Murder in the Name of Honor Read Online Free Page B

that fact. No one wants to be the one to kill his sister, but traditions and society inflict things on us that we really do not want to do. If society would not have shunned us after her rape, we would not have killed her and instead locked her inside the house until she died or someone married her.’
    Sarhan’s family’s promises of rewarding him and helping him out for killing his sister were never fulfilled. He has been unable to find regular work and instead does odd jobs every now and then.
    In one of our most recent interviews, he told me, ‘To be honest with you, Rana, I am scared to have female children because society is harsh and I have a feeling that I might want to bury my female daughter because this is what I would feel is right… I wish my other sister would get married quickly because women are a source of concern. If something goes wrong, they do not pay the price; we do.’
    He also acknowledged that his lenient punishment would encourage him and other males to murder again in the name of honour.
    â€˜If the state amends the law to execute men who kill their female relatives or lock us behind bars for good, I do not think that any family would venture and push her male relative to kill. No family wants to see its male relative executed or locked up for good.’
    His final comment to me was, ‘I hope that the situation will change because I alone cannot change or fix things in my society. My whole society has to change.’
    Even Khalid, who admitted to murdering Kifaya, received a lenient sentence of seven-and-a-half years and was released for good behaviour two years early. I only found out by accident when I returned to the scene of the crime to try and speak to Kifaya’s father. They weren’t there but the neighbours told me that Khalidwas living on the first floor of their three-storey building. Feelings of anger and excitement flowed through my veins as I climbed the stairs and knocked on his door.
    The door opened slowly and a short, tired-looking man in his mid-thirties asked me who I was. He invited me into the tiny one-room flat. Inside, he had mattresses spread out on the floor and so I chose a small one and sat on it. Khalid called his wife and asked her to make us some tea.
    I started by asking him about his days in prison. ‘All my cellmates sympathized with me and treated me as a champion. All the men who were in the prison for killing their sisters or female relatives were treated as champions.’
    He told me he realized that what he did was against the Sharia (Islamic law), ‘but society is stronger than me or religion. I had to kill her to preserve the family’s honour. Society imposes rules on us and I did it to please society. No one was talking to me in the street. We live in a backward society that imposes backward ideas on our lives.’
    He also told me bitterly that he suffered even though he was treated as a hero in prison. ‘It was a tough experience that I had to go through. I have four children that I have been deprived of being with for over five years and now I am trying to compensate for these lost years.’
    â€˜Do you regret killing your sister and if you were put in the same situation again would you kill her?’
    His answer was similar to many I would hear from killers I interviewed over the coming years.
    â€˜No, I do not regret killing Kifaya. But if I went back in time, I would not kill my sister. I would tie her up like a sheep in the house until she either died or someone married her. I have wasted enough of my life in prison and I would not repeat the same mistake.’
    His words made me realize that Khalid was, like his sister, but to a lesser extent, a victim of his own society; a victim of ancient andunfair traditions that turned a normal human being into a killer.
    Three years after Kifaya’s murder, I found her father. I had been planning to do a follow-up story on her family but