Marriage and divorce in Mauritania seem to be almost the same. Sometimes, marriage is the only way towards divorce, while the latter is to be the first step for any woman into being desired and requested for extra marriages. In contrast to the customs and traditions of marriage and divorce everywhere, in Mauritania the divorced woman is much more wanted than the never-married one. This fact is a result of the social absurdity and the absence of any social order, since the word 'order,' for the people of desert, represents restrictions and inability to move and decide freely upon everyone's public as well as private life.
Although, marriage and divorce in Mauritania are the most convenient cultural manifestations or practices through which the social masks are to be removed or at least questioned in an attempt to reveal the real face of our society; a face that has been dissimulated, hidden behind some faked masks. I think it is time to reconsider and reshape our social faces, making sure that the image is to be correctly reflected and projected.
The aim of this article is to touch upon the discrepancy between marriage and divorce as cultural or social enterprises on the one hand and to bring up a new understanding of these concepts in the light of different reading of the social dimension of marriage and divorce in a country of exceptions. Mauritania is an exception to the common rules in almost everything. It is an exception in terms of geography, history, and culture; this fact of being an exception that does not necessarily make the rules but very often breaks it down.
Mauritanian society seems to confuse between happiness and sadness, between respect and humiliation, between marriage and divorce. This confusion is extended even to include the everyday life strategies and tactics. The social terminology is reversed and the world is correct only if it is wrong.
In marriage, for instance, the bride does not only get herself wrapped within a black piece of cloth, covering all her body, but she should also to act as if to be upset and annoyed. She is not given any chance to smile or to see what is going on around her, let alone to take a part in the celebration. She is to be imprisoned into the limits of her faked mask of her oblivion.
This sense of oblivion that the woman as well as the man are being indoctrinated and imbued with is an not outcome of certain outdated traditions and customs inherited from dark ages where some ancestors used to play it, it is, above all, a logical sign of the social masks that women and men are wearing to hide their real faces from each other.
Not only women are born with a social mask, married with, and sometimes to die with, men also have got their own masks wearing them whenever it comes to shrinking from their responsibilities and duties towards the in-laws. Men cover their faces to conceal their identities, preferring to live as unknown or unidentified in a world of strangers. How can we dare to build up family ties while we do not even know each other? How to claim that there would be any kind of confidence between a woman who is taught from childhood to pretend as oddly different and a man who does not know what he wants?
Lack of communication is the prevailing atmosphere in which marriage is inevitably turned into divorce and divorce, of course, leads to another experience of being a failure.
What is sarcastic and ironic about understanding or even trying to think out the intricacies between marriage and divorce in a traditional society like ours is that we look at marriage as only temporary project in which a woman is always a guest and the man just a passer-by. In marriage enterprise, there is nothing certain, everything is possible even to use disrespect and humiliation in a disguise of respect and love; concepts and terms are themselves being faked, corrupted, and empty of any meaning.
The social mask of marriage is used also in divorce. Divorce is a curse everywhere and a symptom of failing and loss. In Mauritania, it is a sign of successfulness and marking a new beginning of the divorced woman's life, while it is supposed to be an end.
If the woman pretends to be depressing and upset in marriage in order to conceal her reality and deny her heart the right to beat and flag, in divorce she pretends to be excited and happy within a forged and faked ecstasy.
Being happy with her divorce and celebrating it among her family is an attempt to consolidate herself and announce to potential victims of men who may be interested into embarking upon a new endless adventure. It is time to say that marriage and divorce are just like many Mauritanian cultural practices, social masks are to be manufactured and shaped according to each occasion. Life is different mask to be put on different occasions, this is how to live.
This misunderstanding between men and women in marriage and divorce cast its shadows on many other aspects of life. It is the reason behind the weaknesses and incongruities that the Mauritanian family is suffering from; the pitfalls of building up a coherent family which would be a nuclear entity of a good society are obvious in increasing rates of divorce and the decreasing of marriage.
Another factor which is still affecting the Mauritanian family is the absence of any kind of privacy in marriage or divorce life. It is common to gossip only about others, gossiping has become one of the social characteristics of our community through which the private life becomes mutual public issue.
The most imperative thing we need to do is being aware of the fact that the social masks or traditional customs are not sacred or immune, they are not above criticism; we can change traditions or even replace them by new rules that would be much fitting to our modern life. It is not normal to live in the 21st century according to the mentalities of our fathers or mothers; we cannot use computers while we think the same way as a rider of a camel in the plain desert.
I believe that each generation has the absolute right to make their life in tandem with their aspirations and style; a lifestyle which should not only be limited to clothing, music, and language, but rather to include the politics of marriage and divorce.
In a nutshell, marriage and divorce in Mauritania have become overused social masks that need to be taken off by means of assuming the responsibility to help men and women understand each others and see themselves without social masks, to see the reality. It is needless to say that if we succeed in changing some of the backward mentalities, we will be able to erect and establish a better life, living in the light of modernity instead of the darkness of traditions. Not all traditions are to be violated and refuted, but not all of customs should be praised and taken for grant.
* Elycheikh Ahmedtolba, University Professor, Nouakchott
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This article was genuinely published in Peace Newspaper on Sunday, 7th....
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