Burned alive (10 page)

Someone came into the room once, in the middle of this nightmare. I sensed a presence rather than actually seeing someone. A hand passed like a shadow over my face without touching it. A woman’s voice with a peculiar accent said to me in Arabic: “I’m going to help you, do you understand?” I said yes, without believing it. I was so uncomfortable in that bed, the object of everyone’s scorn, I didn’t understand how anyone could help me, especially how anyone could have the power to help. Bring me back to my family? They didn’t want any part of me. A woman burned for honor is supposed to burn to death. The only way to help me stop suffering was to help me die.

But I say yes to this woman. I don’t know who she is.

Jacqueline

My name is Jacqueline. At the time of these events, I was in the Middle East working with a humanitarian organization, Terre des Hommes, which was directed by an extraordinary person whose name was Edmond Kaiser. I would tour the hospitals looking for children who had been abandoned, handicapped children, or children suffering from malnutrition. This work is done in collaboration with the International Red Cross and other organizations involved with Israelis and people from the West Bank. I have a great deal of contact with both populations, because I live and work within their communities.

However, it was only after I had been in the Middle East for seven years that I heard about girls being murdered by their own families because they had had contact with a boy. This could have been nothing more than just talking to a boy. The family suspects a girl on anybody’s word, sometimes with no proof at all. It does sometimes happen that a girl really has had an “adventure” with a boy, which is absolutely unthinkable in this culture, given that it is the father who makes all decisions about marriage. But until I heard about Souad, I had never actually been involved in such a case.

To a Western mind, the idea that parents or brothers can murder their own daughter or sister simply because she has fallen in love seems unbelievable, especially in these times. In our society, women are free, they vote, they may have children out of wedlock, they choose their husbands.

But having lived here for seven years, the first time someone spoke to me about it, I knew immediately that it was true, even though I had had no personal involvement in such a case. There must be an atmosphere of trust before anyone will even speak of a subject as taboo as this one, which especially does not concern foreigners. It was a woman who decided to bring it up with me, a Christian friend with whom I am frequently in contact because she works with children. She sees many mothers from villages all over the country. She is a little like the neighborhood
moukhtar,
that is, she invites the women to have a coffee or tea and talks with them about what is going on in their village. It is an important form of communication here. You have conversation every day over coffee or tea. The custom gave her the opportunity to make a mental note of the cases of children in serious difficulty that she would hear about. And one day she heard a group of women say that in one of the villages there was a girl who had behaved very badly and whose parents tried to burn her to death. They thought she was in a hospital somewhere.

This friend has a certain charisma, and she is well respected. She displays an enormous courage, which I was about to witness. Normally she is involved only with children, but the mother is never far from the child. So around the fifteenth of September of that year, my friend said to me: “Listen, Jacqueline, there is a girl in the hospital who is dying. The social service worker confirmed to me that she was burned by someone in her family. Do you think you can do something?”

When I asked her what more she knew about the case, she said only that it was a young girl who was pregnant; the villagers said she was rightly punished, and now she was expected to die in the hospital. When I expressed my horror, she said that’s the way things are here. The girl was pregnant and so she has to die. That’s all there is to it, it’s quite normal. Everyone feels so sorry for the poor parents, but not for the girl. Besides, she would die anyway according to what she had heard.

A story like this sounded an alarm in my head. Children were my first mission. I had never become involved in this type of case, and for good reason, but I said to myself:
Jacqueline, old girl, you have to see for yourself what this is about!

I left for the hospital. It was not a hospital that I was particularly familiar with. However, I know the country and the customs, and I can get along in the language, because I have spent so much time here. I simply asked to be taken to a girl who had been burned. They led the way without any problem, and I entered a large room where I saw two beds, each occupied by a girl. I immediately sensed that it was an isolation unit, a place where they put the cases they don’t want seen. It was a rather dark room, with bars on the windows, two beds, and nothing else. As there were two girls, I told the nurse I was looking for the one who had just had a baby. She pointed to one of the girls and then left the room. She didn’t stop in the hallway, she didn’t ask me who I was, nothing! Just motioned vaguely toward one of the beds: “It’s that one!”

One of the girls has short frizzy hair, it looks almost shaved. The other one has medium-length straight hair. But the faces of both girls are blackened, sooty. Their bodies are covered by a sheet. I know they have been here a while, about two weeks according to what I have been told. It is obvious that they are unable to speak. They both look close to death. The one with the straight hair is in a coma. The other one, the one who had the child, opens her eyes from time to time, but just barely.

No one comes into the room, neither nurse nor doctor. I don’t dare speak, much less touch them, and the odor that hangs in the air is foul. I have come to see one girl, and I discover two of them, both hideously burned from all evidence, and both without care. I go out to look for a nurse in another ward, and when I find one, I ask to see the medical director of the hospital.

I am familiar with the hospital setting. The medical director receives me well and seems somewhat sympathetic. I mention that there are two girls who have been burned and tell him that I work with a humanitarian organization that could possibly help them.

“Listen. One of them fell into a fire and the other one, it’s the family’s business. I advise you not to get involved.”

I tell him that my work is giving aid, and especially to people who have no other source of help, and ask if he can tell me a little more about it.

“No, no, no. Be careful. Don’t get involved in this kind of business!”

When it’s like that, you can’t force people too much. I leave it at that but I go back down to the isolation room where the girls are being kept and sit down for a moment. I wait, hoping that the girl who opened her eyes a little is able to communicate. The condition of the other one is more disturbing. When a nurse walks by in the hallway, I ask about what happened to the girl, the one who has hair and doesn’t move.

“Oh, she fell into a fire and is in very bad shape. She’s going to die.”

There is no pity in this diagnosis, simply a statement of fact. But I do not accept this standard explanation about falling into a fire.

The other one stirs a little. I move closer to her and stay there a few minutes without speaking. I watch and try to understand the situation; I listen to the sounds in the corridor, thinking someone else will come in, someone with whom I can speak. But the nurses pass by very quickly and they have absolutely nothing to do with these two girls. From all appearances, there is no organized care for them. Actually, there must be a little something, but it isn’t apparent. No one approaches me, no one asks me anything. I am, after all, a foreigner dressed in Western-style clothes, yet I am always well covered, out of respect for their traditions; and this respect is indispensable to getting along and getting things accomplished. I think someone might at least ask me what I’m doing there, but instead they ignore me.

After a little while, I lean over this girl who seems able to hear me. But I don’t know where to touch her. The sheet prevents me from seeing where she has been burned. I see that her chin is completely stuck to her chest, it’s all of a piece. Her ears are burned and not much is left of them. When I pass a hand in front of her eyes, she doesn’t react. I can’t see her arms or her hands, and I don’t dare lift this sheet. But I have to touch her somewhere to make her aware of my presence. As with a dying person, it is important to make her understand that someone is there, so that she may feel a presence, a human contact. Under the sheet, her knees are bent. I place my hand gently on her knee, and she opens her eyes.

“What is your name?” She doesn’t answer.

“Listen to me, I’m going to help you. I will come back and I will help you.”

“Aioua,”
which means yes in Arabic, and that’s all. She closes her eyes. I don’t even know if she’s seen me.

That was my first visit with Souad. I left feeling overwhelmed. I was going to do something, that much was apparent to me!

In everything I have done up to now, I have always had the feeling of receiving a call. I hear about someone in distress, I go there knowing that I’m going to do something to answer that call. I don’t know what, but I’ll find a way. So I go back to see that friend, who is able to give me some new information, if you can call it that, about this girl’s case. She tells me that the child she gave birth to has already been taken away by the social services by order of the police. The girl is young, no one is going to help me in the hospital. “Jacqueline, believe me, you are not going to be able to do anything.” My response is that we’ll see.

The next day when I return to the hospital, she is still only semiconscious, and her neighbor in the next bed is still in a coma. And this fetid odor is unbearable. I’m not aware of the extent of her burns but I do know that no one has disinfected them. The following day, one of the two beds is empty. The girl who was in a coma died during the night. I look at this bed, empty but not cleaned with any great care. It’s always painful not to have been able to do something, and I tell myself that now it is time to look after the other one. But she is only semiconscious, and I don’t understand anything of what she tries to answer me in her delirium.

And here is where what I call the miracle happens, in the person of a young Palestinian doctor whom I see here for the first time. The hospital director already had told me to let it drop because she was dying. I ask this young doctor for his opinion and why they haven’t at least cleaned her face.

“They try to clean her as well as they can but it is very difficult. This sort of case is very complicated because of customs . . . you understand.”

“Do you think she can be saved, that something can be done?”

“Since she isn’t dead yet, there may be a chance. But tread carefully with this type of situation, be very careful.”

In the following days, I find a somewhat cleaner face, with streaks of Mercurochrome here and there. The young doctor must have given instructions to the nurse, who makes an effort but not a great one. Souad tells me later that they had held her by the hair to rinse her off in a bathtub, because no one wanted to touch her. I am careful not to criticize, which would only worsen my relationship with this hospital. I go back to see my young Arab doctor, the only person who seems accessible. I tell him about my work with the humanitarian organization and my interest in trying to help, and ask him again if he thinks she has any hope of surviving.

“My opinion is that, yes, she does, something could be attempted, but I don’t think it can be done in our hospital.”

“Well, could we take her to another hospital?”

“Theoretically, yes, but she has a family, parents. She is a minor and we can’t intervene. The parents know she’s here, the mother has already come, and besides they have been forbidden visits ever since. It’s a very special case, believe me.”

“Listen, Doctor, I would like to do something. I don’t know what the legal obstacles are, but if you tell me she has a chance to live, even the smallest chance, I can’t let the possibility drop.”

The young doctor looks at me, a little amazed by my stubbornness. He certainly must think that I don’t grasp the situation . . . one of these “humanitarians” who understand nothing about the country. He is about thirty years old, and I find him sympathetic. He is tall, thin, dark, and he speaks English well. He doesn’t at all resemble his colleagues, most of whom are closed to the inquiries of Westerners.

“If I can help you, I will do it.”

Success! On the following days, he speaks willingly with me about the patient’s condition. Since he was educated in England and is rather cultured, the interactions are easier than usual. I go a little farther in my investigations into Souad and learn that, in effect, she has received no care. The doctor reminds me that she is a minor, that it is absolutely forbidden to touch her without her parents’ permission. “And for them she’s as good as dead. That’s all they’re waiting for.”

I ask if I might be allowed to put her into another hospital where she will be cared for and better treated. Does he think they will let me do it? He says that only the parents can give permission for that, and they will not authorize me to do it. I go back to see my friend, who was the source of this adventure, and I share my idea with her of having Souad moved somewhere else and ask if she thinks it is possible.

“You know that if the parents want her to die, you won’t be able to do anything! It’s a question of honor for them in the village.”

I can be rather stubborn in this type of situation. If I am dissatisfied with a negative answer, I want to push on until I find an opening, even a tiny one. In any case, I usually pursue an idea to the limits.

“Do you think I can go to this village?”

“You’re risking a lot if you go there. Listen to me. You don’t know how relentless this code of honor is. They want her to die, because if she doesn’t, their honor has not been washed clean and the family is rejected by the village. They would have to leave in disgrace. Do you understand? You can always throw yourself into the lion’s jaws, but in my opinion you are taking a big chance for probably no results in the end. She is condemned. Without any care for such a long time, with burns like these, the poor girl won’t live long.”