He shrugged. Under Saddam, such a death would not legally have been considered a murder. He looked pointedly at Ahmed and Mustafa, and they returned his look of exasperation.
Great, Manal thought.
Within a few months of her arrival in Iraq, Manal had hired a dozen more staff members, mostly women. Working sixteen-hour days, she also had several programs up and running, including the letter-writing exchange between American and Iraqi women, a weekly class to train the women in their rights, and another class that trained women in basic business procedures. She also organized and trained dozens of Iraqi women’s rights groups that had formed since the war began.
Ahmed and Mustafa had been hired by Manal’s boss, Zainab. Manal didn’t trust them; they didn’t seem to take women’s rights seriously. Nor were they above making chauvinistic comments, tinged with sectarianism.
“When they said an American woman was coming to run the office, we thought, ‘Yes! Baywatch,’ ” they had joked, obviously disappointed by Manal’s veil and conservative dress. “But, instead, look what they sent us—a Wahhabi woman!” they had continued, comparing her to the extremely conservative Sunni group. Manal had ignored them, since she knew Women for Women needed some male employees. Today she had asked them to accompany her to the police station as protection, knowing postinvasion Baghdad was unsafe for single women and hoping a male presence would earn her a warmer reception among the Iraqi police.
Yet it didn’t seem to be working. Ahmed pulled her aside. “Hey Manal, what are you doing working with prostitutes? Our jobs are hard enough,” he said. “This will make us enemies quickly.”
“Someone has to stand up for these women,” she said. But Ahmed just rolled his eyes.
“We can help,” she insisted again, but this time mostly to herself.
MUNTAHA WAS CURLED up in a corner in her cell. She was skinny. She looked younger than her seventeen years, and her long dark hair fell loosely, in tangles, around her soft face and doe eyes. She was refusing to speak to anyone, but years of aid work had trained Manal in what to do. She introduced herself, and said, in soothing Arabic, “I don’t care what you’ve done.” She continued as the girl looked up. “I know you are a prostitute and, you know, I just want to make sure you are okay. I don’t want you to continue this work, and I can help you find a job, but if you do continue, I have access to condoms, and can get them for you.”
Manal doubted she would be providing birth control, but wanted to show the frightened girl that she understood and was there to help, not judge. It worked. The Iraqi took an instant liking to this curious, veiled young American. Soon, they were chatting freely, and she told Manal her story.
When she was fourteen years old, Muntaha’s father had forced her to marry a hideously ugly cousin. Though she hated her husband, Muntaha had no say in the matter. She was to cook, clean, and satisfy his sexual needs. School was not an option. When the Americans arrived, Muntaha and her girlfriends predicted that everything would change. Squatting barefoot in the front courtyard washing pots, they watched soldiers passing through their neighborhood. They giggled and fantasized that the soldiers were there to liberate them. The fall of Saddam and the talk of freedom were intoxicating.
But months passed and life only worsened, except for one change: Muntaha’s father-in-law bought a satellite dish, which brought a feast of American programs into their home. The shows were about sassy women, none of whom had brothers or uncles telling them what to do. American girls always talked back and expressed their feelings. For most of the young women on television, fathers didn’t seem to have control at all over their lives.
Before long, Muntaha and her friends began to wonder about life beyond their neighborhood. The television had opened Muntaha’s mind, yet also deepened her resentment and frustration about her situation. On the news, the Americans talked constantly about democracy and freedom, and she began to feel a sense of entitlement. She relayed to Manal how her feelings had changed. “I should be able to do what I want now. This is democracy.”
Manal nodded from her side of the cell, but her heart began to sink as she listened to how “democracy” had unfolded in Muntaha’s mind. One of the most popular new television shows was Star Academy, a version of American Idol produced in Lebanon. When Muntaha and her friends saw the young Arabs singing and dancing in front of a panel of judges, they declared that this was their destiny.
“I knew I could win if given the chance,” she told Manal. “A great talent lives inside me and I want to show it to the world.”
Manal sympathized: Muntaha was so hungry to express herself, to be recognized as an individual, to free herself from her role as servant in her arranged marriage. Across the Arab world, shows like Star Academy served as an outlet for women’s repressed dreams. It wasn’t entirely clear to Manal what happened next, but Muntaha said she hatched a plan to run away. She had somehow befriended an older woman in the neighborhood who offered to hide her and help her make plans to go to Dubai to audition for Star Academy.
Manal knew where the story was going, but said nothing. Aid workers were all too familiar with stories about young women whose dreams of moving to Kuwait to become a model, or to Beirut to be on a reality show, led them into danger. In many cases, these women were being lured into human trafficking and sexual slavery by other women who offered them shelter from abusive husbands or families before betraying their trust.
A few months after Muntaha first saw the U.S. soldiers in her village, she ran away, to the home of the older woman. The first few weeks of her liberation were the most fulfilling and carefree of her life, as she described them to Manal. The woman took Muntaha to clandestine “jeans parties” where all the girls shed their abayas and put on denim pants like they saw in the American movies. They danced around and showed off their jeans to one another. Later, the woman introduced Muntaha to pills, which eased her fear that her family would find her. During the day, Muntaha slept or hid in the house in case they were looking for her.
Then one day the woman turned to Muntaha and said, “I have cooked for you and fed you and taken you to parties. Now you owe me a thousand dollars.”
Muntaha was shocked. “I thought you adopted me,” she told her. But the woman said she had never agreed to that.
“You can’t go back to your family, now that you’ve run away.”
She told Muntaha she would have to work off her debts through prostitution. Muntaha cried. She was trapped, although she tried to console herself with the idea that it would be no worse than when her own husband forced himself on her. The woman offered her a deal. “Look, as soon as you finish paying me back, we can go to Dubai.”
“That’s why I became a prostitute,” Muntaha explained to Manal. “I had no choice.”
Muntaha then pulled out a small, wrinkled wedding picture from her wallet. “Look at this,” she said, pointing at the photo. Manal drew in her breath. Next to the willowy, swanlike Muntaha in her white wedding dress was a stumpy old man, a full foot shorter than his bride, with a face so grotesque that Manal thought he was deformed.
“Now you see what they made me do,” Muntaha said, angrily. “Would you agree to marry this man if you were me?”
Manal was speechless.
“Yes, you see,” Muntaha said defensively.
Manal took the wedding photo. “Wait here. I’m going to help you.”
THE SUN WAS beginning its slow descent as Manal returned to the front office. Like most Iraqis, Manal was fasting for Ramadan, the Muslim holy month; since she hadn’t eaten since sunrise, she felt weak and irritable with hunger. She had already been in the police station for almost two hours, but now the situation seemed only to be getting worse.
“The family is outside,” the police chief warned her as soon as she emerged from the cell block. Manal’s heart sank.
Her phone rang. Ahmed, who had left the station to fetch Muntaha a change of clothes, was now circling the station in his car. “Manal, this is bad,” he said. �
�One of the police officers must have tipped off the family. How else would they know she was here? There’s a leak.”
She could hear Mustafa also fretting. “Now look what’s happened. She can’t leave. If they find out who we are, they will come after Women for Women.”
Manal peered out the window and saw a line of cars beyond the barricades and barbed wire the soldiers had erected around the station. Inside each vehicle were several men, whom Manal assumed were Muntaha’s brothers, cousins, husband, and father, waiting like tigers to pounce. Had the situation been addressed quietly, without the public knowing, the family would have been more likely to sweep it under the rug, and even to deny it to the neighbors. However, the convoy outside the police station meant that in this case the family was very publicly admitting the situation, which would make it harder for them to back down without “restoring” the family’s honor by killing Muntaha. Had the military police not been in the station, Manal was certain the Iraqi police would have let the father barge in and take Muntaha.
Eventually, Ahmed and Mustafa entered the station. Manal briefly shared Muntaha’s story with Ahmed, and showed him the photo of Muntaha and her husband. Ahmed visibly recoiled at the image. That, more than anything else, made him more willing to help.
They vacillated on what to do. “Let’s wait,” Manal suggested, but another hour passed and the standoff continued. Manal went back and forth to talk to Muntaha.
Finally, the sun set, and Manal was desperate to break her fourteen-hour fast. She could hear her stomach growling and was desperately thirsty.
She approached a couple of the Iraqi policemen. “Do you have any water?” she asked. “I’d like to break my fast.”
“You are fasting?” asked one of them, visibly surprised.
“You’re Muslim,” the other observed, handing her the water.
“Of course I’m Muslim,” she said, laughing and pointing to her hijab.
“We thought you just put on the headscarf to see us, like the other ajnabi women,” the policeman said.
“No. Yanni, I’m Muslim.” Yanni was a colloquialism popular only in the Iraqi dialect. They chatted in Arabic, and after a while, the policemen warmed to her. Soon the police chief joined them.
“Look, let’s just talk to the family and give her back.”
“They’ll kill her,” Manal said.
“Don’t be dramatic. They won’t kill her,” he replied.
But Manal wasn’t convinced. They continued to wait, and chatted into the evening. Eventually Manal convinced the police chief to keep Muntaha in her cell, just for one night. Ahmed had been monitoring the situation outside, and by nine o’clock the cars had left, and they decided it was safe to go. As a precaution, a soldier escorted them to their car. They edged around coils of barbed wire and across the blocks of concrete and shattered glass to her beat-up old car. Manal was exhausted, and as she looked up at the soldier’s haggard face, she realized he was tired too. He was in his early sixties, and had been one of the troops who had insisted on rescuing Muntaha from the market. It suddenly occurred to her that he and Sergeant Lautenschlager had both gone out of their way to help this girl.
“You know, you most likely saved her life,” she said to him.
“Hey, it’s okay, ma’am. I’m happy to help,” he said. “Now I have something to say when my granddaughter asks me what the heck I’m doing in Iraq.”
THE NEXT MORNING, Manal awoke at four, shortly before sunrise. Wearily, she roused herself out of bed in the pitch black and made her way to the kitchen to prepare a meal. She knew that across Iraq, and across the world in different time zones, millions of other Muslims were also waking to pray and eat. The sense of unity fought off her fatigue. She cooked a couple of fried eggs, took some pita bread and silver-wrapped triangles of cheese out of the refrigerator, and sat in the kitchen chair in her robe. As soon as she finished eating, she would go back to sleep for three more hours.
As she ate, she thought about Muntaha. The girl had only one choice, really: she had to reconcile with her family, however improbable that seemed. Unlike in the West, women here couldn’t start over, with a job and an apartment, by themselves. Muntaha had little formal schooling, didn’t drive, and had no work experience outside the house. Even if she had an income-producing job, the stigma against young women living alone was fierce, mostly from female neighbors, who wouldn’t want a pretty, unsupervised young woman in their midst. Traveling abroad would be just as difficult. She would be hassled every step of the way—by border guards, customs officials, hotel desk managers, real estate agents, taxi drivers. There was, in effect, an all-male conspiracy against the unaccompanied woman in the Arab world, even in so-called modern countries like Jordan, and Muntaha didn’t have the strength to stand it. She would be lonely, ostracized, unprotected, and would always feel hunted by her family.
Manal sighed. Reconciliation was always possible, she told herself, even given the extremity of Muntaha’s crimes. In her experience, families rarely wanted to kill their daughters, and many looked for an excuse, or an alternative, that could still save their honor. However, for this to work Manal needed to find a place for Muntaha to stay while the family cooled off, like a House of Ruth in the States. Manal had heard that one or two such shelters existed in Iraq, but she didn’t know where. They were extremely controversial, so they had to operate clandestinely, like a secret underground network for abused women on the run. Manal imagined they survived by the goodwill of a few survivors. Local women helping one another—that was how so much true aid work was done in the world.
While Manal’s upbringing couldn’t have been further from Muntaha’s, she did recognize a common thread, which made her even more determined to save the girl. Manal had been pushed twice toward a marriage she didn’t want, and had struggled to find her own voice. Although she had grown up with the freedoms of the West, she had had to balance her family’s Muslim traditions with the desires of a young woman exposed to glitter and instant gratification. It hadn’t always been easy.
Raised in South Carolina, Manal was the daughter of Palestinian intellectuals who had moved to the States shortly before she was born. She was raised speaking Arabic, and learned about international politics and activism from her parents’ weekly debates over Palestinian politics. Manal’s family were secular Muslims, and her mother raised her to believe the veil was a symbol of oppression. When Manal became a teenager, she devoted the feminist energy she had learned from her mother and grandmother to American issues; she joined the debate team and was a lively orator, with strong opinions and a penchant for leadership.
By the time Manal entered middle school, her parents had moved to the D.C. suburbs, and they enrolled her in a private, highly prestigious Islamic school in Virginia, run by the Saudi Arabian government. Manal attended along with other Arab students and even a large handful of African American Muslims whose parents had joined the Nation of Islam during Malcolm X’s time. In those halcyon days before Al Qaeda, the only thing most teenagers knew about Islam was that the singer Cat Stevens had converted, so Manal loved being surrounded by other smart, diverse young Muslims. This was her chance to explore her faith more deeply. She had always felt drawn to Islam but was wary of the stereotype of veiled Muslim women as docile, quiet, and obedient, since she was so gregarious. Could she reconcile these two identities?
In high school, Manal came to see her mother’s anti-veil attitudes as old-fashioned. Times had changed since the 1960s. By the 1990s, the generation that had thrown off the veil as an act of female liberation had been superseded by a wave of young people concerned that Islam was being abandoned. As is often the case with immigrants, the need to identify with the motherland was strong. Manal decided when she was sixteen that she, too, would don the hijab. She was the only young woman in her class to take the veil, and the decision earned her respect at school, as several girlfriends followed suit. The decision was a serious one for her; once she put it on, she didn’t intend to take it off
. That first morning Manal came downstairs from the bedroom in a hijab, her mother was furious.
“You’re not going to school like that,” she said. For the next six months, they argued.
“We fought so hard for our rights,” her mother had shouted during one of their regular fights. “You’ve shut the door on everything we earned for you.” All of her mother’s friends, who Manal called “hard-core secularists,” laughed at her and started a bet as to when she would back down and remove the veil.
“The most important thing is to be truthful and honest and God-fearing,” they told her. “It’s not the physical scarf.”
“I believe that, but they’re not mutually exclusive and I need a reminder,” Manal said. Temptation surrounded young people in America, as it didn’t in the Middle East, she said. Boys expected physical contact at parties, and young people frequented dance clubs and drank alcohol. By putting on the hijab, she was drawing her lines in a public way.
Once the veil was wrapped around her head and pinned tightly behind her ear, Manal knew she had made the right decision. It was an extremely visible sign of a faith she was very proud of, and it made her feel more deeply committed and closer to God. She also decided to follow the other tenets of her faith by eschewing alcohol and pork, refusing to date or have any physical contact with boys, and praying regularly. Rather than lead a stoic life, though, Manal felt she had as much fun as, perhaps more than, her Westernized counterparts. Feminism had become trendy in U.S. universities as Manal headed off to college in the early 1990s, and many young women showed their allegiance to women’s rights by chopping short their hair, dressing in flannels and baggy pants, and disguising their femininity. Manal felt her way was better: the hijab served the same purpose but was considered feminine, even attractive, to Muslim men. Socializing came in the form of all-girl dance parties, in which the veils came off, and they danced together in circles and showed off their best hip-swaying, shoulder-shaking moves to Egyptian and hip-hop songs. Free from the pressures of male attention, girls’ confidence soared and their friendships deepened. People wouldn’t judge her by her breast size or hairstyle, Manal thought; they would be forced to get to know her and talk to her.
Sisters in War Page 10