Maħruqa Ħajja
translated into Maltese
by Irma Zammit Ciantar

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

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

Souad grew up in a typical Palestinian community where women are considered “less than slaves” and where animals are treated better than they are.

Girls are not welcomed when they are born; they are almost a curse for the family since only the male gender is considered significant. She has a very difficult childhood and she is abused by her parents, mostly by her father.

She is not allowed out and the only times she experiences the outer world is when she goes out to tend 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 she elopes with a neighbour Faiez whom she has been observing from her home’s terrace; actually it is his car she falls in love with rather than him.

The two begin to meet in secret the fields and she soon becomes pregnant. When Faiez finds out, he deserts the young girl.

When her family becomes aware of the situation, her father plans to kill her, but who will execute the plan?

Her own brother-in-law Hussein is the one chosen for the deed. Yet Souad overhears the conversation in which her murder is being planned.

The novel makes for exciting reading. It is not a pleasant story; on the contrary, Maħruqa Ħajja shows the extreme cruelty in which a Palestinian girl grows to become a woman without any sense of freedom or respect. A member of her family tries to burn her alive with the approval and instigation of her own parents.

She flees in order to safeguard her life, but along the way she has an accident and when she gains consciousness, she finds herself in hospital.

A European woman and a member of an international humanitarian organisation aiming at helping those finding themselves in extreme situations comes toaid her and she is at last taken out of her native country and into Switzerland where she is given the possibility of beginning a new life.

The story develops further when Souad meets her grown-up son after she weds a European gentleman and has had two daughters of her own.

As one reads the novel, one becomes 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.

The book is a must for those who thirst for justice and who dream of the day when righteousness should prevail over sexual discrimination and social insularity.

The irony is that though we should live in a world of peace and justice, Souad ends her book still feeling that she should hide behind the mask of anonymity to avoid being victimised further or to be unjustly avenged.

She may still live haunted by her past but at least her story is no more a secret; she has lived to stand the test of time and her book is the best testimony that could have ever been produced.