Forbidden Love (21 page)

of public debate in 1998 and a draft calling for the abolition was finally submitted to the National Assembly. Royalty joined this abolition effort when, that year, the Jordanian National Commissioner for Women, chaired by HRH Princess Basma, proposed to parliament a draft law which would cancel and replace the articles. Parallel to that proposal was a campaign organized by a group of eleven Jordanians who gathered over fifteen thousand signatures on 713 petitions calling for the abolition of the articles, as well as any other legislation found to discriminate against women.

King Abdullah stood as an ally of women, publicly announcing that women’s groups and women’s rights organizations had his full support in the matter, and he urged Prime Minister Abdur Ra-uf S. Rawabdeh to amend all laws that ‘discriminate against women and inflict injustice on them’. The National Assembly opposed the draft, not once but twice.

The defeat of the draft was inevitable because the Islamic Action Front (IAF) holds the majority of the seats in the Lower House and they publicly opposed either abolishing or amending both Article 340 and Article 98, claiming that the Council of Ministers was seeking to corrupt public morals and impose Western values on Jordan’s conservative culture in order to appease international human rights organizations. The Secretary General of the IAF, Abdul Latif Arabiyat, charged that the people leading these reform campaigns were trying to demoralize Jordanian society, and that the West was using the women’s issue to push Arab women to abandon their honour and values and to start acting like animals.

So much for reasoned public debate in ‘modern, democratic’ Jordan or for the decent efforts of the royal family. The King and Queen are mainly public showpieces. Their job is to portray an image of

modernity for the country, and they do

their job quite brilliantly. Both Queen Rania and the Queen Mother, Queen Noor, have shown leadership; Queen Noor has sponsored several handicraft trading centres and shops, to help bring some financial independence to women. But the impact on women’s rights is very limited. The royal family really have no effect on the laws in the country. It is parliament that controls legislation, and the majority of parliament members are firm Muslims, strict believers in the ancient

codes.

In August 1999, the same year that the draft to cancel Article 340 was rejected by the National Assembly for the second time, it was Arabiyat who called for change when the issue concerned economic reform. He accused the ‘influential forces in Jordan’ of being hostile to democracy and freedom and of trying to protect their own interests. So while any change to the laws that govern women or to the laws that restrain women’s rights would, in his view, be detrimental to the moral fabric of Jordanian society, change in every other area of government would be a step in the right direction.

The history of women’s rights in Jordan is far richer than in many other Arab countries, but then most other Arab countries are not promoting themselves as democracies. The Jordanian National Assembly tried to ignore the fact that in order to achieve a democratic society, it must promote and protect the rights of all sections of that society. Though the royal family, including King Abdullah, have publicly voiced their disapproval and disgust for crimes of honour, the National Assembly, which claims to be the voice of the people but is actually the voice of men, continues to oppose any amendments to Jordan’s penal code that would protect women.

In November 2000, twenty countries, including Jordan, abstained from signing a United Nations draft resolution

condemning crimes of honour. The UN General Assembly had called for the elimination of all forms of violence and crimes against women, and the draft resolution reaffirms that all forms of violence against women constitute grave violations of their rights. Distressingly, the permanent representative of Jordan, His Highness Prince Zeid Ben Raad, tried to have the word ‘premeditated’ inserted before the words ‘crimes of honour’. This would have defeated the entire purpose of the resolution since most ‘crimes of honour’ are supposedly committed ‘in a fit of fury’. Had he succeeded in modifying the wording, Jordan would have signed the draft, knowing that it would not curb the practice it was meant to stop.

In its efforts to attract foreign aid, foreign business investment, and tourism, Jordan has struggled over the past fifteen years to present itself as a modern, liberal, and democratic society by publicly granting women certain freedoms. Jordan is known as one of the least oppressive Muslim countries and was among the first to give women the right to vote. Women are, by law, permitted to receive an education, drive, and work, and the National Assembly is now considering allowing them to obtain passports and travel without written permission from the most senior male of the family. But for most Jordanian women, little has changed. The ‘law’ of the male members of their families does not allow them to enjoy many of these freedoms, and so all these ‘changes’ and ‘modernizations’ are purely cosmetic.

Injustices towards women are apparent in all spheres of Jordanian life, including its citizenship laws, child custody laws, family inheritance laws, and divorce laws. Women in Jordan live under an umbrella of fear since the daily possibility of violent death hangs, literally, as a sword over their heads. Yet these injustices continue to go unnoticed by the international

community. Generations of women, both young and old, continue to suffer in silence.

Paradoxically, one reason why the number of honour crimes in Jordan is on the rise is precisely because of the increase in freedom women have been allowed by the government. For as women begin to exercise their right to express their views, to work, to drive, and to receive an education, they come into conflict with their families’ wishes and way of thinking. With unemployment high, many women are forced to find jobs, which sounds like a good thing. But even taking up one of the acceptable types of jobs is risky; nurses, for example, are attacked as ‘whores’ for touching or seeing men who are not fully dressed. With a penal code that protects and encourages men to commit honour crimes, many innocent women led to the death by promises of freedom are killed by men who are still hailed as heroes for upholding their family’s honour.

The struggle to achieve women’s rights and freedoms in Jordan may take a generation or

more, for women have to overcome centuries of male domination. Even as the world enters a new century, Jordan’s National Assembly, along with the governments of most Arab countries, still celebrate and uphold a stubborn, outdated, patriarchal attitude towards women and women’s rights. As recently as August 2001, the Jordanian Minister of Justice, Abdul Karim Dughmi, responded to a question about honour killings in the case of rape with a smile and the statement: “All women killed in cases of honour are prostitutes. I believe prostitutes deserve to die.”

FAREWELL

From the distance of many thousands of miles and of different cultures, I can now see how long it will take to change such old beliefs. I feel the imprint of the past in my own mind and body as I struggle to live the liberated life I’m now free to enjoy. As I speak out from abroad, adding my voice to the fight for Jordanian women, I am still, personally, fighting the taboos taught to all of us from birth in an Arabic culture.

I still hear the same whispers from the desert that my brothers hear. The voices of my mother and aunts still haunt me, saying over and over as they did throughout my childhood, “A woman is like a cup; if someone drinks from it, no one will want it … A woman is like a sheet of glass; once it is broken it can never be fixed.” When I see people on the street free and open with their affections, holding hands, hugging and kissing, I catch myself thinking it is wrong and shameful. And yet I yearn to be that free, and to feel comfortable with it. The man in my life tells me that it is sad that I was taught to have such negative feelings about something so beautiful, but

in the Arabic culture love is not associated with anything beautiful; it is a means of control. It is part of the cultural and emotional baggage I will carry for a long time.

In retrospect, also, it seems so easy to see the mistakes you’ve made, all the details you were blind to as you were actually living through them. Now I sit for hours thinking of such moments, saying, ‘if only we had’, ‘we should have’, or ‘we could have’, and wondering if Dalia would still be alive if we’d done things differently. I can now see that our naivety, our emotions, our idealism led us on a doomed path. After years of punishing myself for her loss, I believe that even if we’d made different choices, the chances are very high that our secret world would eventually have been discovered. I’ve realized, too, that as long as honour killing is allowed in Jordan, no woman is safe.

Thousands of women are being legally murdered every year, for reasons that would be unheard of in Western countries. Losing my soul sister to such a barbaric practice angered me and hurt me, but eventually it fuelled me with the courage to put pen to paper and expose these archaic traditions. During the preparation of this manuscript, I have relived all of these moments, and I know that I will continue to remember, love, and cherish the short time that Dalia was part of my life. She was a truly remarkable woman, more courageous than I could ever hope to be. She had the courage to follow her heart, and live her beliefs. She paid for chasing her hope of freedom with her life. She was murdered for the most innocent and universal impulse wanting to love and be loved.

I had always believed that we would spend our lives together; I imagined us as neighbours and best friends, raising our children together, cooking our dinners together. I never dreamed that my time

with her would be cut short, or that my life would journey down this path, but I realize that she left me

with a mission. It’s a task I must undertake, a goal I pray to

reach. I must find a way to expose honour crimes for what they

truly are: legalized murder. To break through the official

I Jordanian code of silence and find a way to make all Arab

women’s silent cries for justice and freedom heard around the

world.

My fight will have to continue being waged far away from Jordan. I still have a Jordanian passport, so, officially, I could return. I long to see my mother. But if I went home, I fully believe my father and brothers would have no hesitation in carrying out my honour killing. They repeated their mantra to me, over and over, after Dalia’s death: “If you have a rotten apple in the bunch, take it out before it infects the rest.” Dalia, to them, was a rotten apple, and they took her out before she could tarnish their reputations. Even if I were to return to Jordan a virgin, I have disgraced my family by running away. I have shown disrespect for them, and their rules. They would have to kill me to preserve their self-respect; they would have to take out the rotten apple in their own family.

As a dissident emigre, I made Greece my home for several years, and today-in another country I cannot divulge most of my friends are Greeks, not Jordanians, for I am still afraid to have Arab friends who may oppose what I’m doing. It has been difficult to make my way; in Greece I worked odd and hard jobs for very little pay, most of what I earned going to pay my expenses at an internet cafe so that I could use a computer to write this book. I’ve set new goals, and would like to study law, something I had always wanted to do, and it would now give me a better tool to avenge Dalia, as I vowed to do the day

she died.

This book is my start. I realize that my words alone will not

change what is happening, but I hope that they will bring light to what has been shrouded in darkness for centuries. I hope, by expanding the work of activists in Jordan who are constantly frustrated and suppressed, it can be a positive next step towards abolishing these crimes. Michael, who has left the military but is still in Jordan, is active in this work, helping other women, putting himself at great risk. He will always remain my ally in this struggle, and I owe him more than

I can say in words. And I pray that whoever reads this book, and hears the words I have been able to find, will voice their outrage, as I have here.

The following are just a handful of the honour killings that were recently committed in Jordan. They were all reported in the Jordan Times by the highly credible woman journalist who has courageously made this her cause. I’ve listed a few stories to show that honour crimes are not restricted to a specific age group, religious sect, or geographic region of the country. Honour crime victims include women and young girls from all walks of life. The only thing that unites these women is the fact that a male family member murdered all of them.

One day in May 1994, Kifaya, a sixteen-year-old Jordanian girl, was strapped to a chair by her 32-year-old brother, who gave her a glass of water, told her to recite an Islamic prayer, and slashed her throat. He then ran out into the street waving the bloodied knife and shouting, “I have killed my sister to cleanse my honour.” His sister had been raped by one of her other brothers.

In October 1998, Khadijeh, a twenty-year-old Jordanian woman, ran away from home and was reported missing by her family. The police found her a week later and sent her for an examination to determine whether she was still a virgin, a standard procedure in missing person cases. She was found to

be a virgin and released into her father’s custody. He took her to a deserted area, stabbed her four times in the chest and slit her throat. He then turned himself in to the police, still holding the knife, which he said he had used to kill his daughter and cleanse his honour.

Lina, a twenty-year-old Jordanian girl, became pregnant after being raped by her neighbour. When her pregnancy became apparent to her family, they decided to kill her. On 24 September, her brother drove her to a nearby football field owned by the Jordan Phosphate Mines Company, parked the car and asked her to get out. He then repeatedly struck her on the head with a rock, drew a knife, slashed her throat and stomach, left her by the side of the road, and went to turn himself in. His family treated him like a hero and later posted bail for him, bringing a white stallion for him to ride home. He was sentenced to three months in jail, but was instantly released because he’d served that amount of time waiting for the trial, even though he was out on bail the entire