JEDDAH — Six broken teeth. Debts in excess of SR200,000. Bruised spirit and a battered body. That's precisely what 42-year-old Amal got from a marriage of 15 years.
What's worse, her ordeal has not ended even though she divorced four years ago - Amal is now faced with a possible lawsuit if she fails to pay her former husband around SR75,000 for "child support" by the end of this month.
Not surprising then that though her name means "hope" in Arabic, Amal, a divorced mother of five, said she had lost all hope of any improvement in conditions for Saudi women and had a complete lack of faith in the local legal system.
She had struggled for 15 years to survive life with an abusive husband. Seeking justice in Saudi courts for a year and half has not only left her broke and in debt but also with a court order that obliges her to pay child support.
She recalled an incident that took place 11 years ago. "My husband began beating me in front of the children. The beating got more violent and I could not take it anymore. I managed to run out into the street, dressed only in a house dress."
Amal thought her husband might be hesitant or ashamed to attack her in public but that was not the case. He followed her and, in front of everyone, began hitting her. He then returned to their apartment, leaving her bleeding in the street.
"Some of my teeth were broken and I was bleeding. I felt pain and shame and people gathered to watch but did nothing to help me." After some time, an Egyptian offered Amal a lift to the King Fahd Hospital. Once she arrived at the hospital, no one called the police. The hospital did, however, contact her family members who came and took her away later that night.
A year after the incident, Amal decided to get a divorce. To support her case, she went to the hospital to get a copy of the medical report from the emergency room but was told that it had been lost. At that point, she felt powerless to do anything and so she returned to the misery of her life with her husband.
During her marriage, Amal alleges, her husband allowed her to work so he could take her salary. As a nurse, she initially received SR6,000 a month though it was later increased to SR9,000. However, her husband took this wage and gave Amal a paltry SR1,500 as allowance. The end of her marriage began when he approached her one day, demanding thousands of riyals. She said she was already in debt due to his constant demands for money and that, because she sensed danger, she did not go to work that day. "Get me the money. I don't care where but get me the money tonight," her husband said, according to Amal.
That night, he came back and when Amal told him she did not have the money, he called her family, saying, "Come and get your daughter before I throw her in the garbage."
Amal left the apartment that SR60,000 of her money had furnished with only the clothes on her back and a small bag with her baby's feeding bottles and belongings inside.
At that point, she was able to convince her family that she could no longer live with her husband. Amal filed a lawsuit accusing him of physically and physiologically abusing her for 15 years in front of their children. In court, her husband denied everything and said he wanted her back as his wife.
"You've been married for 15 years and you are now asking for a divorce?" the judge asked Amal. She said that the judge never listened to her and that sometimes she felt she did not exist in the courtroom as he completely ignored her.
Amal said she could not afford to hire a lawyer. Also, she said that the judge never asked for her neighbors' testimony. Her sisters' husbands, who took an oath in front of the judge that her husband was abusing her, supported her statements. Her husband, subsequently, denied all accusations.
In the end, the judge granted the divorce after she relinquished her land grant and agreed to support her children financially. The court order directed that Amal have custody of the five children and asked her to support them until they were adults. (Arab News is in possession of a copy of the court order issued four years ago.)
Though the demand for the wife to support the children was unusual, Amal said it was one of the preconditions for the divorce set by the judge since it was she who sought the divorce. Since Amal did not want the case to drag, she agreed to the same without seeking legal advice on the issue.
However, working as a nurse from morning till night made it hard for her to take good care of her children, especially the boys. So, when her husband saw the kids playing on the street one day, he took them away and filed a complaint stating that she was not taking care of the children. Amal then told her husband to keep the three boys and leave the two daughters with her.
Though he agreed, to her dismay, her husband demanded that she pay him SR3,000 every month to support the boys. Amal says she had no choice and agreed to his terms. She paid him the amount for eight months. However, bogged down by heavy debt she had carried forward over time, Amal almost went bankrupt and found it impossible to pay the agreed amount.
Instead of taking her financial condition into consideration, her husband simply became infuriated. And, according to Amal, all hell broke loose.
Over the last four years since she has separated, her ex-husband has been constantly harassing her for money and has filed numerous reports against her at local police stations, complaining that Amal had abandoned her children and stopped supporting them financially.
Now, Amal said, her husband is threatening to file a lawsuit against her at the end of the month if she fails to cough up SR52,000 in arrears for child support. "When will all this end? I'm exhausted and have a huge debt. To make matters worse, even charity organizations and government bodies are refusing to help me because I am a working woman," Amal told Arab News.
When Arab News got in touch with her husband, he admitted that he was going to proceed with the lawsuit if Amal failed to give him the money she owed him by the end of this month. Even though he argued that his wife had misrepresented him - and that he had "beaten her only once" - he countered that the money that Amal supposedly owed him was in excess of SR75,000 and not SR52,000 as claimed by his wife.
What's more, he felt, the judge had erred when stating that Amal should pay for child support until the children were adults - the payment should have been for life, he argued. Whatever the merits, or demerits, of his argument is left for everyone to judge. However, one thing is clear: for Amal and her ex-husband, the whole thing is turning out to be a strange case of "till debt do us part".
