Nodira knew that life would be difficult when her husband left their home in Tajikistan for a job packing trucks in distant Russia, but they had two children and needed the money to survive.
What she never imagined was that their marriage would end, not with a bang or even a whimper, but with the tinny beep of a message on the inbox of her mobile phone.
“Talaq, talaq, talaq” — three short Arabic words flashed across the tiny screen and 29-year-old Nodira was divorced.
PHOTO: AFP
“I was shocked after reading that SMS. I instantly thought it was a mistake or someone’s evil joke. I had bad thoughts in my mind, I wanted to hang or drown myself, or drink vinegar from such shame,” she said.
Stuck working abroad for years at a stretch to escape Tajikistan’s crushing poverty, some men have begun divorcing their wives using short mobile text messages (SMS), sowing confusion, heartbreak and destitution back home.
“What did I do wrong?” Nodira asked. “This question is still torturing me. I was looking after my husband’s parents, was cleaning the yard, washing, cooking for a big family. Everything was on me all these years.”
Tajikistan, a deeply conservative majority-Sunni Muslim country whose rugged mountain peaks form the soaring borders of Afghanistan and western China, has the dubious distinction of being Central Asia’s poorest state.
Following a brutal civil war that killed tens of thousands and decimated the economy in the 1990s, Tajikistan suffered an exodus of its labor force to more prosperous regional powers such as Russia, China and Kazakhstan.
The outflow of migrants and their exposure to new technologies gave Tajik men new and inventive ways to dissolve their marriages, said Dorsultan Shonazirova, a lawyer specializing in women’s rights issues.
“This whole problem with divorces appeared with the beginning of labor migration in Tajikistan in the beginning of the 1990s,” she said.
Under mainstream interpretations of Sunni religious law, a man needs only to pronounce the word “talaq” (divorce) three times to divorce his wife, several Islamic scholars in the region said.
But experts say that he must do so in the presence of his wife, which means that any divorce done by SMS or e-mail should not be viewed as valid.
“Divorce of a wife by her husband via SMS is not acceptable and contradicts Islamic law,” said Kobildzhon Boyev, head of the department that studies fatwas, or religious decrees, at Tajikistan’s Islamic Center in Dushanbe. Still, he admitted that the center had been “seeing more such cases throughout the country.”
It is unclear how many women have been divorced by SMS — although some suspect they already number in the thousands — because most affected women hide the news out of a deep sense of shame, Shonazirova said.
Many women have few legal options because they lack proper documentation of their marriages, usually because they were isolated from the central government during the years of lawlessness following the Soviet collapse.
“Not all the girls had official registration of their marriages, but in the event of divorce, the law should protect their rights to obtain alimony for their children and to split their household in half,” Shonazirova said. “Our Muslim clergy and men’s parents have to call for the respect of Muslim traditions, so that these text message and phone divorces are not recognized.”
But in an isolated and impoverished country still struggling to rediscover its religious traditions after decades of Soviet-enforced atheism, getting out the clergy’s message of disapproval can be difficult.
Khalima Shamsova, 24, was separated from her husband for the better part of five years, during which time she said she suffered endless abuse from his family, whom she had been living with and taking care of.
Angry that she knew how to read — which they took as a sign of immodesty — her husband’s family convinced him to divorce her via SMS, leaving her to care for their nine-month-old daughter on her own.
“It was scary in the beginning that I had to raise my kid without their father. God is merciful, I have my hands and feet and I’ll go to work as a yard-keeper, if it’s possible,” Shamsova said. “I won’t allow my daughter’s early marriage. I won’t let her go through what I did. I’ll let her get an education and find a profession.”
RETHINK? The defense ministry and Navy Command Headquarters could take over the indigenous submarine project and change its production timeline, a source said Admiral Huang Shu-kuang’s (黃曙光) resignation as head of the Indigenous Submarine Program and as a member of the National Security Council could affect the production of submarines, a source said yesterday. Huang in a statement last night said he had decided to resign due to national security concerns while expressing the hope that it would put a stop to political wrangling that only undermines the advancement of the nation’s defense capabilities. Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) yesterday said that the admiral, her older brother, felt it was time for him to step down and that he had completed what he
Taiwan has experienced its most significant improvement in the QS World University Rankings by Subject, data provided on Sunday by international higher education analyst Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) showed. Compared with last year’s edition of the rankings, which measure academic excellence and influence, Taiwanese universities made great improvements in the H Index metric, which evaluates research productivity and its impact, with a notable 30 percent increase overall, QS said. Taiwanese universities also made notable progress in the Citations per Paper metric, which measures the impact of research, achieving a 13 percent increase. Taiwanese universities gained 10 percent in Academic Reputation, but declined 18 percent
BULLY TACTICS: Beijing has continued its incursions into Taiwan’s airspace even as Xi Jinping talked about Taiwan being part of the Chinese family and nation China should stop its coercion of Taiwan and respect mainstream public opinion in Taiwan about sovereignty if its expression of goodwill is genuine, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. Ministry spokesman Jeff Liu (劉永健) made the comment in response to media queries about a meeting between former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) the previous day. Ma voiced support for the so-called “1992 consensus,” while Xi said that although the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have “different systems,” this does not change the fact that they are “part of the same country,” and that “external
UNDER DISCUSSION: The combatant command would integrate fast attack boat and anti-ship missile groups to defend waters closest to the coastline, a source said The military could establish a new combatant command as early as 2026, which would be tasked with defending Taiwan’s territorial waters 24 nautical miles (44.4km) from the nation’s coastline, a source familiar with the matter said yesterday. The new command, which would fall under the Naval Command Headquarters, would be led by a vice admiral and integrate existing fast attack boat and anti-ship missile groups, along with the Naval Maritime Surveillance and Reconnaissance Command, said the source, who asked to remain anonymous. It could be launched by 2026, but details are being discussed and no final timetable has been announced, the source