Free Burned alive by Souad

maybe the day my father tried to smother me with a sheepskin, in a room on the ground floor. He wants me to tell him the truth, is Mama cheating on him or not? He folded the wool in two and he pressed it against my face. I would rather die than betray my mother, even if I’d seen her with my own eyes with a man. If I tell the truth he’ll kill us both. Even with a knife to my throat, I can’t betray her. And I can hardly breathe. Does he let go of me or do I escape? Either way, I run to hide downstairs, behind that green door, between those motionless sacks that appear as monsters. They have always frightened me in this room that is almost dark. I used to dream that my father was going to empty out the wheat at night and fill the sacks with snakes!

    There, this is how pieces of my life from before try to find their place in my memory. A green door, a sack, my father who wants to suffocate my mother or me to make me speak, my fear in the dark, and the snakes.
    Not long ago, I was emptying a wastebasket into a large garbage bag and a piece of plastic remained caught in the basket. As it fell back into the wastebasket it made a particular sound. I jumped as if a snake had risen up out of this wastebasket. I was trembling and started to cry like a child.
    My father knew how to kill a snake. He had a special cane, with two hooks at the end. He would trap it between the hooks so the snake couldn’t move, then he would kill it with a stick. If he was capable of immobilizing snakes to kill them, he was also able to put them in the sacks so they would bite me when I plunged my hand in to take out flour. That is why I was so afraid of that green door, which also fascinated me because my mother and sister were inside and were doing the ritual hair removal without me. And because I still had not been asked for officially in marriage. But I heard the rumor when I was barely twelve or thirteen. A family had spoken to my parents about me, officially. There was a man for me somewhere in the village. But I would have to wait. Kainat was ahead of me.

 

    Assad

    I was the only one to run to him, to cry when his horse slipped and he fell. I will always have the picture of my brother before me: He was wearing a colorful green shirt, and because it was windy, his shirt billowed behind him. He was magnificent on his horse. I loved my brother so much that this image has never left me.
    I think that I was even nicer with him after Hanan’s disappearance. I was at his feet. I wasn’t afraid of him, I didn’t think he would harm me. Perhaps because I was older than he? That we were closer? But he beat us, too, when my father wasn’t there. He even attacked my mother once. They were arguing, he pulled her by the hair and she was crying. I see them clearly but don’t know the reason for the attack. I always have this great difficulty reassembling the images, or finding their significance. As if my Palestinian memory has been scattered in little pieces in the new life I have had to build in Europe.
    It is difficult to understand today, after what my brother did, but at the time, once the terror had passed, I certainly didn’t understand that Hanan had died. It’s only today, seeing again the scene that has appeared in my memory, that I cannot think otherwise, linking the events together, logically and with perspective. On the one hand, my parents weren’t there, and every time an honor crime occurs, meaning that a woman is condemned by her family, the executioner is the only one present. Afterward, I never saw Hanan in the house, never. Assad was crazy with rage that evening, humiliated at being kept away when his wife would be giving birth, demeaned by his in-laws. Had the news of the death of the expected baby arrived by this telephone? Did Hanan speak rudely to him? I don’t know. Violence toward women in my family and in our village in general occurred daily! And I loved Assad so much. The more my father detested his son, the more I