Director Khadija Al Salami set out to make people think about the gross violation of human rights that is child marriage.
With her film I Am Nojoom, Age 10 and Divorced at this year’s Diff, she succeeded — and how.
A standing ovation at an almost full house in Madinat Theatre on Thursday night indicated that she had managed to create a stirring and inspiring tale from a grim real-life incident in Yemen.
“The film is inspired from Nojoom from Yemen. She gets married at 10 and her husband becomes the reason for her miserable life. For that reason she asks for a divorce and she fights for her rights … I want people to fight ignorance and tell them that we cannot put our daughters in such a difficult position where they go through so much trauma,” said Salami on the red carpet.
While the film touches upon an intense subject, the treatment isn’t heavy-handed. First-time actress Rieham Mohammad does a splendid job of breathing life into her character as a child bride who fights her way out of an abusive arranged marriage.
She’s a child bride, but her luminous performance makes you empathise with her rather than just sympathise. The viewers are first transported into her world — a tiny coffee-growing village in Yemen. We get a glimpse of the traditions and mores binding a Yemeni family. For instance her father’s disappointment at realising that his youngest child is a daughter is beautifully captured. While the eldest daughter calls her Nojoom, which means stars in the sky, her father, who could barely mask his disappointment at having a daughter instead of a son, quickly corrects her and calls her Nujood, which means hidden. They are all mired in their age-old beliefs — her mother’s fatalistic attitude towards her daughter being pushed into marriage at 10 is shocking. When she realises that her child had been raped, her deadpan response about her son-in-law promising to wait until her daughter reaches puberty subtly shows how deep-rooted the problem is.
Living in abject poverty, their decision to push their daughter into marriage for some quick money makes sense in a warped way. The film doesn’t paint the men as villains even though the director could easily have gone down that male-bashing path.
Nojoom’s 30-year-old husband is portrayed as a confused, uneducated man who isn’t aware that raping a young girl is a crime. His genuinely befuddled look when questioned by the judge about hurting his child bride underlines how his life is dominated by traditions.
This film could have easily disintegrated into poverty porn, but the director firmly steers the subject to an uplifting tale of a young woman who uses the money given to buy bread to take a taxi to a court to demand a divorce. This drama also offers a window into Yemen, its landscape and its people.
