![]() ![]() ![]() When Shada Nasser welcomed me to her house, in the Haddah district of Sanaa, one recent afternoon, she was dressed in a dark skirt and black headscarf. “Shada is an amazing lady,” Minoui told me. (This week, a book, “ I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced,” co-authored by Ali and the French journalist Delphine Minoui, was released in the United States.) But in many respects the real hero of the tale was Shada Nasser, the lawyer, who argued Nujood’s case. Within a few weeks, Nujood Ali became the youngest divorcee in the world, and an international icon of tenacity and courage. One day, she left her husband’s house on her own, took a taxi to the courthouse in Sanaa, and demanded a divorce. This is the fate of many young girls in Yemen-according to a UNICEF report, about a quarter are married by the time they turn fifteen-but Ali elected a different course. (He also may have believed that a husband might protect Ali from a kidnapper who he’d seen lurking around.) Ali had been told that she would not have to have sex with her new husband, but he forced her to almost immediately. Her father, a former street-sweeper, had sixteen children and virtually no income-marrying off his young daughters was a way to make some quick cash. ![]() At nine, she had been married off to a man in his thirties. Nujood Ali’s story was, by then, fairly well known. ![]()
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