Persecuted Palestinian

SOUAD (Trans. Irma Zammit Ciantar Maħruqa Ħajja, , 2010, 240 pp.

Maħruqa Ħajja is the name of a book translated into Maltese from the original Brûlée Vive, published in French in 2003.

The book narrates the story of Souad, a pseudonym for a Palestinian woman, who does not wish to reveal her real name, and who goes out of her way to write her cruel experiences at the hands of her family. They refused to accept both her and her baby who was about to be born out of wedlock in a forgotten village in the West Bank.

Souad grows up in a typical Palestinian community where women are “less than slaves” and where animals are treated better than them. Girls are not welcomed when they are born; they are almost a curse for the family since it is males who are considered to be important.

Souad has a very difficult childhood and is abused by her parents, mostly by her father.

She is not allowed out and the only times she sees the outer world is when she goes out to look after her father’s sheep. As time goes by, she becomes aware that her only chance of experiencing freedom is through marriage; however, a girl can marry only if a man asks her father for her hand in marriage.

Souad finds it difficult to wait and elopes with a neighbour who she has been observing from her home’s terrace. Strictly speaking, she falls in love with his car rather than him.

The two begin to meet in the fields; they sleep together and Souad ends up getting pregnant. When the man finds out, he disappears and leaves the young girl unprotected.

When her family find out, her father plans to kill her and gets her brother-in-law Hussein to do the deed. Funnily enough, Souad overhears the conversation and thus knows she is going to be killed.

The novel makes for exciting reading. It is not a pleasant story; Maħruqa Ħajja shows the extreme cruelty in which a Palestinian girl grows to become a woman without any sense of freedom or respect.

The novel makes one aware of the cruel ironies that are typical of humanity, a humanity that varies in behaviour and cultural expression from one side of the Mediterranean basin to the other.

Souad ends her book still feeling she must hide behind the mask of anonymity to avoid being avenged. She may still live haunted by her past but at least her story isn’t a secret any more.