by Nujood Ali
Shada explains to me that she works for Glamour, an important American women’s magazine. She has come all the way to Yemen because of me. I’m going to have to tell my story again. Over and over. And once again, my face will freeze when we get to those personal questions I always find so painful to answer. And that anguish I try so hard to stifle will well up deep in my heart.
All of a sudden, the bell rings. Saved! Pointing with a stick, one of the teachers, Najmiya, signals to the girls to line up along the wall. I hurry to obey. Then she ushers my group into a classroom, where she invites us to sit down at the desks lined up there in two sections. I choose one next to a window: not up in the front of the room, nor all the way in the back, but in the third row, next to two new classmates whose first names I haven’t yet learned. My eyes glued to the blackboard, I try to decipher the letters our teacher has just written in white chalk: Ra-ma-dan Ka-rim. Ramadan Karim! Happy Ramadan! Like a puzzle finally solved, the words slip back into place in my memory. And my racing heart returns to its normal beat.
While the teacher is encouraging us to recite the words of our national anthem, I suddenly focus on the rustle of turning pages. This is the true sound of school, found again at last.
For a moment, I think about a story the principal told Shada a little while ago.
“Last year, one of our thirteen-year-old pupils left school suddenly, without giving a reason. At first I thought she would be back. And then the weeks went by, but we never heard any news of her. Until the day a few months ago when I learned that the child had gotten married and had a baby. At thirteen!”
With the best of intentions, I’m sure, Njala Matri had been careful to whisper this to Shada so that I wouldn’t hear her, but what she doesn’t know is that for the last few weeks I’ve been formulating a plan. Yes; I’ve made up my mind. When I grow up, I’ll be a lawyer, like Shada, to defend other little girls like me. If I can, I’ll propose that the legal age for marriage be raised to eighteen. Or twenty. Or even twenty-two! I will have to be strong and tenacious. I must learn not to be afraid of looking men right in the eye when I speak to them. In fact, one of these days I’ll have to get up enough courage to tell Aba that I don’t agree with him when he says that, after all, the Prophet married Aïsha when she was only nine years old. Like Shada, I will wear high heels, and I will not cover my face. That niqab—you can’t breathe under it! But first things first: I will have to do my homework well. I must be a good student, so that I can hope to go to college and study law. If I work hard, I’ll get there.
Ever since I ran away to the courthouse, events have moved so quickly that I haven’t yet had a chance to fully understand everything that has happened to me. I will definitely need some time, and patience. Shada has suggested more than once, actually, that I see a doctor who she says could help me, and each time I’ve decided to cancel the appointment at the last minute. It’s upsetting, isn’t it, to go to a doctor you don’t know? So Shada finally gave up.
It’s true that at first I was eaten up with shame—shame, the fear of being different from other people, and a painful feeling of inferiority. I couldn’t help having the strange notion that I’d been going through my ordeal all alone, that I’d been the anonymous victim of something no one else could understand.
But recently I’ve realized that my case was not unique. What happened to me and to that thirteen-year-old schoolgirl—no one talks much about those stories, but there are more of them than you might imagine. A few weeks ago Shada introduced me to Arwa and Rym, two girls who had just filed for divorce. When I saw them for the first time, I gave them big hugs, as if they’d been my sisters. Their stories had a huge impact on me. At nine, Arwa was forced by her father to marry a man twenty-five years older than she was, but after hearing about me on the television, she decided one morning to go for help to the hospital nearest her home, in the village of Jibla, to the south of Sana’a. Rym was twelve when her life was turned upside down by her parents’ divorce. For revenge, her father married her off to a thirty-one-year-old cousin. After several attempts at suicide, Rym found the courage to knock on the courthouse door.
I was proud to learn that my story had helped them find the means to defend themselves, and I feel responsible in a small way for their decisions to rebel against their husbands. Touched by their un-happiness, I empathized deeply with their suffering, and listening to them speak, I saw my misfortunes reflected in the mirror of theirs. I thought, Khalass—enough. Marriage was invented to make girls miserable. I will never get married again, not ever again. Machi! Machtich!
I often think about what happened to Mona. Life hasn’t smiled on her, either. And a week ago, my big sister Jamila was finally released from prison. When she walked into our house, I threw my arms around her. What a surprise to see her again!
She had had to share her cell with criminals, even with women accused of killing their husbands. In our house, though, we aren’t talking about such things, so as not to spoil Jamila’s homecoming. And for the first time in a long while, it’s true, our family is once again complete. After the joy of being reunited, however, the quarreling began again, and the other day my sisters had a spat. Although Mona had finally agreed to sign that famous paper to save Jamila, she couldn’t help being angry at her, accusing her sister of having broken up her family. Nothing will ever be the same again between the two of them, and yet, all this trouble is the husband’s fault. Sometimes I think that one day I will have to speak to Fares and make him promise that if he gets married, he will be the sweetest of husbands.
A plane crosses the sky, leaving behind a long white trail that puffs up as I watch it. Meanwhile, the plane goes on its way, and will surely land soon at the nearby airport. Perhaps it has come from France, or maybe Bahrain? Which of those two countries is closer to us, anyway? I’ll have to ask Shada. One day I, too, will fly away in the sky, and I’ll go to the far ends of the earth. It seems that at least three hundred people can fit into an airplane. A neighbor who just returned from Saudi Arabia told me that the inside of a plane looks like a huge living room, where you can read magazines while you order your meal on a tray. In the plane, he added, everyone eats with real cutlery, just like in the bizzeria!
The teacher’s high-pitched voice finally rouses me from my reverie.
“Who would like to recite the Fatiha, the first sura of the Koran?” she asks, addressing the en tire class.
With an enthusiasm I haven’t dared feel for a very long time, I quickly raise my hand, stretching high so that everyone can see me. It’s strange; for once I haven’t bothered to think something over before acting. I didn’t ask myself what Aba would think, or what people might say behind my back. I, Nujood, ten years old—I have chosen to answer a question. And this choice is mine alone.
“Nujood?” says the teacher, turning to look at me.
My eagerness has caught her eye.
Taking a deep breath, I launch myself from my seat, ramrod straight, and begin rummaging through my memory to find the verses of the Koran I learned last year.
In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful,
the Most Compassionate.
Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Universe,
The Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate,
Sovereign of the Day of Judgment!
You alone we worship, and to You alone we turn for help.
Guide us to the straight path,
The path of those whom You have favored,
Not of those who have incurred Your wrath,
Nor of those who have gone astray.
A solemn silence now reigns in the classroom.
“Bravo, Nujood. May Allah protect you!” The teacher applauds, encouraging the other pupils to do the same. Then she looks over at the other side of the room, seeking a new candidate.
With a smile, I sit down again at my desk. Glancing around me, I can’t help heaving a great sigh of relief. In my green and white uniform, I’m only one of fifty girls in this class. I am a
pupil in the second year of primary school. I have just started classes again, like thousands of other little Yemeni girls. When I go home this afternoon, I will have homework to do, and drawings to make with colored pencils.
Today I finally feel that I’ve become a little girl again. A normal little girl. Like before. I’m just me.
Clinging tightly to Shada’s hand in her pretty purple dress, Nujood flashes smiles on all sides. Her movements are shy, but she has a determined look in her eyes.
“Another shot!” yell the paparazzi.
On November 10, 2008, in New York City, the youngest divorcée in the world has just been named a Woman of the Year by Glamour. With all the gravitas of her ten years, she shares this unexpected honor with the film star Nicole Kidman, the American secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, and Senator Hillary Clinton, among others. That’s quite a feat for this little Yemeni girl, this once anonymous victim who has suddenly become a heroine for our time, and who today aspires to return to a normal life, one she richly deserves.
Nujood has won. And she’s proud of that. The thing that struck me immediately, when Nujood and I first met in June 2008, two months after her divorce, was precisely her self-confidence. It was as if her incredible struggle had made her grow up all at once, by casually stealing away the lovely innocence of childhood.
She’d sounded so grown-up when carefully explaining to me, over the phone, the slightest details of the route to take to find her unassuming little house, lost in the labyrinth of dusty streets in Dares, on the outskirts of Sana’a, the capital of Yemen.
When I arrived, she was waiting for me near a busy gas station, wrapped in a black veil, with her younger sister Haïfa by her side. “I’ll be near the candy vendor,” she had told me, betraying the sweet tooth of children her age. Almond-shaped eyes, a baby face, an angelic smile. Seemingly a girl like any other, who likes candy, dreams of having a big TV, and plays blindman’s buff with her brothers and sisters. Deep down, however, she is a real little lady, matured by her ordeal, who smiles today to hear the congratulatory cries of “Mabrouk!” called out to her by the women of Sana’a when they recognize her as she passes by.
Husnia al-Kadri, the director of women’s affairs at the University of Sana’a, confided to me not long ago that “Nujood’s divorce kicked down a closed door.” Husnia al-Kadri was in charge of a recent study revealing that more than half the girls in Yemen get married before the age of eighteen.
Yes, it’s true: Nujood’s story carries a message of hope. In this country of the Arabian Peninsula, where the marriage of little girls draws on traditions that until now have seemed unshakable, her unbelievable act of bravery has encouraged other small voices to speak out against their husbands. After Nujood’s day in court, two other girls—Arwa, nine years old, and Rym, twelve—also undertook the legal struggle to break their barbaric bonds of matrimony. In neighboring Saudi Arabia, one year after Nujood’s historic court case, an eight-year-old Saudi girl married off by her father to a man in his fifties successfully sued for divorce—the first time such a thing has happened in that ultraconservative country.
In February 2009, the Yemeni parliament finally passed a new law raising the legal age of consent to seventeen for both boys and girls. In addition, in an attempt to prevent the formation of “overextended” families like Nujood’s, who are often unable to care properly for their children, this law allows a man to marry more than one wife only when he is financially able to support this extra burden. The women’s rights associations of Yemen have taken a wait-and-see attitude toward this victory, however, because although the law was passed by a majority of the parliamentary deputies, President Ali Abdullah al-Saleh has yet to put it into effect.
Perhaps Nujood does not realize this yet, but she has shattered a taboo. The news of her divorce traveled around the world, relayed by many international media, bringing an end to the silence enshrouding a practice that is unfortunately all too widespread in a number of other countries: Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Iran, Mali, Pakistan. … If her story touches us so deeply, however, it’s also because it impels us to take a good look at ourselves. In the West, it’s fashionable to instinctively bemoan the fate of Muslim women, yet conjugal violence and the practice of child marriage are hardly restricted to the Islamic world.
In Yemen, many factors drive fathers to marry off their daughters before they reach puberty. Husnia al-Kadri reminds us that “poverty, local customs, and a lack of education play a role.” Family honor, the fear of adultery, the settling of scores between rival tribes—the reasons cited by the parents are many and various. Out in the countryside, adds al-Kadri, there is even a tribal proverb: “To guarantee a happy marriage, marry a nine-year-old girl.”
For many people, sadly, child marriages are customary, even normal. Nadia al-Saqqaf, the editor in chief of the Yemen Times, told me recently that a girl of nine married to a Saudi man died three days after her wedding. Instead of demanding an investigation of this scandalous situation, her parents hastened to apologize to the husband, as if trying to make amends for defective merchandise, and even offered him, in exchange, the dead child’s seven-year-old sister. Nujood’s rebellion, honorable in our eyes, is moreover considered by conservatives as an outrageous affront, punishable, according to extremists, by a murderous “honor crime.”
After the glitz and glitter of New York, the everyday reality of our little Yemeni heroine is still far, unfortunately, from the pleasant world of fairy tales.
It was Nujood’s wish to return to live with her parents. Nujood’s family has broken off all ties with her former husband, and no one knows where he is. At home, her older brothers resent the international attention aroused by her divorce. The neighbors complain about the comings and goings of foreign television crews. And not all the many people who come to hear her story are well-intentioned.
Shada as well is not beyond the reach of threats and danger. Her detractors accuse her of promoting a negative image of Yemen. Meanwhile, out in the countryside, nongovernmental organizations are attempting to educate the rural population about the problems linked to early marriage, while remaining sensitive to local traditions. For example, Oxfam, the organization that is by far the most invested in this project, must weigh its words carefully when it organizes consciousness-raising workshops in the southern part of the country. Instead of discussing “the legal age of marriage,” Oxfam prefers to talk about a “safe age,” emphasizing the risks linked to child marriage: psychological trauma, death in childbirth, dropping out of school. The task remains a difficult one, however. “Several of our colleagues who work out in the field have already become the objects of fatwas issued by the local sheikhs, who accuse them of promoting Western decadence and not respecting Islam,” says Souha Bashren, the special projects manager at Oxfam. It would seem that the path to a more enlightened future is a long and tortuous one.
In Nujood’s neighborhood, the lights don’t shine the way they do in New York. In the winter it’s cold, and heating a home is expensive. In Sana’a, the long evening gowns remain behind their shop windows. Every morning someone must go buy bread for the whole family. Often the alarm clock fails to ring, and Nujood’s big brothers doze until midday. As for her father, who is ill and sometimes feverish, he has not yet found work. Nujood’s mother increasingly forgets to attend to even the slightest household chores.
Overwhelmed by the stress of family troubles, Nujood and her younger sister Haïfa had to withdraw from their neighborhood school. After a difficult period, however, both girls are now preparing to attend a private school that offers a more supportive educational environment. The royalties from Nujood’s book, which is being translated into sixteen languages, have already begun helping finance the girls’ schooling and contributing to the support of the family, paying for food, rent, school supplies, and clothing for the children. Later, the money will help Nujood pursue her desire to become a lawyer and to establish a foundation to assist young girls in difficulties. A genero
us soul, Nujood also dreams of someday building a proper house for her whole family.
Whenever I travel to Sana’a, she asks me to bring her colored pencils. Crouching on the floor of the modest living room, she always draws the same colourful building with plenty of windows. One day, I asked her if it was a house, a school, or a boarding school.
“It’s the house of joy,” she replied with a big smile. “The house of happy little girls.”
DELPHINE MINOUI
SEPTEMBER 2009
We would like to thank warmly all those men and women who opened their doors to us, allowing us to tell Nujood’s story so that she can be an example to other girls and encourage them to demand their rights.
We would particularly like to thank Shada Nasser, Nujood’s lawyer, as well as the judges of the court in Sana’a: Judge Mohammad al-Ghazi, Judge Abdo, and Judge Abdel Wahed.
A big thank-you to the entire staff of the Yemen Times, and especially to their editor in chief, Nadia Abdulaziz al-Saqqaf, and to their former reporter, Hamed Thabet, who is currently serving as the political advisor to the German Embassy in Sana’a.
We are infinitely grateful to Husnia al-Kadri, director of women’s affairs at the University of Sana’a, who helped us with her research into the question of early marriage in Yemen.
Our conversations with the personnel of Oxfam, and with Wameedh Shakir and Souha Bashren in particular, were also of great assistance to us.
Thanks are owed to Njala Matri, the principal of the local school in the Sana’a neighborhood of Rawdha, who allowed Nujood to return to the classroom and continue her studies.
We would like to express our profound gratitude to Eman Mashour, without whom this book would never have been published. Her support for the cause of women’s rights in Yemen, her patience, and her talents as a translator were of considerable help to us.
