TAI, 1 February 2006 — Four Saudi women have spoken about their experiences of being married at a very young age.
The story of little girls who were used to playing children’s games and who suddenly found themselves in adult situations for which they were unprepared is reported in Al-Watan daily. The fault, according to the newspaper, is a lack of awareness on the part of the girls’ families.
Most societies say that childhood ends at 18. One of the four women in the article was married off at 14. She was deprived of an important part of her childhood because her father decided she had enough education and should marry. Her husband now calls her “illiterate.” Another of the girls was the victim of her stepmother who wanted to get rid of her and saw marriage as the way to do so. A father saw a solution for his indebtedness in marrying off his 14-year-old daughter. Another girl thought if she married, she would escape from the hell of living with her father but she ended up living in a even worse hell of her husband’s.
In the absence of strict laws that guarantee young girls their childhood freedom, there are even cases if girls being married as young as nine, according Naser Al-Suhaibi, a marriage official.
Al-Suhaibi said that many scholars rule out the matter of age as long as the father agrees to marriage. He said that there was no law preventing marriage officials from performing these marriages.
Umm Nuf spoke about her sad experiences. Her husband calls her “illiterate.”
She said, “My father came to tell me that I was to marry. I was 14 at that time and he did not even bother to ask me my thoughts. I was happy as a child because I had nice clothes and lots of toys. When I am married, I found myself in a strange world. I did not know what to do and my mother never taught me anything.”
She now has four children and her husband wants to marry another wife because he thinks she is illiterate and that he needs an educated wife.
Even if the marriage of young girls is a success, there will inevitably be some negative psychological effects. Zena, a young wife, said that she was forced to marry her stepmother’s brother.
“After my mother’s death, my father married a bad woman. As soon as she entered our house, things changed. She stopped me from going to school and forced me to agree to marry her brother. He was 10 years older than I was and he turned out to be a kind and loving man. I still remember, however, that I was forced to marry and had no opportunity to agree or disagree.”
Nadia speaks with sadness about her terrible experience of being forced to marry when she was very young. Her father had contracted a debt that he could not repay.
“My father told me that I had to marry his friend in order to keep him from going to jail for not repaying the debt. I had to accept and so I married the man. They were the worst years of my life. My marriage did not last; I was divorced after three years. My future has been destroyed and because of the forced marriage, I was unable to go to university and continue my education,” said Nadia.
