Hair Part VI: Honor Killing

I have selected today's quote from a New York Times article from 2004 by Hadil Jawad and Lauren Sandler.   As Sandler explains, the tradition of honor killing "gives family members the right to kill a woman who has sexual intercourse (even if it's a case of rape) without her family's permission."  In her interview with Ms. Jawad, included in the article in translation, she attempts to capture how this practice affects the family dynamic in surprising ways. 


Having read accounts of women who have been disfigured and killed through the practice--many of these accounts quite graphic---this particular quote captured my attention for its directness as well as its understatement of what this practice can entail.  As Ms. Jawad recalls:

"When I was a young woman and still living with my family, I once went out to the market and let my hair down my back without tying it up.  My brother saw me, and when I came back home, he hit me repeatedly with a hard plastic hose.  I nearly died.

My brother was very difficult to live with and would not allow my five sisters or me go out of the house or wear trousers.  My father was also strict.  My mother was helpless; she could not open her mouth."

The reference to hair appears only in passing, and yet in conjunction with Ms. Jawad's reflections on her mother's muteness, it suggests how we assert ourselves through our bodies as well as through our words. Although the exposure of hair might suggest the importance of modesty, conjoined with muteness and helplessness it also suggests the importance of containment, and the threat of self-expression.


Ms. Jawad later fell in love with a married man with children, and the two eloped, eventually becoming refugees in Pakistan, and finally returning to Baghdad after Saddam Hussein's regime ended.  While Ms. Jawad's actions seem to suggest a sense of agency, her testimony reveals her curiously bifurcated feelings about her family upon her return to her homeland:  

"I was terrified that someone from my family might see me.  Yet at the same time, I was eager to see them. I heard that my sisters are married now, and that my youngest sister married an old man who was married and had a big family. When I walk down the street, I worry  that someone from my family will recognize me and kill me.  I try not to show it but I am terrified. I have no objection to death, but it seems unfair: my only crime is that I fell in love with someone and wanted to marry him."

--Hadil Jawad and Lauren Sandler,  "When Love Is a Crime," New York Times, October 7, 2004