He promises not to touch the girl until after her first period Nujood’s father repeats the thinly-veiled lie to console his wife. Her husband is three times her age, hails from the same village as her family but is still essentially a stranger. Poverty drives the family to turn to begging, and eventually, to arrange Nujood’s marriage. For Nujood, though she takes simple joy in the smells and bustle of Sana’a, it is all confusion and vague acceptance.
When one sister brings an unnamed shame upon the family, they move from their village to the capital. But the text does not go beyond Nujood’s childlike impressions of the world, sketching a general impression of an impoverished family with loving but strict parents. She tells her tale with the assistance of co-author Delphine Minoui, a Le Figaro reporter who covers the Middle East. Nujood is not only the subject of the story, but the narrator. It also gave Ali a chance to attend school, escape subjugation to sharaf – a patriarchal Bedouin honor code – and nourish dreams of one day becoming a lawyer and helping girls like herself.
But in Nujood Ali’s case, the act of asking for a divorce – not to mention getting it – shook the Muslim world, caused the Yemeni parliament to raise the age of consent to 17 for boys and girls, and earned the then-10-year-old international press attention, including being named Glamour magazine’s Woman of the Year in 2008. High-profile divorces are usually thrilling tabloid fodder.
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