Frontline

July 2000
Special Report


Arabian brides

Married, honeymooned and cast away – hundreds of poor Muslim women in Kerala’s Malabar coast are cursing their destiny, having been brides, all too briefly, of Arab nationals

MP BASHEER

Her face proclaims her predicament. At the age of 34, Ayesha is a veteran of four marriages. None of them, except one, lasted beyond 60 days. She even fails to recollect the name of her second husband, but has to care for two children fathered by two. Neither child has any experience of their father.

Ayesha, who ekes out a living working as a housemaid in an upper middle class family at Kuttichira in Kozhikode, Kerala, is not alone in her sad tale. She rather represents nearly 600 poor Muslim women who were married to citizens of Arabian countries, who came to Malabar coast on merchant ships or pleasure trips. These women mostly inhabit the coastal settlements of Mughadar, Kampuram, Kappakkal and Pallikandi in Kozhikode and parts of Ponnani and Thirur in Malappuram. Where slums dot beaches, the menfolk are usually fishermen or timber workers and the women work as housemaids in city homes.

Life is a daily struggle; water and electricity are scarce. Sewers are exposed; children defecate in the open. But more insidious than the rigours of poverty is the status of women. Here religion is often misused and deployed as a "legitimate" means of female exploitation. Arabi Kalyanams, as the marriages between local girls and Arab nationals are locally known, is more the tragic as it combines the loose laws and poverty.

Ayesha was first married off when she was 14. The man was a saw mill worker who was 25 years senior to her. He had already married twice. He had a daughter of Ayesha’s age. In the four years that the marriage lasted, her husband was very jealous and would not allow his young wife to talk to another man. One day, one of her classmates from the madrassa greeted her in the streets of Kozhikode. He simply divorced her the same day and within 15 days married another woman, probably a younger one.

By the time Ayesha had given birth to a girl child. She and her child had to lead a miserable life along with their poor family in a squalid quarter of the town. For almost four years.

Here begins the Arabian saga. She remembers that she was 21 and her child, five, when she was again married, this time to a Qatar national (whose name she has forgotten), who came on a trade ship at Beypore port, 12 km south of Kozhikode. "One day my maternal uncle came to our house with a 55–plus Arab man. Uncle told us the man had agreed to marry me and he would also give me money to get my child admitted to school and madrassa". She remembers it was a rainy day, perhaps early June when schools reopen in Kerala. "It was high time for my child to be sent to school. So, I agreed".

The same day Syed Shihabuddin Imbichi Koya Thangal, then Valiya Khasi, the chief priest of Kozhikode solemnised the nikaah at his chamber, half a mile away from her house, which was too small to accommodate a "foreign bridegroom". Her husband took her to a local hotel where he way staying. They lived there for 40 days. On the day his ship embarked, he left her with a promise to visit her every six months. "I waited for him for two years. All in vain. The only benefit from that marriage was that my girl got some good clothes and her school books," says Ayesha with no emotion.

The marriage came to an end when her uncle brought another Arab, a relatively young and wealthy man from Saudi Arabia, who was on a pleasure trip to Malabar. She says she enjoyed the two months of life with him. They toured many places in north Kerala, and dined at good restaurants. She also got good clothes and a purse of Rs. 20,000. When he parted with her, he too, promised to come back and take her to Saudi Arabia. She still believes he was sincere. But after a few months, her father got a letter from the Saudi Arabian Family Welfare Department nullifying the marriage on a complaint by his Arabian first wife.

By that time Ayesha was four months into pregnancy. She named her son Rafeeq Abdulla after his father Ahmed Abdulla. "As a little child my son used to ask about his father," says she. The 10–year–old Rafeeq is now studying in the 5th standard in Kuttichira High School.

She was married for the fourth time in 1991 when she was 25. Nothing was unusual. A marriage broker brought the proposal from a UAE national who was on the crew of a ship that anchored at Beypore for 15 days. However he stayed with her for three months to leave when the ship came on next sail. He was also kind enough to pronounce the talaaq before he left and give her Rs.5,000, which she used to buy a golden chain for her girl "who has already attained marriageable age". Ayesha is determined not to marry her child to any Arab or a Gulf returnee. Last year she almost gheraoed the local priest who had came with a proposal from a Gulf returnee to take young Hafsa as his second wife.

A glimpse at Ayesha’s life reveals the chaotic nature of the marital life of a number of working class women in the poverty–ridden coastal areas of Kozhikode and Malappuram districts in Malabar religion. Those who marry four or five times may be exceptions. But these areas are home to nearly 600 Muslim women who were married off at a young age, mostly against their will, to citizens of Arabian countries.

Ayesha is fortunate that she has only two children to care for. Many other women bear the responsibility of raising many children fathered by many men. Fathima, 49, of Ambalakkandi in Kozhikode is a typical case as she has five children — two by a local merchant who married her first, and the remaining three by a Saudi national who visited her every year till his death. Two marriages and five deliveries later, she is earning a living as a housemaid. According to rough estimates, there are more than 900 forgotten children, whose fathers came from across the sea.

The community leadership of Malabar Muslims controlled by the affluent half or the male–dominated clergy is least bothered about these poor women and their unfortunate children. Syed Muhasin Shihabudeen Thangal, the new incumbent as the Kozhikode Valiya Khasi, says that it is the duty of the girls’ parents to take the responsibility. "They have to probe the eligibility of the bridegrooms. Our duty is just solemnising the nikaah," says he. More than 200 such nikaahs between Arabs and local girls have taken place in last forty years, at the valley khasi’s chamber, the most reputed cleric harem in Kozhikode.

Renowned writer NP Mohammed attributes the one–time rampant system of Arabi Kalyanams to acute poverty and callous leadership of the community. "Wealthy Arabs often married beautiful young women from aristocratic families and took the brides back home. Those who married the women from lower strata of the community are mostly labourers of Arabian ships that anchor at Beypore port. The logical end of such marriages comes when the ships leave the port.

Many blame the sad fate of these women on the young age at which the girls are forced to marry. Had they not been married at the age of 14 or 15 and had they been allowed to acquire an education, they would have been able to decide what is good for them. Sadly, the education scenario in the Muslim heartland of Malappuram the neighbouring regions is still pathetic. Ayesha’s daughter Hafsa stopped schooling after the 7th class four years back.

With the decline of the trade at Beypore port and consistent protest from the progressive section (though their voice is feeble) among Muslims, the system of Arabi Kalyanams has almost come to an end. Instead of Arabs, local Gulf returnees are now coming to these shores for a second marriage. Ms VP Suhara, the firebrand president of Nisasah, — a progressive Muslim women’s forum — says that a new form of Arabic marriages for a pre–fixed period is now flourishing in the Kozhikode slums, the bridegrooms being Gulf returnees.

Suhara also demands immediate rehabilitation of these poor women and their children who are living without their father. Many of the girls among them are waiting to get married. Is the fate of their mothers on the cards for them, too?

(This feature forms part of the National Media Fellowship–2000, awarded by National Foundation for India (NFI) New Delhi).

 

 


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