Divorce Cakes

Tuesday we had a party for one of our colleagues who was getting married. We had a big party, and all of the married women went out of their way to rib her about married life. I guess this happens elsewhere, but I don't have enough married friends elsewhere to have seen it anywhere else. Plus, it's still mostly assumed that you're a virgin at marriage here, which means that the conversations included bawdy commentary and whatnot. I have always said that marriage is a weird sort of public ceremony; getting up in front of all of my closest friends and relatives and announcing to them, "tonight I will be having sex with this man," always seems just a tad bit ... mortifying. And here is even worse than the West, because you may never have even dated anyone before.

Weird.

But obviously that has nothing to do with divorce, and hopefully it never will. But while I was there I discovered that the latest trendy thing is Divorce Parties! You can now celebrate your divorce and your newly-regained freedom with a specially-made divorce cake!

One of my friends sent me some examples.

It seems like a lot of these have the "kill the cheating, lying bastard" theme, which leads me to believe that divorce parties are perhaps more popular among women. I suppose that makes sense. I can't really see a bunch of guys gathering around a wedding cake to celebrate the dissolution of their marriages. I can't really see a bunch of guys gathering around a wedding cake for any purpose beyond a wedding.

Women, on the other hand, really enjoy throwing parties. I cannot complain; I enjoy parties as much as the next girl. Well, I lie. I'm sure men celebrate the same things women celebrate, but I can't help but feel that there is probably more cake involved in female parties.

Anyway, divorce parties sounds like a good sort of tradition to encourage. Especially given the bitter humor displayed in these cakes. I always like a good bitter humor cake.

One of my friends told me the story of a Lebanese woman and her daughter who converted to Islam, and then her daughter also converted. These stories of conversion are fairly common here. Everybody's got at least one to tell. I don't know whether they're true or whether they're urban legends, but they're interesting. This one involved the mother being in a life-threatening situation and finding herself reciting the Ayat al-Kursi completely by accident. When she converted to Islam, her husband was really upset and their marriage fell apart: they ended up divorced. The daughter lived a life of dissolution and hedonism (as my friend put it to me, "she didn't believe in anything"). One day she fell into a completely random coma in her house. Because of her lifestyle, she hadn't made any close friends and no one came to see her and check if she were okay. After ten days of this she started reciting "Ya Rub" ('O God' in Arabic), and miraculously someone came and found her and she recovered (converting to Islam in the process).

Now for those of you who know anything about traditional Islamic Law, the rule goes that a Muslim man can marry a Christian or Jewish woman, but a Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man. I think this comes from the general idea that the child will inherit the religion of the father.

Anyway, the mention of divorce brings up an interesting hypothetical here. Obviously, once she had converted to Islam, the mother and daughter would be expected to marry a Muslim man. But the mother already was married, and to a Christian. My question is, if they hadn't gotten divorced for other reasons, would she have been legally bound (under Islamic Law) to divorce him now that she was a Muslim but he wasn't? Divorce isn't really considered a great thing in Islam (any more than it is anywhere else) and you're really supposed to use it as a last resort. Should you stand by your husband even if he isn't Muslim, or do you dump him and go looking for a Muslim husband?

Just a thing to think about.