Syria, part 3
jody2.718
jody2.718 at protonmail.com
Tue Nov 19 01:06:53 UTC 2019
In Syria, women who had been raped or sexually assaulted were often seen as having lost honor or having brought dishonor upon their family. But what you say is that, for some men, this is no longer the case, which I suppose at one level is a great thing, but it felt like maybe the implication of what you were saying is that this change has only come about because it’s become so widespread and overwhelming. Is my interpretation fair or am I reading too much into what you’re saying?
I don’t know whether it’s because of it being widespread, or if it’s because of the political context. But it was something that I wasn’t particularly looking for or expecting to find but found notable enough to mention in this story, that some families from very conservative backgrounds had changed their opinion about this as a result of the war.
There is an amazing story, which is not in this piece because it has to do with prisons. I met a woman who had been one of the survivors at the Hula massacre, which was a situation where militia members went into a village where some of the men were armed rebels, and went from house to house raping and killing women, mostly with knives. This woman witnessed the rapes and murders of several of her daughters, and they raped her. I can’t remember why they didn’t kill her, but, when her brother came to the door and found her naked, she came running to him and she thought he was going to kill her right there. And he didn’t. He said, “No, I’m not going to kill you.” And then I met her son, who said, “Yes, these women in our family who survived this, we honor them the same way we honor people that were wounded in the war.” So that was an incredibly disturbing and moving story—that she thought her own brother would kill her after she just survived this, and he immediately saw it differently.
(Continued)
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