Where Divorce Means Risking Death

by Olivia Snaije

But while al Baz’s career progressed, al-Fallatta’s was far less successful. Envious, possessive, and jealous, he began to beat her the first year of their marriage. “When I slept, I turned my back to him,” she says. “I lived with this man for eight years and thought about how I could divorce him every day. But there was no chance of leaving him because I would have had to return to my father and it would have been worse.”

She had two children with al-Fallatta, hoping this would reassure him. But, she says, he remained largely indifferent to the kids. His jealousy reached a climax one night when he found her on the phone with a woman friend. He began to beat her, making her recite a prayer that, in Islam, a dying person is required to repeat three times.

As she recovered, physically and emotionally, from the beating, al Baz had a guardian angel: Saudi princess Sara Al-Angari. Encouraging al Baz to speak out, the princess provided financial support for numerous reconstructive surgeries and the political clout to help al Baz not only divorce her husband but also obtain custody of her children—which is extremely rare in Saudi Arabia. In France, al Baz was taken under the wing of Ni Putes Ni Soumises (“Neither Whores Nor Submissive”), an organization founded by young Muslim women from the working-class suburbs.

The Saudi reaction to her crusade has been complex. “People considered the book to be shameful and critical,” she says. “But those who think I’m an embarrassment should be all the more militant about getting things to change.” One result of her experience is that her mother, whom al Baz describes as the perfect wife, left her husband of 32 years. “All this time my father was authoritarian with her. She never talked back. After my accident, my mother felt like she was choking. She was ready. She left with only the clothes on her back.”

In Disfigured, al Baz writes that Saudi women “are merely the shadows of our fathers, our brothers, and our husbands.” But she is adamant on one point: “The unjustified discriminations that we are subjected to daily are revolting and have nothing to do with Islam. I don’t know in whose name we cannot obtain an identity card or a passport without our father or husband’s accord.”