The Bravery And Determination Of A Ten-Year-Old Girl Shake Up The Arab World By Lifting The Veil On Child Brides.
Now That Should Be A Movie.
Today’s book I would like to pitch as a movie is I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali, with Delphine Minoui, from Broadway Books
Nujood Ali was born in the remote Yemeni village of Khardji, circa 1998. Due to the village’s isolation, she does not know her real age because the mobile medical clinics that gave out government IDs would not risk the roads. Her mother, Shoya, married her father, Ali Mohammad al-Ahdel when she was about sixteen. She would carry sixteen children. Three ended in miscarriages, one was lost at birth and four died of illnesses between the ages of two months and four years. When Mohammad took a second wife, Dowla, Shoya did not protest, but submitted to her husband’s will as “good wives” were expected to do in their culture.
Despite the remoteness of her village, Nujood was like many young girls around the globe. She enjoyed school and watching Tom and Jerry and Adnan and Lina, the latter a Japanese cartoon in which the boy always saves the girl. She also dreams of seeing the ocean, holding up a shell to her ear so she can hear the “roar.”
Then one day a scandal broke out in the village. Her sister Mona’s name kept coming up. They tried to resolve the conflict by placing jambias, curved daggers, and bundles or rial notes between the offended parties but the discussion degenerated to the point of the men drawing knives. This was a breach of protocol. As a result. Mona was married at thirteen years old and the family had to flee the village, leaving everything, including their chickens and goats, behind.
The family moved to Sana, the capital. Mona came to live with them a few months later and was glum most of the time. Eventually, her husband joined them. Over the years they had two children, Monira and Nasser. One day Mona’s husband vanished from the scene. So did another of Nujood’s older sisters, Jamila. Mona became even more melancholy and depressed. She began laughing suddenly. A fight between her and her mother-in-law broke out over custody of the children. The old woman took Monira. Mona was able to retain Nasser, never letting him out of her sight.
In Sana, the family had to turn to begging to survive. Nujood had to drop out of the second grade to join her siblings selling cigarettes, bottled drinks, Kleenex, and the like to drivers stuck in traffic. Her favorite brother, Faras, due to his ambition, grew tired of begging and left for Saudi Arabia in the hope of finding more opportunities. Sometimes Nujood would take a break from begging and would look in the store windows at dresses that she could never afford. One day she returned home and was told by her father she was to be married.
Now, before we’re tempted to look down our noses from our ivory condos in the land of plenty, it is important to remember that while Nujood’s family was wrong they were not evil. The case can be made that her family thought marriage would protect her from the human trafficking that plagued the country. It is estimated that at least thirty percent of school-aged children in Yemen, including one of Nujood’s siblings, fall prey to trafficking. However, in the end, it was economics that led her family to make the decision. While it is easy to see the soul-crushing poverty in Yemen as something foreign, let’s not forget that there are women still alive in America whose families took similar actions because of their economic situations just half a century ago.
Nujood’s father had been unable to find permanent employment and the landlord had threatened to evict the family. The family’s health had been failing due to an inability to afford meat and nutritious meals. Shamed that he and his children were reduced to begging, Mr. Ali had begun sitting around with other men, chewing khat, a leaf classified by The World Health Organization as a drug. One of these men was from their home village. His name was Faez Ali Thamer and he was three times Nujood’s age. When Thamer approached Mr. Ali about taking Nujood as his wife with a diary at 150,000 rials (750 US dollars), the offer was too good to refuse.
Not all the family was placed. Mona protested, saying that Nujood was too young. But was shut down by her father, who claimed that the Prophet Mohammad wed a nine-year-old, Aisha. He quoted a tribal proverb, “To guarantee a happy marriage, marry a nine-year-old girl.” He also believed that Nujood being married would protect her honor and from the shameful things that had happened to Mona.
At the wedding, Nujood wore a wedding dress that had belonged to one of Thamer’s female relatives. It was too big for her, so she kept tripping. Despite the wedding ceremony having all the trappings of a joyous occasion, a feast of food, and belly dancers, she felt uncomfortable the entire time. The hardest part was her father saying that now there was one less mouth to feed.
Thamer took Nujood to his compound located far out in the desert to live with his family. Even though he had promised not to have relations with her, he broke his promise. Worse, the women in his family sided with him. Nujood ran through the compound, screaming for help but no one came to her aid. In the morning, when her sister-in-law saw a red stain, she congratulated her on now being a woman. The mother-in-law put her to work around the house. When Nujood asked her if she could go play with the other children, she was told it would ruin the family’s reputation if a “married woman” was seen outside the house playing like a child. When Thamer beat her for “disrespecting” him, his mother would support him. “She must listen to you – she’s your wife,” she said, encouraging on the beating.
Finally, after weeks of Nujood begging to be allowed to visit her family, Thamer relented and allowed her to return to Sana for a visit. During her time with them, she said she would never return. Her father said that was out of the question. She was married now and must stay with her husband. Her sisters, Haifa and Mona, said they supported her. Her mother said she missed her but could do nothing to help her. Despite Nujood telling her family about the terrible things that her “husband” did to her, Sharaf, “honor,” meant that the agreement between the two families could not be broken.
During her time with her family, Nujood visited her father’s second wife, Dowla. He had abandoned her and their five children, reducing them to begging. When Nujood told Dowla about her predicament, she told her to go to court and get a divorce. She even graciously gave her two hundred rials.
Back with her family, Nujood began planning her escape. The opportunity came when her mother told her to go buy bread. She immediately found a taxi and asked the driver to take her to the courthouse. As the taxi drove through the city, she shrunk away from the window in hopes none of her relatives would see her. Even when the taxi left the neighborhood where her relatives lived, she still stayed low. It was rare for a child for ride alone in a taxi in Yemen and she did not want to attract the attention of policemen. If they discovered she was a runaway, they might return her to her family.
Finally, the taxi reached the courthouse. Nujood thanked the taxi driver, her accomplice unaware, and hurried up the steps. She found the secretary and asked to see a judge. The secretary, a woman, asked her which judge she wanted to see. She did not know, but she wanted to see one. Finally, astonished by the little girl’s determination, the secretary called in a judge, Abdo.
When Judge Abdo asked what Nujood wanted, he could not hide his shock when Nujood asked for a divorce. At first, he did not believe her. Life for the elites and wealthy in Yemen was worlds apart from that of the rural and poor. But when she mentioned the beatings, Abdo realized something terrible had occurred.
He brought in another judge to discuss the case. They realized they could not send Nujood home, and, since there were no safe houses for women and girls like her in the country, she went to stay with Judge Abdel Wahad’s family for a few nights. The judge also ordered her father and Thamer arrested to guarantee her safety.
Her case was taken up by Shada Nasser, the first female lawyer in Yamen. This opened up a whole new world to Nujood, intimidating and fascinating. Women were working independently in offices without the traditional clothing required by Islamic fundamentalism. Shada’s daughter even had her own room.
The judges could have ignored the case. According to Yemeni tradition, the contract was valid. Plus, it was hard to verify her age due to the lack of an ID. They hear the case anyway. Even though both her father and Thamer lied, the former claiming she was thirteen and the latter claiming he had never touched her, the judges granted the divorce. Nujood was now the youngest divorce in the world.
The packed court let up a cheer. With all the cameras and media attention, she felt like George W. Bush, the American president she saw on TV. She was so happy she did not even care that her father and the “monster” would be released. Shada told her to ignore the babbling of relatives who called out of the crowd. “You’ve sullied the reputation of our family! You have strained on our honor!” Benefactors and supporters surrounded her, giving her 150,000 rials (750 USD).
While it would be tempting to end a movie with the crescendo of a court victory, I think the resolution should be her relationship with her family, with whom she moved back in. Not all of her family supported her. Her brother Faras returned from Saudi Arabia, unable to find a job, after he had heard about Nujood on the news. Another brother, Mohammad, did not like the attention that she was getting from reporters who came from all around the world to interview her. He believed it disgraced the family.
However, Nujood’s court victory gave her older sister Mona the strength to stand up for herself. The two sisters decide to go to a park together. On their way, Mona asks the driver to go through a neighborhood where they once lived. She tells the driver to stop when a beggar comes to the window. With the beggar is her daughter Monira. Mona pulls her into the taxi and tells the driver to take off. Monira is so dirty Mona cannot see what color shoes she is wearing.
Nujood learns that Mona’s husband, Mohammad, has been found in her sister Jamila’s bedroom. Both were arrested and imprisoned. In Yemen, adultery is a crime punishable by death. Mohammad had been pressuring Mona to sign a paper that would allow the affair to be covered up. Mona would eventually agree to sign the paper. Nujood learned that Mona had been raped and that is why their family had to leave their village so quirkily after she and Mohammed had been suddenly married.
A healing moment is when Nujood, her sisters Mona and Haifa, and niece Monira are on a swing set. They go high and higher. Fast and faster. They feel like they are flying. Nujood’s scarf blows loose. She does not fix it, letting it flow in the wind as her hair tumbles around her shoulders. She feels innocent and free. That’s how a movie about her heroism should end.
Nujood’s bravery deserves to be honored with a film. Her actions shook up the Arabian Peninsula. Two other Yemeni girls, Arwa, married at nine, and Rym, married at twelve, followed her example and successfully filed for divorce. In neighboring ultraconservative Saudi Arabia, an eight-year-old girl successfully filed for divorce. In another case, a child bride who had been sentenced to death for killing her husband saw their sentence overturned. The Yemeni government even raised the age of consent to seventeen. See more child birds who took on their nations’ cultures and legal systems here.
There was a Yemeni language drama, I Am Nojoom, Age 10 and Divorce, produced in 2014. It became the first Yemeni film to be submitted for Best Foreign Language Film, submitted for the 89th Academy Awards. However, it was not nominated. I think an English language version or Western-produced remake would help honor Nujood and lift the veil, so to speak, on the human rights issue of child marriage by reaching more audiences with her story. It could also help bring attention to the backbreaking poverty and famine that many in Yemen still face.
To honor the bravery of young girls like Nujood and to shed light on the human rights abuse that is child marriage is why I think I Am Nujood Should Be A Movie
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