Who is Nujood Ali from the memoir, I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced?

Author, Nujood Ali, was ten-years-old when she learned that she would soon be getting married. Nujood was an active and happy child despite her family's poverty. She loved to run in the rain and collect hailstones and count them. She has just learned to count to one hundred. She also loved to draw pictures with her colored pencils. She had a best friend at school and had dreams about the future. She and her sisters would window shop in the Old City and imagine wearing beautiful gowns, even the lovely white wedding gown that was displayed in the front window.

But, marriage turned out to be a completely different thing for Nujood. She knew that her sisters and mother and other relatives married young; but, she never imagined that she would join the adult world of married people as a child, a ten-year-old child. Her “husband” promised her father that he wouldn’t touch her until she matured. He broke that vow the very first night. She was subjected to a month of terror and nightly beatings and rapes.

Nujood had an independent streak and an inner strength that compelled her to run away and report her father and husband to the authorities. She sought a divorce from the judges at the Sana’a courthouse. After the judges got over their astonishment that the small girl before them was asking for a divorce, they sympathized with her and eventually saw to it that she was granted her freedom.