Honor Lost: The Women's Movement in Jordan
To mark the two-year death anniversary of Du'a Khalil Aswad on April 7th (http://www.redroom.com/blog/ellen-r-sheeley/the-dishonor-killing-dua-khalil-aswad), I recently re-read Norma Khouri's Honor Lost: Love and Death in Modern-Day Jordan (a.k.a. Forbidden Love in some countries). I'd first read it in 2004, before working and living in Jordan. In the meantime, it had become the subject of controversy (http://www.redroom.com/blog/ellen-r-sheeley/literary-hoaxes-and-memoirs-please-weigh-in) and taken off the market by its publisher.
The book was sold as a memoir about the dishonor killing of a young Muslim woman named Dalia, supposedly Norma's best friend from childhood. The back cover of my book is clearly marked fiction, though there is copy that refers to the account as being true. As the story goes, Dalia had fallen in love with a Jordanian Christian man named Michael, with whom she'd met surreptitiously for dates, but not had intercourse or anything close. When Dalia's father and brothers became suspicious, they allegedly fatally stabbed her 12 times.
Controversy arose about this international best seller when activists in Jordan noted and documented obvious inaccuracies in the book. In my first reading, I caught only a few of them, all very minor in my opinion. In my recent re-reading, I caught many more of them, still quite minor in the scheme of things. For example, the countries that border Jordan, according to Norma, are clearly wrong. Norma mentions women going to the neighborhood mosque for prayers, but mosques in Jordan are for men only. Dalia may or may not have existed. Perhaps she's a composite. But the story at the core of Norma's book rings painfully true. Dishonor killings do occur in Jordan, more or less as Norma describes in her book.
Coincidentally, as I was re-reading Honor Lost, there were two more dishonor killings in Jordan. On April 5th, a 21-year-old woman was stabbed in the torso 10 times by her 18-year-old brother (http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=15693). Her autopsy revealed she was not sexually active.
About a week later, the Associated Press reported that a 28-year-old married woman--five months pregnant with a male fetus--was stabbed 35 times in the face, neck, abdomen, and back, slashed across her neck, then hacked into pieces with a meat cleaver (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/12/jordan-honor-killing-man-_n_185977.html?show_comment_id=23004376#comment_23004376). The killer was her 24-year-old brother. He'd heard she was going out with men other than her husband. Rumor alone is enough to get a woman killed.
Given such realities on the ground, the controversy over the possibly fictional dishonor killing of Dalia seems like a distraction. Norma's account of how she was killed is the way these crimes actually do go down in Jordan, time after time. It seems petty to quibble about the facts that Kuwait doesn't border Jordan, the Jordan River doesn't flow through Amman, and women can't go to mosques when the heart of the story, the extrajudicial slaughter of females, is true. Norma's book was a missed opportunity for activists to raise international awareness of these heinous crimes, to fund raise, and to begin to take concrete actions to better the situation on the ground.
This is not to smear all the activists in Jordan. Some are doing good work, quietly, day in and day out, with their heads down and noses to the grindstone. But unfortunately there isn't a cohesive, coordinated women's movement in Jordan. It's a tragedy all around. I don't think men are suddenly going to offer greater respect and rights to women. Women are going to have to ask for them. . .and take them, if necessary.
About Ellen
Ellen R. Sheeley is the author of Reclaiming Honor in Jordan: A National Public Opinion Survey on "Honor" Killings and a contributor to the anthology Nothing But Red.
In 2003, she journeyed to Jordan, where she learned of the needs for empirical...
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I vacillate between Khaled Hosseini's "The Kite Runner" and Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes." I've read both multiple times and relate perhaps too well to...
Ellen, the shock here for me is that any
belief structure, religious or otherwise, could convince any father or brother to brutally murder his daughter or sister for anything short of utter self-defense. If they could perpetrate this crime, then they are not above commiting any atrocity.
I get what you're saying,
I get what you're saying, Dennis. For me, there is also the oddity of knowing so many people are aware of these crimes, but fail to apply any urgency to preventing and reducing them. There are solutions, and they are fairly obvious. But it's as though there is a total compassion deficit. Life is apparently quite cheap and meaningless to some people.
As with any movement,
As with any movement, initiatives like Norma´s should be incentivated, not put down because of inaccuracies. On the other hand, when you´re trying to raise credibility and support, you should also try to avoid even the smallest mistakes or flaws, because they can compromise the whole thing. People might say that if she doesn´t even know which countries border Jordan, she might as well have exaggerated or invented the way women are killed. That´s why a coordinated movement is important, as you said, Ellen.
Do women usually have access to the Internet in Jordan? I mean, the regular, middle class lady?
I agree with you, Luciana.
I agree with you, Luciana.
I'm not advocating purposely setting out to pass off fiction as fact because that is as shady as a $3 bill. But given that Norma's tale ultimately hews very close to real cases in Jordan, that her factual infractions aren't central to the story, it seems to me it would've been wiser to let the legal authorities and outside parties deal with Norma's sins, while the activist community capitalize on the international attention being given these crimes in a way that directly serves the at-risk people and the victims. It was a huge missed opportunity, and it's not like opportunities arise every day to advance the cause.
And, anyway, when I put this out to other writers last year--some of them memoirists--most if not all of them said liberties are almost always taken with memoirs. Apparently, that is the nature of the genre.
I would say there is reasonable Internet access for the middle class in Jordan. If they don't have the funds to own a computer, there are plenty of inexpensive Internet cafes, and some libraries offer free Internet use for limited time periods. Also, most office buildings have the technology. And Jordan is a fairly saturated mobile telephone market, so some people can access the Internet using mobile technologies.