My Nine-Year-Old Heroine

Watching the news the past few days, it would be easy to believe that Obama's victory is the only important story right now, and that it is the biggest gain for the civil rights movement since Martin Luther King Jr. and racially-indifferent suffrage.

But there's another story that trumps it, and it takes place in a land almost on the other side of the world, a land where you'd never see women running for president and vice president, or even running down the street alone outside their house.

This story's heroine has no staff, no volunteers, no chanting crowds, no international pedigree, no experience, no speeches at the crossroads of destiny, and she has no Ivy League degrees, though she might someday. It's hard to tell; she's only nine years old. Her name is Arwa, named for a Queen of her country, Yemen, who reigned almost a millennium ago.

Women in Arwa's country have made quite a bit of negative progress over the last 900 years. Human Rights Watch has reported on the often violent discrimination against and mistreatment of women in the country, including the elimination of the minimum age to marry. Previously set at fifteen, a subjective standard of puberty is now the soonest a father can lawfully force his daughter into marriage with any man. This anachronistic injustice was inflicted upon Arwa, at the age of nine.

For $150 (US) and the promise of around 2,000 more later, Arwa's father, struggling to make ends meet and support a family, agreed to marry off his youngest daughter to a forty-something man who first passed on Arwa's fifteen-year-old sister.

For seven months, Arwa was a wife and a slave, routinely beaten for rebuffing her "husband's" advances. Her father tried to stand up for her, but it was she who went from neighbor to neighbor asking for a small loan (she had no share of the marriage's resources). She sought the money so that she might travel, not to run away, but to make a stand. Inspired by the story of another girl, a year her senior, she did not go and hide, but she went to court, and sued for her freedom.

And she won. In a country which treats women as property, which practices censorship by intimidation and violence, which is intolerant of any race, religion or viewpoint other than the state's, Arwa's compelling tale and young age persuaded a judge to grant her freedom.

Yemen may be approaching a tipping point. A judge took compassion, and, through the creation of such common law, has set an inspiring precedent that most Americans safely take for granted. But in Yemen, it's dramatic progress. A line in the sand, one that says even men can go too far when dealing with women, or at the very least, girls. A line a judge can say should not be crossed. This is how it starts. I'd implore the Yemeni people to not waste this opportunity, to take steps to safeguard a full half of their population, to gain the respect of the world and the strength and prosperity that comes with investing in human capital and allowing men and women to contribute to society to the best of their abilities (I would implore such things, though I doubt I have many Yemeni readers). Still, I think this story should resonate with Americans, who can appreciate what they have a little more, who can appreciate what Barack Obama's victory means not just to us but to the world, who can appreciate the context of civil rights and the desperate and desperately important struggle for equality. And I think our lawsuit-happy culture can appreciate our heroine's methods; a nine-year-old girl had her day in court, and kicked ass.

Now, proud to be a nine-year-old divorcee, Arwa can go back to being a little girl, as she and her country help each other grow up.