Sitting on a couch and cradling her nine-month old baby, Samah, or “Soso” as her four year-old daughter likes to call her, retold her story through tears. “I am an ordinary girl from a middle-class family,” she said. “I’m not going to lie to you and pretend that I have come from the countryside and innocently entered the dark crypt of the capital, and that I don’t understand the world of social relations.”

Sitting on a couch and cradling her nine-month old baby, Samah, or “Soso” as her four year-old daughter likes to call her, retold her story through tears. “I am an ordinary girl from a middle-class family,” she said. “I’m not going to lie to you and pretend that I have come from the countryside and innocently entered the dark crypt of the capital, and that I don’t understand the world of social relations.”

Samah is one of roughly one thousand women per year who become single parents because of a birth out of wedlock, according to statistics from the Amal Association, which provides single mothers with psychological and legal support, as well as assistance with healthcare, housing, social integration and job placement.

Originally from Ben Arous—a northern coastal town—Samah cleans a wealthy family’s house, after being forced to leave her job at a call center, where she worked before she became pregnant the first time.

“My sin is that I loved sincerely and wished for a better future,” she said. “But I was in a hurry. Maybe this is why I am miserable today,” she adds sighing.

The scarlet letter

Women like Samah came under attack in the new government, most prominently by female Constituent Assembly member of the Islamist Ennahda party, Souad Abdulrahim.

Shortly after her party swept the elections last year, Abdul Rahim denounced a call by women’s organizations to adopt legislation that would give single mothers social assistance.  Speaking on Tunisian radio, Abul Rahim said that the government should not “encourage immorality” and that “we won’t help bastards.”

These statements shocked many women’s and human rights groups and Abdul Rahim was assaulted by a single mother in front of the assembly.

Women’s groups publicly distanced themselves from the prominent female Ennahda politician who does not wear a hijab—headscarf— and instead appears in modern suits worn with silk scarves.

A question of legitimacy

Since 1998, a Tunisian law on newborns and their lineage has given mothers the right to prove the parentage of their extramarital children by filing a lawsuit, with the help of genetic analysis or witnesses, which enables their children to enjoy all rights of “legitimate” children.

Having been amended in 2003, Malik Kafeef, chairman of the Amal Association, said the new law obligates the defendant – the supposed father – to undergo genetic analysis through a judicial order, and considers a default father or defendant as an implicit proof of paternity. This law perhaps represents rehabilitation and recovery of some rights of single mothers and their children in a society that frowns upon children born out of wedlock.

Help without judgement

Kafeef of the Amal Association said that 90% of single mothers who sought assistance were illiterate or had little more than a primary school education.

Samah said with grief that she never knew such associations existed. “Even if I had known, I would not have visited them because I do not have the courage.”

A third of women like Samah are between 20 and 30 years old and only 46% of them have more than a primary school education, according to Kafeef.

Amal Association for single mothers is the pioneer in this area and the only one that undertakes to support the mother and her child together. It annually receives 50 single mothers with their babies.

 “We do not only provide health and social care for single mothers and their children, but also strive to direct them to lawfully get their rights, through either the Association lawyer or specialized human rights organizations,” Kafeef added.

The association also opens the doors to single mothers even before delivery, as some of them resort to the association because they can’t afford the expenses of delivery and treatment, and even for psychological reasons to escape the influence of family and community.

After finding out Samah was pregnant, the father of the child left her, even though he promised to return. Months passed quickly, while she waited for him.  She was kicked out of her family’s home even after she told them the story in hopes that they would understand and help her, but she found nothing other than ‘estrangement and closed doors’. Months passed and she became a mother to a daughter whom she named ‘Amal’, or hope.

False hope

After Samah found work as a cook, the owner of the restaurant promised to marry her under the condition that it remained confidential and that they not have children until he decided so.

Samah admitted that while he provided her with everything, rented a house for her, took care of her daughter and treated her tenderly, he became enraged when he discovered she was pregnant. He physically abused her because she refused to abort the pregnancy.

He even went so far as to kidnap her daughter for 20 days and threatened not to allow her to see her unless she agreed to sign the divorce papers calmly and unconditionally.

Even though she initially rejected this demand and tried to commit suicide, Samah finally complied in order to get back her daughter. Five months into the divorce, she gave birth to a boy.  Today, she is a divorced woman raising two children.

“I managed to prove my son’s parentage only when he was seven month’s old,” Samah said.