JEDDAH, 1 May 2003 — At a time when women are increasingly calling for greater political and economic involvement, they are also more willing to stand up for themselves in the home, Al-Madinah reported. In a number of interviews, the newspaper encountered women who would go to any length to retaliate against mistreatment from their husbands.

Nadia, a divorced woman, told the newspaper she began fighting with her husband until she considered hurting him physically. “I tried to drive those negative thoughts from my mind for fear of God but my husband caused me so much trouble. It got serious when I lent him SR5,000. When I asked for the money back, he refused and denied I had lent him the money. I hated him for his refusal anad he hated me for wanting my money back. We could not stand each other.

“When a woman loves someone, she loves completely, and when she hates, she hates completely as well. So he divorced me and began to spread unsavory rumors about my behavior. I pay him back in the same coin because I never lose a chance to speak badly of him. Sometimes I even embellish things to make him look worse than he is.”

Hamedah is proud of her revenge against her husband and believes she taught him a lesson he is not going to forget. “I really loved him before I married him,” she said. “I thought he was Prince Charming who would take care of me and make me happy forever. I was very proud of him. But once we were married, I began to find out things that I didn’t like. Things got so bad that he beat me and cursed me, and one day he threatened to throw me and my children out of the house.

“On one occasion he came home and asked me to cook dinner. When I told him that I was tired, he beat me and threw me out into the cold and the rain. So I decided to teach him a lesson about respect.

“I told my brother, who is a wrestler, everything about the way my husband treated me, how he beat me for no reason. My brother came to the house and beat up my husband. Then he took me home to my family where I stayed for six months. But I still hated my husband; it just got worse.”

When she heard that her husband had married another woman, she decided it was time for another lesson. “My brother and I went to my husband’s house, and my brother called him out and beat him again — this time until the police arrived.”

Hamedah places the blame firmly on her husband. “He drove me to it. I tried to love him, I tried to solve my problems with him peacefully. How do you expect me to love someone who beats me up all the time? It doesn’t make sense.

“Every woman who is abused by her husband will think of retaliating sooner or later. I know this is an uncivilized way, but I am just using his methods of solving problems.”

A fellow sufferer, Maha is a divorced teacher. Her husband used to beat her regularly, and call her lazy, crazy and incompetent. “Even after he divorced me, he would not leave me alone. He started to spread rumors about me. When anyone wanted to marry me, he would step in and scare the man away by telling lies about me.”

At first Maha didn’t realize what was happening, but she found out eventually. “I knew then that he had opened the doors of hell upon himself. I heard he was going to marry a relative of mine, and I realized my opportunity had come. I went to see the woman and told her everything. I completely destroyed his reputation, and she refused to marry him.

“Then I found that he wanted to marry another girl in our neighborhood. I called her and talked to her about him. I told her about his behavior and what a terrible husband he had been. In the end, her family changed their mind about him and refused to allow her to marry him.

“Again I was very happy to have caused him trouble,” she says. “Ruining his life has become a full-time job for me.”