Nov 20, 2019

AMMAN — “For God’s sake spare my other eye, so that I can see and serve my children,” Fatima begged her husband after he had already gouged one of her eyes. Fatima's plea fell on deaf ears. Her husband completely blinded her with his bare hands.

Nadine Nimri, human rights correspondent for the daily Al-Ghad, reported on Fatima's horrific experience of domestic violence, which took place in Jerash, 37 miles north of Amman. Nimri recounted some of the details to Al-Monitor, noting that Fatima had tried to protect her face to prevent her husband from pushing his finger into her eye. Fatima at one point pleaded with him that if he loved his daughter, he would leave her a mother with sight in at least one eye.

In the end, the only mercy Fatima received from her husband, who beat her repeatedly over 13 years of marriage, was not to blind her in front of their children — two boys, ages 9 and 11, and a daughter, aged 2 — or to harm them, although he threatened to kill them if she tried to run away or otherwise seek protection. The prosecutor for the Jerash Criminal Court charged Fatima's husband with inflicting permanent disability and detained him pending trial. If convicted on that charge, he could serve up to 15 years in prison. On Nov. 16, the prosecutor included an additional charge of attempted murder.

Two weeks have passed since Fatima's story became news on Nov. 9, but Jordanians’ rage and disgust linger over the brutality of the violence against her and the state's inability or unwillingness to protect women trapped in situations of domestic abuse. The story has served as a wake-up call to the inadequacy of the mechanisms for reporting domestic violence in Jordan, and it prompted women as well as men to take to the streets on Nov. 16 to express their anger at laws that allow men to get away with brutalizing women.

As part of the protest, women staged a sit-in near the Prime Ministry in downtown Amman, adopting the slogan and hashtag Enough and denouncing the institutional framework and the mentality that encourages violence and discrimination against women. The demonstrators chanted, “We are here for Fatima’s eyes!”