A message to violent men:”Beware what’s on her mind!” [Archives:2007/1068/Last Page]

Nisreen Shadad & Mariam al-Yemeni
The culture of violence affects people's behavior and way of life, as well as their thoughts and ideas. More importantly, the concept of violence sometimes is considered synonymous with strength. Therefore, people enforce such culture in their homes, streets and schools. In this article, we discuss the violent behavioral patterns that take place within homes, particularly violence practiced against women.

Many Yemeni women are subjected to physical as well as psychological violence. The only outlet they have to release their pain is through enacting revenge against their attackers and maintaining mental control of them. Such acts are distant from the minds of women who are not subjected to violence.

Umm Ahmed, a second wife, was mixing the hilba, a Yemeni traditional food, one day when suddenly she started to mix it at a very fast and abnormal speed. The first wife of her husband asked her the reasoning behind the sudden change, to which she happily replied that she was imagining her husband inside the mixture. “I hope I could do it in reality and see him suffer as he does when he beats me without reason