The crime: living while female
The BBC has a series of short reports from Iraqi refugees about their lives in exile and, sometimes, the events that precipitated their flight. Heartbreaking, every single one. This one about a woman named Fatima is just one example of the insanity.
Fatima is a single woman working as a hairdresser in Damascus. She fled Baghdad three years ago after armed militants attacked the salon where she worked. … They had also threatened to attack the building where she lived with several other women. The militiamen disapprove of women living alone.
… Every six months she has to leave Syria to renew her tourist visa. She hires a taxi to take her to the border. “One taxi driver wanted to charge me 25,000 Syrian Lira (about US $480) for the journey. I said that was too much. He said that I must be making lots of money, that as an Iraqi woman in Syria, I must be working in a nightclub.”
… “I want to be independent. I don’t want to be judged badly; I don’t want to be humiliated by anything. I just want to feel settled and to know I can survive.”
It doesn’t seem like a lot to ask.
[…] It’s what I’ve been trying to say in Are Women Human?, Lipstick is not liberation, The Cure for terrorism? Islamic law for women, Iran, yellow stars, and dress codes, as well as here, here, and here, and practically everywhere throughout this whole damn blog. It feels like water in the desert to find someone who gets it. […]
Acid Test » Women are human, take two on June 13th, 2007 at 12:06