For Her Children, Seeking the Education She Didn’t Have

TYRE, Lebanon — When Iman Chtayoui’s husband began courting her, she wasn’t interested.

“He would bring me flowers,” she recalled of the early, one-sided courtship with Ahmad Shayahin. “I told him, ‘I don’t want them.’”

Ms. Chtayoui was still heartbroken over the recent breakup of her engagement, the latest hardship in her struggle with being stateless. The family of her fiancé had said that unless Ms. Chtayoui could find a way for the couple to legally register their marriage, they wouldn’t allow it.

That was impossible. Ms. Chtayoui was born in 1991 in Lebanon to a Palestinian mother and a Syrian father. When her father died a year later, her parents still hadn’t registered her birth. Her mother was illiterate, and the paperwork was daunting and expensive. When her mother remarried a few years later, Ms. Chtayoui’s stepfather tried to sort it out.

“Eventually, he gave up, too,” said Ms. Chtayoui.

Without proof of her identity, Ms. Chtayoui never went to school. Her mother couldn’t access health services for her that would have been provided by the United Nations aid agency for Palestine refugees. When she was young, she would pass checkpoints next to her mother without a problem, but as she got older, it became more difficult.

The first time she understood how serious her situation was, she was in her early teens. She went to the Ain al Hilwe refugee camp to visit her grandparents with her mother, and she was stopped as she tried to pass a checkpoint to leave the camp.

“They said I couldn’t leave until I showed my ID,” Ms. Chtayoui said in an interview this month through an interpreter. Her mother pleaded with the soldiers, saying she had left her daughter’s identification document at home. Ms. Chtayoui waited at the checkpoint for hours while her mother gathered family members to come try to resolve the situation. Eventually, thanks to someone well-connected, Ms. Chtayoui was allowed to go.

“I never went back there again,” she said. Since then, Ms. Chtayoui’s movement has been very limited. Being caught without ID could get her detained.

She lived in Insariye with her family and would travel sometimes to Sidon or Tyre, both about 20 minutes away. Less often, she said, she’d travel the 40 miles north to Beirut to visit her sister, but it was always stressful, even as the number of checkpoints went down in recent years.

Mr. Shayahin fell in love with Ms. Chtayoui while they played soccer as teenagers in the streets of their neighborhood. After Ms. Chtayoui’s first engagement ended, Mr. Shayahin confessed his love. She rejected him. But he persisted in asking her out and bringing her flowers.

“So many flowers,” remembered Ms. Chtayoui, giggling at the memory. Those were hard days for her. The reality of what it meant to not have ID was sinking in, and she gave him excuses for not going out. Once, she told Mr. Shayahin she couldn’t go because she had nothing to wear. He showed up with a new outfit for her.

“Somehow he always knew just what I needed,” Ms. Chtayoui said. “It was like he could anticipate it.”

Ms. Chtayoui slowly fell in love with Mr. Shayahin. They married in 2011 in a religious ceremony. They couldn’t legalize the marriage, but they were happy to be together.

“Even after we got married, we were also still good friends,” Mr. Shayahin said. “We are equals.”

But Ms. Chtayoui’s situation went from complicated to terrifying when she was in labor with their first child in 2012. The first hospital the couple went to turned them away for lack of an ID, they said, and the second initially refused her entry because she could not produce ID.

“Imagine being in labor and the hospital won’t let you in,” Ms. Chtayoui said. “I was in pain and I was scared.”

Eventually, the hospital admitted Ms. Chtayoui on the condition that it would hold her mother-in-law’s ID as collateral, and she delivered a girl. The experience again motivated Ms. Chtayoui to seek a solution, but her own mother had died, making it even more difficult.

The couple couldn’t register their first child, Aseel, because Ms. Chtayoui had no ID. When their second child, Fahd, arrived in 2014, they had learned how to navigate the system better, and refused to pay the hospital bill until they at least were given a document recording the birth. Their third child, Ali, is 14 months old, and the birth was recorded as well.

The three children, however, still lacked proper national ID and could not access public hospitals or go to school. Like her mother, Ms. Chtayoui didn’t attend school, and can’t read or write. She faced the reality that her children might share her fate, and it felt hopeless. The process of acquiring identification was complicated and expensive, and the situation strained her marriage.

Then last year, their case was referred to the International Rescue Committee, which provides refugees with legal counseling and assistance, and is one of seven beneficiary agencies of The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The case, said Carla Mikhael, a senior field and protection manager with the organization, “was one of the most complicated cases we’ve ever had.”

The legal program helps around 4,000 people a year, but most need help with residency or simpler documents. Very few lack any type of ID.

In the I.R.C. office in Tyre, Mr. Shayahin pulled a thick stack of papers out of a plastic bag and unfolded them on the table. A lawyer pulled out an even thicker stack. The process of trying to get Ms. Chtayoui’s nationality recognized has taken lawsuits, a favor from a local council head and a trip to court. But eight years after they married, Ms. Chtayoui and Mr. Shayahin had their union legally recognized in July. And they have official birth certificates for their three children, allowing them to attend school.

After more than a year and a half of working with a lawyer at the I.R.C., Ms. Chtayoui has a piece of paper with her photo and personal details on it, stamped by a government official. Though the process is not over, it’s the closest thing she’s ever had to an ID.

Now Ms. Chtayoui needs the Syrian government to recognize her nationality. Though they were born in Lebanon, Mr. Shayahin, Ms. Chtayoui and their children are not entitled to Lebanese citizenship.

Mr. Shayahin, a garbage collector in Insariye who was born to Syrian parents, plans to take the matter to the Syrian embassy in Beirut, in an attempt to get it settled there. He hasn’t visited Syria since the war started in 2011. She has never been to Syria or Palestine.

Knowing their children are going to school and can access services has been a huge relief.

“I want my kids to have an education,” said Ms. Chtayoui. “Isn’t it better that they don’t turn out like me?”

But both Ms. Chtayoui and Mr. Shayahin say that the most important thing they’ve gained is the feeling that after 28 years, a solution will come.

“Finally,” Ms. Chtayoui said, “I have hope.”

Donations to The Neediest Cases Fund may be made online, or with a check or over the phone.

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