Gwo Lorbey! A 10 Year Old Girl Nan Koze Divorce

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10 years old ...

and divorced

by SARA STEWART

Last Updated: 4:42 AM, February 14, 2010

Posted: 8:19 PM, February 13, 2010

"My wedding ceremony, which began at lunchtime, was quickly over," Nujood Ali writes of the day she became a 10-year-old bride in Sana'a, Yemen.

"I advanced slowly, doing my best to avoid tripping over my outfit, which was too big for me and dragged on the ground."

Her memoir, "I Am Nujood: Age 10 and Divorced," co-written with French journalist Delphine Minoui, revisits in painful detail that day, and the weeks of harrowing abuse that followed it. The story became world famous when Nujood did something absolutely nobody expected, even herself: She went to the local courthouse to demand a divorce.

It was a bold gesture tailor-made for a splashy story in the media -- especially for women's rights organizations.

Nujood's story was reported across the globe, and she was even hailed as Glamour magazine's Woman of the Year in 2008, coming to New York to receive an award alongside Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice.

She was held up as a hero and a pint-sized reformer who would pave the way for change.

But her success story shades a horrifying reality: a significant percentage of Yemen's female population -- and throughout the Muslim world -- exist in conditions that most closely parallel slavery.

Being denied the right to dress as they choose, speak freely, get an education and travel independently is only the tip of the iceberg; women are expected to marry whom they are told to, submit to any form of physical abuse their husbands deem appropriate, and give birth as many times as humanly possible.

Taking a stand is legally punishable by violence, imprisonment and, not infrequently, death.

And preadolescent girls, the most powerless entities in a society that already devalues their gender, stand an especially slim chance of fighting back.

In Nujood's memoir, a chilling Yemeni proverb is repeatedly cited: "To guarantee a happy marriage, marry a 9-year-old girl." This saying is borne out in statistics.

According to a Unicef report, Yemen ranks 14 on the list of the top 20 countries for child marriage, with the legal (but not always accurate) age currently at 15. A new law raising it to 17 has yet to be ratified by President Ali Abdullah al-Saleh.

Thirty-two percent of women there are married before 18. And even in adult women, the study found, 78% are married to men at least 10 years older.

Young girls are regularly married off by their poverty-stricken families, who see them primarily as one less mouth to feed. And in Nujood's case, that designation would stick -- even in the aftermath of her globally lauded legal triumph

NUJOOD'S mother gave birth to 16 children, several of whom died of illnesses as infants.

Her family was so large, Nujood says, nobody remembers exactly when she was born. "By deduction, my mother says today that I must be around 10, but I could just as well be 8 or 9," she writes in the memoir.

Her father was usually under-employed, and the family struggled to get by in their cramped Sana'a apartment.

Her one escape was the Al-Qa neighborhood school, where she excelled in math, Koran study and drawing.

"During recess we played hide-and-seek and recited nursery rhymes.

I loved school.

It was my refuge, a happiness all my own."

After her two older sisters were wed -- both under dubious circumstances as well, though neither as young -- it was Nujood's turn. Her father struck a deal with a local deliveryman named Faez Ali Thamer, who agreed to Nujood's father's stipulation, a common one in situations like that: that the man would not have sex with her until a year after she began to menstruate.

When Nujood's father returned home and told his wife, she objected, saying her daughter was too young.

"Too young?

When the prophet Mohammed wed Aisha, she was only 9 years old," he responded.

The marriage contract was signed out of Nujood's sight: "The event had been men only, and occurred behind closed doors.

Everything happened without me. Neither my mother, my sisters, nor I had any right to know how things had gone."

Nujood was yanked out of school, clothed in an adult-sized, secondhand dress, married and packed off to live in a rural village with the man and his family.

After being driven for endless bone-jarring hours through rocky terrain in a rusted-out pickup, Nujood arrived at her husband's family residence (in her narrative, he is only referred to as "he" -- a nameless, looming villain).

Immediately disdained by his mother and siblings, she huddled in a corner of their hut that first night and listened to them discussing her: "No more time for girlish fancies.

We'll show her how to be a woman, a real one."

That very night, the door to her tiny bedroom slammed open, startling her awake.

"I'd barely opened my eyes when I felt a damp, hairy body pressing against me." When she jumped out of bed and ran into the courtyard, screaming for help, no one came -- except him. He forced her back into the room. "You are my wife. From now on, I decide everything.

We must sleep in the same bed."

The next morning, she awoke to her mother- and sister-in-law standing over her naked body, crowing "Congratulations!" as they examined the bloodstained sleeping mat. They pulled her out of bed and doused her with freezing cold water from a bucket, while her husband grunted, ate his breakfast and left the house for the day.

When Nujood begged for a few minutes to go out and play with the other children in the village, her mother-in-law scolded her: "Impossible! A married woman cannot allow herself to be seen with just anyone -- that's all we need, for you to go ruining our reputation."

Her married life fell into a pattern: days spent doing chores with her mother-in-law, evenings serving dinner to her husband, and nights being attacked.

"It was on the third day that he began hitting me. He could not bear my attempts to resist him.

.

.

he would start to hit me, first with his hands, then with a stick."

His mother-in-law would encourage this. "Hit her even harder.

She must listen to you -- she's your wife."

This, sadly, was also far from unusual.

Girls married before 18 are far more likely to be abused, and many child brides display symptoms of sexual abuse and post-traumatic stress, according to a report by the International Center for Research on Women.

Underage girls are also far more likely to say domestic violence is acceptable, when surveyed -- but Nujood didn't fall into this category.

She never stopped fighting her husband's advances, and after weeks of her sobbing and pleading, he agreed to let her go home for a brief visit -- while he and his brother stayed nearby.

Back home, she pleaded with her parents, her brothers and her uncles for help, only to be told that "all women go through this," and that she had no choice but to return and obey her husband.

The only person who listened was her father's second wife, a woman who lived in an apartment across the alley with her five children.

When she heard Nujood's story, she told her to disobey her family.

"If no one will listen to you," she told her, "you must go to court." She gave her money for a taxi -- money she'd begged on a nearby street earlier that day

34;I WANT to see the judge," she said over and over again to the astonished adults she stopped on the steps of the courthouse.

Finally, a veiled woman escorted her into a judge's office, where Nujood demanded: "I want a divorce." Why, he asked?

"Because my husband beats me."

According to a 2010 United Nations Human Rights Council Report, Nujood was extremely lucky to have found a sympathetic ear. Women who attempt to escape domestic violence can be imprisoned, indefinitely, if male relatives don't come to get them out. A new policy states that women can now collect relatives as well, but that "to date it is not consistently observed." Marital rape isn't considered a crime, so she had no way to actually accuse her husband of that.

The judge Nujood spoke to was indeed horrified, but hesitant; her suit was unusual in that it had happened at all, but that didn't mean she could win it. Along with another judge, he explained to her that girls under the legal age of 15 were frequently married -- an ancient tradition, as he told her. "But to his knowledge, none of these precocious marriages has ever ended in divorce -- because no little girl has, until now, showed up at a courthouse.

A question of family honor, it seems."

Shada Nasser, a women's rights lawyer in Yemen, took on the case, insisting that Nujood's father and husband be temporarily arrested for her protection.

She was placed first in the home of a judge, then a favorite uncle.

And the trial turned into a mob scene.

Journalists from around the world joined the throng of local onlookers in a packed courtroom to hear the testimony.

Her husband testifies that he did have sex with her, but that he was gentle; "I was careful.

I did not beat her."

"That's not true!" Nujood yelled, beside herself with anger.

Her divorce was granted, despite her husband's testimony and her father's protests that his daughter was actually older than she was (without a legal birth certificate, her real age is anyone's guess, but her mother's estimate had put her at between 9 and 10 years at the time).

She was now the youngest known divorcee in the world

IN the Hollywood version of this story, Nujood would be swept triumphantly away in a sea of supporters, revered forever as a revolutionary for the cause of girls' and women's rights.

Financial support would pour in from around the world, and she would be on her way to getting the education that had been cut short by her former husband.

Her reality was substantially more grim. After an initial flurry of media attention, which annoyed her family and the neighbors, Nujood slipped into a depression and gave a bitter follow-up interview to CNN two years later.

Despite the release of the book and her public appearances, she said, her life had not changed for the better.

"There is no change at all since going on television," she told them. "I hoped there was someone to help us, but we didn't find anyone to help us. It hasn't changed a thing.

They said they were going to help me and no one has helped me. I wish I had never spoken to the media."

The revenue from the book had made it possible for her to go to school, but she didn't go on a regular basis; Nasser, her lawyer, speculated that her family was taking out their frustration on her about still being trapped in poverty despite Nujood's worldwide fame. There was some confusion about the allocation of proceeds from the book, and whether they were making their way to the family.

But a Random House spokesperson tells The Post this has since been straightened out. The family is now living in a new home and running a grocery store; Nujood and her younger sister are attending private school full time, and she plans to become a lawyer like Nasser.

On a broader level, her unprecedented act inspired other child brides to follow suit, literally.

In Sana'a, a 9-year-old and a 12-year old girl both filed for divorce in the wake of Ali's trial, and an 8-year-old Saudi Arabian girl won a divorce trial as well -- the first of its kind -- making the age precedent even, shockingly, lower.

In December, Ali announced that she would aid the legal cause of fellow Yemeni Sally Sabahi, 12. Sabahi was suing for divorce from her husband, whom she claimed raped her repeatedly -- and whose family had drugged her with painkillers to assist him. Nujood has donated $500, half the money needed to pay her dowry and buy her freedom.

She's only one of the millions of Middle Eastern women forced to pay, and pay again, for the crime of being born female.

In Pakistan, a woman was recently flogged for being seen in public with a married man. In Saudi Arabia, "honor killings" continue to flourish.

In Iraq, 15 schoolgirls are permanently disfigured from having acid thrown on them for not wearing the veil. And in Afghanistan, where the life expectancy for women is 44, one in three women experiences physical, psychological or sexual violence.

Nujood, herself, is still paying -- from her book proceeds.

As a condition of her divorce being granted, in accordance with Shariah law, she was ordered to give her abusive ex-husband $200.

The Dark Knight, February 14 2010, 4:37 AM

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