Najla

Najla A few months back I received a facebook “friend” request from a woman I didn’t know, so, as I usually do, I asked two questions: How did you find me,” and “Why do you want to be friends with an old man halfway across the globe.” The reply I received was that she had seen some of my posts, had followed them and just decided to send the request. The bonus information was that she lived in Dubai. Bingo !!! . I thought..I want to know more about this Her name is Najla and she turned out to be a delightful person with a wonderful sense of humor and an openness that was amazingly candid. Of the many interesting aspects of her life as a Dubai woman was the story of her family. She is the daughter of an Uzbek mother and a Palestinian father. She is the eldest daughter of her mother and father but that’s not the full picture. Under Islamic law, a man may have up to four wives…There are lots of unwritten rules about what is proper and how things are to be done..It isn’t a free for all for men’s pleasure. With that in mind, she is the eldest child of her father with his second wife. He has a first wife and family who live nearby and the families mix and match with grace and a reasonable amount of harmony.

Najla’s father was a Palestinian who left the country on his own personal odyssey winding up with stints in Egypt, Germany, Yemen, Sudan, UAE and Uzbekistan where he met Najla’s mother before returning to the UAE and finally settling down there. Before winding up in the Emirates, and marrying his first wife with whom he has 7 children: 5 boys and 2 girls. Najla’s mother was a widow who lived in Tashkent and had two daughters by her late husband. Both of them are older than Najla who is 21. The last combination, Najla’s mother and father, have three children together, Najla and two younger sons. So, there are a total of 12 children from two different fathers and two different mothers. Najla says that the families do a lot of things together. Her brother’s best friend is his half brother in the other branch of the family tree. They are all brothers and sisters in the truest sense of the words. I asked Najla how the two mothers were with each other and the answer was, “Okay, not great, but okay.” I got the impression that getting along, at least civilly, with each other is more or less a required part of the job.

I asked Najla if she could be a second wife given who she is. She thought before answering but said: “No, because I have confidence in myself that I could be the best wife possible” and that she would have the relationship that she chooses and would be best friends with her husband and there would be no reason for him to want or need to have a second wife. Under Islamic tradition a man usually takes a second wife only if he has permission to rather than just desiring it. In the time when the society allowed men to have an unlimited number of wives, Islam limited the number to four. In the historical context polygamy offered a solution to the society. Polygamy is only allowed if a man can treat all his wives with justice and equality and provides equal living conditions and divides his time equally between his families. This permission, according to Islam, strengthens the status of women and the family because it helped ensuring the welfare of single women and widows in a society where there was shortage of men due to warfare. A man can also take a second wife if his wife is in a bad health condition, cannot bear children, or cannot take care of her own children. Instead of divorcing her, he would take a second wife with whom he can have children and who can assist him in taking care of his children. Sometimes a woman’s health doesn’t allow her to have more than one child while a man would like to have more children, which makes him take a second wife. Becoming a second wife for Najla’s mother was a no brainer…she was a widow with two daughters…basically, she’s toast in Uzbekistan…Nobody there wants to marry a woman who is a widow, has children, or who has been divorced…I’ve had several friends who had to flee Uzb for them to have any chance of a future other than scorn. Although Najla’s mom was used to living as an independent woman who took care of her 2 daughters all by herself with 2 or 3 jobs, Najla’s father’s proposal and his promise to take care of her and her daughters comforted her and allowed her to finally rest and feel like a woman who is being taken care of, and supported by a man who loved and respected her and gave her more children…all in all, a pretty good career move for Najla’s mom.

Najla told us the story and, during the conversation, an understanding of the whole multiple wives deal became a lot clearer and, at the same time, muddied some preset ideas about the concept and its actualization.