If symptoms
persist.. .
WHEN EDUCATIONAL theorists speak of multiculturalism, I think they imagine public readings of T.S. Eliot in Thai restaurants. An Italian radical writ- er put it rather differently: multicultural- ism, he said, is not couscous, it is the stoning of adulterers.
A bit strong, perhaps, but I know what he means. I can't imagine where liberal intellectuals got the idea that, but for the machinations of a few people of with vested interests, we'd all be one big happy family, glorying in our cultural diversity. Certainly, they didn't arrive at it by empirical observation in my neigh- bourhood.
Last week, a young woman here tried to poison herself. For once, it was a gen- uine attempt: she wanted to die, and I soon saw why. She was a Muslim who had fallen in love with a Sikh, and her family regarded this as deeply shameful. Her mother, who had herself converted to Islam from Sikhism in order to marry her husband for the trifling reason of love, was more Islamic than the Prophet, and was therefore particularly incensed: how could the family maintain its good name if the daughter behaved thus? `They're not bothered about my happi- ness,' said the daughter bitterly of her parents. 'All they're bothered about is what others will say.'
She had once tried to escape from home to a hostel for Asian women who found themselves in her predicament (she made good her escape while her sis- ter-in-law, who was set to watch over her, was in the bath), but her brothers, the guardians of the family's reputation, had found her whereabouts and had kid- napped her, saying that they forgave her this time, but next time they would kill her.
Her father beat his breast, saying that if ever she left the house again without permission he would shoot first her and then himself. He had made enquiries, and discovered that he could buy a gun for £35, which even he, a manual worker, could easily afford. (I admit I found this aspect of the story particularly unnerving.) The parents had plans for her. They intended to pack her off to Pakistan as soon as she left hospital, so that no `harm' might come to her. There she would be forced to marry a first cousin of hers, a man she could not abide, but who had at least the correct ideas about the place of women: the Urdu equivalent of Kinder, Kiiche, Kirche.
Despite the threats of her parents and of her brothers, she had continued to see her Sikh lover. They had found out and had beaten him up. Next time, they said, they would kill him, a threat not to be taken idly.
`But they would go to prison for life,' I said.
`They wouldn't mind,' she replied. 'It's a matter of respect, pride and honour.'
She was afraid to stay at home and afraid to leave. In spite of all, she loved her parents no less than she loved liber- ty; and her ambition was to become a journalist. She saw herself, however, on the slab of a morgue, her father in jail, the family honour preserved. Now that's what I call real multiculturalism.
Theodore Dalrymple
Previous page
