Some crimes are so heinous, some betrayals so deep, that we lack even the words to properly describe them, let alone do justice to their harm. No excuses can be found for them because they are not deeds brought about by ignorance or of immaturity. They are atrocities so vicious, so scornful, so destructive to the progress of humanity, that they cannot be forgiven, no matter what culture birthed them or religion failed to censure them. They are crimes too dark even for love to stanch. And yet, often, despite their barbarity, we never hear of them. The dead, after all, cannot tell their tales. And so it must fall to those lucky few who have escaped the cruelty of Honor Killings to rise from the ashes and tell the world of what they have endured. Of these first-hand accounts, few are as breathtaking as Souad's.
Burned Alive is the 240-page reconstruction of the life of Souad, the third daughter of a farmer in the West Bank. Born to an abusive father and an obedient mother, Souad is denied any of the gifts of civilization and society that are taken for granted by the developed world. For her family feels no need to educate her, to teach her how to read or write, to instill her with intellectual curiosity, to give her any sense of the broader world. Why squander profitable time instructing girls in such frivolities when, ultimately, girls are for nothing more than marriage and childbirth?
Detailing a life of beatings and obligations, Souad describes her endless days of rising early to pick fruit, to shear sheep and to care for the farm's animals all while safely harboring her mother's secrets. Any deviation, mistake or thoughtless act on her part is eagerly and thoroughly acknowledged by her father's belt, the violent use of which is so customary, so frequent, that Souad seems almost immured to its strikes upon her skin. There is but one path out from under her father's roof, marriage. For in her culture, once a daughter is married off to another man, she is to never return to her father's home. She is then the property and the responsibility of another. But as the marrying off of daughters must be done in order, and as Souad's older sister is without suiters, she has but one avenue, to court the neighbor's son.
Their relationship, forged in secret, initially brings Souad some modicum of pleasure, but when the boy flees in the face of Souad's pregnancy, the young, defenseless girl is left to the pitiless hands of her family and the gasoline-fuelled pyre they have arranged for her. On fire, Souad flees her own murder, is indifferently treated at an area hospital, and is on the brink of death from her burns and from a lifetime of neglect when an a European aidworker sneaks her out to Switzerland where she is healed and released, for the first time, into society as a free woman.
Burned Alive is non-fiction at its most chilling. It is nothing less than the step-by-step retelling of an honor killing from the perspective of its victim. Though Souad's voice is rough and simplistic, her account, which reads like it was the product of dictation, is all the more raw and immediate for its lack of refinement. Yes, the reader must approach Souad's recount with a great deal of caution -- she depends entirely upon her own unreliable memory to recreate the traumatic events of her adolescence, a reality that conveniently excludes corroboration. Nonetheless, she is forthright with her own fallibility, pointing out when her recollection has failed her. More over, she at no point asks the reader to believe her. She states, simply and clearly, the circumstances that lead to her family-sanctioned punishment for being "a whore." In this narrative, she is as compelling as she is courageous.
But though this work succeeds as a memoir, its greatest virtue is the extent to which it is both an expose and an excoriation of honor killings and the cultures that practice them. Souad describes her parents as religious, as regular attendees at their local place of worship. And yet nothing is done to halt her suffering, at the hands of her father prior to the honor killing, or at the hands of the nurses at the local hospital who refuse to heal her once she has been "punished." This widespread callousness transcends ignorance. It is systemic cruelty which is only possible in a society that has completely dehumanized women, reducing them to property that can be heartlessly claimed and discarded at whim.
How can we hold with such societies? How can we trade with them and call ourselves clean when we know what happens behind closed doors? No, we in the developed world are not perfect; far from it. But we are not this. No one should be this. Anyone who practices such is not worthy of civilization. (3/5 Stars)
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