venerdì 4 gennaio 2013

Review: I am Nojoud, age ten and divorced

Title: I am Nujood, age ten and divorced
Author: Nujood Ali
Pages: 188
My rating: 

Plot:
Forced by her father to marry a man three times her age, young Nujood Ali was sent away from her parents and beloved sisters and made to live with her husband and his family in an isolated village in rural Yemen. There she suffered daily from physical and emotional abuse by her mother-in-law and nightly at the rough hands of her spouse. Flouting his oath to wait to have sexual relations with Nujood until she was no longer a child, he took her virginity on their wedding night. She was only ten years old.
Unable to endure the pain and distress any longer, Nujood fled—not for home, but to the courthouse of the capital, paying for a taxi ride with a few precious coins of bread money. When a renowned Yemeni lawyer heard about the young victim, she took on Nujood’s case and fought the archaic system in a country where almost half the girls are married while still under the legal age. Since their unprecedented victory in April 2008, Nujood’s courageous defiance of both Yemeni customs and her own family has attracted a storm of international attention. Her story even incited change in Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries, where underage marriage laws are being increasingly enforced and other child brides have been granted divorces.
Recently honored alongside Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice as one of
 Glamour magazine’s women of the year, Nujood now tells her full story for the first time. As she guides us from the magical, fragrant streets of the Old City of Sana’a to the cement-block slums and rural villages of this ancient land, her unflinching look at an injustice suffered by all too many girls around the world is at once shocking, inspiring, and utterly unforgettable.

My thought:
I study arab language at university and I am always the first in defending this world. I always say to anyone who speak about it without knowing: don't judge so easily! There are lots of thing you should know before saying any word..
In this case, I tried to come up with some excuse for this story, but I couldn't.
How can a man -even if defining him 'man' is insulting for the oher human beings- marry, harass and hit a girl who is only nine years old and could be his daughter?! Poverty, ignorance.. seriously, they are NOT excuses for such behaviour.. 
While reading this book, I felt so helpless, so angry, so out of me!! There are lots of bad, terrible things in this world, no doubt. But abusing little girls is something that my mind cannot event think about!
I'm glad Nujood made it and became a free woman.. But my heart is still sad at the thought of the thousand girls in the same situation who weren't strong enough to rebel.. and I really think Nujood was extremely fortunate in being freed: NGO, international journals and foreign countries were so horrified with this story that they decided to intervene..
I don't think she would have been safe without them!

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