An Unpleasant Event

This afternoon, when I was sitting in the bookshop, a lady from the Tempelhof district came in and asked whether I knew about the attempted honour killing down the street. I had seen candles and flowers beside the door but didn't know it was about that (and had felt it would be sensationalist and snooping to examine it further). She said that she wanted us, as the neighbours of the woman, to write a flyer condemning the attempted honour killing, which had already been written up on a website which tracks such honour killings in Germany.
Basically what I said was that any murder or attempted murder is already condemned by me and by most other people — that it is condemned generally, condemned under much of Islam, and condemned I thought also in countries like Afghanistan where it is culturally rooted. (I had read up on this issue, admittedly not in depth, for my class presentation on Islamic feminism in the USA. But I also felt a bit antagonistic because I don't like pointing at other countries and cultures and talking about how backward and savage they are, particularly if it is completely undeserved.)

I also said that I didn't see that it was possible for me to do anything, particularly unasked by those most concerned — unless the family asks for support — and that at best I could post a sign from a women's organization (which she named) directing possible future victims to a helpline or other resources in the window. Much of the time I was in the uneasy position of arguing that I am not my sister's keeper; the woman was generally dissatisfied (though reconciled by the end of the conversation, I think) with the responses of me and of other people she'd talked to as well. In hindsight I wished I had asked her what interested her personally in the case so much, because I think it is far better to engage in a cause when one has a specific personal knowledge or connection to it, and I am certain that she must have one.

When I read up on the case, it was that a young Iranian woman had been attacked with a knife by her former boyfriend in her apartment a week ago; the little daughter is under the care of youth services and she herself was operated on so that she survived. It was so biblically brutal that I understand why the label of attempted honour killing was affixed to it, but I think it is brutal entirely because the man was psychotic.

It does feel unsettling to live around the corner from a near-homicide, but after living here for six years I know that most of my neighbours would never even think of doing anything like it and that, God willing, it won't happen again.