Burned alive (16 page)

Jacqueline

My role today and in the years to come is to continue working to save other Souads. It will be a long struggle, complicated and arduous, and money is needed, as always. Our foundation is called SURGIR, which means “arise,” because the right moment must “arise” to help these women escape death. We work no matter where the need is in the world—for example, in Afghanistan, Morocco, Chad—anywhere there is an urgent need for intervention. The larger world has been, and continues to be, very slow to respond to the atrocities that are inflicted on women in this part of the world. It has been reported that more than six thousand honor crimes are committed in a year, and behind this figure are all the suicides and “accidents” that cannot be counted.

In some countries, women are put in prison when they have the courage to complain, supposedly to save their lives. Some have been there for fifteen years because the only people who can get them out of there are the father or the brother, which is to say the very ones who want to kill them. So if a father asks for his daughter to be released, it is quite evident that the warden is not going to comply! I am aware of one or two women who were released, and they were subsequently killed.

In Jordan, and this is only one example, there is a law on the books, as there is in most countries, that a murder must be punished by years in prison. But next to this law, are two small articles, ninety-seven and ninety-eight, specifying that judges will be lenient with those found guilty of honor crimes. The penalty is generally six months to two years in prison. The condemned, sometimes considered heroes, usually do not serve the whole sentence. Associations of local female attorneys are struggling to have these articles amended. Some other articles have been changed, but not ninety-seven and ninety-eight.

We work on-site with associates of women that, for several years now, have initiated programs for preventing violence toward women and for assisting women who are victims of violence in their countries. Their work is long and often thwarted by obstacles. But step by step things have moved forward. The women of Iran have made progress on the issue of their civil rights. Women of the Middle East have learned that there are laws in their countries that concern them and give them rights. Appeals have been submitted to the parliaments, and certain articles of law have been amended.

Little by little, the authorities recognize these crimes. Statistics are published officially in the reports of the Human Rights Commission in Pakistan. In the Middle East, public health law provides information on the number of known cases, and local associations inquire into cases of violence and do research into the historical and current reasons for maintaining these archaic customs. Whether it is in Pakistan, which keeps track of the number of girls and women killed, in the Middle East, or in Turkey, the most important work is to put an end to these customs, which are blindly passed on. In recent years, authorities such as King Hussein and Prince Hassan have come out openly against honor crimes, which they have said “are not crimes of honor but of dishonor.” Imams and religious Christians explain continually that the honor crime is totally foreign to the Koran and the Bible.

We do not lose courage or our determination. SURGIR has developed the habit of knocking on all doors, risking having them slam in our faces. Sometimes it works.

My Son

Laetitia and Nadia were still small when I returned for a visit to my adoptive parents for the first time since I had left Marouan with them. I feared Marouan’s reaction face to face with his two little sisters. He was becoming an adolescent, I had built another life without him, and I didn’t know if he was going to remember me, if he would hold it against me or have no interest in us. Every time I telephoned to alert them of my visit and my uneasiness, they would tell me: “No, no, no problem, Marouan knows about it, you can come.”

But he wasn’t there very often. I asked about him and they assured me that he was doing fine. I had seen him three times in twenty years. And I was unhappy every time. I would cry when I went home. My two daughters encountered their brother without knowing who he was, while he knew everything. He showed nothing, demanded nothing, and I kept silent. The visits were exhausting. I couldn’t speak to him because I didn’t have the strength.

The last time, Antonio said to me: “I think it’s better if you don’t go there anymore. You cry all the time, you become depressed and it doesn’t serve any purpose. He has his life, parents, a family, friends . . . let him be. Someday later on, you can explain it all to him if he asks.”

I always felt guilty, I refused to go back to the past, so much more so because no one knew I had a son, except for Jacqueline and my husband. Was he still my son? I didn’t want any family crisis, it would be much too difficult.

The last time I had seen Marouan, he had been about fifteen years old. He even played a little with his sisters. Our exchange was limited to a few words of sad banality: “Hello, how are things?” “Fine, and you?”

Almost ten years passed. I thought he had forgotten me, that I no longer existed in his life now that he was an adult man. I knew that he was working and that he was living in a small apartment with a girlfriend, like all the young people his age.

Laetitia was thirteen and Nadia twelve. I devoted myself to their education and persuaded myself that I had done my duty. In the moments of depression, for my own sake, I would say to myself that in order to continue to survive it was better to forget. I envied happy people, those who have had no unhappiness in their childhood, who have no secret, no double life. I wanted to bury my first life and, with all my strength, to try to be like the happy people. But every time that I took part in a conference when I had to tell about this nightmare life, my happiness trembled on its base, like a badly built house. Antonio saw it clearly, and Jacqueline, too. I was fragile, but I pretended not to be.

One day, Jacqueline said to me: “You know, you could do a real service to other women if you would make a book of your life.”

“A book? But I hardly know how to write . . .”

“But you can speak.”

I didn’t now that you could “speak” a book. A book is something so important. I’m not one of those who read books, unfortunately. My daughters read books, Antonio can read them. I prefer the morning paper. I was so impressed by the idea of a book, of myself in a book, that I couldn’t get it out of my head. Seeing my daughters get bigger, I said to myself that one day I would have to tell them more. If it was all written in a book once and for all, it would be less agonizing than facing my daughters alone. Until now, I had only told them the essential details to explain my physical appearance. But one day or another, they would want to know everything, and the questions that would come would be so many knife thrusts to my heart.

I didn’t feel capable of rummaging in my memory searching for the details of the past. By force of wanting so desperately to forget, you really do forget. The psychiatrist had explained to me that this was normal, a result of the shock and the suffering due to the lack of care. But the gravest issue was Marouan. I had been living for so long under a protective lie. And I had been doing it badly.

If I agreed to tell about myself in a book, I would have to talk about Marouan. Did I have the right to do this? I said no. I was too afraid. My safety and his were equally at stake. A book goes everywhere in the world. And what if my family were to find me? If they were to harm Marouan? They were capable of it, for sure. On the other hand, I wanted to do it. Too often I had daydreamed about an impossible vengeance. I saw myself returning there, well concealed and protected until I found my brother. It was like a film in my head. I arrive at his house and I say:
Do you remember me, Assad? You see, I am alive. Take a good look at my scars. It was your brother-in-law Hussein who burned me, but here I am!

Do you remember my sister Hanan? What did you do with my sister? Did you give her to the dogs? And your wife, how is she? Why was I burned on the day she gave birth to your sons? I was pregnant, did you have to burn my son, too? Explain to me why you did nothing to help me, you, my only brother.

I introduce my son, Marouan! He was born two months prematurely in the city hospital, but he is big and handsome, and full of life! Look at him!

And Hussein? Has he grown old or is he dead? I hope he’s still here, but maimed or paralyzed, to see me alive in front of him! I hope he is suffering as much as I suffered!

And my father and mother? Are they dead? Tell me where they are so I can go and curse their graves.

I often have this dream of vengeance. It makes me violent, like them, and I want to kill like them! They all believe I’m dead, and I would so much like for them to see me alive!

For almost a year, I said no to the book unless I could leave my son out of the story. Jacqueline respected my decision. She thought it was too bad, but she understood.

I did not want to do a book about myself without talking about him, and I couldn’t decide whether to have a face-to-face meeting with Marouan to resolve the problem. Life went on but I was demoralized from saying to myself:
Do it! No, don’t do it!
But how to approach Marouan? I considered the idea that one day I would telephone him, just like that without warning after all these years, and say to him:
Marouan, we have to talk.

How should I introduce myself? Mama? How should I act in front of him? Hug him? And if he’s forgotten me? He has a right to, since I more or less forgot him myself.

And Jacqueline forced me to reflect on something that tormented me even more. “What would happen if Marouan one day met one of his sisters and she didn’t know that he is her brother? If she fell in love with him and brought him home, what would you do?”

I had never thought about that possibility. About twenty kilometers separated us. Laetitia was going to be fourteen and pretty soon the time for boyfriends would arrive. Nadia would follow. Twenty kilometers is nothing. The world is small. Despite this awful possibility I still couldn’t make up my mind. Another year went by. And finally things sorted themselves out. Marouan telephoned. I was at work and it was Nadia who answered. He simply said: “I know your mother, we were together in the same foster family. Can you ask her to call me back?”

But when I came home, Nadia couldn’t find the piece of paper on which she’d written the number! She looked everywhere. I was a nervous wreck. You might have thought that fate didn’t want me to be in contact with Marouan. I didn’t know where he was living or where he worked now. I could have telephoned his adoptive father to get the information but I didn’t have the courage. I was cowardly and I hated myself for it. It was easier to let fate take its course than to look at myself in the mirror. He called back on Thursday. He was the one who said: “We need to speak with each other,” and we arranged to meet the next day at noon. I was going to face my son, and I dreaded what I knew was waiting for me. In short, the questions would be,
Why was I adopted when I was five years old? Why didn’t you keep me with you? Please explain it to me.

I wanted to look nice so I had my hair done, put on makeup, dressed simply in jeans and a red blouse with long sleeves and closed neck. The meeting was fixed for exactly noon, in front of a restaurant in the city.

The street is narrow. He comes from the downtown area and I from the railroad station so we can’t miss each other. I knew I would recognize him among thousands. I see him coming from a distance, carrying a green sports bag. In my mind he was still an adolescent but this is a man who is smiling at me. My legs won’t hold me, my hands begin to tremble, and my heart pounds as if I am meeting the man in my life. It is a love encounter. He is tall so he has to bend down to kiss me, very simply, as if he’d left me the day before, and I return his kiss.

“You did right to call,” I say.

“I also called two weeks ago and since you didn’t call back, I thought:
So, there it is, she doesn’t want to see me.
”

I told him that Nadia had lost the number.

“If I hadn’t called again yesterday, would you have called me?” he asks.

“I don’t know, I don’t think so, no. I didn’t dare because of your parents. I know that Mama died . . .”

“Yes, Papa is all alone now, but it’s okay. And you?”

He doesn’t know what to call me. This habit that I developed in the beginning of calling the foster parents “Papa” and “Mama” doesn’t help things. Who is his mama?

I plunge ahead: “You know, Marouan, you can call me Mama, you can call me Souad, you can call me the little one, the big one, you can call me whatever you like. And if God is willing, we’ll get to know each other quickly.”

“Agreed. Let’s have lunch and talk.”

We sit down at a table, and I devour him with my eyes. He resembles his father. Same silhouette, same fast gait, same expression, but he is different. Also, he looks a little like my brother but with calm, softer features. He appears to take life as it comes, without too much complication. He is simple and direct.

“Explain to me how you were burned.”

“Do you mean that you don’t know, Marouan?”

“No. No one has ever told me anything.”

I explain and, as I speak, I see his expression change. When I talk about the flames covering my body, he puts down the cigarette he was going to light.

“I was inside you?”

“Yes, you were in my belly. I gave birth all alone. I didn’t feel your arrival because of my burns. I saw you, you were between my legs, that’s all. Afterward you disappeared. They took you away from me. They put me in a hospital to die. Then Jacqueline searched for you so she could take us out of the country together by plane. We lived together for nine months in a shelter and then we were placed with Papa and Mama.”

“So it’s because of me, your burns?”

“No, it’s not because of you! No, never! It’s unfortunately the custom of our country. The men in this country make their own law. The ones to blame are my parents, my brother-in-law, but surely not you!”

He looks at my scars, my ears, my neck, and then places his hand gently on my arm. I know that he guesses the rest, but he doesn’t ask to see. Is he afraid to ask?

“You don’t want to see . . .”

“No. This story already breaks my heart, it would give me more pain. What was my father like? Did he look like me?”

“Yes, the upper part of your face. I haven’t seen you walk much, but you hold yourself like him, straight, proud. And the back of your neck, your mouth, and especially your hands, even the nails. He was a little taller, muscular like you. He was handsome. Earlier when I looked at your shoulders I thought I was seeing your father.”

“That must warm your heart, because you must have loved him.”

“Oh yes, of course I loved him. He had promised that we would get married, but you see, when he learned that I was pregnant, he didn’t come back.”

“That’s disgusting! To drop you! So, in the end, it is because of me.”

“Marouan, no. Never think that. It’s because of the men there. Later, when you get to know that culture better, you will understand.”

“I’d really like to meet him one day. Couldn’t we go there? The two of us, just to see what it’s like, and then see him. It would please me to see his face. Does he know that I exist?”

“That would surprise me. I never saw him again. And then there is the war there. No, it’s better for both of us not to ever see them again.”

“Is it true that you gave birth at seven months?”

“Yes, that’s true. I was all alone when you arrived, I didn’t get to see you for very long, but you were very small.”

“What time did it happen?”

“The time? I don’t know. It was October first they told me later. The important thing is that you were whole, from head to foot!”

“Why didn’t you speak to me when you used to come to visit Mama and Papa?”

“I didn’t dare in front of Papa and Mama who had adopted you. I didn’t want to hurt them. They are the ones who raised you, and they did everything they could for you.”

“I remember you. And in the bedroom once, you gave me a yogurt and then one of my teeth fell out and there was blood in the yogurt and I didn’t want to eat it but you made me eat it. I remember that.”

“I don’t remember. You know at the time I was taking care of other children and Mama would tell me that I shouldn’t spend more time with you than with the others . . . And also we didn’t waste food in their house because it was very expensive to care for all the children.”