Roksana Dzhenid<\/a>, who married Wa\u2019el, a businessman, in 2000, and lives with him in Moscow. He benefited too, she noted, by escaping the intense family ties that come with a Syrian bride.<\/p>\n\u201cIf there is a quarrel, what will a Russian woman do? She will cry,\u201d she said. \u201cMaximum, she will go to her friend and say, \u2018He is such and such.\u2019 And what will an Arab woman do? She will gather a posse of all her relatives. She may run at night to her husband\u2019s mother and sister and start yelling.\u201d…<\/p>\n
Svetlana N. Zaitseva, who spoke by telephone from her home in the Syrian port city of Tartus, was 19 when she met her husband, a linguistics student living in the same dormitory in what was then Leningrad.<\/p>\n
She and her friends had only the dimmest idea of what life was like in other countries, she said. In the Soviet Union, \u201cit was like the entire world was our friends, brothers and comrades.\u201d Six months after the two met, she said, \u201cI realized that we loved each other and could not live without one another.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the height of my age, I must say that it\u2019s of course better to marry someone from your own country,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
But that decision is long past for Ms. Zaitseva, 62, a mother of three and grandmother of four. She is clinging to the hope that the conflict will end; but even if it escalates into war, she said, she would still choose to stay in Syria to the end.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt cannot be otherwise,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have become part of this place. Our children are here, who are citizens of Syria, and our grandchildren. Everything here is ours.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/graphics8.nytimes.com\/images\/2012\/07\/02\/world\/middleeast\/wives\/wives-articleLarge.jpg\")
Roksana Dzhenid lives in Moscow with her Syrian husband, but many wives like her live in Syria.