Customer Reviews

Burned Alive

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book read more like fiction than a biography. I find it hard to believe that someone who was terribly burnt, survived for weeks without medical treatment. And how did they move her around with her skin falling off? Although this book was very interesting to read, some things just didn't ring true for me.

I bought this book, because I have always been interested in other cultures. To say that this true story by Souad is shocking would be the same as to say nothing. I still cannot believe that such things still happen or... I don't want to believe. This book opens your eyes in different ways and helps you to love your life if you think it sucks. Hence, this book is good for those women who say: I've got everything in my life (house, loving husband, children, etc.), but I still feel unhappy. Read this book and you'll understand that you're the happiest woman in the universe!

It is highly suspenseful and I especially liked the evil telephone motif. This was back in the days before calling features when the phone still had enough mystique to sometimes in still fear.

Several reviewers have impugned the credibility of this story. The basic premise, unfortunately, is highly plausible and not just confined to Muslim countries. Someone also expressed contemptuous disbelief that Souad's mother would actually suffocate her baby daughters. This story takes place about three decades ago. Today gender (almost always female) infanticide has been made obsolete by ultra-sound. In countries like India (majority Hindu) and China (majority atheist) female fetuses are aborted at such a high rate many young men have difficulty finding wives. Many baby girls who manage to make it out of the womb alive end up in orphanages. This perturbing aspect of females helping to perpetuate their own subservient status is an irony usually overlooked by readers.

Burned Alive is a timeless story. This version just happens to take place in Palestine. Souad lives a very isolated and abusive life. Instead of her parents building self-esteem in their daughter, and warning her about the archetypal Humpty-Dumpty, they treat her as some sort scourge turned servant as compensation for not having been born male. She is kept locked up behind walls so that she won't escape and no one will use her. When she eventually manages to sneak out she is putty in the hands of a wily older man looking to score. He showers her with "kindness" and flattery, tells her he loves her and wants to marry her, etc. He gets her pregnant and then leaves the country for an extended vacation. It also turns out that he's already married or has a fiancée.

This creates an embarrassing quagmire for Souad's family: It makes the men look like a bunch of weenies who can't control their women. It also spoils their cash crop since in many cultures the groom must pay a bride price to the male head of household. Ergo, pregnant Souad must be annihilated in order to punish her and save face.

In the US murder is the leading cause of death among pregnant women, usually perpetrated by the husband or boyfriend who wants to be relieved of his paternal responsibility. Fortunately, defending one's so called "honor" is not a defense for murder. So, Charles Stuart, who fatally shot his pregnant wife and superficially shot himself blamed it on a non-existent black man. Rae Caruth denied shooting his pregnant girlfriend and if this had been prior to the advent of DNA testing he could have simply denied paternity. Scott Peterson blamed it on a band of marauding Devil worshippers. His trial was a death penalty (which is rarely carried out) case and he was convicted of two murders.

I am very grateful that in America women enjoy a status, economic power, and legal protect that exceeds that of many nations. Unfortunately, these advances haven't eradicated misogyny, which fuels violence against women.

FYI: For those interested in this subject I also recommend The Garlic Ballads by Mo Yan. It takes place in the Chinese countryside in 1987. A young woman, Jinju, is forced into an unwanted marriage with a much older man in order to secure a happy marriage for her older brother. Corrupt officials refuse to help her and she runs off with her true love. It is also a brutal story and its premise is basically the same.

When she was 18, her brother-in-law poured gasoline on her and set her aflame. She was meant to die because she was pregnant and unmarried, bringing disgrace to her parents. But she survived, and now, 25 years later, "Souad" bears witness to the horror of "honor crimes" that kill thousands of women every year in many countries across the world. She begins with a bitter account of what it was like to grow up female in a remote Palestinian village in the Occupied Territory. "Being born a girl was a curse." Unlike her brother, she never went to school. Her father beat her daily. She worked as a shepherd, a "consenting slave." She barely glimpsed the city, where women were free to work and move around. Her rescuer was Jacqueline, a European aid worker, who was in the Middle East to care for children in distress and who arranged for the badly burned young woman to be flown to Switzerland, where she and her newborn baby received medical care and support. Today Souad is "somewhere in Europe," married with three children, her testimony still anonymous for her protection. Occasional chapters by Jacqueline fill in the wider context, but it's the immediacy of the shocking first-person narrative that drives home the statistics. (From the other version of "Burned Alive" here at Amazon.com)

This is a book that will stay with you for a long time. I felt like crying when I finished it, because it's so horrible that things like this happen. Honour crimes DO happen. There have been several just in Denmark over the past few years. I'm glad there are people out there like Jacqueline, who is willing and able to help.

I read this book a while back when doing research on violence against women and focused in the Middle East and Pakistan. I was touched by this story, as with all the others, because it sems inconceivable that the ego of an entire family rests on the 'honor' of a girl. Yet this is reality in many many places and even in some societies inside the USA. It took a lot of brabery to get this book written. Many cases go unkown because women are scared to come public with these atrocities done to them by the people they love most.

I highly recommend it for readers searching autobiographies. One word of caution: an isolated event does not represent a society. It is the law and the observance of the law protecting women against domestic violence that can really provide a testament on how a society allows or forbids this type of behavior.

Souad is 17, or 19. She's not sure. The births of female children are not noteworthy events. Sadly, she accepts this as normal. Born into the male dominated Muslim world of 1950's Palestine, Souad's life is a nightmare of abuse and degrading servitude to her father and younger brother. Throughout her early years, she yearns unceasingly for escape from an unendurable family situation which her mother and sisters are powerless to alleviate. As she reaches puberty, Souad experiences typical teenage fantasies about a handsome young Muslim businessman who lives in a regal house directly across the street from her modest home. Daily, she watches his suit clad form drive a flashy automobile off to his unknown job in the city.

Once, not so long ago, he had asked her father for her hand in marriage. He had been refused. Souad's plain older sister must marry first, in accordance with Muslim tradition. Fearing she will forever be handcuffed to the shame of unwanted spinsterhood, one day, in abject desperation, Souad does the unthinkable: she dares to raise her eyes to meet his. Instantly, he understands their unspoken message.

Throughout one fine summer, they tryst daily in the fields surrounding her father's farm. When she becomes pregnant, she pleads with Faiez to once again ask her father for her hand in marriage. Cowardly, he refuses. Alone and terrified, Souad tries unsuccessfully to conceal her condition from the prying eyes of her family, but they soon discover the truth.

One evening when she is left purposefully alone and defenseless by her family, Souad's brother-in-law pours gasoline over her head and sets her afire in an "honor killing" to save the family from the shame of her unwanted pregnancy becoming public knowledge. This is common occurence in the Muslim world. Screaming, Souad runs into the street, engulfed in flames where neighborhood women douse her in a public fountain, holding her only by the hair for fear of contaminating themselves with her "uncleanness".

Left to die in a local public clinic, Souad's case comes to the attention of Jacqueline, a European social worker who is all too familiar with the horrors endured by young unmarried women in Souad's condition. With much difficulty and intrigue, Jacqueline manages to transport Souad and the son she gives birth to prematurely to Geneva, Switzerland. Here, Souad eventually recovers from her physical wounds, marries, and has two more children, but the emotional scars from her ordeal remain unhealed. This book is her catharsis. A fast moving and compelling story, but because of the complexity of the case and the extent of her injuries, I wish Souad's recovery had been detailed more thoroughly.

I mean aside the argument whether or not this is a true story, the writing of this thing is just awful. You don't sympathize with the protagonist because you get annoyed by them within the first 3 sentences. The story doesn't flow. I am not even going into the factuality of it all. You couldn't read it if it was a known piece of fiction. Don't bother buying it and if you really must get it, please get it from me because I am more than willing to get rid of the darn thing..

This book is about a woman who survives an attempted honor killing after she has gotten pregnant by a neighbor.
the neighbor professes his love for her, impregnates her and then, leaves her to deal with the consequences. she discusses village traditions which mandate that she be killed for premarital sex. She is also quite honest about her difficulties after moving to Switzerland. What makes this book a wonderful read is that she does not portray herself as "cured" after replanting herself in Switzerland. she discusses the psychological challenges that await her, as she tries to make a new family and also connect her old one, as her child from the improper union was adopted by another family . My only problem with the book is that Souad seems quite eager to adopt western traditions, morals and actions. I wonder if this is a product of translation.

Burned Alive is the story of a survivor of honor killings.
A truelly heartbreaking story