Rating: Summary: Vast Culture Gap Illuminated Review: Honor Lost is a superb and shocking book. It is, first and foremost, a deeply felt memorial to a cherished friend. Honor Lost tells the story of two lifelong girlfriends, one Catholic, the other Muslim, living middle class lives in modern Amman, Jordan. Sheltered, even pampered, Norma and her friend Dalia play at being shopkeepers, but know that their lives are ultimately completely controlled by their fathers and brothers. Dalia's forbidden flirtation with a Catholic man leads the two friends into a double life in which they taste the freedoms that Western women take for granted--afternoons of conversation at a restaurant, telephone calls to boyfriends, and fatally, a picnic in a Jordaninan park.
For Western readers, Honor Lost is even more than a dramatic page-turning story of suspense. It also provides a startling glimpse of an ancient culture on a collision course with modernity. No book I have read in the last ten years has spoken more clearly about the dissonance between the traditional Arab world and the West's system of values. Norma Khouri makes it clear that honor killing is a cultural, tribal practice that predates Islam and Christianity, although the Koran is now used (or distorted) to justify it. Through Norma's book, I understood for the first time how deeply threatening America is to the Arab way of life. The portrait of Arab society that Norma draws is of one where men hold absolute control over their families and can enforce that control with beatings and even murder, with the full sanction of the government. Even in "modern, Westernized Jordan" a woman can be killed on the slightest pretext by a relative for the sake of family honor and her killer will face nothing more than a judicial slap on the wrist, if that; more often he will be treated as a hero.
America and Europe--with their liberated, scantily clad women charging off to work, making their own way in life with or without men, with or without the approval of their fathers and brothers--do indeed threaten the Arab world, the traditional Arab family, and the honor measured in the subservience of their women, that traditional Arab men hold as their highest right.
In a culture that views killing family members as a "cleansing" honorable ritual, it seems inevitable that the encounter with Western values and modernity would engender a violent response. British pressure in the 19th century forced the Ottoman empire's Arab provinces to curtail their thriving African slave trade, and the routine use of chattels as concubines and household servants. Will Western pressure similarly bring about a change in the treatment of women? It seems to be happening to some extent already, but after reading Honor Lost, I realized that the true liberation of Arabia's women will likely come only with a fight and only after the death of many more young women like Dalia.
Rating: Summary: ALERT* ... Review: THIS BOOK MUST BE READ COMPELLING AND HAUNTING A true story of how awful life can turn out to be, for some innocents,(women), who are at the mercy of sick, dominant, saddistic "mentalitys" in charge.Its a story of how someone twists the good in religion to feed their sick rules of right and wrong.This story should not be overlooked. Its a story NOT to be missed..... devastating. ( I always rate first time authors 4 stars even when they deserve 5, just so that they'll write some more...) Also might want to check out>The Princess Trilogy by jean sasson
Rating: Summary: Jean Sasson recommends this book. Review: This is a passionate read about the loss of Norma Khouri's best friend to a primitive custom that defies all rational thought. This true story will break your heart, leading you on a mission to work to ensure such crimes do not go unpunished.
For the sake of humanity, I recommend this book with as much enthusiasam as I can possibly muster. Jean Sasson
Rating: Summary: Incredible book Review: Ms. Khouri's story is harrowing and deeply upsetting- what struck me more than the revelation of what happened to Dalia, is the power of the friendship between these two women. This book is a must read.
Rating: Summary: Provocative and Troubling Review: The book chronicles the alleged events that led to the horrifying death of a beautiful young woman at the hands of her father.
The author's analysis is weak and the facts are questionable but whether the author succeeds or fails in the analysis is really beside the point. The intended mission is shedding light on a shameful practice, and keeping the memory of a fallen friend alive, so she may not die in vain.
Rating: Summary: Good as memoir/bio, but fails in socio-political context Review: This non-fiction book is a recounting through one woman's perception of the true-life events that led to her best friend's honor killing in Jordan. The writer is clearly young and only recently published, but that shouldn't detract from the "plot" or tension you feel as you follow its chain of events. If you know anything about what Westerners call "honor killings" (murder by relatives of a "fallen" sister, daughter, or niece whose chastity or reputation is suspect), the sequence of events as Khouri recounts them should ring vaquely and eerily familar: chaste Arab (or Pakistani or Egyptian or Afghan --substitute your choice of Easterner) girl meets cute boy, they get to like each other (watch out--big brother's lurking in the shadows, scrutinizing your reputation...and his), they make plans to one day be together, (brother, father, and uncles are acting strange lately), girl's mutilated body is found, murderers get parole or get off--so, I guess the ripped-from-the headlines story is not surprising to many readers, is it? The writing is not literary--this is clearly a young woman's tribute to her slain friend. However, the dialogue is re-created or created very realistically, as though a first-time screenwriter was crafting a script rather than a young girl recalling scenes from a painful past. Khouri is also knowledgeable about her country and city, their inhabitants, the landscape and geography, and nomenclature. She throws in little interesting facts and opinions like "The city of Amman, Jordan is named for..." and "the difference between a Muslim and a Christian wedding in Jordan is the reception..."
Of course, the content is emotional and my eyes teared up a little even though I don't cry too easily (especially when reading). Khouri's authorial voice is authentic, fresh, and confident while maintaining an appealing post-adolescent vulnerability. You'll feel emotionally satisfied or vindicated or in some way moved by this book. So it is A GOOD BOOK. on it's own. But when you step back a little...
Khouri and I have a lot in common. We are both native Arabic speakers, females in our twenties, and part of traditional Christian families suffering persecution in our homelands. But Khouri spent all of the first half of her life enclosed in her native Jordan, while I had the freedom to move between both my homeland and the West enough to learn a lot about each. This clearly colors my attitude toward her book's message and context. In my own way, I'm as biased as she.
Khouri's story is tragic and true, but her agenda is too predicatable and too clear-cut. The book has been marketed toward the sympathetic West, readers in Europe, the Americas, or Oceania who will read this book, feel horrified or vindicated, cry "how terrible!" or "I knew it!" and run to a NPO to MAKE A DIFFERENCE in Arab women's lives. (Alternately, certain other readers will use the book as yet another example to help villify all darkies and our backward cultures). Euro-Americans or others so inclined will above all feel vindication after having read this--and vindication can be a dangerous feeling.
I know a lot of Eastern boys and girls like the self Khouri presents in her book. They're like Pocahontas in Disney's movie, shut off from "civilization" and breathlessly wondering what's "just around the riverbend."
I'm sure they feels their lives are so much better now for living in the "Free World,"~ and their lives probably are, but they are left with an underlying antipathy towards their birth cultures, and this inevitably colors everything they write--and you read--about it.
When Khouri writes about the Bedu (Bedouin) culture she sees as the heart of Jordanian Arab religion, society, and interaction, I detect an underlying sense of dread and disgust. She places relatively neutral lines like $Q
Rating: Summary: A Great Book Review: "Honor Lost" is a dignified novel based on a true story. It brings you into a society completely different then our own and then introduces you to honor killing, a horrible practice used mostly by Islamic Fundamentalists. I give this book 5 stars because it helped me better understand a culture that is vastly different then the American lifestyle. I would suggest this book to anyone who wants to learn a little more about the Middle East.
