Written by Basheer al-Selwi
“I’ve become lonely in this life, and no one remains to support me and my children in order to keep on living.” This is the voice of Basma Salah, a 19-year old divorcee. “I have three children and my relatives constantly chide me, ‘Give those little children back to their father!’ She adds, ‘I cannot bear to see my children without me, as they are still very young. They need me due to the fact that they are not able to rely on themselves,”
Basma is just one victim among many Yemeni children who are subject to early marriages.
Basma’s tragic story resulted from early marriage due to the fact that her father, who passed away when she was around 6, was not present in her life. Basma was married when she was around 12 to a boy of around 14 under pressure from her mother. After two months of marriage, they started quarreling with each other and neither could bear to be with the other. However, because of her difficult economic circumstances, she was determined to keep living with her husband due to the fact that she had no one to resort to when in need; only her mother who lives with her step-father.
“The main cause for my wretchedness is my mother. Why did she not prevent this from happing? My friends and all of the women in the village are always telling me
that they advised my mother against such things, but she refused because the father of the boy I was to marry possessed great financial resources. At the time, I was only a child, I did not know what was best for me. Nevertheless, I don’t think I would have married him if it wasn’t for my mother encouraging it,” said Basma.
Basma lived with her husband for seven years until the age of 19. “The first time I became pregnant was when I was 12 years old. Every time I was pregnant I could not even walk by myself. Moreover, when I went to the doctor for a health check-up, the doctor was always furious with my husband and my mother, saying that I would not be able to deliver the baby,” Basma said.
When she found that she could not tolerate living with her husband any more because of his neglect, she demanded his respect and for him to fulfill his duties to her and the house as whole, otherwise, she would go to her mother’s house. Yet when she went to her mother’s house, her husband took advantage of her absence and divorced her immediately without showing any care or concern for her or their children.
Basma went on to say, “After our marriage, he was always saying that he would re-marry again, but all the time I forced myself to remain silent in order to avoid quarreling with him. I never felt that he loved me, in all of my time living with him. The whole time all he said was that he was a child and that his father had forced him to marry me”
Now, Basma is living alone in house which has no windows, no electricity, and a roof on the verge of collapse. Her uncles have refused to embrace her children, telling her that they would accept her alone to live with them, only if she abandons her children and returns them to their father.
“Why do my relatives want me to abandon my children? Yes, I am young, but I became a mother of two children and it is my responsibility to care for them completely. Where were they when my mother decided to marry me off? Why didn’t they stop her? I am a mother, I cannot leave them and I will not do so until God himself separates us,” Basma added.
Basma is 19 years old, but her face tells a different story. Time, people, society, and her mother, every one of them has taken its toll causing wrinkles on her face and making her appear an old woman.
She concluded, “All of my girlfriends were married when they matured. Every one of them is beginning a new story, while my story will come to an end very soon.”
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