Ayoon Wa Azan (Beyond verbal abuse)

Violence against Arab women has led to the coining of the term al-mu’anafat, to describe those women subjected to violence. This term must have no doubt been invented by a man. To be sure, the term is not derived from the Arabic word for violence, al-‘unf, but rather the word ta’nif, which means chiding and censuring, that is, verbal abuse. This falls short of doing the meaning justice because what is happening is physical violence, and even murder, which goes way beyond verbal abuse. If men wanted to be fair, the term to describe those women suffering such violations of their rights should have been something like: the battered, the oppressed, or the wronged. There is no consolation for Arab women in being a second-class citizen and a life partner who has lesser rights, so all I say is that violence is a global phenomenon and not just an Arab one. Recently, a scandal erupted in Britain after newspapers published pictures of billionaire Charles Saatchi at a restaurant apparently grabbing his wife Nigella Lawson by the neck in anger. Saatchi hails from a family of Iraqi Jews, whose original name Saachi means watchmaker in Arabic. The family immigrated to Britain and Charles founded, with his brother Maurice, Saatchi and Saatchi, once the largest advertising agency in the world. For her part, Nigella is a renowned celebrity chef in Britain. Her father is a British Jew who was once the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and now holds the title of Lord for life. What Charles and Nigella have in common is high education, cultivation, and the highest degrees of success. And yet, this did not prevent violence in their private life together, as it seems that violence against women is not restricted to one particular people, ethnicity, or religion. In previous months, I was gathering material for an article focusing on the flip side, namely, violence against husbands. Indeed, I read back in April a report in The Independent titled, “As a man, it's very difficult to say I've been beaten up.” I searched and found other similar stories. Last month, there was another report titled, “It's the side of domestic abuse you rarely hear about. But here, one wife shockingly admits... I was a husband beater.” I even found a study that said that “Central Kenya ‘top husband-beaters’.” The material on violence by women against men was extensive, and came from all four corners of the world. But I was still not convinced, and put it aside, and only returned to it with the controversy over the picture of Charles Saatchi grabbing his wife’s neck at a restaurant. I was surprised to read in the articles published on the incident that the husband, an antiques collector, released a book last year titled, “Be the Worst You Can Be: Life's Too Long for Patience and Virtue.” I did not hear about that book at the time, although my office usually follows up new books both in Arabic and English. On the sidelines of the scandal, I read that Saatchi, in his book, advised his readers not to put others ahead of themselves, and not to care for people’s feelings, calling on them instead to ignore these negative values that lead to the erosion of the soul. Most likely, what he meant was how to deal with others in the world of business and finance, on the basis of his experience at Saatchi and Saatchi. However, he seems to have gone beyond all that in his private life, and assaulted his wife instead of a competitor in the advertisement market, for example. Nigella has now left the marital home for a 10-thousand-pound-a-week rented flat. She said that she still loves her husband and does not want divorce, but wants her husband to undergo therapy to control his anger. Once again, violence against women is a global phenomenon, and is not limited to ‘brave’ Arab men. In England, a report by the Home Office this year said that 1.2 million women were subjected to domestic violence last year, and the number of course does not include those women who did not report the abuse. The report mentioned that two women are killed each week by a husband or a partner. The figures are dismal everywhere, but must be worse in our countries, where men failed the test of civilization, and all that they have left to do is “reign over” their wives. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.