chani | De retour dans les salles obscures (Reply)

I went to the movies today. It's been a long time (4 weeks)! I saw a French-Syrian film, Passion, and it was like an extention of my journey in Jordan. I'd like to go to Syria btw. It's a disturbing film that takes its time to tell a tragic story.

The heroine, Imane is a married woman, living in Alep, who has a passion for music, especially for the great Oum Kelsoum. She also has two children and a niece whom she's been raising since her beloved brother got incarcered for political reasons. Her husband is a good man, but he's too caught in his political preoccupations to see what's happening to his wife. It isn't a movie about politics despite some scenes of anti-Bush demonstrations and the recurring mention of the absent brother, Rachid, who fought for democracy. Everybody is waiting for his return in that family. The memory of this brother is still ruling Imane's life as well as music (she used to sing for him when they were kids). And Imane sings all the time.

But there is another brother who doesn't like her passion, who thinks that that passion is unaccepable, unforgivable. It's her father's brother, a despotic uncle who rules the whole neighbourhood and the family. The same uncle lost his job in the army when Rachid was sent to jail. That brutal and bitter man will do anything to submit the people around....and to take his revenge. Through Imane. That muslim woman becomes a truly Christlike character then.

After 10 years Rachid's daughter is removed from Imane's home despite her tears, to be raised in a more traditional way in her grandparents' house. And first she must cover her hair of course. Imane protests, tries to face the uncle, but she's alone. Imane's father is an old man, ill and obviously under the influence of his brother. Her mother? Only a woman and women have to remain silent in that house. But this is only the beginning. The uncle uses his sons and employees to follow Imane, to spy on her. Because a respectable woman shouldn't sing. She must be hiding something. That woman so full of grace she's a disgrace according to her powerful uncle. She's lost.

Because her voice can't be controlled, her voice is to be cut. One night when she's recording her singing voice on a tape for her husband (who is a taxidriver)Imane is visited by her brother, her uncle and her cousins. She'll never sing again.That scene is violent and touching of course, but also very significant. They killed her and broke the tape recorder, but one of the murderers also addressed us, or rather the cameraman, saying "stop filming that!"as if suddenly the film became a documentary and not a fiction....as if the film was an evidence or maybe a testimony. Because it's based on a true story.

The director, Mohammed Malas, dedicated his film to that Syrian woman who was killed in 2001 by her uncle, brother and cousins because she loved Oum Kalsoum and her passion for music was a proof she was in love and therefore adulteress...Because a suspicion is enough to sentence a woman to death.

This is a film about all the women who are muzzled, gagged, and all the women who died in what people of the region call "crimes d'honneur", crimes of honour...and it isn't that unusual. Several women were killed in Jordan for similar reasons over the last year, there are 23 crimes of honour every year on average. I read that King Abdallah and Queen Rania tried to change the situation but the deputees refused to abolish the article advicing clemency for such crimes.

I enjoyed my trip in Jordan but sometimes the matter of women's rights just made me want to scream.

Over the world, 5000 women die every year because of those crimes, the Yemen and Pakistan being the champions of such tradition.