“You understand, she’s not a little girl like the others,” this teacher had whispered to Shada when we’d first visited the school. “After all, she’s had relations, you know, with a man. That might have an effect on her classmates.”
Shada must have considered other offers, and very attractive ones, but in her opinion they were too extravagant: studies abroad financed by an international organization, or attendance at a private school in Sana’a. Was I really cut out for that? Was I ready to leave my family, especially Haïfa? No, not now. Not yet. So I chose the school in the nearby neighborhood of Rawdha, so that people would stop staring at me, so that I would be treated like everyone else, like my little sister.
“Well, hi there, Nujood! Oh, you are sooooooooo cute!”
Oops-not this time, I guess! A woman with blue eyes, perfect posture, and a mauve scarf awkwardly draped over her short hair has just appeared in the middle of the courtyard. Surrounded by schoolgirls, she’s waving her hands around and talking loudly, but the words pouring out seem like gibberish. Must be a foreign language.
Shada explains to me that she works for Glamour, an important American women’s magazine. She has come all the way to Yemen because of me. I’m going to have to tell my story again. Over and over. And once again, my face will freeze when we get to those personal questions I always find so painful to answer. And that anguish I try so hard to stifle will well up deep in my heart.
All of a sudden, the bell rings. Saved! Pointing with a stick, one of the teachers, Najmiya, signals to the girls to line up along the wall. I hurry to obey. Then she ushers my group into a classroom, where she invites us to sit down at the desks lined up there in two sections. I choose one next to a window: not up in the front of the room, nor all the way in the back, but in the third row, next to two new classmates whose first names I haven’t yet learned. My eyes glued to the blackboard, I try to decipher the letters our teacher has just written in white chalk: Ra-ma-dan Ka-rim. Ramadan Karim! Happy Ramadan! Like a puzzle finally solved, the words slip back into place in my memory. And my racing heart returns to its normal beat.
While the teacher is encouraging us to recite the words of our national anthem, I suddenly focus on the rustle of turning pages. This is the true sound of school, found again at last.
For a moment, I think about a story the principal told Shada a little while ago.
“Last year, one of our thirteen-year-old pupils left school suddenly, without giving a reason. At first I thought she would be back. And then the weeks went by, but we never heard any news of her. Until the day a few months ago when I learned that the child had gotten married and had a baby. At thirteen!”
With the best of intentions, I’m sure, Njala Matri had been careful to whisper this to Shada so that I wouldn’t hear her, but what she doesn’t know is that for the last few weeks I’ve been formulating a plan. Yes; I’ve made up my mind. When I grow up, I’ll be a lawyer, like Shada, to defend other little girls like me. If I can, I’ll propose that the legal age for marriage be raised to eighteen. Or twenty. Or even twenty-two! I will have to be strong and tenacious. I must learn not to be afraid of looking men right in the eye when I speak to them. In fact, one of these days I’ll have to get up enough courage to tell Aba that I don’t agree with him when he says that, after all, the Prophet married Aïsha when she was only nine years old. Like Shada, I will wear high heels, and I will not cover my face. That niqab-you can’t breathe under it! But first things first: I will have to do my homework well. I must be a good student, so that I can hope to go to college and study law. If I work hard, I’ll get there.
Ever since I ran away to the courthouse, events have moved so quickly that I haven’t yet had a chance to fully understand everything that has happened to me. I will definitely need some time, and patience. Shada has suggested more than once, actually, that I see a doctor who she says could help me, and each time I’ve decided to cancel the appointment at the last minute. It’s upsetting, isn’t it, to go to a doctor you don’t know? So Shada finally gave up.
It’s true that at first I was eaten up with shame-shame, the fear of being different from other people, and a painful feeling of inferiority. I couldn’t help having the strange notion that I’d been going through my ordeal all alone, that I’d been the anonymous victim of something no one else could understand.
But recently I’ve realized that my case was not unique. What happened to me and to that thirteen-year-old schoolgirl-no one talks much about those stories, but there are more of them than you might imagine. A few weeks ago Shada introduced me to Arwa and Rym, two girls who had just filed for divorce. When I saw them for the first time, I gave them big hugs, as if they’d been my sisters. Their stories had a huge impact on me. At nine, Arwa was forced by her father to marry a man twenty-five years older than she was, but after hearing about me on the television, she decided one morning to go for help to the hospital nearest her home, in the village of Jibla, to the south of Sana’a. Rym was twelve when her life was turned upside down by her parents’ divorce. For revenge, her father married her off to a thirty-one-year-old cousin. After several attempts at suicide, Rym found the courage to knock on the courthouse door.
I was proud to learn that my story had helped them find the means to defend themselves, and I feel responsible in a small way for their decisions to rebel against their husbands. Touched by their un-happiness, I empathized deeply with their suffering, and listening to them speak, I saw my misfortunes reflected in the mirror of theirs. I thought, Khalass-enough. Marriage was invented to make girls miserable. I will never get married again, not ever again. Machi! Machtich!
I often think about what happened to Mona. Life hasn’t smiled on her, either. And a week ago, my big sister Jamila was finally released from prison. When she walked into our house, I threw my arms around her. What a surprise to see her again!
She had had to share her cell with criminals, even with women accused of killing their husbands. In our house, though, we aren’t talking about such things, so as not to spoil Jamila’s homecoming. And for the first time in a long while, it’s true, our family is once again complete. After the joy of being reunited, however, the quarreling began again, and the other day my sisters had a spat. Although Mona had finally agreed to sign that famous paper to save Jamila, she couldn’t help being angry at her, accusing her sister of having broken up her family. Nothing will ever be the same again between the two of them, and yet, all this trouble is the husband’s fault. Sometimes I think that one day I will have to speak to Fares and make him promise that if he gets married, he will be the sweetest of husbands.
A plane crosses the sky, leaving behind a long white trail that puffs up as I watch it. Meanwhile, the plane goes on its way, and will surely land soon at the nearby airport. Perhaps it has come from France, or maybe Bahrain? Which of those two countries is closer to us, anyway? I’ll have to ask Shada. One day I, too, will fly away in the sky, and I’ll go to the far ends of the earth. It seems that at least three hundred people can fit into an airplane. A neighbor who just returned from Saudi Arabia told me that the inside of a plane looks like a huge living room, where you can read magazines while you order your meal on a tray. In the plane, he added, everyone eats with real cutlery, just like in the bizzeria!
The teacher’s high-pitched voice finally rouses me from my reverie.
“Who would like to recite the Fatiha, the first sura of the Koran?” she asks, addressing the en tire class.