One small 10-year-old girl changes a piece of our world, fighting for what’s right. It is very easy living in LA to forget the daily struggles that many face all over the world. I listen every day to people’s complaints about living in LA. Yes fuel is expensive, yes our job market sucks, yes times are not easy, and yes you have a right to be upset, but lets try to gain a bit of perspective. For many people living in LA we will never have to face what Nujood Ali had to face at only 10-years-old. She had to escape from her husband who beat and raped her, rebel against her father who could not help her, and ask plead for help to a court to ask for a divorce when legally, nothing was wrong with her marriage.
The young girl, was given to a man three times her age because her poverty stricken family was not able to support her and hoped that she could be cared for by Faez Ali Thamer, a thirty-something motorcycle deliveryman from his native province, Hajja.
Nujood’s father made Thamer promise that he would not have sex with her until after puberty. But as soon as their wedding night Thamer went back on his word.
“I asked him not to sleep next to me,” she recalls. “He told me, ‘No, we sleep together in the same room. Your father agreed to accept me as a husband.’ ”
On a visit weeks later to her parents’ house in the capital, she wept, saying that her husband was doing unmentionable things to her.
When the young girl said that she would not sleep next to him, he beat her and raped her. When she went to her father and two mothers and told them what happened, they said that they could do nothing to help her. If they said anything they would be killed. Luckily her aunt provided her with bus money and told her seek a divorce and with the help of human rights lawyer Shada Nasser, that’s exactly what happened.
The little girl was waist-high, so small that the lawyers, clerks and judges hurrying through the courthouse almost missed her.
As lunchtime arrived and the crowds of noisy men and women cleared away, a curious judge asked her what she was doing sitting alone on a bench.
“I came to get a divorce,” 10-year-old Nujood Ali told the jurist.
Within days of that April 2 encounter, Nujood’s tale and the plight of child brides in Yemen made international headlines. And thanks to the efforts of human rights lawyer Shada Nasser, who took up her cause, the girl at the center of the story has begun to overcome her trauma and dream of a better life.
With Nasser’s help, this case has helped to break new grounds.
Yemeni law sets the age of consent at 15. But tribal customs and interpretations of Islam often trump the law in this country of 23 million. A 2006 study conducted by Sana University reported that 52% of girls were married by 18.
Publicity surrounding Nujood’s case prompted calls to raise the legal age for marriage to 18 for both men and women. Yemen’s conservative lawmakers refused to take up the issue. But the case sparked public discussion and newspaper headlines. Several more child brides came forward, including a girl who sought a divorce last week in the southern city of Ibb.
What is the most amazing part of this story is how Nujood has dealt with the situation.
Nujood says that at first, she felt ashamed about what had happened to her. “But I passed through that,” she says, eyes narrowing beneath her black head scarf.
“All I want now is to finish my education,” she adds, her mouth curling into a smile. “I want to be a lawyer.”
The girl has refused to see a psychologist or a gynecologist. She says she doesn’t like doctors. And besides, she says, the experience has made her stronger and wiser.
She says she’s had enough of marriage and domestic life, and looks forward to beginning third grade and pursuing dreams she never knew she had.
“I want to defend oppressed people,” she says. “I want to be like Shada. I want to be an example for all the other girls.”
Nujood is now back with her family and her father has promised never to marry her. Although her father, Ali Mohammed Ahdal, still says that he only married her to try to try and save her. Two of her sisters had already been arrested of kidnapped and he did not want the same for her.
He is among the many tribal Yemenis who have migrated to the capital looking for work. Instead, he found misery.
Nujood’s parents say they were trying to do what was best for their daughter and didn’t even receive a dowry, a claim many Yemenis don’t believe. The parents say the groom had promised he wouldn’t have sex with her until she reached puberty.
“We asked him to raise her,” said Shuaieh, the girl’s mother.
“I was trying to protect her,” Ahdal says during an interview in his family’s decrepit two-room flat on the capital’s outskirts.
Her father said there was nothing he could do.
“My cousins would have killed me if I dishonored the family by asking for a divorce,” he said.
When Nujood arrived at the courthouse, no one knew what to do. There are no rules against sexual abuse within a marriage in Yemen.
Luckily, Shada Nasser heard Nujood’s plea’s and went to see her. She said she reminded her of her own daughter and took the case after she went to visit Thamer, the girls husband in jail she asked him “Why did you sleep with her? She’s a little girl.”
He didn’t deny it, Nasser recalls. Instead he complained that Nujood’s father had said she was much taller and better looking than she really was.
After that, Nasser took the case without questions of pay and opened her home to the young girl.
When a sympathetic judge agreed to hear her case several weeks later, reporters packed the courtroom.
Verbally, Judge Mohammed Ghadi was merciless to the husband.
“You could not find another woman to marry in all of Yemen?” he demanded.
But legally, there was little he could do. No provision in Yemeni law provides for prosecution on sexual abuse charges within a marriage. Not only did the husband and father go free, but Thamer demanded $250, the equivalent of four months’ salary for a poor Yemeni, to agree to a divorce.
A sympathetic lawyer donated the cash.
Although the outcome was grim and those who deserved punishment went free, something great came out of this. A little girl not only got her life back but opened the door for other young girls in her position. It’s amazing how one young girl can stand up for woman everywhere and make a difference in the world simply by standing up for what is right.
Living in Los Angeles we often take these things for granted. We are lucky enough to live in a society where we can change things and make a difference. So instead of looking at how bad everything thing is around you, try and find a way to make it better. It may not be easy, but even the smallest bit counts. With one ounce of what it took Nujood to stand up for herself, you may find you have the power to change many things around you.
Quotes and Photo by the LATimess
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