While some people blame second wives for opportunism, others blame the negligence of the first. Riham Adel investigates the controversial subject of polygamy "You never really know someone until you have lived with them," says an old proverb, and experience seems to have proven it right. Deciding to get married is one of the biggest decisions that most people will ever take, bearing in mind that making a commitment to share one's life with someone one may not fully know could cost whole lives. It has become more and more common today to hear of even apparently the most stable couples ceasing to get along and either coping, or not coping, with inner separation. Some men are thinking about marrying a second time and having a second wife on the grounds that Islam allows polygamy. (Due to the sensitivity of the topic, the names mentioned in this article have been changed). Ahmed, a 47-year-old engineer, has two wives and feels fully satisfied with it. "Boredom is the ghost that threatens married life in my opinion," he says, "and it was the reason I decided to get a second wife." Ahmed says that he still loves and respects his first wife, and he emphasises that he treats his two wives equitably. "I have never regreted my decision," he says. "Since I married my second wife, my first has also changed a lot. She has become a lot more caring, for example." Ahmed's second wife was against polygamy before she met him, but, being a single mother, she suffered from loneliness, and she felt targeted by men around her. As a result, she re-evaluated her beliefs. "Society criticises second wives, treating us as if we were thieves. Even I used to think like that, and this was my issue with Ahmed before I agreed to marry him," says Mona, 32, who is Ahmed's second wife and works as a PR manager in a private company. On the other hand, Mona agrees that being Ahmed's second wife has allowed her to spend more time with her children. Why should she waste her youth and deprive herself of having a normal life as a woman, she asks. "When I got acquainted with Ahmed, I realised how perky he was. He has not given up looking for happiness. His cheerful strain and his frankness attracted me when I was a lonely widow raising two children. I felt I needed such a man in my life," Mona says. Three years after the marriage, Ahmed has coloured her life like a summer sky, she says. "Simply put, if a man can guarantee that he will treat his two wives justly, a woman can confidently accept being a second wife." According to statistics published by the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, almost 614,848 marriage contracts were registered in 2007. Of these, some 14,514 were for second wives, with 541 reportedly being for third wives and 12 for fourth. Though polygamy represented only some 2.5 per cent of marriages in 2007, there has been a remarkable increase in polygamy over the last two years. However, not all second wives feel as happy about their situation as Mona. "I feel discriminated against as a second wife," states 36-year-old pharmacist Soha, complaining that her husband does not realise that he treats his two wives differently. "I was an independent woman before I met my husband, and I lived for almost seven years depending on myself and devoted to my son and my work," Soha says. However, eventually she grew tired of having to bear such responsibilities alone, and she felt that as a woman she needed to get married. Yet, Mohsen, her husband, does not treat her the way he treats his first wife. "My big issue with him is that he wants me to stay as I used to be, in other words completely independent, whereas his first wife relies on him for every single detail in life." For his part, her husband, a businessman, says that he has never been able to think of his first wife as truly his partner in marriage, since she gave most of her attention to her daughter. For this reason, he wanted a second wife who would be more of a true partner to him. "I have tried to cope with his needs, but I still feel exhausted. However, I am not prepared to ruin our life together, though I don't want to give up my rights. I am not willing to let this drive a wedge between us," Soha says. According to Emad Effat, secretary- general of the Fatwa Committee at Dar Al-Iftaa, polygamy is conditional in Islam: if a man cannot treat his wives fairly, he should not have more than one wife. "A man should commit himself to observing equality between his wives," Effat says, adding that this is the case even when a man may love one wife more than the other. The Prophet Mohamed loved Aisha more than his other wives, but he prayed that he should not be judged on what was outside his control. According to Effat, this illustrates the idea that justice is not a matter of feelings but is a matter of material treatment, which a man can control. Justice means being able to have more than one life with more than one wife, and it means treating wives equally by dividing possessions equally between them. It also means not discriminating against children according to the feelings a man may have for their respective mothers. Effat adds that Islam always considers the interests and needs of humanity, while bearing realistic factors and circumstances in mind. "The parliament in The Netherlands is now thinking about passing a law to allow polygamy, having admitted that it can solve complicated social issues. Marriage is not only about having children or achieving stability. It's also about satisfying social and psychological needs," he says. For Nora, a 34-year-old house-wife and second wife, jealousy may be destroying her marriage to her husband Karim. She agreed to become a second wife due to her preconceptions about her husband's other life, and her husband's family had told her that he was having problems with his first wife and that these would lead to a separation. "Unfortunately, his first wife's character then changed, and she became a sympathetic person after I married Karim," Nora says. She now appears to regret her decision, though she still stresses the deep harmony between her and her husband. Jealousy, Nora says, is a blemish of her personality, and she feels she should not have consented to be a second wife in the first place. "My situation is not amenable to ordinary judgement, since we were engaged even before I got married to my first husband. It was only family barriers that kept us apart," she adds. For his part, Karim, a 38-year-old physician, says that he has never been happy with his first wife. "My children were my only reason to carry on living together," he says, and he is honest when he says that when he met his first love Nora again by accident he felt a renewed passion for her. He insisted that she should not disappear from his life again, as he saw her as his best chance of finding happiness. "I do my best not to discriminate between my wives financially," Karim says, "and even my time is divided equally between them. However, I have to admit that my second wife has my heart and my feelings. Honestly, having two wives is not an easy job. In fact, it is an unbelievable burden." Psychiatrist Ayman Ammar confirms that men seem to take pleasure in having affairs with different women, and the more religious among them satisfy this through polygamy. "Many Egyptian women are unable to compromise between their husbands and their children," Ammar says. "Most probably, for them motherhood is the main aim of marriage, and this gives a man a strong excuse to look for another woman." Ammar adds that many men visiting his clinic are looking for a second wife. "Their fear of losing their first wives and children is the only reason that prevents them from marrying a second time," he says. High expectations before marriage can also lead to depression, Ammar says. "We should admit that our culture is not realistic. Every relationship has its normal development. We should work on ourselves first before looking for other solutions," Ammar emphasises. Some women regret that they've missed their youth after spending years as second wives. "At the end of the day, I sleep on my own, because my husband's first loyalty is to his first wife and first home," says Fatima, 60, who has been a second wife for almost 20 years, which she now regrets. "I haven't seen my husband for six months, and getting older has made his commitment to his first wife more pronounced," she says. House-wife Fatima has no one else to turn to apart from her husband. If she had, she would have asked for a divorce long ago. "What scares me most is that he might find out that I had died, and then it would be too late," she reflects sadly. If social and financial circumstances may drive some women to be second wives, others prefer to be the second wife. Reem, 27, says that she "was looking for a married man because I basically wanted a part-time marriage. I have a demanding job that I don't want to give up." Reem's husband, for his part, is happy with this arrangement as it gives him the opportunity to spend time with her while at the same time allowing him to be with his first wife and children long enough. For Nehad Abul-Qomsan, head of the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights, the rising numbers of second marriages are due to the spread of superficial religious beliefs. "Second marriages have become an idea to cover the existence of a mistress," Abul- Qomsan says. Rising inequalities have also added to the incentives many poorer women may feel in looking for a richer husband who already has one wife. Abul-Qomsan believes that many factors might push a woman to be a second wife. She may fear getting old without getting married, or she may be divorced or widowed. Positive social and financial changes in a man's life may also push him to experiment outside his marriage, she says, and he may grow impatient with the normal compromises and requirements of married life. "Egyptian women have been raised to consider marriage as their principal goal and first priority in life," Abul-Qomsan says. "This has also given rise to the increasing rates of polygamy in society nowadays, along with the worsening financial and social circumstances."
