Then last night, while tidying up my library, I found this book, which I can't recall reading. I must have bought it [or stolen it. Ed.] and put it away for future reference. So I'm referring to it now. [Geddit? Ed.]
Sold, by Zana Muhsen (with ghostie Andrew Crofts) is "one woman's true account of modern slavery". (That's what it says on the cover.) It was published by Warner Books in 1991.
According to the summary on the back cover, the author -- 15 years old at the time -- and her still younger sister, Nadia, born in Birmingham, England, were asked by their folks if they'd like to go on a holiday to visit relatives in northern Yemen. To the innocent girls, it sounded like the trip of a lifetime.
Those who know a bit about Islam and the countries of the Arabian peninsula will not be surprised to learn that the girls' father had sold them into marriage! Once they arrived in the sandpit, they were held virtual prisoners in primitive stone houses, with shit-plastered walls and no running water. They were subjected to beatings, rape and "the terrifying ordeal of childbirth on bare mud floors with only old women in attendance".
This went on for eight years, and the book is the story of how they escaped what is, sadly, "normal life" for young women in countries bound by the feudal barbarism of Sharia law. Is it still like this for Muslim women, a quarter of a century later? Answers on the back of a postage stamp, please, to the usual address.
See also: "Hijab, niqab, burqa -- what's the difference?"
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