AL-KHALDEYA, Jordan — Even when Hamda was still living in the city of Homs, her husband used to hit her. This didn’t happen a lot, but occasionally, when he was stressed out or tired. Most of the time he wasn’t even at home, since he worked outside of Syria a lot, so Hamda didn’t consider it to be a problem.
However, things changed when the Syrian war broke out and their neighborhood was bombed. One of their seven children died during an attack. Hamda’s husband was still mourning his dead son when all of a sudden he lost his job.