Zeinab is in the throes of puberty. She is 14 years old, Syrian, and a wife. Her childhood came to an abrupt end on New Year’s Eve when she married a distant relative who is ten years her senior.
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A child bride tells Rachel Smalley her life in Syria before the war was perfect - now she has lost everything.
"I needed to marry for protection. My father thinks I am vulnerable because I am single and living in a refugee camp." She says she didn't want to get married and she didn't choose her husband. He chose her.
"My parents believe it is best for me." Her family live in a camp in the north of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, 60km from Zeinab's new home in a small refugee settlement in the south. She struggles with the social isolation.
"I worry about my parents. They are everything to me ... they cared for me when I was sick and when I was sad. I miss them so much."
The World Food Programme's monthly refugee allowance is US$19 ($25.85). It seldom covers rent and food. There is little chance it will pay for a bus ticket to her parents' village.
Zeinab struggles with the isolation. Photo / Jo Currie / World Vision
Her husband is in Beirut looking for work and Zeinab thinks she will see him again "in about a month". In the meantime she shares a tent with his parents and her brother-in-law.
"I was going to be a painter. That was my dream but it will never happen now. I use to draw birds and trees. I loved to paint, I loved it so much and I was good at it."
Much of Zeinab's story is the story of every Syrian refugee who fled the conflict and sought refuge in Lebanon. She threw together a bag of clothes and a few essentials, but much of her life was left behind in an abandoned bedroom in Syria. Her art. Her paints. Her mirror. Her books. Her clothes.
She says relatives who stayed in Syria have since told her their house has been destroyed by fire.
"There is nothing left. My bedroom ... all of my artwork is gone." She doesn't have any pencils or paper in the camp. They're luxury items.
Child bride Zainab says she didn't want to get married and didn't chose her husband. photo / Jo Currie / World Vision
"I have nothing." Her eyes suggest there is so much more to her story but her father-in-law is back and he sits with us in the tent.
Zeinab shrugs. "What can you do?" She changes the subject and says she dreams of having her own home one day but at the moment she is saving to buy more blankets and a pillow. Zeinab, like every 14-year-old, is grappling with the early stages of pubescence and the adjustment that comes with it. She may soon have to adjust to motherhood as well.
"I will be a mother soon, I think. It will happen." A childhood pregnancy will bring with it an increased risk of suffering complications in birth. There are no hospitals here. Zeinab will have no access to pain relief or medical intervention, and no help from her family either.
"This is life now," she says. "My life in Syria was perfect. Syria was like heaven on earth before the war. I went to school. I studied. I had a nice life with my family ... "
She escaped the Syrian conflict with her life but Zeinab is one of almost six million child refugees who are continuing to feel its ramifications every day.
Young firebrand's dreams vanish
Hind dreamed of becoming a teacher. Photo / Chris Sisarich
Hind was 14 when I first met her.
It was September 2013 and she was living in a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.
I liked her immediately. She was a young firebrand. Her fury was eloquent and her eyes blazed when she spoke. She punched her fist into the palm of her hand, willing me to grasp her sense of injustice. Did I understand? Did the world understand? Why was this happening?
"Why am I living like this? Tell me!" she said.
Hind and her family fled Homs when the fighting intensified. Her education was on hold. She was unsure what had become of her friends. She lived in a tent. She was Syrian, not Lebanese. She didn't belong here, she said.
Hind's family had been well-off in Syria. They owned a large home and a supermarket but when Government troops began a major assault on the city, they boarded a bus to the Lebanese border. Her young eyes had already seen too much. "The rockets, the tanks, the gunfire ... so many rockets," she told me.
That was 18 months ago and when I returned to the Bekaa Valley with World Vision last month, I told them I wanted to go back to the camp and find Hind. I was too late. I had missed her by three months.
Her family was still living in the same white tarpaulin tent on the edge of the Syrian border, but Hind was gone. She had married a distant cousin and moved to a refugee camp near Tripoli, in the west of Lebanon. This strong young woman who had dreamed of becoming a teacher had instead become a child bride.
I was stunned. Not Hind. Not the young woman who I thought would one day be a leader among Syrian women. She had spoken of her desire to keep studying and to marry much later, in her 20s. She had set up a school in the camp and was teaching children to read.
She was adamant the only place she would move to was "east of here, towards Syria". Instead she had moved west and further into Lebanon. Hind, at 15, was a wife.
We tracked her down and spoke to her on the phone in Tripoli. She told us she was happy to hear from us. She missed her parents. She said it felt as if they were "as far away as heaven is from the earth".
I ask if she is happy and she tells me she is. Her 21-year-old husband Abdul loves her and "he thinks I am beautiful". There is less conviction in her voice this time. The fury has gone. She doesn't mention her dream of becoming a teacher. She is now a refugee camp statistic. Her name will be added to the growing list of Syrian child brides.
She thanks me for tracking her down in Tripoli. And then before she hangs up she makes one request. "Please don't forget me."
War driving young girls to wed
The practice of underage marriage and child exploitation in Syria's refugee camps has increased dramatically as the crisis lurches into its fifth year this month.
The conflict is spawning a multi-headed monster that forces vulnerable young people into child labour and child marriage.
Desperate families have been forced to accept marriage dowries to pay rent or buy food, and it's also viewed as a way of protecting young girls from the risk of rape in overcrowded refugee camps.
In Jordan, the United Nations says 32 per cent of registered marriages in the Zaatari refugee camp involve girls under the age of 18. The true figure may be far higher.
Pamela Daoud, a social worker with World Vision Lebanon, says young girls, in particular, are vulnerable to exploitation. "I know of agents in the camps looking for girls as young as 8 or 9 for marriage."
The World Food Programme cut the monthly refugee allowance from US$31 ($42) to US$19 last year as numbers spiralled.
The rate of child marriage in Syria was 13 per cent before the conflict.
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