That was the last time I ever saw her.
I had to say good-bye as well to my two favorite teachers, Samia and Samira. With them, I had learned to write my first name in Arabic letters, from right to left: the curve of the noon, the sway of the jeem, the loop of the wow, and the pincers of the del: Nujood! I owed them so much.
Mathematics and Koran study were two of my favorite subjects. We had memorized the Five Pillars of Islam in cla.s.s: the shahada, or profession of faith; salat, prayer for guidance; the hajj, the great pilgrimage to Mecca; zakat, alms to the poor; and Ramadan, the monthlong fast during which Muslims neither eat nor drink from sunrise to sunset. My cla.s.smates and I had promised Samia that when we were older, we would observe Ramadan like the grown-ups did.
My favorite subject, though, was drawing. With my colored pencils I used to draw flowers and pears, and villas with blue roofs, green shutters, and red chimneys. Sometimes I would add a uniformed guard to stand in front of the entrance gate because I"d heard that rich people"s houses were protected by guards. I always drew big fruit trees in the garden. Plus a pretty little pond, right in the middle.
During recess we played hide-and-seek and recited nursery rhymes. I loved school. It was my refuge, a happiness all my own.
I also had to give up my escapades at our next-door neighbors" house, only a few yards from ours, where they had a transistor radio. My little sister Haifa and I had taken to visiting them to listen to tapes by Haifa Wehbe and Nancy Ajram, two beautiful Lebanese singers with long hair and heavy makeup. They had lovely eyes and perfect noses; we used to imitate them, batting our eyelids and wiggling our hips. We also liked the Yemeni singer Jamila Saad, who was a real star. "You think so much of yourself," she warbled in one of her love songs, "You think you"re simply the best."
The people next door were also among the few in the neighborhood lucky enough to have a tele vision. The TV was my ticket to travel. I adored watching Tom and Jerry, my favorite cartoon, and a show called Adnan and Lina, which told the story of two friends who had met on a far-off island. I think they were supposed to be j.a.panese, or maybe Chinese, but the amazing thing was that they spoke Arabic, just like me, and without an accent. Adnan was a brave boy who was always ready to save Lina; in fact, he saved her repeatedly from bad people who tried to kidnap her. She was so lucky! I envied her a lot.
Adnan reminded me of Eyman, a young boy from Al-Qa I will never forget. One day when I was walking in the street with some of my girlfriends, a neighborhood boy stopped us and started frightening us, saying nasty things that seemed insulting. He was laughing at our scared expressions when Eyman appeared like magic to challenge him.
"Get out or I"ll throw stones in your face!" Eyman told him.
When Eyman"s threat finally drove the boy away, it was such a relief. That was the only time anyone had ever come to my defense, and Eyman became my imaginary hero. I told myself that when I was grown up, maybe I"d be lucky enough to have a husband like him.
On my wedding day, my female cousins began to ululate and clap their hands when they caught sight of me arriving. I, however, could hardly see their faces, my eyes were so full of tears. I advanced slowly, doing my best to avoid tripping over my outfit, which was too big for me and dragged on the ground. I"d been hastily dressed in a long tunic of a faded chocolate color, which belonged to the wife of my future brother-in-law. A female relative had taken charge of my hair, which she gathered into a chignon that weighed down my head. I didn"t even get to wear any mascara. Catching sight of my face in a small mirror--round cheeks, pink lips, and brown, almond-shaped eyes--I"d noticed how smooth my brow was, and try as I might, I couldn"t find a single wrinkle. I was young, too young.
Barely two weeks had pa.s.sed since I had been spoken for. Following local custom, the women celebrated my wedding in my parents" tiny house; there were forty of us, all told. Meanwhile, the men gathered at the house of one of my uncles to celebrate, and to chew khat yet again. Two days earlier, when the marriage contract had been signed, the event had also been men only, and occurred behind closed doors. Everything had happened without me. Neither my mother, my sisters, nor I had had any right to know how things had gone. We found out the details late that afternoon only through my little brothers, who had gone off to beg a few coins in the street to pay for refreshments for my father, my uncle, and my future husband, along with his father and brother. We learned that the meeting had taken place according to well-established tribal protocol. My father"s brother-in-law, the only one present who could read and write, acted as notary, drawing up the marriage contract. My dowry had been set at 150,000 rials, a sum equivalent to 750 dollars.
"Don"t worry," I heard my father whisper to my mother that night. "They made him promise not to touch Nujood before the year after she has her first period."
I shuddered.
My wedding celebration, which began at lunchtime, was quickly over. No white dress. No henna flowers on my hands. No coconut candies, my absolute favorites, the ones that hold the sweet taste of happy days. It was over quickly--but to me it seemed to last forever. Sitting in a corner of the room, I refused to dance with the other women because I was gradually realizing that my life was undergoing a complete upheaval, and not for the better. The youngest women began to improvise a belly dance, baring their navels and undulating their bodies like something out of a tacky video. Holding hands, the older women performed more traditional folk dances, like the ones still seen in villages. During lulls in the music, they came over to greet me, and I embraced them dutifully. But I couldn"t even pretend to smile.
I just sat impa.s.sively in my corner of the main room, my face swollen from crying. I didn"t want to leave my family. I didn"t feel prepared. I already missed school painfully, and Malak even more. Catching sight of my little sister Haifa"s sad face during the celebration, I realized with a pang that I would miss her as well. I felt a sudden rush of fear: What if she, too, were condemned to suffer my fate?
At sundown the guests took their leave and I dozed off, fully clothed, Haifa at my side. My mother joined us a little later, after straightening up the room. When my father returned from his all-male meeting, we were fast asleep. During my last night in my parents" house, no dreams came to me, nor do I remember sleeping fitfully. I only wondered if I would awaken the next morning as if from a nightmare.
When sunlight flooded the room at around six o"clock the next morning, Omma woke me up and asked me to follow her out into the narrow hallway. As we did each morning, we bowed down before G.o.d, reciting the first prayer of the day. Then she served me a bowl of ful (fava beans cooked with onions and tomato sauce, which we eat at breakfast) and a cup of milky chai, our tea. My little bundle was waiting for me in front of our door, but I pretended not to see it. It was only when a car horn sounded outside the house that I was forced to resign myself to this new life full of uncertainty. After hugging me tightly, my mother helped me cover myself in a black coat and scarf. For the past few years I had worn simply a small colored veil when I went outside, and sometimes I even forgot it, but no one ever paid any attention. Now I saw Omma reach into my bundle and pull out a black niqab, which she handed to me. Never, until that moment, had I been forced to veil myself completely.
"From this day on, you must cover yourself when going out into the street. You are now a married woman. Your face must be seen by no one but your husband. Because it is his sharaf, his honor, that is at stake. And you must not disgrace it."
I nodded sadly and said good-bye to her. I was angry at Omma for abandoning me, but could find no words to tell her of my pain.
In the back of the SUV waiting in front of our door, a short man was staring at me. He wore a long white zanna, like Aba, and had a mustache. His short wavy hair was somewhat mussed, his eyes brown, and his face poorly shaved. His hands were stained with black grease. He was not handsome. So this was Faez Ali Thamer! The man who had asked for and been granted my hand, that stranger whom I had perhaps walked past one day in Khardji--where we had returned for visits several times over the last few years--but whom I did not remember.
They had me sit in the middle row of seats, right behind the driver, with four other female pa.s.sengers, including the wife of my husband"s brother. Their smiles were strained, and they didn"t seem very talkative. The stranger sat all the way in the back, next to his brother. I felt a little better not having to look at his face during our long ride, but I could feel his eyes on me, and it gave me the shivers. Who was he, actually? Why had he wanted to marry me? What was he expecting of me? And marriage--what exactly did that mean? I had no answers to those questions.
When the motor rumbled to life and the driver pulled away, my heart was pounding, and I couldn"t help myself--I started crying, silently, with my face glued to the window as I watched Omma grow smaller and smaller until she was only a tiny little dot of nothing at all.
I never said a word that whole trip. Lost in my thoughts, I wanted only one thing: to find a way to go back home, to escape. The farther away from Sana"a the car drove on its way north, however, the more I understood how trapped I was. How many times did I wish I could tear off that stifling black niqab? I felt so small, too small for this whole business--for the niqab, for this long ride far away from my parents, for this new life beside a man who disgusted me, a man I didn"t know. The vehicle stopped suddenly.
"Open the back door!"
The soldier"s voice startled me. Exhausted from too much crying, I had finally fallen asleep. Then I remembered that the road north is full of checkpoints, and that we were only at the first one. People say it"s because of the war raging in the north between the army and the Houthi rebels; my father says that the Houthis are Shiites, while most Yemenis are Sunnis. The difference? I have no idea. All I know is that I am Muslim and recite my five daily prayers.
After a glance inside the vehicle, the soldier sent us on our way. If only I could have taken that moment to appeal for his help, to ask him to save me! With his green uniform, his weapon on his shoulder, wasn"t he supposed to ensure order and public safety? Then I could have told him that I didn"t want to leave Sana"a, that I was afraid of being bored and alone out in that village, where I didn"t know anyone anymore.
Over the years I"d grown used to Sana"a. I loved all the buildings under construction in the capital, the wide avenues, the billboard advertis.e.m.e.nts for cell phones and orange sodas that tickled the roof of my mouth. Pollution and traffic jams had become part of my daily life. But it was the old city, Bab al-Yemen--Yemen"s Gate--that I would miss the most. Bab al-Yemen is truly a city within the city, a magical place where I loved to stroll around, holding Mona"s or Jamila"s hand, feeling as if I were an explorer off on a mission. It"s a whole different universe, with its adobe houses and windows outlined in white tracery so delicate that Indian architects must clearly have pa.s.sed through there long ago, well before my time. Bab al-Yemen is so elegantly civilized that I"d invented my own story of a king and queen from the olden days who must have lived out happy lives there. Perhaps the old city had even belonged entirely to them?
Anyone who enters Bab al-Yemen is immediately surrounded by all sorts of sounds: merchants" cries mingle with the popping and hissing of old ca.s.sette tapes and the laments of barefoot beggars, while a shoeshine boy at an intersection might grab your foot to offer you his services. The call to prayer often rises above this entire concert of jumbled noises. I used to have fun trying to sniff out the different smells of c.u.min, cinnamon, cloves, nuts, raisins--all the scents wafting from the street booths. Sometimes I would stand on tiptoe to better appreciate the goods laid out in stalls that were a little too high for me, but whose bounty lay heaped up as far as the eye could see: silver jambias, embroidered shawls, rugs, sugared doughnuts, henna, and dresses for little girls my age.
In Bab al-Yemen, we"d sometimes see women draped in sitaras ("curtains" in Arabic), large, colorful pieces of beautifully patterned cloth worn over their clothes. I used to call them "the ladies of the old city" because their brightly colored outfits were just so different from the black veils usually worn in the street that these women seemed to belong to another age.
One afternoon, when I was accompanying my aunt on some errands, I allowed myself to be distracted by this fantastic and almost unreal world, and I wandered off into the middle of the dense crowd. When I tried to retrace my steps to rejoin my aunt, I found that all the lanes and alleys looked alike. Should I take the next one on the right, or on the left? Disoriented, I crouched down in tears: I was well and truly lost. And it was only two hours later that I was spotted by a vendor who knew my aunt.
"Nujood, when will you stop being so scatterbrained?" Auntie had scolded me, grabbing my hand.
And here I was, lost again, on this sad day after my wedding, sitting in the uncomfortable SUV, only now the people around me were grim and unfriendly. Gone were the magic of spices and the kindly looks of vendors who let children taste their still-warm doughnuts. My life was taking a new turn in this world of grown-ups, where dreams no longer had a place, faces became masks, and no one seemed to care about me.
Once the capital was behind us, the highway became a black ribbon snaking along among mountains and valleys. At every turn I clutched the armrest of my seat. My stomach was heaving, and several times I had to pinch myself, hard, to control my nausea. Better to die than to ask him to stop by the roadside so that I could breathe some fresh air, I thought. I kept gently swallowing my saliva as quietly as possible, trying not to be sick.
To block out everyone around me, I decided to observe the smallest details of the landscape. There were old fortresses in ruins perched on promontories; little brown houses with white trim that vaguely reminded me of Bab al-Yemen; cacti by the side of the road; arid mountain pa.s.ses alternating with pockets of agriculture; goats cropping the gra.s.s; and cows. There were women, too, their faces partly hidden by the scarves they pulled over their mouths. I thought I also saw two run-over cats, but I closed my eyes quickly to avoid memorizing the image. When I opened them again, the car was driving through an ocean of khat. On the right, on the left, green as far as I could see. It was magnificent, so fresh and cool.
"Khat, our national tragedy!" exclaimed the driver. "It sucks up so much water that we"ll all wind up dying of thirst in this country."
Life is really weird, I thought. It"s not just bad people who spread misery--even pretty things can be hurtful. So hard to understand ...
A little farther along, to my right, I recognized Cocabane, a small village cut into the living rock, way up atop a hill. I remembered going by the place with my parents when I was younger, on our way to another village to celebrate Eid. People say the women of Cocabane are thin and beautiful because they go every morning to labor in the fields. An hour to walk down, another to climb back up--a real workout. What courage! An hour to walk down ... another to climb back up. An hour to walk down ...
It was the throbbing of the car"s engine that woke me with a start. How long had I been asleep? How many miles had we driven? I had no idea.
"One, two, three!"
Behind the vehicle, a half-dozen men were pushing on the b.u.mper with all their strength, trying to free us from a sandy hole. Amid the dust cloud raised by the wheels, I tried to read the sign bearing the name of the dried-up village where we had run aground. Arjom. Apparently we had left the highway for a rocky, rutted road edging a ravine that led to a deep gorge. The car was definitely at a standstill.
"You"d do better to turn around," one of the villagers suggested. He had a red and white headcloth wrapped around his face. "You"ll never get any farther; this track just keeps getting worse."
"But we must get to Khardji," insisted the driver.
"Pfft--with your car? You"re joking."
"Well, then, how?"
"The best way is to go by donkey."
"Riding donkeys! But there are women with us. It might be difficult."
"Listen, why not hire one of our fellows? He"s used to making round-trips carrying visitors. And the tires on his car are up to it--he gets new ones at least every two months, the road"s so bad."
So we changed cars, and while the grown-ups were busy moving our bundles into the other one, I used those few minutes to stretch my legs. I took a deep breath, drawing as much pure mountain air into my lungs as possible. Below my black veil, the brown dress was sticking to my skin with perspiration, and I picked up the folds of material to go carefully over to the edge of the ravine. Right at the bottom, so far away, I recognized Wadi La"a, the valley of my village--it hadn"t changed. I"d been so little, though, when we"d left. Were my childhood memories coming back, kept alive thanks to a few recent trips to the area with my parents? Or was I recalling things from the faded photographs languishing in an old alb.u.m that Aba looked at from time to time with tears in his eyes? I saw my grandfather again in my mind"s eye, my Jad, whom I had loved so much. It had been a year since his death, when I had cried and cried. He always wore a white turban, and although his beard was thin and grizzled, he had bushy, dark brown eyebrows. Sometimes he would sit me on his knees and playfully tip me over backward, then catch me at the last minute. I"d grown used to the idea that if the world collapsed around me, my Jad would always be there to save me. He had gone too soon.
"Nujood! Nujood!"
I turned around, wondering who could be calling me in that unfamiliar voice, so strange to my ears. Not like Jad"s, a voice I could always recognize with my eyes closed. Looking up, I realized that it was him, my unknown husband, speaking to me for the first time since we"d left Sana"a. With barely a glance at me, he announced that it was time to leave again. Nodding, I headed toward our new "carriage": a rusted-out red and white Toyota pickup. I was put in the front seat with the veiled sister-in-law, sitting on the new driver"s right. The men clambered into the open truck bed in the back, with other pa.s.sengers who were catching a ride.
"Hang on tight," warned the driver. "The pickup will rock back and forth."
Before setting out, he turned on his tape deck at top volume, and folk music began crackling out of loudspeakers as rusty as the pickup. The vibrations of the oud, a kind of Oriental lute, accompanied the voice of a very well-known local singer, Hussein Moheb, and soon they were joined by the jolting of the pickup doing battle with the big stones in the road. We weren"t rocking back and forth, though; we were flying in all directions! Several times, stones crashed into our windshield, and I hung on for dear life, praying to arrive at the village in one piece.
"Listen to the music, it will make you forget your fear!" shouted the driver.
If he had only known what other fears tormented me.
Hour after hour we drove, to the sound of Hussein Moheb"s wailing; I should have counted the number of times the driver rewound the ca.s.sette. He seemed intoxicated by the music, which surely gave him the courage to forge ahead. Hanging on to his steering wheel like a rider clinging to his horse, he tackled even the slightest turn with his eyes riveted on the winding road, as if he knew all its pitfalls by heart.
"G.o.d made nature tough, but luckily he made men even tougher!"
Well, I thought, if the driver is right, then G.o.d must have forgotten to include me.
The deeper into the valley we went, the worse I felt. I was tired. I felt sick to my stomach. I was hungry and thirsty. But most of all, I was afraid. The closer we came to Wadi La"a, the more uncertain my fate seemed. And my hopes for escape? Dashed.
Khardji hadn"t changed; it still felt like the end of the earth. As soon as we arrived, aching from the bone-jarring ride, I recognized the five stone houses, the modest river flowing through the village, the bees humming from flower to flower, the endless trees, and the village children going to the well to fill their little yellow jerry cans. A woman was waiting for us on the threshold of one of the houses. I felt immediately that she didn"t like me. She didn"t embrace me--not even a tiny kiss, not even a gentle pat. His mother. My new mother-in-law. She was old and ugly, with skin as wrinkled as a lizard"s. She was missing two of her front teeth, while the others were rotten from cavities and blackened by tobacco. She wore a black and gray head scarf. She gestured for me to enter. The inside of the house was spare, with hardly any furnishings: four bedrooms, a living room, a tiny kitchen. The toilet was out under the stars, behind some bushes.
I hadn"t eaten anything since we"d left Sana"a; I was famished and fairly fell upon the rice and meat that his sisters had prepared. Joined after our meal by some guests from the village, the grown-ups gathered to chew khat. Again! Huddled in a corner, I watched them in silence. To my astonishment, no one seemed surprised by my tender age. Later I learned that marriages to little girls are not unusual in the countryside, so for these people, I didn"t seem like an exception. There is even a tribal proverb that says, "To guarantee a happy marriage, marry a nine-year-old girl."
The grown-ups were chatting up a storm.
"Life in Sana"a has become so expensive," my sister-in-law was complaining.
"As of tomorrow, I"m going to teach the child to work like the rest of us," announced my mother-in-law, without saying my name. "And I certainly hope she brought some money with her."
"No more time for girlish fancies. We"ll show her how to be a woman, a real one."
I remember how relieved I felt when they led me to my room, after the guests had gone at sunset. That brown tunic I"d been wearing since the day before was starting to smell really foul, and now I could finally take it off. Once the door had shut behind me, I sighed deeply and quickly slipped into a little red cotton shirt I"d brought from Sana"a. It smelled like home, a musty smell with a hint of resinous incense, a familiar and comforting scent. A long woven mat was lying on the floor: my bed. Beside it was an old oil lamp that cast the shadow of its flame on the wall. I didn"t even need to put out the light to fall asleep.
I would rather have never awakened. When the door crashed open, I was startled awake, and thought that the night wind must have come up unusually strong. I"d barely opened my eyes when I felt a damp, hairy body pressing against me. Someone had blown out the lamp, leaving the room pitch dark. I shivered. It was him! I recognized him right away from that overpowering odor of cigarettes and khat. He stank! Like an animal! Without a word, he began to rub himself against me.
"Please, I"m begging you, leave me alone," I gasped. I was shaking.
"You are my wife! From now on, I decide everything. We must sleep in the same bed."
I leapt to my feet, ready to run away. Where? What did it matter--I had to escape from this trap. Then he stood up, too. The door was not completely closed, and spying a glimmer of light from the moon and stars, I dashed immediately toward the courtyard.
He ran after me.
"Help! Help!" I shrieked, sobbing.
My voice rang in the night, but it was as if I were shouting into a void. I ran everywhere, anywhere, panting for breath. I went into one room but ducked out again when he followed me there. I ran without looking back. I stumbled over something, maybe a piece of gla.s.s, and scrambled to my feet to take off again, but arms caught me, held me tightly, wrestled me back into the bedroom, pushed me down on the mat. I felt paralyzed, as if I had been tied down.
Hoping to find a female ally, I called out to my mother-in-law.
"Amma! Auntie!"
There was no reply. I screamed again.
"Somebody help me!"
When he took off his white tunic, I rolled into a ball to protect myself, but he began pulling at my nightshirt, wanting me to undress. Then he ran his rough hands over my body and pressed his lips against mine. He smelled so awful, a mixture of tobacco and onion.
I tried to get away again, moaning, "Get away from me! I"ll tell my father!"
"You can tell your father whatever you like. He signed the marriage contract. He gave me permission to marry you."
"You have no right!"
"Nujood, you are my wife!"
"Help! Help!"
He started to laugh, nastily.
"I repeat: you are my wife. Now you must do what I want! Got that?"
Suddenly it was as if I"d been s.n.a.t.c.hed up by a hurricane, flung around, struck by lightning, and I had no more strength to fight back. There was a peal of thunder, and another, and another--the sky was falling down on me, and it was then that something burning, a burning I had never felt before, invaded the deepest part of me. No matter how I screamed, no one came to help me. It hurt, awfully, and I was all alone to face the pain.
With what felt like my last breath, I shrieked one more time, I think, and then lost consciousness.
April 9, 2008.
With her cell phone glued to her ear, Shada is pacing up and down the courthouse hall.
"We need to do everything we can to get Nujood out of the clutches of her husband. We must alert the press, the women"s groups. ..."
After she finishes her call, she leans down to me, crouching to put herself at my height.
"Don"t be afraid, Nujood. I"ll help you get your divorce."
No one has ever shown so much concern for me before.
Shada is a lawyer. People say she"s a very important lawyer, one of the best lady lawyers in Yemen, who fights for women"s rights. I look at her, my eyes wide with admiration. She"s beautiful, and so sweet. Her voice is a little shrill, and if she talks quickly, it"s only because she"s in a great hurry. She smells of nice perfume, with the scent of jasmine. As soon as I saw her, I liked her. Unlike the women in my family, she doesn"t cover her face, and that"s rare in Yemen, not wearing the niqab. Shada wears a long, black, silky coat, with just a colored scarf on her head. Her skin glows, and her lipstick makes her look chic, like ladies in films. And when she wears her sungla.s.ses, she looks like a movie star. What a contrast to all those veiled women out in the streets!
"With me, you"ve nothing to fear," she says, patting my face rea.s.suringly.
Shada approached me this morning as soon as she spotted me. When everyone returned to work at the courthouse after the weekend, she heard all about me, and was very upset by my story. She decided that she absolutely had to meet me. I was in the courtyard when she called out to me.
"Excuse me, are you the little girl who came looking for a divorce?"
"Yes, that"s me."