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Sandra El Khoury is a woman who was born in Lebanon but came to Sweden at a young age. She was brought up in a Syrian-Orthodox home with parents that did the best they could to hold on to their culture, traditions, and religion. Sandra started revolting at a young age and the more she pushed the more harm her parents caused her. She was physically and emotionally abused daily and when it did not help, her parents married her off against her will. After a year and a half, she ran away and from that time until now she is being seen as the shame of the family.
Today, she lives by herself in an apartment in a small town in Sweden and she is fighting every day to try to reach her dreams. She lives with a brain injury and Complex PTSD as a result of the abuse she endured. Still, she isn’t giving up to reach her dreams. She wants to become a spokesperson for women abused by honor culture. Sandra is also a writer and an aspiring poet.
*Note: El Khoury was kind enough to provide two personal poems expressing sentiments, experiences, traumas, and feelings at the end of the interview.*
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Where did your family come from? Where did you come from? How did you end up in Sweden?
Sandra El Khoury: I was born in Lebanon. My father was born in Syria. My mother in Lebanon. I have a mix of origins. My great-grandfather on my father’s side was Turkish. My great grandmother on my mother’s side was Greek. I have four countries in me: Greece, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon.
So, how did we arrive in Sweden? Sweden was entirely my father’s choice. He had heard about people going to Sweden. We were the first family of all our relatives to flee the war. It was awful. I have some horrific memories from the war so in 1984 my father had enough and sent us to Sweden.
Jacobsen: What was his background or involvement in the Syrian Orthodox Church?
Sandra: Listen, when we lived in Lebanon, we were in Sunday schools. It was more social than being forced to learn the Bible. My parents were not pushing us. However, we prayed before we ate dinner or breakfast and before we went to bed.
So from what I remember, I was never beaten for not praying or sitting right in church. My mother was beating us children for other reasons, like spilling our ice cream.
The physical abuse I got from my mother was never about religion. Church back then was a playground for us. It was not about sitting around and memorizing the Bible. We were in the Scouts as well.
The three fingers up sign and then saying, “I swear on my honor to serve the Scouts.” It was never about Jesus or God. We had fun.
We got these badges when we finished an assignment. But that all changed one day. When I was 5-years-old, it was the first time I was shocked and disappointed by the church.
For me, it began there. My journey out of Christianity. Before we move on, let me explain what “Syrian Orthodox” means, people have the wrong idea. To be Syrian Orthodox, it does not mean being from Syria.
It is like the Assyrians. There is no country named Assyria because it is not bound to one specific country but several as a race and religion.
It is the same with the Syrian Orthodox people. Their origin is from Turkey, from which it spread to other countries.
Let’s go back to why I started to hate the church and question it: in the Syrian Orthodox Church, when a boy is being baptized, it takes place at the altar, where they also put the Baptist cup for boys.
After the baptism, there is a ceremony, where the priest goes first. Then the godfather carrying the baby boy, and then all other men and boys follow.
Then they go around the church 7 times. I do not know why it is specifically 7. They walk around: up on the altar, down, around the church, up and then down, 7 times.
The priest first and then all the others. Of course, only the men and boys are permitted to do it. When a girl gets baptized, the cup where they baptize the baby will be put between the front row and the altar.
So, in the Syrian Orthodox Church, a girl can never set foot on the altar, from the day she is born to the day she died. A girl, according to the Syrian Orthodox religion, is dirty and born sinful.
So, back to the day I started hating the church, my father was the godfather here.
He was carrying the baby. I wanted to walk beside my father. They pushed me to the side.
The men and my father pushed me out of the way and were angry with me. Imagine me, at 5-years-old, I wanted to walk by my father, but I couldn’t. I was so sad. I was like “Why?!”
It was the first poor treatment because of religion. I understood there and then of the inequality between boys and girls.
The next time, I was treated differently came at age 15. I was menstruating. My mother said, “You cannot participate in this.” I felt shame. I was put in the corner of the church with other girls and women who had their periods.
We were treated like parasites. We were not allowed to partake of communion or touch anything considered holy in the church, e.g., a crucifix.
We were treated as if we carried all of the shame in the universe. I was so embarrassed. As a girl, I was shy. At the age of 15, you do not want the whole world to know that you are on your period. The public humiliation was the second strike.
Let’s go back to strike one, the one with my father. In my eyes back then, my father was my hero. Not my mother, she was abusive. I was very attached to my father. For him to push me away, it was too much. I was shocked. I had many traumas before, but it was the first one caused by my father.
Jacobsen: Did you ever have a chance when you were young to talk to other girls or young women?
Sandra: That is a good question. However, no! I have never talked about this with anyone while growing up. My sister and I were controlled. We did not have friends. We couldn’t play with our cousins even sometimes; it was forbidden for us. Even our thoughts were controlled.
Some was honor culture. Some was not, in my case. My mother was a sick woman. She did some things that are not included in honor culture society or religion. Of course, you are allowed to play with your cousins in an honor culture, but it was only my mother who did not allow us to play.
If she would have told us to not play with black people or Muslim people, that is honor culture, but that was not the case here. If not supervised by her, we were not allowed to talk to anyone, not even our own relatives. She was a control freak.
I talked to doctors. They think, she could be schizophrenic. So, to answer your question, “Why I have not talked to other girls or women?” I was controlled by my mother. I was shy. I was afraid to talk to people about anything, afraid to trigger beatings from mom. Her beating was horrible.
She would beat me with wooden spoons until they break on my body. She would cut me and my sister’s hair and if we dare to cry, she would beat us with the scissors on our heads until we started bleeding.
She would beat me until I fall down on the floor and then she would kick my head so hard that my head bounced many times on the floor until it finally stopped. She would throw things on me, whatever she was holding, shoes, knifes, plates, and glasses.
If someone would have visited us back then, they never could tell that there were kids in the house. We were forbidden to leave our bedrooms. Even us kids were not allowed to talk to each other that much. It all depended on her mood. I grew up as a very traumatized and scared little girl.
It is far from the girl talking to you today. Nowadays, I speak up. I am tough. However, back then, if you would make a sudden move, I would not stop crying. I was so fragile back then. I was growing up, questioning everything, screaming out the pain but in silence.
If I cried I got beaten, if I smiled I got beaten, if I laughed I got beaten. This went on for 17 years. My father during this time would sit and watch TV. He never stopped her. I even tried to kill myself when I was 16 years old. I failed. I ended up in the juvenile psychiatric ward.
The doctors did everything in their power to make my mother visit me. She refused. My father came every day. One day my mother called. The doctors were hopeful and smiling telling me that my mother was on the phone. I ran to take the call.
She said 4 words to me and hang up the phone in my face. I remember how hurt I was as if it is happening right now. I dropped to the floor, crying, screaming. All I could hear was her 4 words on repeat in my head “I wish you died”. The story does not end there but let us change the subject.
Scott: Was there ever a connection with other Syrian Orthodox people outside the family?
Sandra: When we moved to Sweden, we lived in a village with no Syrian Orthodox people. There was no one to talk to there in our first years there. After a couple of years, my father took us to a Syrian Orthodox Church. We didn’t understand the Syriac language.
I suggested: we should go to the Swedish church. Then my father stated the closest Swedish church, theologically, was the Roman Catholic Church. After one year, my father stopped bringing us to church.
Even at home, we were not forced to pray before eating and before going to bed. So, we never met other Syrian Orthodox church members because we stopped attending church. The only remnants of the sociocultural context of the religion were the honor culture.
Now as an adult, just because my family does not want to have anything to do with me, I am a divorced woman living by myself, then Syrian Orthodox people do not want to have anything to do with me. That is fine by me. I would rather stay away from Syrian Orthodox people.
I do not like them as much as they do not like me. It is wrong of me, to think like that. Maybe, I need 20 years of therapy to change that about myself [Laughing]. Without therapy, I may not change my mind. However, now, as soon as I know they are Syrian Orthodox, I try to avoid them. In my experience, Syrian Orthodox people are the most judgmental people of all Christians.
I am terrified by them because of the long history in my life. I have experienced lies and distortions, and have been ratted out, by people in my family’s social circle. This is why I stay away.
Jacobsen: You were married at 17. At 18, you divorced. What was the reason for the divorce?
Sandra: The short answer: it was a forced marriage. I was not given a choice in who or how I marry. My uncle, he formed fingers to replicate a gun. He pointed the makeshift gun at my knees and said, “Choose which knee, I can shoot the one you choose if you do not get married. Do you want the left or do you want the right? I will make sure you end up in a wheelchair, so no boy ever wants to marry you. Either that or you get married.”
I believe that counts in the category of “forced marriage.” Right? I think so too. Both my parents and I did not know him. However, my uncle did.
Before my uncle’s threats, my mother had taken my sister, who was only 14-years-old, out of school and to Lebanon to marry her off to a cousin.
When my sister was gone, my mother came back for me. I knew. I was next. I went to social services. I told them about my sister and that I was next in line. They did not help me. A month after my mother came back from Lebanon, I was forced into marriage.
Why did I leave? He was beating the shit out of me every day and raping me every day for one-and-a-half years. How can you love someone forced on you?
While married, I repeatedly asked my father to help me. I wanted the abuse from my husband to stop. My father did not care. Not that he did not care, he might have cared. However, my father is afraid of conflicts. He becomes like a small child.
He goes under the cover of a bed. He stays there like a scared child, literally. If I ever needed to talk to my father, he would hide under the covers and say, “I do not want to. I do not want to. I do not want to.”
He has done that my whole life, at least since he came to Sweden. My mother can beat us until we bleed, but he will sit and watch TV. It is like he does not exist. He is like a ghost at home. My father has never been an authority. It has always been my mother and that is not common in an honor society.
It is the father who usually is the monster and the mother who is the kind one. So, when I called my father and told him, “I am being beaten.” He said, “Now, you are married. You have to stay with your husband.”
When my father did not help me, I tried to kill myself to get away from the marriage. It did not go well, as I am still alive. Then three months later, after my suicide attempt, I convinced the husband to let me visit my parents. He never allowed me to go anywhere.
I talked every day about it. I nagged. I begged him to let me go and see my parents. Finally, he said, “Yes.” I left the train one station before my parents’ station. I was afraid that they will catch me and force me back. I called my father.
I said, “If I come, I do not want to go back. I want a divorce.” He said, “You are not allowed to visit if you do not go back to your husband.” My mother was screaming in the back, “What is the whore saying?! What is the whore saying?!”
I continued, “Father, I have a six-month-old-baby in my arms. Where should I go?” He said, “If you were smart enough to leave your husband, then be smart enough to take care of yourself. So, it is not my problem”.
They hung up.
I collapsed at the train station, crying. Two girls helped me to call social services. That is how I got married and divorced.
Jacobsen: It is not only important to get the whole story out. Statistically, there are likely others going through the exact same thing. It is probably cathartic to you, to put a time stamp on it, to put a narrative on it, and say, “This happened.” It is an important part of processing and therapy.
Sandra: My therapist I have had for one-and-a-half years. He has yet to start my therapy. Because he wants me to trust him first, whatever that means. He does not want to move into the therapy part, until I can say that I trust him.
I haven’t even started to process my experiences. But I am doing that every day on my Facebook page and with this interview.
If I am courageous enough to speak out on my experiences and abuses, then my hope is others, especially girls, going through similar experiences and abuses will feel sufficient courage to speak out themselves, get help for themselves, and be examples for still others.
Jacobsen: That makes sense. The people who were supposed to be the first bond. You, at some level, probably feel they betrayed you. So, getting to trust a stranger who is a therapist – even though a professional and an expert, there is a certain cachet.
But the idea of trusting someone random after being betrayed by family and husband. It would, probably, make of sense. “Work on the foundation, you trust what I am going to do with you in terms of the therapeutic practice.”
Sandra: I have complex PTSD. He wants to treat me with EMDR. It means that your blocked memories will come back, from what I understood of it. I need to trust him in order for that to work according to him.
He did not use the word “totally,” but he said, “I need you to trust me, Sandra.” One-and-a-half years later, we are still here. In the meantime, I am doing a complete neuropsychiatric assessment. I have a cognitive disability caused by the brain damage from the beatings my mother inflicted on me.
So, back to that trust issue, I do not think it will happen for me. I cannot trust anyone. I like my psychiatrist. He is cool. However, trust? I do not know. I do not know what it even means. Is it to trust someone 5% or 70%?
I do not even know what trust means, because everyone can hurt you! It is not like I believe everyone is out to get me, but I do not trust anyone. Not anyone.
Even my friends, I love my friends. I have lots of good friends. I have had them for 15 years, 22 years, and so on. However, “trust,” it is a big word. It does not come easily, if ever.
Jacobsen: What is the situation with your daughter now?
Sandra: The situation started there with her, at that train station. Unfortunately, Scott, I was not a good mother. Not because I was a bad mother per se but because I was a child, I did not know how to take care of a baby.
I was scared and traumatized by my mother so much that I was terrified to become like her. For example, because my mother forced food in me to the degree that one day she was pushing food down my throat and I vomited in my own plate. I was only three years old. She forced me to eat my own vomit. So when my daughter at 4 months should have started to eat baby food, I did not push it on her. The first spoon she moved out with her tongue, I stopped immediately, afraid to become my mother.
Another thing, I carried her all the time in my arms, except when she was sleeping, of course. That caused, even at the age of 6 months, an inability to keep her head up and move from side to side. I had done it all wrong. Because I was always holding her and carrying her too much. I was afraid. I did not want to become my mother. My mother who never hugged me or held me.
So back to the train station, when social services came to pick us up, they put us with a Swedish family, temporarily, until they knew where to place us. While there, the mother of the family reported me. She told the social services, “This girl is not doing anything right with the baby.”
She told them, “The baby cannot hold its head. She should be able at this age.” I both thank and curse her. Because I wish that she would have told me this to my face. But she ratted me out behind my back. I found out many, many years later, when I was reading the files they kept back then.
In one way, it was good. I should not even have a baby. A child should not be forced to become a mother. I couldn’t even take care of myself nevertheless a baby. So, in one way, it was good, but not the way she did it. The outcome was a disaster. I lost my daughter.
What should have happened is they should have placed me with the baby in a family, I would have had the opportunity to grow into a young adult and also a mother. Instead, they placed me in an investigation home for parents.
They put you under the microscope to see if you are able to take care of your child or not. Then they will decide to take the child from you or not. While at the investigation home, the baby’s father and I still had shared custody. Here in Sweden, when you have children together, you cannot get a divorce right away. They make you wait for 6 months.
So, we still shared custody. The investigation home told the baby’s father where I was. He told my parents. This spread to my relatives. Everybody started to talk about me, “She left her husband. She is the worst. She went to the Swedish people. This should stay in our society.”
For them, I had committed a terrible sin. My older brother came to see me. He said, “You have to go back. You are embarrassing us.” I started to translate what he said in Arabic into Swedish so the staff could understand he was threatening me.
“It is our father’s duty to kill you. However, it is my duty as the older brother if he won’t. I cannot do it. If I do it, I will kill myself. However, I have to warn you. It is your uncle’s duty then to kill you.”
I translated everything. He wanted to keep me quiet. He said, “Quiet, stop translating!” and then he pushed me. I had my daughter on the sofa while facing him. When he pushed me, I fell backwards on the sofa. I was close to falling on my baby. The personnel came and took her.
They said, “She is not safe with you.” I started crying, “Please do not do this.” My brother left. They gave her back to me that day. But now, the staff started to constantly harass me, “You cannot take care of her. What happens if you go out with her? They can come and do something. She is not safe with you.”
One day I wanted to take a shower. I asked them for help to hold the baby. They said, “No, we want to see what you do with her.” I put her in the stroller and took her with me to the bathroom to take a shower. When I came out they said, “You did two mistakes. You did not put the safety belt on the child and it is too steamy in the bathroom. She could have died. You cannot take care of her.”
Every day, I was under tremendous pressure: the staff who always complained about how useless I was as a mother, to the calls that I got from my parents who told me that I was a shame to the family, and to the husband who said, “How can you do this? I can find you. I know where you are. I can do this or that to you.”
One day it all became too much. The staff said something about mistakes. I said – this is so hard for me to admit, “What do you want from me?! If you want her, then take her!”
Immediately, they took her. They placed her with a Swedish family. When my daughter was gone, they said, “You cannot stay here. This is an investigation home for families.” I asked, “Where will I go? I have nowhere to go.”
They said, “It is not our problem. You can call social services.” The social services personnel came and started asking questions. “Do you know how to pay rent?” I said, “What?” I did not know anything about rent. It was foreign to me. Even if I lived in Sweden, I did not live like Swedish people. My father took care of the finances of the family. They started to ask, “Do you know anything about electricity bills?” I did not know anything about it. I thought they were interviewing me. They were smiling. [Laughing] I was so stupid. I did not know that this would be important for me keeping my baby or not.
They decided to put me in a teenager home. In hindsight, I appreciate it because I needed time to grow up. However, they should not have done this because when the court date came, I was living in a teenager home and not a safe place for a child to grow. I did not have anything. I lost her in court. The only thing I had left was rights of access to my child.
They granted me a few hours every weekend. This went on until I became 22 years of age and got my first apartment. I went to court. I wanted part of the custody. I won half of it. For the first time in years, she could finally sleep in my arms again.
I had her every other weekend, every other holiday, and four consecutive weeks in the Summer. Time went by, when she was five, she said, “You are not my momma. I was not in your stomach. Jesus does not love you.”
The older she got, the more she had to say: “My father said that your own parents do not want you. So, why should I?” She would, from time to time, lash out at me and say, “Shut up! I hate you! I do not want you! I am ashamed of you! You will go to hell! You will burn in hell!”
She also said that a priest told her the church and Jesus loves her because she is not like me and does not follow my path in life. I would be devastated by these words, but she was only a child. It has never been her fault.
They taught her to hate me and avoid me. From the age of 14 until now I have not been allowed to talk to her very much. I am blocked everywhere on social media. Today, she is 22.
Somehow, it is never over for me. People say; I should come out of this PTSD. How could I? I am reliving the past in my future because my child is stuck in the honor culture I have tried to leave behind me my entire life.
Jacobsen: In real time, you are reliving the past vicariously.
Sandra: Exactly! All I know is if I will ever be seen as her mother then I have to become a Syrian Orthodox again. I cannot be an atheist. I also have to be married or living with my parents, as a woman can never live by herself. A single woman living alone, unmarried is seen as repulsive.
I would rather die than go back to it. So, I do not know. I wait, wish, and hope for her to come back into my life. That is all I can do for now. All these years, all my apartments, I always had my bed in the living room.
I kept the bedroom for her, wishing someday of her return to me. Today, she is an adult. However, the room is empty. It means something is wrong with me. In my brain, I cannot understand it. She is an adult. However, I am still looking for my lost baby.
I want her in my arms; I cannot explain it. It sounds crazy. Every day, when I walk past this empty room, it feels better that it is empty because I have this empty space in my heart, which carries her name. I am a mother that lost her child. It feels like nobody cares.
Nobody ever asked, “How do you feel about it?” Nobody, not even my therapists and doctors, maybe, they are waiting for me to talk about it. The way I talk to you now. I have never told a doctor about this. Not like this, I have not opened up yet.
Jacobsen: There is a syndrome called Phantom Limb Syndrome. People who come back from war. Let us say, they lost an arm through a grenade blast. Somehow, the parts of the brain. There is a map.
You can touch fingers, arms, the face. You can map the nerves of the hand connected to the part of the brain. There is a map from left to right like a big half-circle crown on the brain. You can map the circuitry.
It is like a sensory map of the brain (cortical homunculus or Penfield’s Map). For some people, the sensation does not go away for the ‘arm.’ They have a phantom limb. They will say, “My limb is stuck. Sometimes, it is stuck in an uncomfortable position.”
But it is a phantom. They do not have an arm. They have the idea that they have an arm, but stuck in an uncomfortable position.
Sandra: I have seen videos of this. That is why I get what you are saying. I know this phenomenon. So, yes, the empty room is my uncomfortable position. The ache in my heart for my lost child. Thinking that she is still a baby and that she will return.
Jacobsen: If you look at someone who plays the piano who is a virtuoso, it is almost as if the piano or instrument is an extension of themselves. I would suspect you could map this to the brain in terms of the sensory map having an extended map for the keyboard.
When you are talking about this, I can imagine a concrete, naturalistic answer. When you have a child, I can see a correspondence here.
Sandra: I was still breastfeeding her when I lost her. They ripped her away from me. I went through nights of horror for months. Milk came out of my breasts. I screamed and cried because I heard her in my mind. I was feeling that she was hungry.
People said, “No, she’s not here. It is okay.” I went through it. This kept happening until my breasts stopped producing milk. It was so hard for me. However, no one has helped me with this. Back then, the 1990s, there was not so much discussion about mental health.
Of course, there were psychiatrists and therapists back then but it was not as common as today to seek help. The staff at the teenager home said, “You should talk to someone.” They drove me to a therapist. I sat there. The therapist asked, “Sandra, can you answer?” I was like, “Mickey Mouse!”
I did not want to open up because I did not want to talk about those things. They stopped taking me to see the therapist after two weeks. They said, “Oh, you are making a fool out of us. It is not acceptable. We drive you. You act irresponsibly.”
I said, “Fine, but I do not want to go, I do not want to talk about it.” I was a child for God’s sake. I did not want to hear what they had to say to me. Today, I am 40. I still, at times, feel like a child who never grew up. I still feel like I need a mother and a father. It sounds crazy.
Jacobsen: It is okay. I understand. Every story has a context. I understand given the context. You had an abusive mother and a negligent father. A forced marriage with an abusive rapist husband. Then you had a child and fled at only 18.
Sandra: Yes, it is hard to move forward now. Also, I feel as though there are things missing with my doctors, psychiatrists, and therapists. I ask them, “Where is the education when you go to a university about honor culture? How do you help someone who went through honor culture?”
“Did you have as a part of your program any education about honor culture?” They say, “No.” I say, “How can you help me if you do not understand?” We have sects here in Sweden. It is similar to honor culture. How can the doctors be so clueless?
I ask, “Do you know how to treat someone who lived in a sect or an honor culture?” The answer: they do not know. So, how can they help me? It is the same if I go to the police, the hospital, the social services, or school. There must be proper education about victims of the honor culture.
We who live in a sect or an honor culture and want out: how can they see and help us? That is what is missing. More education about it.
Jacobsen: That is a difficult context for people. It is a failure on the part of the government rather than a failure on the part of the individual people.
Sandra: I know it is not totally the doctors’ fault, when there are no programs in their education about it. Whose fault is it? It is whoever put this program together. Is it the politicians? Who decides what topics you read at school?
Jacobsen: Even in Canada, it is asynchronous, whether in the development of psychology or psychiatry. In my province, we only, recently, banned conversion therapy. It is the purported therapy to make gay people straight; this only got banned this year, in part of the country.
Some see this as crazy, even in Canada. Given the context, there are some areas, where it takes time for developments and progress. To the point, where people, for instance, coming out of a fundamentalist background – and a culture and religion that bind themselves to honor culture – treat women differently than men, the scapegoating is more with the women than with the men.
Sandra: Yes, it is.
Jacobsen: Societies tend to be terrified of an educated woman and a sexually liberated woman. Most of the cultural restrictions are on women. Another way of doing it; if you look at the religious texts, whether Fatima, Ayesha, or Rachel, or Mother Mary Magdalene or the Virgin Mary, there are a few stories.
If they are there, they are an afterthought or an “also.” It is also in the culture as well as the texts. It is in the stories that tell people how to live their lives.
Sandra: I agree with you. You know, Scott, in the media, no one speaks about Christians; however, they talk constantly about Muslims. But honor culture does not exist in Muslim culture alone. It is in Christian culture too.
In Sweden, many of the women’s organizations who focus on helping victims of honor culture would not speak with me. They did not want to hear my story. That’s what I mean, Scott. They did not care about my story because it came from a Christian background rather than an Islamic one, which is what they’re used to.
When I tell my story to people, they assume I’m Muslim. They say, “Oh, so, you are Muslim.” No, I am not! I wonder why only Muslims get all the benefits of being believed? I exist, too. However, when they hear that my parents are Christians, they do not believe me, or assume that it would have been worse if I was a Muslim girl.
“At least you weren’t forced to wear a hijab.” How can that make it better? This piece of fabric means more than my entire existence to some people. It is horrible. As soon as you are a foreigner, people assume: Muslim.
Even now, when I get invited to parties with Swedish people, they say, “We are sorry. Because of your religion, how do you feel when we sit and eat pig?” I say, “First of all, I am an atheist. Thank you very much. My parents are Christians. Second of all, give me bacon and shut up!” [Laughing]
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Sandra: It is the same with alcohol. It is not because it is forbidden in my culture that I do not drink. I just hate alcohol. I do not like the taste. The first and last time I drank was when I was 19 years old. I ended up in the hospital. I had my stomach pumped. I got alcohol poisoning. Since then, I hate alcohol.
Yet, when I get invited to parties by Swedish people, they say, “Oh! Sorry Sandra, we forgot. We are sorry to drink alcohol in front of you.” They will never allow me to be Swedish. Whatever I do, it does not matter if I speak Swedish fluently or dress like them.
I will always be singled out. On the other hand, my culture and country do not want me, too. They single me out as well. “You are European. You are an atheist. You left your husband. You left your child. You did this and that…”
I feel lost sometimes. Where do I belong? I want to belong to something.
Jacobsen: It is common. In this sense, it happens. It is not common. In this sense, it does not happen the majority of the time. It is stuck between worlds: family, culture, country, religion-nonreligion, modernity seen more in European culture, and family life in Lebanon.
I am sorry for what you’ve gone through.
Sandra: Thank you, when you come to a new country as a child, it is more difficult than if you would come as an adult because you already have an identity. We who came as young try to find an identity here. Your parents try then to block you from becoming a part of the community as they see the new country as the enemy of morality.
You get alienated from both countries. You feel like you do not have roots in either country. I do not know what has to happen for this to change. At least, I want to be taken seriously when I talk about honor culture.
It cannot be that my voice isn’t heard because I was born Christian. Media has to stop writing articles that only talk about Islam. There is an honor culture in every religion. My tears and pain are as true as that of a Muslim girl.
Jacobsen: Oftentimes, I think the focus for most Europeans will be Christianity. Given Europe was, historically, Christian, people give it more of a pass when bad things happen within it, whether Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, what have you.
In North America, the population is becoming less and less religious. People harbor more Christian heritage. They will be more likely to excuse it. I expect this more in Muslim and ex-Muslim household communities, even though they may have more Muslim heritage than Christian heritage as here.
That is what I heard. They do not register it. “I cannot get a job,” is not bad – though bad – as, “I am forced into marriage,” and so on.
Sandra: Even the human rights organizations that are fighting for gender equality, they only refer to what the Muslim women go through. There are ex-Muslim societies or atheist societies, or women organizations.
However, they only talk about how bad Islam is, especially for women. I have not seen a single article written to highlight honor culture within Christians from the Middle East, for example. Maybe, this article is a start. Who knows?
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Sandra.
By Sandra El Khoury
TIME TO BURY YOUR PAST
When you least expect it, it comes to you
Making you realize what you’ve been through
It makes you angry, it makes you mad
Now you realize how much power they had
Even from the first day you were born
They forced you to wear Christ’s thorn
They watched you bleed, they saw your pain
They trapped your freedom and locked the chain
When you grow up, you understand
They forced you to obey, it was planned
They forced you to think you were meaningless
And you carry it inside you in your adultness
But no evil plan is without solution
Love becomes your bloodless revolution
Real friends take your hand when you lead the fight
Your loved ones become warriors of human right
So you will be at war all your life
Your inner strength becomes your knife
It is known that war never ends
Until one of the fighters descends
That person can never be you
Not after all they put you through
The day will come at last
When it is time to bury your past
By Sandra El Khoury
IN THE REFLECTION OF MY AFTERNOON TEA
In the reflection of my afternoon tea
I see a wild wave of the Mediterranean Sea
I see the place where I was born
Where my innocent childhood was torn
I see war exploiting the Lebanese
I see politicians as an infectious disease
But as a little girl that wasn’t my terror
It was my family who were the dangerous error
I wasn’t afraid of the bombs outside
Not even the images of all the people who died
I wasn’t afraid of the bloody river in the street
Not even the thousand bullet holes in concrete
I was afraid of the adults in my life
Who brought me up to become an obedient wife
To dream was forbidden in all sort or form
They stopped my wave in the Mediterranean storm
One day they moved me many miles away
Sweden were the country where they wanted to stay
I thought maybe now there will be a change
But their convictions became more and more strange
As they’ve taken my childhood, they now took my teenage years
A new wave was created by my salty tears
The more I grew the more harm they caused
All my hopes and dreams for a future they paused
I’ll not give you details of all the horrible things that took place
That will force me into the unconscious memory trace
All I can say is that I’m looking for the wild wave in me
That I saw today in my afternoon tea
That reflection was a reminder of what they couldn’t kill
And I get closer to reach it after every psychiatry bill
One day I will find the wild wave in me for sure
Because what they did will not hurt so much anymore
I will become more than I was meant to be
I will be the waves on all the tsunamis of the sea
So come then and try to stop me
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Photo by Jessica To’oto’o on Unsplash