Riyadh: In a peculiar incident, a Saudi woman, two days after her wedding, asked her husband for a divorce over him being bald, local media from the Gulf nation reported.
According to a report from the Arabic daily Sabq, a woman said in her plea that she wanted a divorce because her husband concealed his baldness during the engagement by wearing the ghutra, the traditional Saudi cotton head covering.
The couple tied the knot just two days before the lawsuit, said the report dated September 28. She reportedly told the counselor that the her husband kept her in the dark about his baldness, so she wanted the divorce as she felt betrayed.
She alleged he kept it a secret, but a few days ago she saw him without the headdress to discover that he was completely bald. “I feel embarrassed in front of my friends and family, and I’m worried my kids are prone to baldness. It is difficult for me to stay with him more,” she told Sabq.
The couple got another appointment for a second round of hearing in the hope that the woman would change her decision. The husband’s legal advisor Ahmed Ajab described the case as the “strangest divorce case he has ever seen”.
Ajab added that a woman has the right to ask for divorce if she discovers a defect that repels a man, such as insanity, leprosy, or a sexual defect, provided that she did not know it during the engagement or if the husband remained silent about it.