Synopses & Reviews
I suddenly felt a cold liquid running over my head and instantly I was on fire. It is like a movie that has been speeded up, images racing past. I start to run in the garden, barefoot. I slap my hair, I scream. I feel my dress billow out behind me. Was my dress on fire, too?
I smell the gasoline and I run, the hem of my long dress getting in the way. My terror leads me instinctively away from the courtyard. I run toward the garden as the only way out. I know I'm running and I'm on fire and I'm screaming. But I remember almost nothing after that. How did I get away? Did he run after me? Was he waiting for me to fall so he could watch me go up in flames?
The first true account ever published by a victim of an "honor crime," Souad's testimony is a shocking, moving, and harrowing story of cruelty...and incomparable courage.
When Souad was seventeen she fell in love. In her Palestinian village, as in so many other villages, sex before marriage is considered a grave dishonor to one's family and is punishable by death. This was her crime. Her brother-in-law was given the task of meting out her punishment. One morning while Souad was washing the family's clothes, he poured gasoline over her and set her on fire.
In the eyes of their community he was a hero. An execution for a "crime of honor" is a duty, and Souad's brother-in-law had the full support of her parents.
Miraculously, she survived, rescued by women of her village, who put out the flames and took her to a local hospital. Horribly burned over ninety percent of her body and still denounced by her family who strived to "finish the job" even as she lay suffering in the clinic Souad was able to receive the care she needed only after the intervention of a European aid worker. Now in permanent exile from her homeland, she has decided to tell her story and reveal the barbarity of a practice that continues to this day.
More than five thousand honor killings are reported every year; many more go unreported. Burned Alive is both the dramatic, heartbreaking, and inspiring testimony of one young woman's resolve to survive and build a new life and a call to action to end a heinous tradition.
Review
"Not so much a literary work as an expose of the brutal treatment of women still condoned in several parts of the world, this memoir, although painful to read, will be of urgent interest to anyone concerned with international human rights." Publishers Weekly
Review
"[I]t's the immediacy of the shocking first-person narrative that drives home the statistics. Like Mende Nazer's Slave, this book is a call to action." Hazel Rochman, Booklist
Synopsis
A 17-year-old girl from Jordan beats the odds and lives to tell the tale of her family's attempt to kill her after she shames them by becoming pregnant.
Synopsis
The first true account ever published by a victim of an "honor crime," this shocking, moving, and harrowing tale has already become an international sensation.
Souad was a 17-year-old girl living in a small village in Jordan when she had the misfortune of falling in love an emotion that would lead to an unspeakable act of violence and a lifetime of exile from her homeland. With a childhood marked by hard labor and physical abuse at the hands of her father, who is humiliated by the birth of many daughters and only one son, Souad is desperate to leave home. Enticed into a relationship with a handsome neighbor, her short-lived romance leaves her pregnant. Forbidden to marry until her older sisters find husbands and having brought shame to her family, Souad faces the only acceptable punishment: death. How her family plots to kill her, her harrowing struggle to survive burns over 90% of her body after her brother-in-law douses her with gasoline and sets her on fire, her dramatic escape from Jordan, and her resolve to build a new life for herself is a tale of heartbreaking drama and remarkable courage.
Synopsis
When Souad was seventeen she fell in love. In her West Bank village, as in so many others, sex before marriage is considered a grave dishonor to one's family and is punishable by death. This was her crime. Her brother-in-law was given the task of meting out her punishment. One morning while Souad was washing the family's clothes, he poured gasoline over her and set her on fire. Miraculously, she survived, rescued by women of her village, who put out the flames and took her to a local hospital. Horribly burned over seventy percent of her body and still denounced by her family, Souad was able to receive the care she needed only after the intervention of a European aid worker. Now in permanent exile from her homeland, she has decided to tell her story and reveal the barbarity of a practice that continues to this day. Burned Alive ...is the first true account ever published by a victim of an "honor crime." Souad's inspiring testimony is a shocking, moving, and harrowing story of cruelty and incomparable courage...and an inspiring call to action to end a heinous tradition.
About the Author
Souad lives in Europe with her husband, where she must still keep her identity and location secret from her family.