Arab society's view of the divorced woman

She became twice divorced although she had not yet passed eighteen years of age. She tried to leave her home after many clashes with her brother, in order to earn her living through an honourable job opportunity, but the employer tried to harass her and to hint at his desire to have an illegitimate love relationship with her, after he learned that she was divorced, for everything in his view was permitted, and there is nothing to prove physically that an illegitimate relationship has taken place.

As for the other, she still suffers doubly because of her divorce from her husband and her return to her family's house. She had fled from her husband's house, where he did not miss an opportunity to beat her, and in her family's house she was treated like a servant and barred from leaving the family home, because she is a divorced woman, and the women of the family looked at her as if she were a mass of error and sin, and that is the view in many Arab areas.

As for the last one, she sat in her family's house after her divorce, but the women of the family decided to get rid of her only because they wanted to obtain all the property and she was an obstacle to that, so they contrived a plot against her, and she was killed on the grounds of what is called family honour!!!

The title may be seen as something glaring and illogical, but how long will we go on wrapping our problems in cellophane and using the terms employed only to improve the negative image of most of what we inherit in our customs and traditions? And here I ask you: does injustice that may reach the point of killing need its image improved?!

There are many women who live in their husbands' houses while resembling divorced women, and each of them accepts living that way only because she is afraid of becoming a divorced woman in the eyes of the family, society and her children.

And what forces many married women to bear their husbands' injustice is their children, where they endure humiliation, beating, contempt and being belittled so as not to live away from their children, and also because she does not want her daughters to be called, when they grow up, "the divorced woman's daughters", because that may lead, according to customs and traditions, to no young man coming forward to ask to marry one of her daughters.

And when the divorced woman tries to go out into the labour market, she may be subjected to harassment by her manager or her colleagues at times, because she is a divorced woman and no longer possesses the virginity she proved in her first marriage, and those men believe that if they reach their aim their crime will not be uncovered.

And there are some women of the family who treat the divorced woman as a criminal, a deviant, ready to indulge her desire with any man, and look at her as having branded the family with shame, a shame for which she bears no guilt, so she lives under their feet, forbidden from moving, breathing, desiring or even dying except by their permission alone.

What the divorced woman most often suffers is the treatment of her mother or of the women who rule in the family, where they excel in humiliating her and direct accusations at her, and the first threat they always direct at her is that if she does not listen to what they tell her, they will tell the men of the family that she is not chaste and that she will drag the family's alleged honour in the dust. And the mother's breast that suckled and raised her turns into an enemy fighting the one it suckled, under the pretext of preserving the family's honour.

As for the men of the family, they often look at the divorced woman as if she had committed a sin and returned to her home, so they treat her with harshness and severity, and she becomes like an object or a disease that has struck the family home and must be excised. The solution is either to hide her from her surroundings, or to marry her off to a man of advanced age, or to kill her, and the last of the solutions is the simplest in their view, for the law does not put them on trial, so they kill under the sieve of family honour or otherwise, as by falling down the stairs or from something high so that she dies.

And the great problem the divorced woman often suffers is that those around her treat her as a woman who cannot sit without being alone with a man, for in her every movement and glance they suppose that she has made love with a man, and suspicion keeps surrounding her in every turn and lapse. And the greatest calamity is if any change occurs in her appearance or her behaviour, for then the calamity falls and the tongues begin to work against her.

And there are married women who treat the divorced woman as a snatcher of men, for they fear that the divorced woman might marry one of their husbands, so they tarnish her reputation and bar her from entering their homes, and she remains the prisoner of a grave she cannot leave and in which she can do nothing but exercise the freedom to breathe.

And amid the labyrinths and contradictions of what has been mentioned, the divorced woman goes on walking the thread of customs and traditions. Some of them may manage to live with dignity, while others remain captive to looks of suspicion and accusation. And once again I ask: why does Arab society treat the divorced woman like a prostitute? Why??!! Bearing in mind that God permitted divorce in His book and that it is a remedy for the marital problems that call for it.

By lawyer Nevine Al-Fakhouri