In Al-Watan Arabic daily, I recently read a story about a Saudi woman who wants to establish an organization that would assist divorced women. The news item was very brief but it did refer to efforts by the female academic to help divorced women deal with the psychological and social pressures they are subjected to. Her proposal was based on a study done at King Saud University that gave the number of divorced Saudi women as 400,000. Nothing new about the numbers of divorcees in the Kingdom and as for the reasons behind them, study after study has been done and most of them revealed well-known reasons for the numbers. What the numbers hide and fail to indicate is the divorced woman’s predicament. When a woman’s life is reduced to a number in a statistical table, she is pushed into a certain group — but where can she turn for help with her problems and difficulties?
I ask this question bearing in mind some specific cases that I am aware of. They all involve divorced women who have simply given up hope in our social justice and abandoned themselves to a monotonous and relatively joyless life just because our society provides them no help, assistance or support. If my readers will allow me, I will tell the story of one of these women and leave the questions about justice hanging in the air, waiting for an answer.
Salwa is a beautiful young woman who was married to a man who was, in the eyes of Saudi society, “an ideal husband.” He was handsome, from a respectable family, had a good job and was well off. The first years of their marriage were happy and they were looked upon as a perfect young couple. After ten years of marriage, two sons and a daughter, Salwa noticed a change in her husband. She soon found out that he had allegedly fallen in love with another woman. It was not long from the shock of discovering that she had company in her husband’s heart to being told that he wanted a divorce. Salwa was soon living alone with her children in a rented flat. So far, this is a sad but not unknown story — not only in Saudi society but in many other societies around the world. What is uniquely Saudi are the troubles and problems Salwa and most other divorced women here have to face and endure on a daily basis.
First of all, society looks on a divorced woman like Salwa as a third class citizen — not a first class one (a man) or a second class one (a woman, either single or married). Being a third class citizen is bad enough but being a third class citizen with children is very difficult indeed. Her only hope of changing her life and the lives of her children for the better is to marry an older man or to marry someone as his second wife.
Meanwhile, Salwa’s former husband is leading a happy life. He got what he wanted; indeed, as a Saudi man, he was used to getting what he wanted. Even when he was married to Salwa, things were done as he wanted — including access to her salary and savings, which she willingly granted him. As soon as he and his new wife had settled down, he arranged to see his children on weekends that then began to extend into the week. When that happened, the children missed school and though Salwa told him their teachers were complaining, he decided the easiest thing to do would be to keep the children with him and maybe, only maybe, allow Salwa access to them on weekends. When she protested and pointed out that she was the legal guardian of two of the children who were still under seven, he told her in effect to bang her head against the nearest wall. Naturally, she then went to the court for help and was shocked to be told by the judge that she was not legally divorced since there was no document saying so. There was no way to reach her former husband as he was out of the country. The children had not been taken abroad with him but were left with an elderly relative who would not allow Salwa to see them.
This is a very short story, leaving aside family pressures on Salwa, to say nothing of her heartache and misery. My question is what could the organization which the Saudi female academic wants to establish do for Salwa and other divorced women? Dare I say nothing? In the end, there is no law that holds men accountable or grants women safety, security and the certainty that they can get the rights that the law should guarantee them.
