Burned alive (11 page)

But the next time I go to see this little Souad, she opens her eyes a little, and she listens to me and answers me with a few words despite her dreadful suffering. When I ask her where her baby is, she says she does not know, they took it away. With what she is enduring, and what awaits her, seemingly imminent death, I understand very well that the child is not her major problem.

“Souad, you have to answer me, because I want to do something. If we are able to get you out of here, if I can take you somewhere else, will you come with me?”

“Yes, yes, yes. I’ll come with you. Where will we go?”

“To another country, I don’t know where, but someplace where all this will be behind you.”

“Yes, but my parents . . .”

“We’ll see about your parents. We’ll see. Agreed? You trust me?”

“Yes . . . thank you.”

So, armed with this confidence, I ask the young doctor if he knows where this famous village is where they incinerate young girls who are guilty of being in love.

“She comes from a little hamlet, about forty kilometers from here. It’s rather far and there’s hardly any passable road. It’s also dangerous, because you don’t know exactly what goes on there. There aren’t any police in these remote places.”

“I don’t know if I can go there alone . . .”

“Oh no! I don’t advise that at all. Even trying to find the place you’ll get lost ten times over. There aren’t any maps sufficiently detailed . . .”

I may be naive but I am not stupid. I know that it is quite a problem asking for directions on these roads when you’re a foreigner. All the more so because the village in question is in territory occupied by the Israelis. And I, Jacqueline, Terres des Hommes or not, humanitarian or not, Christian or not, I could quite easily be taken for an Israeli woman come to spy on the Palestinians, or the opposite, depending on the section of road where I happened to be.

I ask if he will help me by coming along.

“That’s madness!”

“Listen, Doctor, we could be saving a life. You tell me yourself that there is some hope if she’s taken somewhere else.”

To save a life. The argument makes sense to him because he is a doctor. But he is also from this country, like the nurses. And as far as the nurses are concerned, Souad or any other girl like her should die. One has not survived already. I do not know if she even had a chance to pull through but in any case she received no care. I would like to say to this sympathetic doctor that I find it unacceptable to withhold care from a young girl because it is according to custom! But I won’t do that, because I know that he himself is caught in this system, vis-à-vis his hospital, his director, the nurses, the population itself. He has already shown great courage in just talking to me about it. Honor crimes are a taboo subject.

But I guess I finally have him half convinced. He is truly a good man; I am touched when he says hesitantly that he doesn’t know if he has the courage. I answer that we can only try, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll just come back.

“All right, but you’ll let me turn around if there’s the slightest complication?”

I promise him, the young doctor whom I will call Hassan, who is going to be my guide.

I was a young Western woman who had been working in the Middle East to care for children in distress, be they Muslims, Jews, or Christians. This is always a complicated exercise in diplomacy. But the day I got into my car with this brave doctor at my side, I didn’t really appreciate the risk I was running. The roads were not safe, the inhabitants were mistrustful, and I was bringing along an Arab doctor, freshly graduated from an English university, on an adventure that would be incredible if the goal were not so serious. He must have found me completely mad.

When we leave in the morning, Hassan is a little green with fear. I would be lying if I said I am at ease, but with the daring of youth at the time, and the conviction of my engagement in the service of others, I plunge ahead. Obviously neither of us is armed.

For me it’s “God be with us,” for him, it’s
“Inshallah!”

When we leave the city, we are driving in a classic Palestinian countryside, with parcels of land that belong to small farmers. The parcels are surrounded by low stone walls, with little lizards and snakes running between the stones. The land, which is a reddish ocher color, is dotted with fig trees. The road that leads out from the city is not blacktopped but it is passable. It connects the hamlets, the neighboring villages, and the markets. The Israeli tanks have just about flattened it but there remain enough holes to make my little car rattle. The farther you get from the city, the more you see small farms. If the parcel of land is big enough, the farmers grow wheat, but in the smaller ones they let the flocks graze, a few goats, some sheep, more animals if the farmer is rich. The girls labor in the fields. They attend school very little, if at all, and those who are lucky enough to go are soon brought back to take care of the younger ones. I had quickly understood that Souad is completely illiterate.

Hassan knows this road but we’re looking for a village that he has never heard of. From time to time we ask directions but because my car has an Israeli license plate it puts us in some danger. We are in occupied territory and the directions we are given are not necessarily reliable.

After a short time, Hassan says to me: “This is crazy, we’re going to be all alone in this village. I forewarned the family by the Arab telephone, but God knows how they’ll receive us. The father by himself? The whole family? Or the whole village? They can’t possibly understand your involvement!”

“Did you tell them that the girl is going to die and that we’re coming to talk to them about it?”

“Exactly, that’s just what they’re not going to understand. They burned her, and the one who actually did it is probably waiting for us at the next bend. In any case, they’re going to say that her dress caught fire, or that she fell into the coals headfirst! It’s complicated in these families . . .”

I know that. From the very first, people have been telling me that a woman who has been burned, that’s a complicated situation, and that I shouldn’t get involved. Except here I am, involved.

“I’m telling you it would be much better to turn back . . .”

I stimulate my precious companion’s courage. Without him I probably would have come anyway, but it is better if a woman doesn’t go about alone in these regions. Finally, we arrive at the village in question. The father receives us outside, in the shade of an immense tree in front of the house. I sit down on the ground with Hassan on my right. The father is seated against the tree in a familiar posture with one leg bent, on which his cane rests. He’s a small man, reddish hair, a very pale face with freckles, somewhat albino looking. The mother remains standing, very erect in her black dress, a veil of the same color on her head. Her face is uncovered. She is an ageless woman, with strong features, a hard expression. Palestinian peasant women often have this look. But with what they endure, their burden of work, children, and servitude, it is understandable.

The house is of medium size, very typical of the region, but we don’t see much of it. Seen from the outside, it has a closed look. In any case, the man is not poor.

Hassan introduces me with a local expression of politeness. “This woman works for a humanitarian organization.”

And the conversation goes along in the Palestinian style, first between the two men: “How are your flocks doing? And the harvest? You sell well?”

“The weather’s bad. Winter’s coming. The Israelis make a lot of problems for us.”

They talk about the weather for some time before touching on the real subject of our visit. That’s customary. He does not mention his daughter, so Hassan does not say anything about her, and neither do I. They offer us tea. Since I’m a stranger, I cannot refuse the customary hospitality. And then it’s time to go. Good-byes.

“We’ll come back to pay you another visit.”

We are not going to get any farther than that today and so we leave. It is necessary to begin like this, both of us know that. We have to broach the subject very slowly and not appear to be enemies, or inquisitors, give it a little time, in order to be able to return. And there we are again on the road going toward the city. I remember the sigh of relief that escaped me. I felt like I had been walking on eggs.

“That didn’t go too badly, did it? We’ll go back in a couple of days.”

“You really want to go back?”

“Yes, we haven’t accomplished anything yet.”

“But what do you hope to offer them? If it’s money, that’s no good, don’t count on it. Honor is honor.”

“I’m going to play up that she’s dying. It’s unfortunately true and you said so yourself.”

“Without emergency care, and the emergency is already past, she scarcely has any chance.”

“Well, since she can’t remain there, I am going to tell them that I will take her somewhere else to die. That could be arranged and would relieve them of the problem.”

“She’s a minor and she hasn’t any papers. The parents’ agreement is needed. They won’t budge for the papers, you won’t get what you want.”

“We’ll go back anyway. You’ll ring up on the Arab telephone when?”

“In a few days. Give me some time.”

She doesn’t have any time, little Souad. But Hassan, besides being a miracle doctor for my expedition, has his job at the hospital, a family, and the simple fact that getting involved in an honor crime can bring him serious enemies. I understand him more and more and I respect his caution. To attack a taboo of this type, or even try to work around it, this is new for me, and I put all my energy into it. But he’s the one who has to make contact in the village to announce our visits, and I can well imagine the force of persuasion he has to employ for this simple task.

Souad Is Going to Die

“My brother is nice. He tried to bring me bananas and the doctor told him not to come back.”

“Who did this to you?”

“My brother-in-law, Hussein, my older sister’s husband. My mother brought poison in a glass . . .”

I know a little more about Souad’s story. She is able to speak to me better, but the conditions in this hospital are terrible for her. The burns are becoming infected, they weep and bleed continuously. I notice the upper part of her body: Her head is always lowered as if in prayer, her chin is attached to her chest. She can’t move her arms. The gasoline was poured over her head, and it burned her as it ran down her ears and neck, over her back, arms, and upper chest. She rolled up in a ball like a strange mummy, probably when they were transporting her, and she is still in this same position more than two weeks later. That is not even considering the effects of giving birth in a semicoma, and then the child who has disappeared. The social worker must have deposited him like a pathetic little package in some orphanage, but where? And I know only too well the future that awaits these illegitimate children. He has no hope.

My plan is crazy. I first want to bring her to Bethlehem, a city under Israeli control at this time, but accessible for both of us. I know for a fact that they don’t have the means of caring for serious burn patients, but this is only a first step. They can at least dispense the minimal basic care. The next phase of the plan: leave for Europe, with the agreement of Terres des Hommes, which I have not yet requested. And all of this does not yet include the child, whom I intend to try to find in the meantime.

When my young doctor gets into my little car for a second visit to the parents, he is still uneasy. Same welcome, still outside under the tree, same banal conversation as we get up to leave, but this time I mention the children that we never see.

“You have many children? Where are they?”

“They’re in the fields. We have a married daughter, she has two boys, and a married son, who also has two boys.”

Boys, that’s good. You have to congratulate the head of the family. And extend your sympathy, as well: “I know that you have a daughter who is the cause of much trouble for you.”

“Ya haram!
It’s terrible what’s happened to us! What misery!”

“It’s really a pity for you.”

“Yes, a pity.
Allah karim!
But God is great.”

“In a village, it is painful to have such problems . . .”

“Yes, very hard for us.”

The mother does not speak, always standing solemn and motionless.

“Well, fine,” I say, “she’s going to die soon anyway. She’s in very bad shape.”

“Yes.
Allah karim!
”

And my doctor adds, very professional: “Yes, she is very bad.”

He understands my participation in this strange bargaining over the hoped-for death of a young girl. He helps me by adding explicit comments about Souad’s inevitable death, while we are hoping for the opposite. The father finally takes the bait and confides in him the core of all their worries: “I hope we will be able to stay in the village.”

“Yes, of course. In any case, she’s going to die.”

“If Allah wills it. It’s our fate. We can’t do anything about it.”

But he does not say what happened, nothing at all. So I advance a pawn on the chessboard and say, “But all the same, it’s a pity for you that she is dying here. How do you plan to bury her? Where?”

“We’ll bury her here in the garden.”

“Perhaps if I took her with me, she could die elsewhere and you wouldn’t have any problems like that.”

This clearly means nothing to them, my taking her with me to die somewhere else. They have never in their lives heard of such a thing. Hassan understands this and he pursues it: “She is right. All in all, that would mean fewer problems for you, and for the village.”

“Yes, but we will bury her like that, if Allah wants it so, and we will say to everyone that we buried her and that will be that.”

“I don’t know, just think about it. Perhaps I can take her to die somewhere else. I can do that if it would be good for you.”

It is frightful, but I can only keep emphasizing her death in this morbid game. To help Souad live again and speak of medical care would horrify them. They tell us they need to talk about it among themselves. This is their way of signaling that it is time for us to leave, which we do after the customary good-byes, promising to return. What should we think now about our attempt? Have we negotiated properly? We think our offer makes sense. On the one hand, Souad disappears, on the other, the family recovers their honor in the village.

Allah is great as the father says. We must be patient.

During this time, I go to the hospital every day to try to get Souad at least the minimum of care. My presence obliges them to make a little effort. For example, they disinfect the burns somewhat more frequently. But without painkillers and without specialized products for treating severe burns, poor Souad’s skin remains an immense wound, unbearable for her and difficult for others to see. I think about the hospitals in Switzerland, and France, and other places where they treat burns with such gentle and exquisite care to help the skin regenerate with a minimum of scarring and make the pain bearable.

And we return to the negotiating, always just the two of us, my courageous doctor and I. We stick with it, we set out the terms with as much diplomacy as possible: “What would not be good would be for her to die in this country. Even there in the hospital that would not be good for you. But she can be taken far away, to another country. And that way, it’s over, finished, you can tell the whole village that she has died. She will have died in another country and you’ll never again hear a word about her.”

The conversation is more than strained at this moment. Without papers, any agreement with them is worth nothing to me. I’m almost there. I ask nothing else about the situation, neither who did this nor who the father of the child is. These details do not enter into the negotiation, and bringing them up would only further sully the family’s honor. My interest is in convincing them that their daughter
is
going to die, but somewhere else. And I must seem like a crazy eccentric foreigner, but also someone who in the end might be of use to them.

It seems that the idea is taking root. If they say yes, then as soon as we have turned our backs, they can declare the death of their daughter to the entire village, without any other details, and without the need for a burial in the garden. They will be able to say whatever they want, even that they have avenged their honor in their own way. This is all very bizarre from a Western perspective, to even imagine such discussions. This bargaining does not disturb them morally. Here there is a special kind of morality, enacted against girls and women. The moral sense and legal structures do not protect females; they are based only on the interests of the men of the clan. This mother accepts it herself, without flinching she wishes for the death and disappearance of her own daughter. She cannot do otherwise, and I even find myself feeling sorry for her. Otherwise, I do not get emotionally involved. In all the countries where I work, whether in Africa, India, Jordan, or the West Bank, I have to adapt to the culture and respect ancestral traditions. The unique goal is to bring aid to the woman or man who is the victim. But it is the first time in my life that I have negotiated for a life in this fashion.

They finally give in. The father makes me promise, and the mother, too, that they’ll never see her again.
“Never again!”

I promise this to them but to keep this promise I must take Souad abroad, and to do that I need papers for her.

“I’m going to ask you to do something that may seem a little difficult, but I’ll be with you and will help you. We have to go together to the office that issues identity and travel documents. I have to take you by car to Jerusalem, you and your wife, for you to sign the papers.”

This new obstacle immediately makes them uneasy. Any contact with the Israeli population, and especially with government officials, is a problem for them.

“But we don’t know how to write!”

“That is not a problem, your fingerprint will be enough.”

“All right, we will come with you.”

Before coming back for the parents, I have to prepare the way with the administration officials. Fortunately, I know people in the Jerusalem visa office. I can explain myself, and the clerks there know what I do for children. Besides, it is a child whom I am rescuing. Souad told me that she was seventeen years old, which makes her still a child. I explain to the Israeli employees that I am going to bring the parents of a gravely ill West Bank girl to them, and that they cannot be kept waiting three hours or they will leave without signing anything. These are illiterate people who need me for the formalities. So I will bring them, with a birth certificate if they have one, and the officials will only have to confirm the age of their daughter on the travel document. And I add, pushing my luck one more time, that this girl is going to be leaving with a child, although I still don’t know where the child is or how to find it. But for the moment that is not the issue. First things first: My immediate problem is to get the official approval of the parents and to see that Souad receives some care.

The Israeli employee asks me if I know the name of the child’s father. I don’t, and I see we may have to write on the form that the child is illegitimate. This designation on an official paper unnerves me: “No, don’t write illegitimate! His mother is going to another country and your statement of illegitimacy won’t be well received where she’s going.”

This travel document for Souad and the child is not a passport, only a permit to leave the West Bank for another country. Souad will never return here. She will no longer exist in her country, she will have been eliminated, the little burned girl, a phantom. I ask him to please make out two documents, one for the mother and one for the infant. The clerk asks the whereabouts of the child and I tell him I intend to find out.

Time passes and at the end of an hour the Israeli official gives me the green light. And the next day I am on my way to pick up the parents, alone this time, like a grown-up woman. They get into the car in silence, their faces like masks, and we go to the visa office in Jerusalem. For them, this is enemy territory, where they are usually treated as less than nothing. I wait, seated next to them. My presence assures the Israelis that these people have not brought a bomb with them. They know me very well since I’ve been working in these regions.

Suddenly the employee who authorizes the papers signals to us to approach: “This girl is nineteen years old according to the birth certificate! You told me seventeen!”

“We’re not going to quibble over this. It is hardly important if she’s seventeen or nineteen.”

“Why didn’t you bring her along? She has to sign, too!”

“I didn’t bring her because she’s in a hospital, dying.”

“And the child?”

“Listen, drop it. You’ll give me a travel document for their daughter, in front of the parents, and they will sign, and one for the child, too. I’ll give you all the details, and then I’ll come back for the documents.”

If the security of the territory is not at issue, the Israeli authorities are cooperative. When I started my humanitarian work, when it took me into the occupied territories, they at first gave me a hard time.

That changed when they came to understand that I also worked with severely handicapped Israeli children. Many of these children are the products of family intermarriage in certain ultrareligious communities in which cousins marry. The children may be born with Down syndrome or severely handicapped. It is the same in some very religious Arab families. My work at that period was essentially focused on this problem in the two communities. It earned me an attitude of acceptance, notably with the administration.

The office of travel documents is situated outside the walls, in the old city of Jerusalem. Here I am now on foot on the way back to the car with the precious document and with the still-silent parents, in the middle of Israeli soldiers armed to the teeth. I am going to bring the parents back to the village just as I found them there, a little red-haired man with blue eyes in a white head scarf, with his cane, and his wife all in black, her eyes focused on the hem of her dress.

It is at least an hour’s trip between Jerusalem and the village. The first time I met them I was very afraid, despite my gung-ho demeanor. Now I no longer fear them, I don’t judge them, I think only:
Poor people.
We are all the object of a fate that is all our own.

They follow me coming and going without saying a single word. They are a little afraid that the Israelis will make trouble for them. I had told them that they had nothing to fear, and that everything would turn out all right. Apart from a few essential words, we do not have a real conversation. The rest of the family and the inside of the house remain hidden from me. Observing them, it is hard for me to believe that they wanted to kill their daughter. However, even if the brother-in-law did the act, it was they who had made the decision. The same feelings surfaced in me again later with other parents whom I met in similar circumstances. I could never think of them as murderers. These two do not cry, but I have seen parents cry because they are themselves prisoners of this abominable custom, the honor crime. In front of their house, which encloses their secret and their unhappiness, they get out of the car in silence, and I leave the same way. We will not see each other again.