Inside an Honor Killing by Lene Wold

Author:Lene Wold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greystone Books
Published: 2019-07-25T16:00:00+00:00

“AL-AQABA PRISON” IS written on the side of the imposing building in front of me. In the days since the meeting in the desert, I have visited several local police stations, looking for women in the same situation as Amina. I wanted to find some kind of documentation, something that would confirm her story. At first, I had had some difficulty believing parts of what she said—especially when it came to the preventive legislation that imprisoned women who were in danger. I thought no law could possibly be designed that way. In the following days, however, I sat with the legal text in my hands, and came to the realization that Amina was right. In Qanon manae Al-jraim 1954, the Crime Prevention Law of 1954, it was written that governors in Jordan have legal authority to keep a woman in “administrative custody” without the case being evaluated in court, if her release would lead to a “criminal act taking place.” In a study of the law, it was further explained how this exact clause—which was originally designed to imprison the perpetrator—was being abused to oppress women. In other words, the punishment for the potential crime is directly transferred to the victim.

I have never before heard of a legal framework that is so discriminatory, and never before heard a story so provocative. I’ve inquired around Aqaba about whether locals have heard of other women who are imprisoned to avoid being killed for honor. Most people become uncomfortable at the mere mention of the word “honor” but they’ve told me that such women are first sent to Aqaba Prison, where women and men are held together before the women are transferred to the Jwaideh Women’s Prison in Amman. “Proper women” are at home with their families, they stressed.

Perhaps it was a prison like this that Amina was sent to just a few days after her family tried to kill her. It was where she spent her first nights under lock and key. Where the decision that she should be imprisoned for her own safety was made. Where she went in free and left as an outlaw.

I want proof of what she’s told me. Although it has been many years since Amina was imprisoned, the police can surely confirm her story. There must be some form of registration, statistic, or official documentation. I stare up at the dilapidated entrance to the prison, which is being overseen by a single guard with a rusty machine gun. Well, perhaps the registration system here might not be the best, I think, but it’s still worth a try.

The prison guard asks me to present my UN identification card. I glance quickly at the interpreter next to me, who is clad in a full black suit despite the heat. I’ve replaced the interpreter who was with me in the desert with this stiffly dressed man, since Amina had seemed so skeptical about the one she’d met. The new interpreter speaks Russian, Arabic, and English and can work as

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