ABSTRACT
Nisreen, who is heavily pregnant, has been sitting quietly in Faisal’s office for over 20 minutes. She’s waiting to begin the second of four scheduled arbitration sessions (tahkim) after her husband, Ziad, recently requested a judicial divorce from the Damascus Shari’a (Muslim personal status, or family) court.1 Faisal and Nasser, the two arbiters appointed by the court to oversee the case, come in and out of the room to check that she’s comfortable. I’ve been chatting with her a bit, but she’s understandably tense. Nisreen is 18, but she is already in her third marriage. Faisal and Nasser saw her during the breakdown of her last marriage, which ended in a mutually agreed divorce (through mukhala‘a). Her first husband repudiated her by talaq before their marriage was consummated. Now she is the defendant in a case that is likely to lead to her being divorced for a third time.
