Honor killings

According to the ISNA news agency, annually, 375 to 450 honor killings occur in Iran. On the occasion of the International Day of "Say No to Violence Against Women," we read a firsthand account narrated by a witness. (The characters in the narrative have pseudonyms.)

My cousin, Soheila, was beautiful and full of energy when she was only 12 years old. Her uncles' sons were eager and desiring to marry her. However, Soheila had different dreams. She had no inclination for a traditional marriage to her cousins; she wanted to study and have a different future than her mother and elder sister, who had dropped out of school at the age of 12.

Her feelings and long-term aspirations for her father, uncles, and her cousin "Khaled," who had won this competition to marry Soheila, were insignificant. Soheila unintentionally left school and, unaware, became a bride. Eventually, one day, with an uncertain and trembling voice, she said "yes" at the marriage ceremony with the groom.

Let's pause for a moment, not reading the harsh pages of Soheila's life, and turn the pages. Do we need to read such stories when we have witnessed or at least heard about the abundance of systematic violence against women? If you haven't paid attention to this issue, just take a careful look at the lives of women in society.

We flip through the story of Soheila's life and her adventures, even skipping her difficult childbirth at the age of 13, which brought her to the brink of death because Soheila forgot all her pains when holding her child in her arms and seeing his first smile.

Now we turn to a neighborhood police station in Ahvaz: One spring morning, around 5 a.m., when the air was still misty in those cool and scarce days of Khuzestan, several men in traditional Arab attire (deshdasheh) entered the police station. They were solemn and armed. They casually placed a heavy sack, which they had difficulty carrying, on the ground.

At first glance, they seemed proud, and their proud and honorable boasts could be easily heard. But the police officers, who had witnessed such incidents many times, knew well that behind the pride and superficial honor, there was the broken heart of brothers who had resorted to murdering their sister in the name of the unwritten tribal and familial "honor" that had been a noose around their tribe and clan for years.

Brothers who were themselves victims of the ignorance of tribal and ethnic norms.
They laid the dismembered body of their childhood playmate in a blood-stained sack on the ground and placed a bloody knife on the police station desk.

The story was narrated in a way that our sister, despite having a 6-year-old child, had no desire to live with her husband. She had left her husband's house last year and returned to our father's house. Despite all the interventions, she was not willing to return, even though she knew that with this separation, she would not have the right to see her only child. However, her husband had no inclination for a divorce; during this time, he continued to live with his temporary wife.

Soheila, on the other hand, was beautiful and young, still pursuing her childhood dreams. Perhaps girls her age had not yet thought about marriage, or they were jokingly dismissing the idea at high school and university desks.
But poor Soheila, immersed in a complex web of blood, awaited to see how the family men would decide her next fate.

The brothers and cousins attributed Soheila's murder to rumors they had heard from neighbors, friends, and acquaintances, as well as the heavy judgmental gaze of the people. They doubted Soheila's chastity, and this irrational doubt overshadowed everything

Even though, for whatever logical or illogical reason, Soheila was no longer alive. The physically strong man who stood proudly but shamefully in front of the police station desk, "Sheikh Mashaf," was the father of Soheila and the collaborator of his sons and nephews in Soheila's murder. With the power granted to him by the law, "Sheikh Mashaf" managed to have all the killers return home about two hours later, with greetings and prayers, under the pretext of bail for administrative procedures.

Now it was time for the relatives to meet the killers, congratulate them, and offer their best wishes. The female family members, who were delicate-hearted, were prevented by the men from expressing emotions, crying, and mourning. Some of them might have been living victims who had not chosen Soheila's path because they knew the outcome. Perhaps they preferred the anguish of life over death!

Among them, there were also happy women who cursed Soheila for causing trouble for the family with her behavior. But what had Soheila done that her fellow women had similar views to her brothers and cousins?

Although on that day Soheila's body left the house as a corpse, many women and men walked the streets of the city who had been dead for years, only unaware of it themselves.