Family laws in
Lebanon are still under the jurisdiction of religious courts, regardless of
the religion in question. In the case of divorce, the mother usually keeps
physical custody of her children until the age of seven for boys and nine
for girls. These short-sighted and archaic laws cause tremendous suffering
and grief for divorced women and their children. Legal Violence
is a piece constructed with the following text: “On my son’s seventh
birthday he came and took him; he took him and put him in a boarding school.”
The words came from an interview conducted by Nada Sehnaoui with a woman who
was married and later divorced through the Lebanese Protestant Church.
