My new book, On Behalf
of the Family, is the third in a series featuring Detective Dave Mason of
the Santa Monica Police Department. He is presented with a complex car arson
death of a beautiful and rich Turkish girl. The question is whether this
young girl's death is domestic abuse, a hate crime, or an honor killing? Either way he turns, the
political blow back with scorch him.
Most people think that honor killings only happen in
Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. While these crimes happen there much more frequently,
they are not unknown in the United States. I wanted to bring attention to this
because it horrified me and I’ve been browsing headlines for years. An idea
gets stuck in your head and won’t let go.
An honor killing is the murder or maiming of a woman who has
violated the norms of the community, whether it is talking to a man outside the
family, immodest appearance, or suspected “loose” behavior. An old Arab proverb
states that the “woman carries the honor of the family between her legs.”
I write about Kurds in Eastern Anatolia, a province of
Turkey, one of the more secular countries in the middle east. Turkey, however,
is changing. Anatolia is located right
up next to Iran and Iraq.
It’s a common misperception that honor killings are dictated
by Islamic belief. Not always. Sometimes the behavior violations that lead to
honor killings are the cultural beliefs of men—and women—in the more
conservative areas of the world. Remember, here in America, we have parts of
the country that have very conservative beliefs as well that sometimes lead to
reported criminal behavior toward women.
You can yank out verses of the Bible that are vicious
towards women, just as you can from the Quran, but that does not mean either
Christianity or Islam is vicious and hateful towards women at its core. And
this does not mean that women cannot be vicious toward one another.
What was hardest of all in writing this book was to write
about a family who carries out an honor killing. and convey at the same time
that they are good people at heart, and most importantly, that this is an
extremist act in the Kurdish community. Of course there are Kurds who would be
horrified at the notion. And the family I write about is hardly unified in
their views.
Extremism of any kind fascinates me. The experiences needed
to move from the soft center of any opinion—or practice−to the hard outer edge
are where the best stories lie.
2 comments:
Sounds terrifying and fascinating at the same time. I admire you for being able to write such a book.
Morgan Mandel
I was hooked and well into into it before I realized what I had hold of.Then I couldn't stop.
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