I Am Nojoom, Age 10 and Divorced

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Khadija Al-Salami/Starring: Reham Mohammed

Yemeni director Khadija Al-Salami's film I Am Nojoom, Age 10 and Divorced may have an unwieldy title but it directly and accurately describes the plight of a Yemeni girl, who, like thousands of girls in her home country, are married off against their will. This horrifically unjust practice is the subject of Al-Salami's narrative film, which is based on real events and partly on her own experiences. I Am Nojoom has a blunt immediacy that leaves one recoiling in horror, but it also brings an injustice perpetrated on young girls into sharp relief.

Nojoom, as the title suggests, is a ten-year-old girl living with her family in a village in Yemen. The rocky hills on which her village rests, are terraced with crops, which are treacherously lined with rocks that sometimes tumble downward; injuring and/or threatening those below. The environment is far from lush; animals share living spaces; meandering cows and sheep are a common sight around her family's home.

When the film begins, we see Nojoom running through a Yemeni city street as the young girl dodges and evades a grown man. Why and how she happens to be in a city is soon revealed. Fleeing her pursuer, she finds sanctuary inside a taxi and commands the driver to the courthouse.

The story backtracks to an earlier period in her life when her christening became a bone of contention. Though her mother calls her Nojoom, meaning "stars," her father insists she be Nojood, which means "hidden." Though the spellings are separated by a mere consonant, their respective meanings say much about female regard in the Arab world.

The hard life in Nojoom's village is further complicated by dangers visited upon women, particularly young girls. While playing one day, Nojoom notices a dubious young man in the village forcing her older sister into a shed. Her sister's screams, which are puzzling to the young and naive Nojoom, are unmistakably those of someone being violated.

Not long after, Nojoom's father moves the family from their village home to the city, where they find their small home is only one among many indignities their new surroundings present. As Najoom's father is unable to find steady work, the family begins to feel the lash of deprivation. We see the meager dinner Nojoom's family must share and worse still, the landlord's sudden presence, which brings a threat about the delinquent rent. Faced with homelessness and hunger, Nojoom and her siblings take to the street to beg.

For reasons unknown to her, Nojoom suddenly finds herself being removed from her home. Nojoom's fears mount as her mother hurries her out the door and into a car occupied by two men, who drive her to her new home; a village slightly more prosperous than the one her family left.

The reality of the situation becomes harrowingly apparent as Nojoom finds herself forced to become a housewife and maintain a home. Nojoom's unsuitability for the role of housewife is reinforced by the doll she clutches. In a fit of rage, her mother-in-law jettisons the doll out the window. Nojoom's feelings of fear, bewilderment and resentment elicit a visceral reaction, as we watch her perform backbreaking chores. But her greatest horror is in the bedroom, where her husband seeks marital consummation. In spite of Nojoom's violent protests, the husband has his way. A shot of Nojoom in a fetal curl and a bloodied bed-sheet is a very grim and shocking image.

A story about a girl forced to become a child-bride is compelling enough but Al-Salami's film carries another perspective. Rather than focusing solely on Nojoom's predicament, we see a concatenation of economic setbacks that lead to her veritable imprisonment.

Nojoom's husband, frustrated by her determined resistance and her inability to acclimate to her new home, is compelled to bring her back to her family in the city, where he pleads with her father to inculcate docility and accept her new life. As seen in the beginning, she escapes her husband and brings her plight to a progressively-minded judge's attention. Sympathetic to her cause, her father and husband are arrested and brought before the court. Her father tells his version of the story, which we see in flashback. Faced with a desperate situation, he marries off Nojoom for a sizable price and for what he sees as his family's salvation. But as he explains to the judge, his fear of Nojoom meeting the same fate as his older daughter; a rape that dishonors his daughter and his family, also weighed heavily in his decision.

Again in flashback, we see Nojoom's enraged father after her older daughter's rape. We also see him sitting before the sheik; the village's highest moral authority, pleading his case for retribution. Though the sheik forces marriage upon his daughter's rapist, we can understand (though not condone) how a Yemeni father might resort to drastic measures to avoid the same fate befalling his daughter.

But Al-Salami's broad perspective allows us to see how other members of the family are victims of diminished means. Nojoom's brother, with whom she shares a strong familial bond, is subject to abject servitude. We see the brother waiting on a wealthy Saudi, whose contempt for his Yemeni servant is hardly disguised.

I think one of the film's great strengths is its wise and perspicacious view of Nojoom's problem, which represents the child brides problem as a whole. Al-Salami shows us the issue's economic dimension, as well as its long-standing practice within tribal culture.
But the film's power also derives from Al-Salami's wondrous images. Yemeni landscapes are hardly a common sight in cinema. Al-Salami frames the rugged beauty of the countryside; the deserty heights and terraced hills in the scorching, Yemeni sunlight, proudly and lovingly. The beautiful landscapes are a welcome relief from the story's brutal truths.

The cast is comprised of both professional and non-professional actors, which results predictably in uneven performances but they are nonetheless moving. Reham Mohammed is poignant as Nojoom; a demanding role for a child actress. Mohammed must capture both Nojoom's innocence and the wrenching exile from her child-like state after she is violated by her husband. She does so with stunning skill and artistry.

It might be easy to overlook the fact that a Yemeni woman wrote and directed the story, which she filmed on location. I can't imagine the Yemeni rural communities would have been entirely sympathetic to her film-making efforts.

Whether Al-Salami's film draws the world's attention to the heinous injustice remains to be seen but it seems the world is slowly becoming aware of the oppressive and degrading treatment women are often subjected to in third world countries (though the western world is far from being a paragon of equality). Al-Salami's film is a compelling, sobering story and a plea for social reform. Though it succeeds in its former endeavor, we can only hope it does so in the latter.