A Rebel in Gaza by Asmaa al-Ghoul

Author:Asmaa al-Ghoul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DoppelHouse Press
Published: 2018-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

19

A Shameless Hussy?

ANYONE COMING TO GAZA will see at once how complicated our society is. It’s not just a matter of the political power, it’s society as a whole that is immersed in an atmosphere which is horrible for women. During the time when Fatah was in control, I stopped a policeman in the street to complain about a man who made a sexist remark because of the way I was dressed. He looked me up and down before saying, “The man’s right, you’re beautiful dressed like that.”

It was hardly any better with Hamas. I went to the police station with my lawyer to report the threats that had been made on my blog. The captain asked me, “What threats?”

“I’ve been called a whore.”

“How do you dare use words like that with me?”

“I’m simply repeating the words of the threat that was made,” I said, showing the email that I’d printed out.

My lawyer broke in, “What business is that of yours? It is your duty to record the complaint, that’s all.”

He acquiesced. When we went back to see him the next day, he said to me, “I’ve read your blog. It’s very good but you’re too bold.”

A police captain! I was pleased that he’d read it. He added, “There are, however, things you shouldn’t write.”

“What, for example?”

“You say that during one of your trips you found yourself without anywhere to sleep one night. So you went to see a man friend in a university residence hall and he gave you his waterbed for the night.”

“And what’s wrong with that? Such things happen to everyone on their travels, we’re ready to sleep anywhere because we don’t have enough money, though most people keep quiet about it and lie.”

He said nothing. But my complaint was never recorded. During those days, if a father saw his daughter talking to a man, he could kill her, and so could her brother. I wrote an article about a girl who had suffered that fate because her father had caught their neighbor’s son jumping out of her window at three in the morning. The father hit the boy before throwing him in some alley, but he didn’t die. The girl did. Among the neighbors, the murder is accepted, it’s nothing. They stand out in the street by their doors, laughing and chatting, passing the time as if nothing had happened, as if there wasn’t a girl who’d just been murdered. Men, of course. It was only the mother who was sick about it and the victim’s brothers and sisters as well. The father will go to prison but not for long, less than three years. That’s the law: “in cases of legitimate defense or defense of honor, the sentence will be reduced”—and it wasn’t Hamas that introduced that law, it was Fatah! Don’t think that one is more progressive than the other. As soon as women are concerned, the pair of them agree. In 2014, fourteen young women were killed on the West Bank and in Gaza.

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