I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced

• Author: Nujood Ali and Delphine Minoui
• Genre: Nonfiction Memoir
• Publication Date: March 2, 2010
• Publisher: Random House Audio

“I’m a simple village girl who has always obeyed the orders of my father and brothers. Since forever, I have learned to say yes to everything. Today I have decided to say no.”

Nujood Ali’s childhood came to an abrupt end in 2008 when her father arranged for her to be married to a man three times her age. With harrowing directness, Nujood tells of abuse at her husband’s hands and of her daring escape. With the help of local advocates and the press, Nujood obtained her freedom—an extraordinary achievement in Yemen, where almost half of all girls are married under the legal age. Nujood’s courageous defiance of both Yemeni customs and her own family has inspired other young girls in the Middle East to challenge their marriages.

Hers is an unforgettable story of tragedy, triumph, and courage.

On my armchair reading journey, I came across this story set in Yemen, by a Yemeni author. This isn’t the kind of story that I would seek out to read, but it showed up as an audiobook that was available through Libby, and it felt as though this was a story that needed to be read and amplified. 

Written by a young woman from a poor family that lived in a rural village, Nujood was a happy child of ten when she was told that she was to be married to a much older man. She didn’t have a say in the matter—although her father did make her future husband promise to wait until the child matured to consummate the marriage. I wasn’t surprised to hear that he broke his promise on their wedding night, raping a ten year old. 

She lived in her husband’s house, with his mother criticizing everything she did and encouraging her husband to beat her. Nujood refers to him as ‘The Monster,’ and it is a horribly fitting name for the man she was married to. Looking at it through the lens of American/Western society, I can’t even conceive of a world where this is acceptable, yet we learn about how common and widespread child marriage is within Yemen. On top of that, she married into a family where everyone had a cruel streak, even her mother-in-law, who demonstrates no empathy towards this child that is forced to take on the mantle of a grown woman.

Nujood writes her story through her ten year old perspective and understanding, and it is heartbreaking to see a child being married off so young, and going through the experiences she was forced to. It made the story so much more powerful, and Nujood was incredibly easy to empathize with. Her simple retelling of these events drives home the fact that she was a child being pushed into womanhood far too early. 

Even through all of this, Nujood is no passive victim. She might be young and uneducated at the time, but she was determined and stubborn. When her husband let her visit her parents, they refused to allow her to return home, claiming that her uncles would kill her father to protect the family’s honor. Undeterred, she refuses to return home to her husband’s house, and instead seeks out a courthouse, so she can ask a judge for a divorce.

I was nervous for her, knowing how little weight the word of a woman carries in her country. Yet somehow, she found a judge who listened to what she had to say and found her a lawyer that would take on her case and become her champion. Seeing how big of an impact Nujood’s story had on improving her own life, but also ultimately creating greater awareness of the dangers of child marriage. 

Overall, this was an important read. The audiobook was a short one, but it was gave such a strong message in around 4 hours. The narrator did a fantastic job at sounding childlike as Nujood, yet also being able to pronounce Arabic words with ease. This isn’t the kind of book that you read for pleasure, more for education, but I loved the fact that nothing was able to kill Nujood’s dreams or hold her back. This kind of outlook would take her far in the West, but I wasn’t confident about her prospects long-term if she remained in Yemen. Some things did change for her, but child marriage continues to be a problem in countries around the world, and I was so disappointed to be proven right about her future. She never did become the lawyer she dreamed of, instead remarrying at the age of 16 and having two children, and continuing to live in a part of Yemen that has been severely impacted by the war and Houthi terrorists.

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