Tragedy struck in Jordan when an 18-year-old girl committed suicide after being bullied and beaten by her own brother for smoking cigarettes. Before taking her own life, Maysaa’ Sharouf wrote a heartbreaking note in which she talks about the oppression of women in the Middle East and how cruelly they are treated by men.
I pass my hand over my face, do you remember my face? I have always been told it was as luminous as a shining star. But now I see it ugly and terrible.Sometimes, blue and purple bruises cover my entire body. Yesterday my brother beat me because he discovered that I smoked cigarettes. Every bruise reminds me of that tasty smoke that filled my brain cells. My brother hit me, my brother who consumes two packs of cigarettes a day.I glided my hands towards my bruised exhausted body, feeling the bulged areas. You know? This world is miserable, and makes us miserable every day. This world is just a large transmit process, carried out by God, or by someone or something I do not know who, so that he make us think we are alive, in order to walk many years, striding rapidly towards death.Death, that big word, how tempting death is, pushing me everyday towards it. I discovered that we aren’t living, but waiting for death, and in the same time, we can’t stop mentioning it: we witness death in the news, we talk about it in cafes and we watch it on TV, religious and entertainment programs, not only that, we celebrate it by slaughtering an innocent animal and call it feast. Even in times of love, we say ‘I love you to death!’I do not know if God was right when He created me and put me among these people. Everyone looks at me when I walk in the street. I become a whore just because I refuse to behave as a woman/slave: come back from the institute and cook, clean and fix my brother and father’s clothes, then sit and talk about marriage, chastity, honor and future husband. Was God aware that his kingdom that He pitched on Earth turned into a daily massacre? Did He deliberately make the Middle East, where all his prophets existed and lived, become a cemetery for women? Why does He drag us on towards death?Who said that death is a bad thing? Is life, in contrast, a good thing? Would you call the daily suffocation, and those hands that stretch every day to mess you up, life? I really feel sorry for our situation. I am like all women in the Middle East, not good at defending herself, I’m filled with hatred against the injustice that is piling up inside of me every day. We women are being labeled everyday with the word ‘bitch.’ We die ten times everyday till we feel helpless.I no longer can stand death, I want to be reborn, and create new and frightening paths. This world – my friend – has no room for me. I want the spacious Paradise and clouds to dream upon. I want to live.This rope will take me away, this soft cord will suffocate me gently. Don’t be sad my friend, you will find me next to you, and follow me if you wish..
WE SAID THIS: Our thoughts and prayers go to her friends and whoever she held dear.