Picture the scene: you’re at the wedding you’ve waited for your whole life. You’ve picked out the most beautiful dress. In front of hundreds of guests, your groom lifts the veil after the wedding ceremony, gazes into your eyes and breathlessly whispers: “You are not the girl I want to marry. You are not the one I had imagined.”
This was a story widely reported in the western media earlier this week about a Saudi groom and his response to the bride the first time he saw her at their wedding. Facts are thin on the ground: there are no names, no event details, nothing apart from a report in the Saudi outlet Okaz and a location citing Medina. The sad story ends with the groom pronouncing a divorce.
Whether the story is true or not, the heartache we feel for the bride should serve as a modern morality tale for any woman who needs a wake-up call to understand that in life, you have to grasp what you want.
Of course, life will always throw curveballs. But we are no longer the hapless victims of circumstance; passively waiting for princes to wake us from slumber with a kiss, or rescue us with sparkling glass shoes.
In this scenario of the horror wedding, the groom had waived the opportunity to meet the bride beforehand. But the bride could have requested a meeting. There are always taboos: it’s never been done before, “people will talk”, she’ll be considered “forward” or even “shameless”. But there is nothing shameful about a woman making informed logical choices to determine her life. Meeting a prospective husband is definitely one of her rights.
Further, they should both insist on “marriage lessons” for themselves as well as their husbands to be, so both are clearly aware of their mutual rights and responsibilities.
From a young age, girls are indoctrinated about their burden to make marriage a success, how as single women they cannot be fulfilled and are a kind of failure, and how if a marriage doesn’t work out, it’s because she should have tried harder. Without the same training, attitude and focus on men to take serious responsibility for the success of a marriage, and the right skills to do so, no wonder marriage can be such a challenging affair.
Women should speak more loudly about the imbalance in maintaining marital relationships. If they are not doing it themselves, women need to ensure scholars place more emphasis on men’s roles and responsibilities.
Women can do a huge amount to change social attitudes and support other women. In the case of our bride, women should be singing loudly in her support that the groom’s act was no reflection on her, but a humiliation for him.
Until the groom shows remorse, women – particularly the women of his family and social circle – should be clear in condemning such immature, mannerless and superficial behaviour.
Women can do all of this – but it requires challenging social convention, it requires unflinching belief in the value of women. And it means taking a risk that in the immediate short term there might be talk about them. But in the end, people will bore of the gossip and accept you are right.
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and blogs at www. spirit21.co.uk