“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.
Now there is much to be done. First, I must get in touch with the head of my agency, Edmond Kaiser, who is the founder of Terre des Hommes. I still have not spoken to him about my crazy plan to take Souad to another country. It seemed advisable to finalize the administrative side of things first. Now the time has come to contact him, and when I do, he tells me he has never heard of this type of story.
I summarize the situation for him: “I have a girl who has been severely burned and who recently gave birth. I intend to bring her to Switzerland, but I don’t know yet where the baby is. Are you in agreement with all of this?”
“Evidently, I am.”
That is what he was like, Edmond Kaiser. A formidable man, with an intuition for urgency. Once the question was asked, the answer was immediately forthcoming. You could speak to him in this straightforward manner.
I am in a hurry to get Souad out of that hospital where she is receiving inadequate care and suffering miserably, but where she and I have the good fortune of having the enormous support of Doctor Hassan. Without his goodness and his courage, I would not have succeeded. So Edmond Kaiser now knows my plan. Doctor Hassan and I decide to take her out at night, discreetly, on a stretcher, with the agreement of the hospital director that no one will see her. I do not know if they pretended she had died during the night, but it is likely.
I lay her down in the backseat of the car. It is three or four in the morning and we are going off to another hospital. At that time, there were not yet the numerous barricades that were installed at the time of the intifada. The trip goes without a problem and we arrive in the early-morning hours at the hospital, where everything has been prepared. The chief of medicine knows about the situation and I have asked that no questions be put to her about her family, her parents, or her village. The facility, which receives donations from the Order of Malta, is better equipped and very much cleaner.
They settle Souad in a room. I come to see her every day while waiting to receive the visas for Europe, and especially waiting for word about the child. Souad doesn’t say anything to me about him. It seems that knowing he is alive somewhere is enough. This apparent indifference is perfectly understandable. Suffering, humiliation, anguish, depression, she is psychologically and physically incapable of accepting herself as a mother. It is important to understand the conditions in which an illegitimate child is received, a child born of a disgraced mother who was burned for the sake of family honor. It is better to separate such a child from the community. If it were possible for this baby to live in good conditions in his own country, we would leave him there. For the child, as for the mother, it would be the least painful solution. Alas, it is impossible. This child will endure the presumed shame of his mother in the depths of some orphanage where he will be scorned. We owe it to him to get him out of there, as we are doing for Souad. And she thinks only about leaving and asks me about it during every visit. I tell her we will leave when we have the visas, and not to worry. She complains about the nurses who tear off her bandages without precaution, she yells every time they come near her, she feels mistreated. The quality of care, although more hygienic, is not ideal. But what else is there to do while we wait for the visas? And this type of document always takes time.
During this wait, I make some moves, using my contacts, to find the little one. The friend who brought Souad’s case to my attention gets in touch, a little reluctantly, with a social worker, who reports that she knows where the child is and that it is a boy. But she says that I can’t just take him away like that, it’s impossible. And besides, she thinks I am wrong to want to be encumbered with the child, because he will be an extra responsibility for me, and afterward for the mother. So I discuss it with Souad: “What is your son’s name?”
“His name is Marouan.”
“Was it you who gave him this name?”
“Yes, I did. The doctor asked me.”
She has some moments of lucidity and others of amnesia, which I sometimes have difficulty following. She has forgotten the terrible circumstances of the child’s birth, forgotten that they told her it was a boy, and she had never before mentioned a name to me. Suddenly, in answer to a simple question, the response is direct.
I continue in the same direction: “What do you think about this child? I would think we can’t leave without Marouan. I’m going to look for him, because we can’t leave him here.”
She glances up at me, painfully, because her chin is still attached to her chest.
“You think so?”
“Yes, I do. You are going to get out, but you know in what conditions Marouan is going to be living, it will be a hell for him.”
He will always be the son of a charmuta. The son of a whore. I don’t say so, but she must know it. The tone of this You think so? is enough for me. It is a positive response. So I begin looking for the child. First I visit one or two orphanages, trying to find a baby who must be about two months old now, and whose first name is Marouan. But I don’t see him, and I am not in the best position to locate this child. The social service worker does not like girls like Souad. She is from a good West Bank family that has not repudiated these traditions. But I’ll get nowhere without her. So in response to my insistence, and especially to please my friend, she tells me the center where he has been placed. It is more a rat hole than an orphanage, and getting him out of there will be very complicated. He is a prisoner of the system that placed him there.
I undertake some steps, which finally bring results two weeks later. Along the way, I have met intermediaries of every stripe. There are those who would be in favor of the child being submitted to the same fate as his mother. There are those who favor getting rid of a prob
lem and a mouth to feed—some of these children die without any explanation. And then there are those who have some heart and understand my obstinancy. In the end I have in my arms a two-month-old baby, who has a tiny head that is a little pear-shaped and a little bump on his forehead, a result of his premature birth. He was never cared for in an incubator, even though he was born prematurely. He has the traces of the classic jaundice of newborns. I had been afraid he would have serious problems. His mother had been burned like a torch with her child inside her and he was born in nightmarish conditions. He is scrawny but that isn’t serious. He looks at me with round eyes, not crying, calm.
I am used to encountering children suffering from malnutrition; we had about sixty of them at the time in an institution where I worked. I bring him home with me where I have everything I’ll need for him. I have already had experience traveling with seriously ill children who needed to have an operation in Europe. I place Marouan for the night in a basket, diapered, dressed, fed. I have the visas. I have everything. Edmond Kaiser will be waiting for us in Lausanne to take us directly to the serious burn section of the university hospital.
Tomorrow is the big departure. Souad will be transported on a stretcher to the plane for Tel Aviv. She goes along like a good little girl but she is suffering horribly. When I ask her if she is all right and not in too much pain, she answers simply: “Yes, I am in pain.” Nothing more.
“If I turn you a little, will that be better?”
“Yes, that’s better. Thank you.”
Always thank you. Thank you for the wheelchair at the airport, an object she had never seen in her life. Thank you for the coffee with a straw. Thank you for settling her in somewhere while I get the boarding passes. As I am holding the baby and having trouble balancing him while I go through the formalities, I tell Souad that I’m going to place the little one on her and not to move. She gives me a frightened look. Her burns prevent her from taking him in her arms. She manages to bring them just close enough together, stiffly, on both sides of the baby’s body. And she makes a fearful gesture when I entrust the baby to her. It is hard for her.
Burned alive: a victim of the law of men Page 12