A Review of "I Am Nujood, aged 10 and Divorced"
by Esmerelda Weatherwax (May 2010)
I Am Nujood, aged 10 and Divorced
By Nujood Ali and Delphine Minoui
Three Rivers Press 2010
192 pages
THer early descriptions of life in the village sound happy, despite the poverty, and she has an eye for natural beauty, taking delight in the rays of the sun breaking through rain clouds and the smell of home baked bread and local honey.
All the way in the back of a hired car to Khardji she fought back vomiting from under the niqab. On arrival she met her mother-in-law.
And then her husband broke his promise to her father.
We know from the title that Nujood got her divorce, although not that day. The first judge called three brother Judges. I am used to a court system with family liaison officers, court welfare officers, child protection units although even with all that too many children die because the bosom of their family is not a safe place.
On the down side her brothers resent the attention their sister receives. Neither they nor the father will work and their mother is in poor health. Nujood, Shada and other campaigners have been accused of showing Yemen in a poor light. Some regard her rebellion as meriting an honour murder. But the last paragraph describes her working on a picture of a house.
This is a report on Southern California Public Radio.
And because Yemen is increasingly overpopulated and impoverished, many families see marrying their young daughters and receiving dowries as a way to survive.
Since the book was published more cases of child marriage have reached the news.
A 12-year-old Yemeni child bride died after struggling to give birth for three days, a local human rights organisation said. Fawziya Abdullah Youssef died of severe bleeding on Friday while giving birth to a stillborn in the al-Zahra district hospital of Hodeida province, 140 miles west of the capital Sanaa.
Youssef was only 11 when her father married her to a 24-year-old man who works as a farmer in Saudi Arabia, said Ahmed al-Quraishi, chairman of Siyaj human rights organization.
23 April 2010, this time in nearby Saudi Arabia
It also prompted the state-run Human Rights Commission to appoint a lawyer to represent her. The commission has capitalised on the case and pushed for a legal minimum age for marriage of at least 16.
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