by Jean Sasson
Mother, this aspect of my culture greatly troubles me, for I know from your work that if a child is vulnerable through disability or if she or he is traumatized in any way, the families turns away, saying that it must use its resources to raise the children who are mentally and physically fit—those who are able to work for the family.
At the end of each day, I join my friends at the front gate, where our driver awaits. We sometimes stop along the way in the village to buy some food, and perhaps take a few minutes to pause at a café for a cup of tea and a sweet, for we, too, are tormented by the anguish we see and need a little relaxation. I feel physically and mentally drained from the emotional tugs at my heart and mind, yet nothing could pull me away from these people.
Although our Turkish neighbors speak and smile when we pass, there has been no time to become more familiar than this. It is said that many ordinary Turks are incensed that the Syrian refugees are receiving benefits that ordinary Turks are denied and in need of. But we have seen no bitterness thus far. We will be making efforts to befriend our neighbors, as well as other Syrian refugees who have managed to avoid living in the shipping-container camp. These are the refugees who held on to enough money or jewels to rent apartments in the village. However, we are also told that as the funds diminish, many of these families are marrying their daughters off to affluent suitors. Girls as young as eight years old are being used like a valuable commodity by many families, their little bodies bartered and exchanged for money, sometimes for marriage. Even more alarming, sometimes girls are provided for a weekend or a week for a wealthy man’s pleasure. My friends and I are determined to save as many girls as possible from this odious situation. They should not be the solution to the financial dilemmas their families face.
Mother, I can barely write these words, as my body is still trembling from the memory of something I have just witnessed. I met a young woman named Yana who was captured, raped, and tortured by the ISIS fighters. While attempting escape from Syria to Turkey, the caravan she was in was attacked by a small group of fighters. Many of the fleeing Syrians escaped, including her parents. But Yana was grabbed out of the vehicle in which they were traveling and kidnapped, along with her two younger sisters, both of whom are still missing.
This is how this tragic story came to me. As I was clearing my workstation at the end of the day, a woman came in to collect one of the mute boys for her neighbor. I instantly became aware of her because she was wearing a niqab, which exposed her eyes but nothing else. Few Syrian women wear the niqab, as you know. Everything about this woman suggested youth. Her shoulders were broad and her stride was sure. I listened as she spoke to the mute boy. Her voice was youthful, with a melodious cadence. When the boy refused her kindly gesture to walk from the classroom, the woman suddenly lost her composure and began wringing her hands, which I noticed were visibly scarred with angry raised red stripes.
I walked to her and placed my hand on her shoulder, as she was small compared to me. I asked, “What can I do to help?”
I was completely stunned when she burst into sobs and collapsed into a chair.
I was concerned for the mute boy, but his expression never changed; he stood and stared, as he always does. I suppose that the poor child must hear the sounds of weeping women all hours of the day and night. Feeling that he was neither better nor worse from the situation, I turned my full attention to the veiled visitor. I stood beside her and rubbed her shoulders.
Our eyes met, and I believe she could sense that I truly cared about her circumstances. Without speaking, she removed her niqab.
My heart skipped several beats. Those raised red stripes I had seen on her arms were also streaked across her face. I knew then that someone had taken a sharp blade to a face that was, quite obviously, once delicate and lovely. I could tell by her small features, her large eyes, and her full lips that she had been a very attractive girl. Finally, I stammered, “What happened? Who did this to you?”
She bewildered me with her admission. “Oh, I did it,” she said in a calm voice. Then she removed her abaya. Underneath, she was wearing a plain navy dress with sleeves to her elbows. She pulled up her sleeves, showing me that the red bands went all the way up her arm. I assumed then that much of her body was covered in red stripes. And it was.
I will condense a very long story for you, Mother, but will tell you more when I see you. This poor Syrian girl has endured more terror and abuse over the past year than I can bear to contemplate. Yana and her two younger sisters were beaten by their captors even as they sped across the desert. All three pleaded to be returned to their parents, of course, but their pleas were a source of amusement for the brutal men who had captured them.
They were transported to a fighters’ camp to be locked in a cramped room in a small house. They were taunted, told that they would be kept for the high-ranking fighters due to their youth and beauty. The only benefit was that gangs of men would not be free to rape them, at least until those high-ranking fighters tired of them.
Yana was only seventeen years old, but she was suddenly the guardian of her two young sisters. She knew that she must defend them at all costs. One sister was only ten and the other was twelve. When confronted by her rapist, Yana offered herself in place of her sisters. At first, the fighter who had claimed her agreed. He raped her several times a day, but he kept his promise and did not assault her sisters. Then one day, when Yana was sleeping, her rapist unlocked the door, rushed into the room, and snatched the youngest of her sisters.
Yana leapt to her feet and tried desperately to rescue her sister, but her rapist was twice her size and punched her in the face. The force of the blow rendered Yana unconscious and she briefly passed out. It was only the horrific screeches coming from her little sister that brought her back to consciousness. Yana pleaded from behind locked doors for her rapist to leave her little sister alone, to return her, but of course he did not. He threw the grievously wounded little girl back into the room when he was finished with her. Two days later, he repeated his brutality with Yana’s second sister.
Although she knew she would be executed for killing an ISIS fighter, Yana plotted to murder their rapist. She waited for the opportunity to seize a weapon. One day after a particularly brutal attack, Yana realized that her captor had removed his dagger and placed it with his trousers between Yana and the wall. Yana seized the dagger and tried to plunge it into her rapist’s stomach. But the man was strong and he knocked the dagger from her hand, laughed in her face, and goaded her to keep the dagger and use it to kill herself and her sisters with it if she dared.
Not surprisingly, utterly beaten and distraught by her lack of power, Yana suffered a breakdown a short time later. She said she played with the dagger for a few days, before being possessed with enough courage to self-inflict pain on her own body. She began cutting the flesh on her arm. Once she started cutting, she said, she could not stop. Slicing her flesh gave her an enormous sense of relief. The cutting also served to act as a self-inflicted punishment for her failure to protect her sisters.
Eventually, Yana began to cut her face—the face her mother and father had claimed to love. Looking back, she remembers thinking that mutilating herself was a useful act. The rapes would most likely stop because her pretty face would no longer be a magnet for her rapist, who had enjoyed lusting after her. Just as she was about to mutilate her little sisters for the same purpose, to free them from being raped, the rapist and several other men burst into the room. They’d heard the girls screaming, as if they were fearful for their lives. The men took the dagger then dragged the distraught Yana from the room she shared with her sisters.
She never saw her young sisters again, although she heard their cries of pain and terror through the concrete walls. It seemed that the high-ranking fighter was so enraged with Yana that he allowed the lower-ranking fighters to rape her young sisters at will.
Yana was right in her assumption that without beauty she had no value to her captors. She was freed from be
ing raped, for her face and arms were scabbed and ugly. Sadly, the torture of hearing her sisters repeatedly raped was more painful than being raped herself, or so she said.
Then one day, some of the fighters burst into her room and bound her hands before pushing her into a vehicle. She was driven for several hours before being released in an area not far from the Turkish border. The shouts of her tormentors still ring in her heart. “Yana!” they bellowed. “Tell the women you meet that someday they, too, will be ours!”
A kindly Syrian family found Yana wandering alone and rescued her, giving her a lift to Turkey, where she was taken in to live in the shipping-container camp.
And this, Mother, is the story of Yana.
I will not abandon her. I will do what she will allow me to do for her. To my surprise, she refuses to consider surgery to smooth the scars on her face and body, saying only that she prefers to be an undesirable woman, unwanted by all men. I volunteered to pay for the best European plastic surgeons, but she says an emphatic “No.”
Tragically, I am told by others here that there are many other rape victims living in the shipping-container camp. No one will identify them exactly, for few refugees will open up like Yana. I am told that when a woman claims she has heard of a woman who was raped or has received a letter from someone in Syria with details of a friend who was raped, it is in reality actually this woman who is speaking of her own experiences.
As you know, our society finds a way to blame every female victim, so who can fault these women for keeping their history of rape and abuse a secret?
Mother, tonight I was looking in the mirror and contemplating the life I have lived, comparing my childhood, and now my adulthood, with the lives of the children and women who I encounter daily. Although I feel enormous sympathy and care, truthfully I feel like a war correspondent who sees all but can do nothing. This is not a good feeling.
Yet for the first time in my life, I finally and fully understand why you have devoted your life to the cause of women. Now I know the significance of your work.
I want you to know that now your daughter is doing the most important work of her life.
I love you,
Maha
My daughter’s communication marked the beginning of an episode that turned my close family upside down.
But, of course, I did not know that at the time.
5 - Infamy in Pakistan
Still clutching Maha’s letter, I stumbled across the room and tumbled face forward on my bed. My mind was bubbling with a multitude of emotions. I felt elation even as I suffered sadness. I strained to smile, but my lips spread no further than a tremble. Ultimately, the tears gushed and I wept. My heart was breaking for my daughter, and for the traumatized women and children she was seeking to serve.
I have always counseled my children that those who have great wealth—particularly those born into wealth without having worked for it, such as is the case in our own family, the al-Saud—owe a debt to society. And while I have always envisaged the day my children came of age—an appropriate age to accept their responsibilities and undertake charity work—now that my daughter was in a place and situation I sensed might be risky for her, I underwent remorse that I had steered my child to true peril.
Indisputably, danger lurks for those who push societies to transform. Nearly all who gain power take offense when censured by their citizens or others, even if the criticism might provoke positive change for their own people. Many governments choose the regrettable approach of using the power they possess to imprison, torture, and even put to death those who dare to condemn or call for progress. There are even famous cases in my own country where those who have dared to speak out have been arrested, imprisoned, and sentenced to floggings and years in prison.
Societies tend to be equally less forgiving of dissenters, with too many people clinging stubbornly to the way things have always been, and reacting angrily when various segments of society demand change. When people are uneducated, or simply lack curiosity to seek knowledge, change appears as a frightening unknown. Such fear leads to aggression, even violence. This we have seen in countries such as India and Pakistan, where anyone not of the majority religion can easily be falsely accused of blasphemy, a favored manner of harming one’s enemies, and the state will too often execute these innocent people without a proper trial.
These factors combine to mean that there is a possibility of immense danger for one who pushes for reform.
Moreover, there is the potential for enormous personal pain. Many people walk the earth without recognizing the agony of the lives of so many, but for those people who do take note and truly care the misery they witness becomes their private sorrow.
I know this to be true, as there have been times in my life when I have felt that my eyes have seen only grief and my heart has felt only pain. I have lived with what I call the “pain of compassion” for much of my adult life and know the toll the anguish takes. Now my child was to follow. Once the desire to help others settles in a heart, a hunger to assist flourishes. There was no doubt in my mind that my daughter Maha al-Saud would now devote her life to serving others. Her endeavors would bring sorrow even as they brought joy.
To calm my nerves, I comforted myself with the knowledge that the joy of improving and changing lives would overshadow Maha’s sorrow.
After some long moments had passed, I stood up and glanced into the mirror that hung over my dressing table. I noticed that my eyes were red and swollen, and I knew that I must put cold compresses upon them quickly, if I was to avoid Kareem’s scrutiny. My husband becomes very inquisitive if he suspects that I am upset or if I am keeping a secret from him, and is always determined to get to the bottom of my troubles. Just as I placed Maha’s letter on my dressing table, Amani knocked lightly on the door. “Mummy, may I come in?”
I smiled, pleased that my youngest child finally understood that it was best to knock before entering her mother’s private quarters.
“Come in, darling,” I said with anticipation, forgetting momentarily that my eyes were swollen from weeping. I was not expecting Amani, but whenever one of my children or grandchildren visit, I am anxious to see them without delay; my day brightens when I am in their company.
Amani burst into my quarters. Her head was lowered, as she was looking at some photographs, but I could see that her face was twisted with anxiety.
What now? I wondered.
Just then Amani looked up at me. She suddenly stopped and, staring into my face, she said, “Mummy, have you been crying?’
Other than Kareem, Amani was the last person I wished to know of Maha’s current mission. “Darling,” I stammered, “no, I am suffering from an allergy from the profusion of flowers that your father sent me.”
It was true that our home smelled heavily of perfumed flowers. Kareem and I had had a minor squabble the previous week, and the day before he had surprised me with many bouquets of yellow roses, one of my favorite flowers. But, as usual, my husband had overdone his gesture, and I could not count the number of roses placed throughout our palace. Sara had visited that afternoon, and she had suffered such a headache from the strong scents that wafted through the palace that she had departed earlier than planned.
“Mother?” Amani queried in a disbelieving tone.
“Yes, Amani. It is nothing.” I stared pointedly at the photographs in her hands and nodded. “What is in your hands, Daughter?’
Amani clearly did not believe my words. I am not a mother who seeks to worry my children, so there have been many times when I have attempted to keep a painful truth from one or all of them.
Amani’s gaze shifted from side to side, searching my room for any evidence of what might have brought her mother to tears. Seeing nothing to question, she said, “Let’s have a cup of tea, Mummy. I am quite distressed and would like to relax a moment before I tell you a story that will bring back your tears.”
I sighed. I had been unsuccessful in my attempts to convince Amani that th
e scented roses had created a flower allergy. I would have to be on guard, for no one can reconnoiter with the passion of my daughter. In past years, when attempting to burrow out the sins of her siblings and their friends, Amani had become as skilful as the finest private investigator.
But I hoped that such activities were behind her, as all in our family had strived mightily to encourage her to lose this most unappealing trait.
“Yes, darling.” I glanced at the clock, guessing the time we had before Kareem would arrive. Believing that we had several hours, I said, “But give me but a moment to repair my face and I will join you in the small sitting room.”
“Yes. I will wait for you there,” Amani promised.
I kissed my daughter’s face before walking away, trusting that she would exit my quarters. Never did I suspect that she would do a hurried search of my room while I was in the powder room or that she would find her sister’s communication from Turkey.
To my alarm, I would soon discover that Amani had read enough of Maha’s letter to create a great upheaval in our family.
***
Half an hour later, I joined Amani in the smallest of our sitting chambers. The room has an intimate feel and I always select that setting when there are no more than two or three individuals in attendance. My daughter and I had sat there on many occasions, discussing the joys and sorrows of our family life, and of the world.
An attractive display of tea, coffee, and fruit juice, along with fresh fruit and small sandwiches, were waiting for me at the small dining table set up in the sitting room. Our tea was served by a dear girl named Dilipa from Sri Lanka who is part of our home life. Her name means one who gives and protects, and Kareem and I had observed that she lives up to her name, for Dilipa was the most kindhearted of all our employees, and always consoled others when they were lonely or homesick.