but one day he had guests and did not let us in until they left, “ she says. “We were outside in the cold, and my daughter asked if we would ever have our own lights on.”

Zeynalova moved her family between the houses of friends and relatives and then they slept in hotel yards or the entrance halls of apartment blocks. Baku, on the Caspian Sea and licked by the khazri, a freezing wind from the north, is a cold city in winter.

“One day the door of an entrance hall was not open, the wind was so strong that I hugged the children and howled,” she says. “I was so helpless. Those were hard times.”

Almaz Makhmudova, and her sons Nijat, left, and Aydin Mahmudov at the shelter. Photograph: Ismayil Fataliyev

Her daughter Elnura, now 33, remembers all the entrances where they used to hide and the benches where they slept.

“Once a man invited us to spend a night at his house,” she says. “My mother was scared, not for herself but for us. We barely survived. I could collapse from hunger.”

While she was married, Zeynalova had been invited to a meeting of a women’s rights organisation but did not dare go. In 1998 she was given a job as project manager with the same group, dealing with domestic abuse. She slept in the office with her son, Khalid, but Elnura went to live with her grandmother in Ganja, 190 miles (300km) west of Baku.

“They put two chairs together and slept on them until mum got her first salary and bought folding beds,” says her daughter, who would not see her mother for five years.

By 2002, Zeynalova had saved enough for a flat and sent for Elnura. “For us, it was more than an apartment,” she says. “It was ours.”

But it turned into more, becoming “Təmiz Dünya” (Clean World), providing shelter for victims of domestic abuse and in 20 years has grown to helping 650 women and children every year.

“Not only did she get herself back on to her feet but she helped others. For me, she is an example of staying human. Even though she was striving to achieve everything by herself, she has kept this sense of humanity, her readiness to help,” says Elnura, a legal consultant for the shelter.

Some of the residents hold a meeting. Photograph: Ismayil Fataliyev

Almaz Makhmudova, 44, turned up there last July. She suffered more than 20 years of assaults and insults until the day her husband was arrested over a stabbing and she took her chance to leave.

She is especially grateful for the care of her children. “Once my husband hit my younger son, Aydin, and his chin fractured. Treatment is ongoing, although we need expensive surgery. Otherwise when he grows up, he will be disfigured. They found a good doctor and will also cover the costs.”

There is a rehabilitation process for each newcomer and legal, psychological and medical assistance if needed.

“Some are reluctant to talk, withdrawing into themselves,” says Yagut Mammedyarova, 61, a social worker who has been working with Zeynalova for 25 years. “Or, some say one thing during our first meeting and another during the following ones.”

When trust is established and the woman feels stronger, she is helped to find a job.

Afsana Hasanova, 30, started working in a grocery shop while staying in the shelter and fighting to have the courts order her husband, a gambling addict, to return her three children. She was successful at last and Hasanova was able to leave the shelter a couple of months ago and rent a flat nearby.

“This shelter is the main reason I survived,” she says. “My mind was a blank sheet of paper when I appeared here. They gave me a chance to write on that paper again.”

Ismayil Fataliyev

Share6Tweet4SendShare

Get real time update about this post categories directly on your device, subscribe now.

Unsubscribe

Related Posts

Bildschirmfoto 2022-03-10 um 11.49.37
Gender

Brochure ‘Sexism: See it. Name it. Stop it.’ in Azerbaijani

March 10, 2022
shutterstock_710271961
Gender

“All those involved in arranging a marriage between a pedophile and an underage girl should be punished.”

February 10, 2022
shutterstock_706720159
Gender

Azerbaijan – Country Gender Assessment

February 8, 2022
image019
Gender

On the history of women’s suffrage in Azerbaijan

October 6, 2021
Wren-McDonald-Casual-Sex
Gender

Maarif Mammadov: “Not every porn video is good for you.”

September 16, 2021
1_lkqJA0p-ecHZOoDiEsFs6A-750x563
Gender

Rape as a female sexual fantasy

August 19, 2021
zLNJKY15795228550599_l-750x375
Gender

Unowned aggression, or Woman as a commodity

July 21, 2021
265394-3x2-facebook
Gender

Homophobia: Made in Europe

July 18, 2021

New articles

News

Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan calls on UK Embassy to acknowledge its mistake

May 18, 2022
News

Ilham Aliyev made a phone call to Tokayev and invited him to Azerbaijan

May 18, 2022
Economy

Investors show interest in Azerbaijan’s microfinance sector

May 17, 2022
Opinion

Armenia risks disappearing from the political map

May 17, 2022
Energy

Bulgaria to start receiving gas from Azerbaijan

May 17, 2022
Uncategorized

President Ilham Aliyev: Our country highly appreciates the stance of the brotherly Turkic states on the restoration of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity

May 17, 2022
News

UK ambassador thanked Azerbaijan for Karabakh horse presented to Queen Elizabeth II

May 17, 2022
News

Queen Elizabeth II presented with Karabakh horse as gift from President Ilham Aliyev

May 17, 2022
Opinion

Forward-looking policies of Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as guarantor of stability and peace in the region

May 17, 2022
Logistics-Transport

Will Russia complete Iran’s Rasht–Astara railway?

May 17, 2022
c24a7d34-02d2-45a2-95ad-980aa8264ad5
426082d1-a9e4-4ac5-95d4-4e84024eb314
ab65ed96-2f4a-4220-91ac-f70a6daaf659
96e40a2b-5fed-4332-83c6-60e4a89fd4d0
aze-media-logo-ag

Aze.Media offers an independent and strategic insight on socio-cultural, political and economic life in Azerbaijan. We are thinkers of diverse disciplines spread across countries working together as one team to provide international audiences with an alternative point of view on Azerbaijani and foreign realities.

Email: editor@aze.media


© 2021 Aze Media International Platform for Alternative Thought.

No Result
View All Result
  • News
  • Economy
  • Ecology
  • Energy
  • Opinion
  • Culture
  • Gender
  • Interview
  • Science
  • Logistics-Transport
  • History
  • Defense
  • Karabakh
  • Diaspora
  • Who we are

© 2021 Aze Media International Platform for Alternative Thought.