Married As Children
By Jillian D'Onfro
Silvery henna twisted intricately over Zeytun Aden’s arms, while golden bangles gleamed and rattled around her wrists. Her ebony hair, usually tucked under her hijab, spilled in spirals around her slender shoulders. Dressed lavishly in red and gold shawls, one of four different outfits she chose for that June night, Zeytun looked like a princess. Her hips moved hypnotically to the beat blasting from the speakers. Around her, everyone else danced. The large room, packed with hundreds of people, crackled with youth—hardly anyone appeared over 25. It felt like a children’s wedding.
By American standards, it technically was the wedding of a child. Zeytun married her cousin, Banane Ali, on June 25, 2011, at only 17 years old (although no legal matrimony would occur for eight months until after Zeytun had turned 18 and could be recognized as an adult by U.S. law). In accordance with Somali-Bantu cultural tradition, her family entirely orchestrated the marriage.
Eight months later, in February, Zeytun looks ready to burst. Even under her baggy green tie-dye t-shirt, her stomach seems gigantic. “I have a huge belly!” Zeytun exclaims. “I got fat.” Soon after her summer wedding ceremony, Zeytun, now a high-school junior, became pregnant. Even though she wishes that the baby would just “get out” already, she glows when talking about her unborn son.
But his new beginning will mark the end, or at least the interruption, of several of Zeytun’s long-kept life plans. She always anticipated going to college, earning a degree. Now, her most immediate struggle will be finishing high school with an infant in tow. Zeytun vows she will still work hard to achieve her educational goals, but acknowledges now the journey will be more difficult—a dilemma many Somali-Bantu youth face in America. In Africa, nearly every Bantu marriage was arranged, and weddings took place while the bride and groom were still young. Today, in America, Somali-Bantu teenagers face a cultural tug-of-war: debating whether to cede to the tradition of arranged marriage, or extend their budding Americanization to matters of the heart.
On Monday and Wednesday evenings, the Somali Bantu Community Association center, located at 302 Burt Street in Syracuse, bursts with chaotic merriment. Dozens of Somali-Bantu youth meet with Syracuse University students as part of a program called International Young Scholars. Some students lean diligently over multiplication worksheets and history books with their SU mentors. Others didn’t even bring their backpacks, preferring to play board games or socialize with their mentors and friends. Unlike their parents, these teens grew up in America, not Africa. Most arrived in the States under ten years old. They view the world through a different lens than their parents. Although most of the girls wear the hijab and colorful long skirts encouraged by their culture and religion, their dialogue sounds Americanized. A year ago, Zeytun sat amongst them. She was one of the studious students, always ready to finish a biology worksheet or complete an essay for her Advanced Placement world history class.
Zeytun grew up on the same diet of pop songs and Disney Channel shows as her American and Somali-Bantu peers. But as she grew, she started facing pressures from her family unlike anything she’d seen on TV. “Ever since I was nine, my parents were always saying that I was going to get married to my cousin,” Zeytun recalls. “At that time, they were just joking.”
When Zeytun became a freshman in high school, it was no longer a joke. Zeytun’s father and her oldest brother, Haji, 29, told her the family wanted her to marry a cousin who lived in Arizona. He was the brother of Haji’s wife, and five years older than Zeytun. Initially, she was shocked and horrified. Arranged marriages remain very much a part of life for Somali-Bantus living in America, but she never imagined it for herself. She felt she had much to accomplish educationally before marriage should enter the picture.
The willingness to accept arranged marriages represents one of the biggest cultural differences between Zeytun’s generation, raised in the United States, and her parents'. In Africa, Somali-Bantu women would often marry by 15. Dating doesn't exist. In the United States, however, fifteen-year-olds are not legally allowed to marry. Instead of growing up under the watchful eyes of community members in a refugee village, kids mature while navigating a harsh sea of high school hallways. Girls and boys date, even if their parents never hear about it.
But every summer, for as long as she can remember, Zeytun attended the weddings of young Somali-Bantu couples whose parents decided their matrimony. “Parents believe that they have the better choice,” Haji explains. “They make the best choice for you—that’s what they always believe.” As for Haji’s personal beliefs, he thinks girls and boys should marry around age 25, instead of directly out of high school. He believes men and women should have more freedom in choosing the person with whom they will spend the rest of their lives with. At 29 years old, Haji is the father of six children, with a seventh on the way. His own marriage was arranged when he was only 17. “I believe that for the next generation, my kids’ generation, there will be marriage the American way.”
Somali-Bantu marriages are complicated, family affairs though. If two young people fall in love, their families base approval of the relationship on their opinion of the entire other family. That’s why arranged marriages among cousins are so popular: the two families already have a strong bond. Haji’s wife’s family felt strongly that Zeytun and Banane should marry.
Yet when Zeytun’s cousin flew to New York to see her for the first time since they had lived in the same community in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, she refused to speak to him. She remembers instinctively hating everything about him. At the time, unbeknownst to her father and Haji, she was dating a boy from school. They were in love. During a large community soccer game, she and her boyfriend laughed at Banane behind his back. “Oh my god, that’s the guy they’re trying to get you married with?” Zeytun remembers her boyfriend asking incredulously.
Even then, however, Zeytun never openly refused the marriage. She didn’t want to start a fight in her family. More than anything, the Somali-Bantu culture values a powerful familial bond and deep respect for elders. She feared that if she ditched Banane and tried starting something more serious with her boyfriend, her family would reject the match anyway.
I" said, ‘I don’t really want to marry him, but I will do it for you guys,’” Zeytun says. Her one condition was that she could finish high school in Syracuse before marrying Banane. Her father and Haji agreed. Zeytun reluctantly ended her relationship with her boyfriend from school, her heart broken. Banane also had a long-term relationship in Arizona at the time, but his family didn’t approve of the girl, and they were forced to separate. Banane sent Zeytun a cell phone, and the couple erased the thousands of miles and layers of emotion with simple conversation.
“We were finally talking,” Zeytun says. “But we weren’t talking as lovers, we were just talking as friends, and as cousins.” She admits to using the cell phone Banane sent her to keep in touch with her ex. But then, the dynamic started to shift. The phone calls with her future husband lengthened. Compared to her nightly chats with Banane, the conversations with her ex-boyfriend became less appealing. “Oh my god, then we started talking on the phone like crazy,” she laughs. “We talked on the phone in the morning, in the afternoon, at night. I would be in my room all the time, just talking on the phone.” Zeytun’s reluctant acceptance slowly brightened into optimism. Her future seemed tinged with the rosy glow of a girl in love.
But then one night, Banane’s family called Zeytun and told her they refused to wait until after her 2012 graduation for the wedding. Either she married Banane that summer, or there would be no marriage at all. “No, this is too early,” Zeytun told them. “I want to finish my school. It’s not right. I came to America so I could learn.” Zeytun remembers crying wildly, desperate, bitter tears burning her eyes. Haji remembers arguing with the aunt: “It was a big fight. But finally we had to accept it, because we didn’t want it to ruin the life of Zeytun.”
To Haji and his father, uprooting Zeytun from her education wouldn’t permanently ruin her life. Breaking off the marriage, however, would bring “curses” upon her future happiness. Haji describes how in Africa, when an arranged marriage is proposed, the couple is offered two sticks: one dry, and another green with leaves. Choosing the green stick and getting married brings prosperity and joy to the couple. But if the man or the woman refuse the marriage and choose the dry stick, misfortune would forever haunt them. Marital issues. Stillborn children. Divorce after divorce after divorce.
Haji and his father had to accept the marriage, even though it hurt them to do so. The Aden family, Haji in particular, places great emphasis on education. As summer heat started pounding down on Syracuse, the wedding date approached, and Haji couldn’t completely alleviate his misgivings. He remembers crying throughout the entire wedding day, even in public. “People were asking me what was going on,” he says. “I would tell them, ‘There is something deep in my heart that is making me cry.’”
He was afraid that once Zeytun arrived in Arizona, out of his sight and away from his guidance, something would happen and she would stop going to school. “There will always be bumps. In your lifetime you will have ups and downs. But I told her be strong, and go for your school, and your education—don’t stop,” he says. “And she promised me that she will always go to school.”
Having a child might be another one of those bumps. Before they were married, Zeytun and Banane had a conversation about birth control, and they agreed it was a good idea. After all, she still had to complete her junior and senior years of high school. A few weeks later, however, Banane approached her and said he'd changed his mind. “What do you mean it’s not a good idea? We already talked about it!” Zeytun remembers crying. “You said it was a good idea! Why are you bringing this up again?” Although Zeytun knew she could still take birth control if she wanted, she decided not to. She couldn’t explain why.
Deynaba Farah, Zeytun’s 18-year-old friend from Syracuse, feels nervous for her. Although Zeytun’s mother-in-law (technically also her aunt) promises to help care for her son, Deynaba worries that once he's born, Zeytun won’t get as much assistance as she expected. She fears Zeytun will drop out of school. Deynaba herself plans to attend college before she thinks about marriage, let alone children. Her parents haven’t seriously approached her about an arranged marriage yet.
“I think it’s because I don’t have any cousins here, thank god,” she says. The oldest cousin Deynaba has in the United States is six years old, a fact that might save her family from a big fight. When her mother once suggested the proposition of one day having an arranged marriage, Deynaba bluntly showed her distaste for the idea. “I told her with a straight face, ‘This is Deynaba.’ She always tries to compare me to other people, but I’m not other people,” Deynaba says. “I’m different, and this is what I want. I don’t care what other people did, that’s their life. They have their own issues, but this is me, and I’m not going to do that.”
For now, Deynaba is more concerned about passing the next round of Regents (a New York State standardized tests required for high school graduation) than she is about a forced marriage. Zeytun no longer has to worry about Regents. Arizona has its own set of standardized tests, but there are fewer subjects than in New York. Zeytun failed her last one by only six points, but she looks forward to taking it again near the end of the year.
Even though she didn’t refuse arranged marriage like Deynaba did, even though she does love Banane, even though she’s so excited to bring her son into the world, Zeytun can’t help but wonder what her life could have been like. “I don’t know, they might have been right,” she says, referring to her family members who arranged her marriage with Banane. “I’m not saying they weren’t. I don’t see anything bad about it right now, being married to my cousin. But I don’t know what it would be like to be with somebody else.”
Arizona weather weighs her down with its heat. She misses Syracuse, her family, and her friends. “Here in America, I’m still proud of my culture,” she says. “But I think that there’s just some things that we do wrong, that I don’t like, that I’d rather do the American way.”