Where Divorce Means Risking Death

by Olivia Snaije

Even as a teenager, she had a rebellious streak. At 16, when her father decided she should marry, she chose a man he disapproved of, simply as a way of asserting herself. “My father is very strong, and he only wanted us to listen and say he was right and the rest of us were wrong,” she says. “I wanted to go against my father’s words.”

Al Baz had no idea what to expect from marriage, though. In her book, to be published in the U.S. later this year, she writes, “Love stories are unwelcome in Saudi Arabia. The term ‘love’ is proscribed; one is not allowed to talk about it or evoke it. It would be indecent, immoral.” Since the only men she had known were her father, brother, and uncle, “I just behaved with my husband as I did with my father. I felt I had to learn from him and listen to him. I obeyed him.”

But after she gave birth to a daughter, her husband left her. “He wanted a woman, not a girl,” she explains. “I was still a girl when I divorced.” At 18, as a “repudiated” woman, al Baz was forced back into the family enclave. Luckily, a friend encouraged her to try out at the state television station, which was looking to change its image. By her early twenties, she was the unveiled anchor of The Kingdom This Morning, and one of her country’s most familiar faces.

It was in the corridors of the TV station that al Baz met singer Mohammed al-Fallatta, who would become her second husband. He pursued her, relentlessly asking her father for her hand in marriage. Al Baz’s father became so incensed, she says, that he locked her up for two months and told the station she was ill.

But al-Fallatta continued in his pursuit until al Baz’s father relented. Al Baz agreed to the marriage because “the status of divorcée meant I was completely shut into the house, and under my father’s rule.” She hoped love would follow. “Women in my country learn to love after they have married. I remember with my second husband I made up stories in my head to make myself think I loved him. If he went away on a trip I would tell myself I missed him, and would prepare for his return by making myself beautiful. I would make myself feel.”