Marrying the floorwasher girl

[xiinfaniin]

July 24, 2009

Pelican Park Journal

In a Complex Family, Death Adds to the Indignity

By BARRY BEARAK

 

 

PELICAN PARK, South Africa — When Fatima Hassam returned to South Africa after a visit to Mecca, her husband, Ebrahim, met her at the airport and said he had something important to announce. To further prepare her, he added cryptically, “It’s not such a nice thing.”

 

Finally, he spit out the news, she recalled: He had taken an additional wife, Maggie, the young woman who had been their maid. An imam had performed the ceremony. Maggie, a Christian, was now a Muslim.

 

Islamic law is often interpreted to allow a man more than one wife, and by then Ebrahim’s involvement with Maggie was hardly a surprise. She already had given birth to two of his children and was pregnant with a third. But a lover’s status is lower than a wife’s, and Ebrahim had promised never to marry this other bedmate half his age, a person Fatima considered “a very ****** girl who washed our floors and cleaned our toilets.”

 

More indignity followed. Within a year, in 2001, Ebrahim died of a heart attack at age 59. He left no will. And when a court-appointed executor sorted through the modest estate, he began meting out cash to Maggie, whose children were young, giving none to Fatima, whose four children were grown. In fact, the older wife was ordered to leave the house she and her husband had built.

 

This expulsion was simply too much. “My husband and I owned two stores, and I worked in them Sunday to Sunday, 7 in the morning until 11 at night,” she said. “I gave my life to this man for 36 years. He took my youth away, and I became an old lady. Why should I be the one left without a roof?”

 

She refused to move, instead filing a lawsuit that on July 15 resulted in a landmark decision by the nation’s Constitutional Court. South Africa legally recognizes polygamous marriages in line with indigenous African customs; that is how President Jacob Zuma is permitted his three wives. But Muslim unions are not similarly acknowledged by the state. While the Hassam decision did not change that, it did ensure that when a husband dies without a will in a polygamous Muslim marriage, each of his wives is guaranteed legal rights of inheritance.

 

About 835,000 Muslims live in South Africa, making up about 2 percent of the population. Pelican Park, the Cape Town suburb where Fatima, 62, lives, is one of their enclaves. Publicity surrounding her case has made her well known here, a hero to some, an embarrassment to others.

 

Polygamy, however commonly practiced, is a touchy subject.

 

“These men running around with younger women, it’s like a sickness,” said Saliema Chafekar, who runs a small grocery. “You hear it all the time.” She reflected further, “If my husband does it, I’ll slit his throat.”

 

M. S. Rawoot, an officer in a local mosque, said that whatever the rules of inheritance, the male prerogative to take additional spouses was important to preserve. “A shopkeeper takes his assistant as a second wife, a doctor marries his receptionist,” he said. “It’s done very quietly. The important thing is not to create a scandal.”

 

The South African press has portrayed Fatima as a wronged but resolute widow. Maggie, if mentioned at all, is referred to as Mariam, the Muslim name used in court papers. The younger woman’s story is unexplored, leaving the implication she used Ebrahim as a sugar daddy.

 

But life, even at its simplest, is stubbornly complicated.

 

“I’m always made out to be the evil one,” complained Maggie Hassam, now 35. “But I only have God to answer to, and God is on my side.”

 

A young woman of mixed race, she was 16 when the Hassams, an Indian couple, found her in the nearby city of Worcester. They spoke her language, Afrikaans, and needed someone to work in their house and stores. She needed a job, any job. The pay was about $7 a month plus room and board.

 

Fatima was always rude to her, Maggie said. Ebrahim was nicer. “I was young and it was wrong, but he told me he got no love from her and his marriage was unhappy,” she said. “I was scared but he kept on asking. In the end, I got used to him and got to like him.”

 

Fatima, by contrast, does not see Maggie as a victim. “She blamed my husband, and I told her, it was you, too,” she said. “ ‘When he started kissing you and touching your bum, you should have come and told me, and I would have put a stop to it.’ ”

 

Ebrahim was a frequent philanderer, Fatima said. Indeed, his wanderings included an affair with her. When she began seeing Ebrahim, he already was wed to a woman named Washila. For a time, the two wives shared him before Washila found another man and was granted a divorce.

 

One of Ebrahim and Fatima’s four daughters, Mehruneesa Hassan, said, “My father was a great father, even if he wasn’t such a good husband.” Assessing her parent’s marriage, she said: “They fought a lot, over anything and everything. My mom can be very difficult. She screamed at him.”

 

Given the circumstances, there may have been much to scream about. “I was better off when I worked in the shop all day and only saw him in bed where it was dark,” Fatima said. “I didn’t have to look at his face.”

 

Divorce would have meant sullying the family name, she said. Nevertheless, in June 1998, Fatima went to the area’s Muslim Judicial Council and obtained a faskh, or annulment, ending the marriage. The couple then reconciled during iddah, a three-month waiting period, Fatima said. They continued to live together.

 

Johan Jacobs, the executor of Ebrahim’s estate, said he was never sure if the marriage still existed. “It’s all very confusing, isn’t it?”

 

Landmark decisions are not necessarily reached with airtight facts. For her part, Maggie said she never understood the litigation and thought it all settled in 2004. She and her three children — ages 15, 12 and 8 — live in Worcester, paying $30 a month for an apartment in a shabby and dangerous red-brick housing project. She does menial work at a day care center.

 

“All those years Fatima whined about her house and property,” Maggie said. “Now I suppose she got what she wanted.”

 

Actually, Fatima’s two-bedroom house is the chief remaining asset in the estate, and it will probably be sold, with the proceeds then divided.

 

“Who needs it anyway?” the older widow said. “The roof is leaking, the geyser is broken.”

 

Her bigger problem is with the past. “How could my husband — a proper, proper Indian man — fall into a trap with such a girl? What was he thinking?”

 

Joao Silva contributed reporting.

[Faarax-Brawn]

When Fatima Hassam returned to South Africa after a visit to Mecca, her husband, Ebrahim, met her at the airport and said he had something important to announce. To further prepare her, he added cryptically, “It’s not such a nice thing.”

Aha!, i see this farax played the old skool trick of "send the bah weyn to a far away flung place before you marry a bah yar". Rageedi.

 

What brings Xiin to this story,summer time,minyaro hunting season haye?

[Warrior of Light]

Oh boy... Im speechless.

[Indhoos]

Is this one of those where one can say, What goes around comes around...I mean she married him while he was married to another and now is surprised that he married another woman...This kind of thing happens alot....Woman who go like..naagtii baan ka qaaday ama wuu ifuray...will later be surprised when they are replaced by another.

[chubacka]

Originally posted by xiinfaniin:

July 24, 2009

Pelican Park Journal

In a Complex Family, Death Adds to the Indignity

By BARRY BEARAK

 

“You hear it all the time.” She reflected further, “If my husband does it, I’ll slit his throat.”

 

If every man was told the grave consequences of such an action then i think there might be a bit less polygamy around.