Many of the unprecedented number of Christians fleeing violence across the Middle East have taken refuge in Jordan, where fellow Christians are struggling to help them

Sabiha last saw her husband two years ago. He left to fill the car with petrol and did not return. Islamic State (IS) jihadists were approaching the northern Iraqi town of Bashiqa, to which Sabiha and her family had fled when the group seized control of the nearby city of Mosul two months earlier. Now she and her children would flee again, north to Erbil in Kurdistan. Neighbours who arrived from Bashiqa after her said they saw “many bodies” as they escaped. She feared her husband was among them, but she could not go back in case IS killed her too.

Today Sabiha is in legal and emotional limbo. She and her three children live in safety in the Jordanian capital, Amman, but she is dependent on food parcels and a local benefactor who pays their rent.

We sit on mattresses on the floor of a barely furnished flat. Without a body, she cannot obtain a death certificate or organise a funeral. Widow status might help her application for resettlement to Australia, but the only “evidence” she has of her husband’s death – apart from his absence – is her utter desolation. The alternative is to become a single parent, by asking her Church, the Assyrian Church of the East (ACE), for a divorce. Meanwhile, she suffers from high blood pressure, she is tearful, her 15-year-old son is withdrawn and her 10-year-old son is increasingly violent.