Rating: 3/5
Nujood Ali was hastily married off at age around nine (she had no birth certificate and her parents had little idea of what year she was born in), five years under the legal age of her native country, Yemen. Her husband, Faez Ali Thamer, was thirty years old, and dealt with her harshly, despite the promises he made to Nujood’s father and older sister Mona, which said that he would not touch Nujood until the year after she first had her period. Physically and sexually abused only the first night that she got to her husband’s house, and every night after that, Nujood begged her mother-in-law to let her see her parents. Finally, her husband’s mother consented, and Nujood was allowed to stay a week or so with her Omma and Aba (Mummy and Daddy).
Nujood implored her mother to let her divorce Faez Ali Thamer, but Omma, although grieved at her daughter’s miserable fate, was not allowed to do anything about the matter, as she was a woman and inferior to her husband, Nujood’s father. So Nujood went to him, begging and telling her story to him. But Aba told her that if he let her divorce her husband, the Ali’s honour and reputation would be stained forever. Clearly, he strongly believed that a family’s honour was more important than his own daughter.
Upset and dreading the days to come with her horrible new husband, Nujood made for her father’s first wife’s house. Following the advice of her second mother, Nujood secretly made her way to the Yemeni courthouse, where she seeked and gained the help of three kindly male judges and a gentle female lawyer, Shada Nasser (known for being the only Yemeni lawyer not to cover her face in court). After a few weeks of secretly staying with Shada or one of the judges, Nujood finally gained her freedom a couple of months after being married in the year of 2008.
An inspiring and heartbreaking tale, I enjoyed this book. I think it was just the way it was written that wasn’t my type.