Where is the honour in this?

Posted on June 12, 2007 by Helena

A beautiful young girl is raped, strangled with a bootlace and buried in a suitcase in a garden. This is not the act of some random psycho; the persecution and murder of this young woman was arranged and carried out by her own family. Twenty-year-old Banaz Mahmod had the temerity to leave an abusive arranged marriage and fall in love with a man she met at a party. Her father decided she had shamed her family and ordered the “honour killing”.

Oh well, it’s terrible, but these things happen abroad you might think. Think again. This happened in England. Banaz lived in Mitcham in Surrey. Her parents came to England from Iraq (they are Kurdish) when she was only 10 years old. She assimilated into our culture. They obviously did not.

Official figures say that there have been 19 “honour killings” in the UK in the last 10 years. I would guess the real figure is way above that. Is it any wonder that Asian women are three times more likely to kill themselves than British women?

How much longer can this go on for? We may not have a right to impose our culture on others, but if they chose to live in OUR society then we have a right to expect them to behave as our rules dictate. And our rules say that women have a right to fall in love and marry whoever they choose without fear of death and judgement by a medieval creed that has no place in our world.

People who carry out “honour killings” should be deported. There is no room in civilised society for them. I don’t care if that infringes on their human rights. In my view once a father garrotes his daughter he ceases to have any rights. He is no longer human.

And next time a woman goes to the police four times pleading for protection, as Banaz did, then maybe they’ll listen. This is yet another tragic case of a young woman daring to be herself and paying the ultimate price. I wonder what her mother’s role in all this was? I suppose she was too scared to speak out for fear of being murdered herself.

I also wish the police would stop talking about “honour-based crime” (trust them to come up with some stupid phrase). There is no honour whatsoever in these crimes; there is only shame.

The sins of the fathers

Posted on June 11, 2007 by Helena

When we were in Paris last week Rupert and I met a nice couple of child psychologists who told us that our children are made up of 50% us and 50% our parents. We were amazed by this fact, having always thought that our children were a product of us alone.

This weekend my father came to stay and confirmed this fact. “Helena,” he told Rupert, “is just like her grandfather. Always irritated and causes bedlam wherever she goes.”

Last time I saw him, my father told me how one day my grandfather came home to find my father, my aunt, my grandmother and a local farmer’s wife who was delivering some Ricotta cheese in the kitchen. Without saying a word he turned the light out and started beating them all with his walking stick.

“But Mr. Benedetti,” pleaded the farmer’s wife. “I haven’t done anything. I just came with the ricotta.” My father hid under the table but still got bashed a few times. After about three minutes my grandfather left, without turning the light back on.

As I don’t have a walking stick I have tried other methods of getting my own way. Yesterday I left my clothes and shoes by the pool all day. Around five o’clock I said to Rupert: “I am leaving my clothes and shoes by the pool in the hope that someone will come and pick them up for me and put the clothes in the wash and put the shoes away in my cupboard.”

“Why on earth would anyone want to do that?” he asked.

“Exactly,” I said.

As I write my shoes and clothes are still by the pool, now soaking wet due to a storm last night.

“I don’t think your plan worked very well,” said Rupert this morning.

It could be time to buy a walking stick.

Orange is not the only colour

Posted on June 8, 2007 by Helena

Jail bird Pity poor Paris Hilton. After three days in prison she is on the verge of a breakdown and has been sent home. You may think the reason for this breakdown had something to do with being incarcerated along with some pretty rough birds from downtown LA, or just being incarcerated, or having to eat overcooked vegetables or not being allowed near a Prada store for 24 hours. But I think it had more to do with the clothes she was forced to wear.

I’m sorry, but three days in an orange jump-suit is enough to send anyone over the edge. Orange is so last week, and terribly unflattering. Also poor old Hilton does not have the advantages of an English public-school education. As Evelyn Waugh said: “Any one who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison.”

George Michael has been spared prison and is instead going to do 100 hours community service for “drug driving”. I think community service is a much better option for celebs. That way they can do something useful for once.

What a wasted opportunity it was not to give young Paris some dreary tasks instead of a custodial sentence. I’m sure there are plenty of old people who would have loved their meals on wheels delivered by Paris wearing a pinafore. Or maybe she could been assigned the task of picking up rubbish on Rodeo Drive and get in a spot of shopping at the same time?

I wonder what they’ll find for George Michael to do? Probably not cleaning public loos.

The cruellest death

Posted on June 7, 2007 by Helena

Zakia Zaki (centre) A story in today’s Daily Mail made we want to throw up. Zakia Zaki, a 35-year-old Afghan journalist, was shot dead as she slept with her 20-month-old baby at her home north of Kabul. In the same room was her three-year-old toddler. Her four other children were asleep elsewhere in the house.

Zakia has long been unpopular with the Taliban, she was one of the few journalists who spoke out against them when they were in power. She also ran the US funded radio station Radio Peace. But what made her a target more than anything else was the fact that she was a working woman.

What kind of man goes into someone’s home along with two others and shoots a woman seven times in the head and chest as she sleeps with her baby in front of a three-year-old? I can’t imagine.

What kind of man stones his sixteen-year-old daughter or niece or neighbour to death as happened only a few weeks ago in Iraq? Whatever you think of the Daily Mail, it was the only UK paper to carry that story on its website for several days.

The fact is we’re more worried about a chief executive pinching someone’s bottom than the truly serious feminist battles that still need to be won. I can guarantee that some secretary suing would get more headlines than Zakia’s tragic and cruel death. I was amazed to even see it in the Mail to be honest.

The fact that women are being killed for being women that dare to do something, be it write, or go to school, or voice an opinion or work or even fall in love is something worth fighting against. And it’s not as if this only happens in far-flung places. There are plenty or arranged marriages and so-called “honour” killings in England.

Maybe we can’t impose our culture on another, but we can and should impose basic human rights. A woman’s right to sleep alongside her baby should never be taken away in such a brutal way, wherever she lives.

Harping on……

Posted on June 6, 2007 by Helena

I am a failure as a mother. Aged almost eight Olivia has yet to pick up a harp, unlike Ophelia, a five-year old girl who goes to a small school in Chelsea around the corner from where I’m staying.

Last night I had a conversation about bedtimes with the two daughters of the friends I am staying with aged three and five. Like most English children they are in bed by 7pm. I can rarely get mine anywhere near the bathroom before 8pm.

“But my friend Ophelia,” said the five-year old, “goes to bed at 10pm.”

That’s a bit late even by my standards. “Why?” I asked.

“She has a harp lesson at 9pm.”

Some mother's little princess Call me old-fashioned, but I find the thought of a five-year-old having harp lesson slightly tragic, and a little bit comic. Shouldn’t she be doing ‘normal’ childlike things such as fighting with her siblings or drawing on the walls?

Anyway, it gets worse. Stunned as I am by this news of late-night harp playing I talk to my friend this morning about it.

“Oh yes,” she says. “Ophelia gave a concert at the last school event. I think she was just five at the time. At the end the headmistress announced that it had been a very special performance by Ophelia as she had written the music herself.”

You couldn’t make it up. And I know what Olivia’s getting for her birthday next week. But how will I lug it back on the Eurostar?

Sore feet

Posted on June 5, 2007 by Helena

So Mother’s Day was good except that I got off at the wrong metro and then had to walk about two miles to the hotel. By the time I got there my feet hurt so I changed shoes to go walking in the Tuileries Gardens and then to the Virgin Megastore as I needed a plug for my laptop. By the time I got there my feet hurt again and so I had to hobble around looking for a shoe shop. A taxi would have been more sensible but I was determined to get some exercise.

I found a rather bling pair of torquoise flip-flops and heaved a sigh of relief as I put them on before I started my long walk back to the hotel.

Of course half-way there my feet started hurting in different places due to the bling flip-flops. At this stage my husband called me to tell me he was getting on the train from London. I told him about my feet.

“How many years have we been coming to Paris and how many times have I told you to wear sensible shoes?” he said. Really helpful.

Go ahead, lick it Sensible shoes is not something I do. I never have done and really can’t imagine I ever will. Along with matching underwear I find nothing determines your mood quite as much as a pair of shoes. That is why women will spend £300 on Jimmy Choos and then not eat for several months. I remember living off tinned tomatoes on toast when I was saving to buy a flat, but show me a pair of Tods in a sale and I was a gonner. Just think about how many tins of tomatoes you can buy for the price of a pair of Tods, even in the sale.
The tennis was really annoying. First of all my feet hurt, but there were other downsides too. As my husband said when I asked him if he was enjoying it:

“Not really, it’s bloody hot, these seats feel like they were designed by Ryanair and there’s some stupid Aussie playing who can’t hit the ball over the net.”

But apart from the tennis we had a really lovely time. My sore feet and I are now headed to London while Rupert heads home to look after the babies. I am looking forward to getting there and finding some more comfortable less than sensible shoes. The only question is, how will I get from the train to Harvey Nichols without walking?

A question for mothers

Posted on June 3, 2007 by Helena

Today is Mother’s Day in France. All over the country responsible children will be taking their mothers and grandmothers out to lunch. It is the worst day of the year to try to get a table in your favourite restuarant. They are booked up weeks in advance.

I will be eating my lunch on the TGV, as I am bound for Paris. This is not something I did on purpose; I was offered tickets to the French Open for Monday. Rupert is in London and is meeting me at the hotel, he still doesn’t know where we’re going, so it’s all very exciting. I just hope his hero Federer is playing.

Less exciting was the children’s reaction when I told them I was skipping off on Mother’s Day. They were, frankly, appalled. The term ‘disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ springs to mind. And of course I felt horrible.

But this morning before I left they showered me with presents and cards. I am wearing the necklace Bea gave me with great care as she has yet to perfect the closing mechanism.

“If you hear something falling, then look behind you,” was her advice.

Olivia gave me a wooden bracelet and said; “Any time you miss us and feel sad you can kiss this.” Sweet you might think. But she also said, as I was trying to get my skinny jeans on, “Mummy, aren’t they a bit small for you?”

My point though is this; who is Mother’s Day for? Should we as mothers spend it with our children (like we do most other days) or should it be a day we take for ourselves, to get away from our children and have some quality time with ourselves?

Rupert has been away since Wednesday and the babies have been really tough for some reason. I must have fantasised about the moment I would finally be on this TGV in perfect calm and solitude more than I have fantasised about George Clooney picking me to write his biography or Marat Safin offering to give me tennis lessons in the nude.

I have to say I come down on the side of Mother’s Day being a day when mothers should so whatever they like. And if that means getting on a train, spending an afternoon in a Paris hotel room sleeping and meeting their husbands in the evening then so be it.

Although I do miss them already and have a feeling that bracelet is going to come in handy.

The greatest living Englishman on the football pitch?

Posted on June 2, 2007 by Helena

I don’t know why I watched the football last night. Well, actually I do, it was because Beckham and Owen were playing and so it felt like the good old days when I used to enjoy football and England weren’t appallingly bad.

You’ve got to hand it to Becks. All that pressure and what does he do? Just puts the ball where you expect him to. I don’t know how he lives with all the negative publicity and nasty things said about him. I was upset by a couple of losers writing mean things on their blogs about me. He has to look at his life (and even worse, his hairstyle) being torn to bits in the national press on a daily basis.

I wonder how he felt the moment before he kicked the ball to Terry? We all know that if he messed up the critics would have been thrilled to tear him to bits. I was so nervous for him. But he seemed cool as anything. It reminded me of the Kipling poem, which I know is a cliche but I still love it:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise

Meanwhile it is official, I am a lunatic. “Mummy you’re quite the maddest girl I know,” Olivia told me this morning. So that’s reassuring. I’m now going to iron my straight-jacket and watch the football highlights.

A high price for stress

Posted on June 1, 2007 by Helena

You have to wonder where our priorities have gone when two babies are left to die in over-heated cars by their “stressed” mothers in one week.

We have all done stupid things. I once forgot I had three children shortly after Leo was born and almost left him in the park. The anxiety dreams I have had about forgetting children in supermarkets/at school/in the street cannot be counted. But to forget to take your child to its crèche and come back five hours later to find it dead is worse than any nightmare I ever had.

Apparently this stressed Dutch mother had a pre-school meeting to go to. So she parked the car and rushed in, leaving her 11-month old son in the car. Earlier in the week a five-month old suffocated in a stuffy car after his mother drove to work at a laundry in Belgium and left him there.

“The hectic pace of modern life is the root cause of both tragedies,” said Belgian psychologist Theo Compernolle.

“It’s too much to suppose that a woman can cope with so-called multi-tasking, keeping several balls in the air at the same time.

“The truth is that the brain is not able to cope with both a family’s needs and a responsible job at the same time. The brain can only really focus on one thing at a time.”

Call me old fashioned, but aren’t we all working hard to give our children a nice life? So if by doing so we inadvertently kill them then there really isn’t much point is there? And as for the brain not being able to cope with both things at once, well that’s just nonsense. Millions of mothers (and some fathers) cope every day. OK we may not be perfect and sometimes a school bag gets left behind (like this morning), but we do cope.

And sometimes it’s all worth it. The mortgage may be high, but where would you rather be when a little girl comes wandering into your room first thing, looks out of the window and says: “Aren’t we lucky to be living in the mountains. We got the sun, the sky, the green hills, lovely flowers and trees. Aren’t we lucky mummy?”