Burned alive: a victim of the law of men

by Souad; Marie-Thérèse Cuny

  “Stay just like that. I’ll be right back.”

  I am really forced to enlist her help, I can’t push the wheelchair, hold the baby, and go to all the counters where I have to show my passport, the visas, the documents for Souad and the baby, and explain my strange traveling group. And it is a nightmare, because the travelers who walk near her do what everyone does before a baby: “Oh, what a beautiful baby! Ah! He’s adorable!” They don’t even look at the mother, completely disfigured, her head bent over this child. She has bandages under her hospital gown—it was too difficult to dress her—on top of which is one of my woolen jackets and a blanket over that. She can’t raise her head to say thank you to the passersby and to tell me how much this baby, whom they find so adorable, panics her. As I move away from her to take care of the official business, I think how surrealistic this scene is. She is there, burned, the baby in her arms. She has experienced hell and so has he, and people pass by with a smile. “Oh, the beautiful baby!”

  When it is time to board, another problem presents itself: how to get her on the plane. I have already taken a wheelchair up the steps of an airplane, but here I am really stymied. The Israelis have a technique, however. They bring a huge crane, and Souad is suspended in a sort of cabin at the end of it. The cabin rises slowly, arrives level with the plane’s door, and two men are there to receive her.

  I have reserved three seats in front to be able to stretch her out, and the flight attendants have arranged a curtain to shield her from the looks of the other passengers. Marouan is in a cradle provided by the airline company. We are on a direct flight to Lausanne. Souad doesn’t complain. I try to help her change position from time to time, but nothing soothes her. The pain medication really has not had much effect. She looks a little haggard, half asleep, but confident. I can’t get her to eat but I do give her something to drink through a straw. And I look after the baby, who needs changing. She avoids looking at him.

  She suffers from so many complications. She doesn’t know what Switzerland means, this country where she is going for treatment. She has never seen an airplane before, or a crane, or so many different people in the hubbub of an international airport. She has seen nothing of the world and is suddenly being barraged by all sorts of new experiences that are perhaps terrifying for her. Her suffering is far from at an end. It will require a long time before her survival results in a bearable life. I do not even know if they will be able to operate on her, if skin grafts are still possible. Then there will be the integration into the Western world, learning a language, followed by all the rest of the acculturation. When you “bring out” a victim, as Edmond Kaiser says, you know that it is a responsibility for life.

  Souad’s head is next to the window. I say to her, “You see those? They’re called clouds.” I don’t think she is capable, in her condition, of thinking about everything that awaits her. She hopes, without knowing for what exactly. She sleeps. Some of the passengers complain about the odor, despite the curtains drawn around her. From the day of my first visit to Souad, in that dreadful hospital room, two months have gone by. Every centimeter of skin on her chest and her arms is decomposed in a vast purulent wound. The passengers can hold their noses and make faces of disgust to the flight attendants, it’s all the same to me. I’m taking a burned woman and her child to their salvation, one day they will know why. They will know, too, that there are others, already dead or dying, in every country where the law of men has institutionalized honor crimes—in the West Bank, in Jordan, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, India, Pakistan, and even in Israel, and yes, even in Europe. They will know that the rare ones who escape must spend the rest of their lives in hiding, because their assassins may still be successful.

  Most of the humanitarian organizations do not take up the cases of these women, because they are individual social cases, “cultural” cases! And because in some countries, laws protect the murderer. Their cases do not excite the big campaigns that are waged against famine and war, to aid refugees, or battle epidemics. I can understand and acknowledge this sad situation in the world. The experience I lived demonstrates the difficulty and the time needed to discreetly implant oneself in a country to recover the victims of honor crimes and help them, and the risks and perils involved. Souad is my first rescue of this type, but this endeavor is a long way from finished: Keeping her from dying is one thing, making her live again is another.

  Switzerland (Souad)

  As the infant lay across the seats on the plane, I could look at his beautiful little face, long and dark, with his white hospital bonnet on his head. I lost the sense of time and had the impression that it had only been three weeks, when actually Marouan was already two months old. Jacqueline told me that we arrived in Geneva on December 20.

  I was so afraid when she first settled him on me. My arms couldn’t hold him, and I was in such a state of confusion, shame, and suffering all mixed together that I didn’t quite realize what was happening. I slept most of the time and don’t even remember getting off the plane and into the ambulance that took me to the hospital. It was only the next day that I began to understand where I was. Of this extraordinary day when I was taken out of my country I have retained only the memory of Marouan’s face and seeing the clouds from the airplane. I wondered what those funny white things were on the other side of the window. I did know that we were going to Switzerland, but at the time the word meant nothing to me. I confused Swiss and Jewish, because everything outside my village was one big enemy country.

  I had no idea about foreign countries and their names. I didn’t even know much about my own country outside my village. I was taught that there was my territory and then the rest of the world, the enemy, where “they eat pork!” as my father used to say. That was how evil he thought they were.

  But now I was going to live in an enemy country, and with great confidence, because “the lady” was there with me. The people around me in this hospital did not know my story. Jacqueline and Edmond Kaiser had said nothing about it. I was a burn victim, and that was the only thing that mattered in this place. They took charge of me the next day for an emergency operation, which consisted of unsticking my chin from my chest to allow me to raise my head. The flesh was raw; I had lost a lot of weight and now was only thirty kilos of burns and bones, and not much skin. Every time I saw the nurse coming with her instrument table, I would start crying because the procedures, which I knew were necessary, were excruciating. They did give me tranquilizers, and the nurse was very, very gentle. She cut away the dead skin delicately, getting hold of it with a tweezers. She gave me antibiotics, they soothed my burns with creams. There were no horrors of forced showers, gauze ripped off carelessly as I had endured in the hospital in my country. At first, my arms just hung down on either side, stiff like a doll’s arms, but eventually they were able to straighten them so that I could move them. I began to stand and then to walk in the halls and to use my hands.

  At the same time, I was learning about this new world whose language I didn’t speak. Since I didn’t know how to read or write even in Arabic, I took refuge in a prudent silence until I got to know some basic words.

  I could only express myself with Jacqueline and Hoda, both women who spoke Arabic. Edmond Kaiser was marvelous. I admired him as I had never in my previous life admired any man. He acted like a real father, I now understand, one who had made a decision about my life and allowed Jacqueline to bring me here.

  What surprised me very much when I came out of my room to go see Marouan in the nursery was the freedom of the girls. Two nurses went with me, and they were wearing makeup, their hair was nicely styled, they wore short dresses, and they spoke with men. I thought to myself: They’re speaking with men, they’re going to die! I was so shocked that I said so to Jacqueline and Edmond Kaiser as soon as I had the right words.

  “Look at that girl over there, she’s having a conversation with a man! They’re going to kill her.”

  I made a gesture of slicing my hand across my neck.
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  “No, they’re in Switzerland, it’s not the same as in your country. Nobody will harm them. This is normal behavior in the Western world.”

  “But look, their legs are showing, it’s not right to see a girl’s legs.”

  “But yes, it’s quite normal.”

  “And the eyes. It’s not a bad thing for women to wear makeup?”

  “No, the women here use makeup, they go out, they have the right to have a male friend—very different from your village. You’re here, you’re not in your land, you’re in Switzerland.”

  This was not easy for me to grasp and get used to. I must have worn out Edmond Kaiser asking him the same questions over and over. The first time, I commented: “That girl, I won’t see her again, because she’s going to die.” But the next day, I saw that she was still there and I was happy for her. I said to myself: Thank God she is alive. She is wearing the same white blouse, her legs are showing, so that must be all right, and you aren’t punished for that. I had thought that everywhere it was the same as in my village. I was also shocked by the way these girls walked. They were smiling and at ease, and walked with confidence, like men.

  And I saw many blonde girls: “Why are they blonde? Why aren’t they dark like me? Because there is less sun? When it’s warmer they’ll become dark and their hair will be curly? Oh! She put on short sleeves. Look over there, those two women who are laughing! Where I come from a woman never laughs with another woman and no woman would ever wear short sleeves. And they have shoes!” I was startled by all of this.

  I remember the first time I was able to go to the city, alone with Edmond Kaiser. Jacqueline had already left on a mission. I saw women sitting in restaurants, smoking cigarettes, with their arms uncovered showing beautiful white skin. There seemed to be only blondes with white skin. They fascinated me and I wondered where they came from. In my country, blondes are so rare that the men covet them very much, so I thought these girls might be in danger. Edmond Kaiser gave me my first geography lesson, including the differences in people.

  “These women were born blonde, but others are born another color in other countries. But here, in Europe, there are also brunettes, red-haired women with spots on their faces . . .”

  “Spots like I have?”

  “No, not spots from burns like you. Little brown spots caused by the sun on their white skin.”

  I watched and I kept looking for a woman like me, and I would say to Edmond Kaiser: “May God forgive me, but I would really like to meet another woman who has been burned. I have never seen one. Why am I the only woman who has been burned?” Even today I still have this feeling of being the only burned woman in the world. If I had been the victim of an automobile accident, it wouldn’t be the same thing. I guess it’s fate, and you cannot hold a grudge against fate. All my life I will feel burned and different. I will always have to conceal my scars under long sleeves. I dream of being able to wear open-necked blouses and short sleeves like other women, but I have to wear clothes that button up to the neck. Other women have that freedom. Even if I am able to walk about freely, I am a prisoner in my skin.

  One day I asked if I could have a shiny gold tooth, something I had really wanted. Edmond Kaiser answered me with a smile that I should first get better and then we could talk about my teeth. In my village, a gold tooth was something very special. All that shines is marvelous. I must have surprised him with this strange request, because I had nothing of my own and spent most of my time in bed. They took me for walks from time to time between treatments but it was weeks before I was able to take a shower. There was no question of getting dressed before the scars healed. I wore a large loose shirt that covered my bandages. I couldn’t read because I didn’t know how. I couldn’t speak because the nurses didn’t understand me, although Jacqueline had left them cards with words written in French and phonetically in Arabic for “eat,” “sleep,” “bathroom,” “bad,” “not bad,” everything that could be useful to them in taking care of me. When I was able to get up, I would often sit by the window. I watched the city, the lights, and the mountain above. It was magnificent. I contemplated this spectacle with awe. I wanted to be able to go out and walk. I had never seen anything like this and it was all so beautiful.

  Every morning, I went to see Marouan. I had to leave my building to get to the nursery. I was cold since I was wearing only the hospital gown, which closed in the back, a hospital robe, and hospital slippers. These and the hospital toothbrush were my only possessions. So I would walk very quickly, as at home, with my head down. The nurse told me to take it more slowly but I didn’t want to. I wanted to put on a proud look outside just because I was alive, even though I was still afraid. That was something the doctors and the nurses couldn’t do anything about. I felt like the only burned woman in the world. I felt humiliation and guilt and I couldn’t get rid of these feelings.

  At night, in the hospital, I often had nightmares, and the face of my brother-in-law would come back to me. I felt him move around me, I could still hear him lying to me, saying: I’m going to take care of you. And then I would be running in flames. I thought about this during the day, too, and suddenly I would feel an urge to die, to make the suffering stop. Sometimes, lying in my bed, I would think that I should have died because I deserved to. When Jacqueline transported me from the hospital to the airplane for Switzerland, I had the feeling that I was a bag of garbage that she should have thrown into a corner to be left to rot. This notion, the shame of being what I was, recurred regularly.

  Very gradually I began to forget about my first life. I wanted to be someone else in this country, to be like these free women I saw all around me and to fit in here as fast as possible. To achieve this, for many years I buried memories. My village, my family were not supposed to exist in my mind. But there was always Marouan, and the nurses who taught me how to give him the bottle, to change him, to be a mother to him for a few minutes each day to the extent I was physically capable. And I hope my son can forgive me, but I had difficulty doing what was asked of me, because unconsciously I felt guilty being his mother. Who could understand this? I was incapable of really embracing him as my son, of imagining his future with me and the scars from my burns. How would I tell him, later, that his father was a coward? What could I do so he wouldn’t feel guilty himself for what I had become, a mutilated body, frightful to look at? Actually, I couldn’t picture myself “before.” Had I been pretty? Was my skin soft, my arms supple, and my breasts seductive? There were mirrors in the eyes of others and I saw myself as ugly and to be scorned. A bag of garbage. I was still in a state of acute suffering. While my body was being cared for and I was regaining my physical strength, in my mind things were not always well. Not only did I not know how to express this, but the word depression was completely unknown to me. I became acquainted with it some years later. At the time, I just thought that I should not feel sorry for myself and in this way I buried twenty years of my life so deeply that I still have trouble bringing up memories. I think this was necessary in order for me to survive.

  For long months there were skin grafts, twenty-four operations in all. My legs, which hadn’t been burned, served for replacement skin. Between grafts, it was necessary to wait for the skin to heal and then begin again. Until I had no more skin left to give. The grafted skin was still fragile, I had to take great care to soften and hydrate it. I still have to do that today.

  Edmond Kaiser had decided that I should start wearing real clothes. He took me to a department store that was so large and so big and so full of shoes and clothes that I did not know where to look. For shoes, I didn’t want embroidered slippers like we wear at home. And I wanted real pants, not a saroual. I had already seen girls wearing them when I went in the van with my father when we brought the fruits and vegetables to market. Some girls wore pants that were in style, very wide at the bottom, called “Charleston” pants. They were considered to be bad girls, and I couldn’t wear such things.

  I didn’t get my “Charleston
s.” He bought me a pair of black shoes with little heels, jeans, and a very pretty pullover. I was disappointed. I had been dreaming about these new clothes for nine months. But I smiled and I said thank you. I had gotten into the habit of smiling at people all the time, which surprised them, and saying thank you for everything. Smiling was my response to their kindness, but also my only means of communicating for a long time. If I cried, I hid it, an old habit. To smile was the sign of another life. Here people were smiling, even the men. I wanted to smile as much as possible. And having people say thank you to me was a new experience. No one had ever said it to me before, not my father, my brother, or anyone, when I worked like a slave. I was used to being struck, not thanked.

  I realized that saying thank you was an act of great politeness and respect and it gave me pleasure to say it because others also said it to me. Thank you for the bandages, for the sleeping pill, for the cream to keep me from tearing off my skin, for the meal, and especially for the chocolate. It’s so good, so comforting. I said thank you to Edmond Kaiser for the pants, the shoes, and the pretty pullover. “You’re a free woman here, Souad, you can do what you want to do, but I advise you to dress simply, in clothes that suit you and don’t irritate your skin, and that don’t bring attention to yourself.”

  He was right. In this country that welcomed me with so much goodness, I was still a little shepherd from the West Bank, without any training or education and without family. And who was still dreaming of a gold tooth!

  At the end of the first year after my arrival, I left the hospital to be placed in a shelter. There were more skin grafts, for which I returned to the hospital. It didn’t always go well in my mind, but I survived and I couldn’t ask for anything better. I was learning French as well as I could, expressions, bits of sentences that I repeated like a parrot, without even knowing what they meant.