If symptoms
persist.. .
OF ALL the many human failings, self- righteousness is among the most com- mon and the most destructive. Thank goodness I'm entirely free of it; my anger on behalf of others is a pure and gener- ous flame. But when self-righteousness is allied to self-interest (as it usually is) the consequences are often appalling.
A patient of mine, a Sikh girl aged 20, told me that there is a taxi company in the city, owned and operated by Sikh men, which concerns itself not only with transporting passengers from A to B, but with enforcing the morals of the commu- nity. This involves informing Sikh fami- lies of the movements of their children, particularly their daughters: for honour must be preserved.
One evening three years before, she was deputed to accompany one of her cousins to the station in a taxi owned by this company. On their way back from the station — or so the driver told her family — they passed through an area of the city inhabited largely by Muslims, and the girl waved to, or otherwise com- municated with, a young Muslim boy, as though she already knew him.
The following day, her brother, who could contain his moral outrage no fur- ther, called her into his room and asked her whether what the taxi driver had told him was true. She denied it, but he resorted to the tactic of torturers and secret policemen down the ages: he tried to beat the truth out of her. He smashed her over the head with a crow- bar, fracturing her skull. She came to our hospital, where she told the doctors that she had been attacked by muggers on her doorstep — for fear that her brother would kill her if she told the truth.
At the age of 19, she ran away from home, and went to live with a young Sikh boy who, alas, was of a lower caste than she, and therefore ineligible as a hus- band. Her parents employed a private detective (specialising in such work) to find out where she was living. They wormed their way back into her confi- dence, not disclosing their true feelings or intentions. They told her that they had found a private clinic for her where a small operation which she needed on her leg could be performed, and that they were willing to pay for it; foolishly, she went with them. When she woke from the operation, her leg was still the same, but an attempted sterilisation had been carried out. Fortunately it was bungled and, hav- ing escaped her family once more, she became pregnant by her (now) husband. But she lived in fear of her life: if her parents found her again, they might very well kill her.
Let no one suppose this to be an iso- lated case. The day before I had seen a Muslim girl whose parents had given her a choice: marriage to her first cousin in Pakistan or death. She chose the first, only to discover that, when he came to England, her life was a living death. If any of her friends came to the house, he beat her; if she so much as put her nose out of the front door, he beat her.
She ran away to another city, but her family discovered her whereabouts, and kidnapped her twice, once from the street, once from a shop. Fortunately, the police were informed by the girl with whom she shared a flat, and they rescued her. Now, however, she was a prisoner as much as she had been under her hus- band's direct domination: for she knew that if she disappeared again it would be for good.
Theodore Dalrymple
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