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Fabricated: A Tale of Two Memoirs
Of Honor Killings
Forbidden Love and Burned Alive are both best-selling memoirs about
honour killing in the Arab world.
Published in 2003, they attracted rave reviews from major journals,
and also the enthusiastic recommendations of many readers. Both are
based on a story about a Christian/Muslim friendship – in each memoir
a Muslim girl is threatened with death, and a Christian friend tries
to save her.
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Norma Khouri Is A 'Hoaxster'
The author, Norma Khouri (nee Naomi
Cohen?) was in fact an American, who grew up in Brooklyn, not in Amman
as she claimed. The other author, pen name 'Sauad', is some mystery
woman out of France.
There is a striking similarity between both books.
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Both Books Were A Zionist
Fabrication
Both Burned Alive and Forbidden Love were based in locations which
were evidently fictional.
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Nothing Existed
The first book was based on a
Muslim girl that worked in a hair salon. One, in a unisex hair
salon in Amman in the 1990s, but no such salons exist in Amman,
and Jordanian men attend male-only barber shops.
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The Second Book Was Another
Hoax
Burned Alive, the second book, was
based around a wealthy family in a poor remote West Bank village
in the 1970's. The family lived on a hill in a gated estate.
The trouble is there is no such
place, and the only gates in the West Bank are barbed wire
checkpoints, armed by sadistic Israeli soldiers.
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Zionists Make A Docudrama
Burned Alive has received awards, and
Forbidden Love is still standard reading for gullible students at
major universities. Anna Broinowski has produced a documentary.
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What A Way to Go
Sasha (Souad) became pregnant at 18,
bringing disgrace to her parents, so her brother-in-law poured
gasoline on her and set her aflame. She lived and was rescuer
was Jacqueline, a European aid worker, who was in the Middle East to
care for children in distress and who arranged for the badly burned
young woman to be flown to Switzerland, where she and her newborn baby
received medical care and support.
Today, Souad is "somewhere in Europe,"
married with three children, her testimony still anonymous for her
protection. Occasional chapters by Jacqueline fill in the wider
context.
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Souad
Sees Her Sister Killed
Later on she recalled, quite
providentially, that she had a younger sister ‘Hanan’, an innocent
young girl, who was murdered before her eyes.
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Grandmother Smothers
Granddaughter
Souad claims she had seen her
mother give birth to a baby girl and her grandma smother it.
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Arabs Kill Baby Girls
In a 2003 interview, a
journalist from ANSA noted that: ‘Souad … remembers very well
how her mother had strangled two newborn babies because they
were girls.’
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Two Authors Are Just Two
Hoaxsters
The mysterious Souad is supposedly
French, but most suspect she is just a third-rate Brighton Beach
writer of Jewish origin.
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Norma Khoui Relives Her Childhood
Norma Khoui's (nee Naomi Cohen) main
character was Dalia, her closest childhood friend. Later still, Norma
claimed that the model for Dalia was a cousin from her own family.
‘The same thing happened to her, as happened to me’, Norma states.
This was an apparent reference to
Norma’s claim that she was sexually abused by her father from an early
age. A common occurrence in certain households.
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Noted Feminist Is Horrified
The Spanish Minister for Social
Security, Cristina Alberdi, gave a speech about Souad’s book on
International Women’s Day. ‘This work moves our consciences. It is a
most valuable testimony.’ She said that reading Souad’s memoir made
her ‘thank God for not having been born in a country whose laws
protect the crimes of honour.’
It's not just male violence, the
Muslim women kill also.
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Therese Taylor's
Conclusions
The publishers of Burned Alive are offended that I would compare
this ‘true story’ to that of the discredited Forbidden Love.
Having looked carefully at both memoirs, I would say that both are
completely false, but of the two, Norma Khouri’s story was always
more credible. It is she who is entitled to be offended to be
compared to Souad, and not vice versa. At least Norma Khouri was
capable of telling one story for a considerable period of time.
Souad makes it up as she goes along, and can barely get through a
single interview without contradicting herself.
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