Disfigured

When a crime of passion becomes a matter of state.
Young and beautiful, Rania al-Baz was a Saudi television star, where she hosted a popular program. An unprecedented path in a country where women have so much difficulty pursuing a career. For all her peers, Rania represented a hope for progress, because she had blazed a trail for them.
Now, that was precisely what her husband could not stand. Sickeningly jealous, he multiplied the scenes of violence until, on April 4, 2004, he attacked her even more violently than usual, disfiguring her, before leaving her, dying, at the door of a hospital and fleeing.
After four days in a coma and thirteen operations to try to recover her features, Rania would see her terrible ordeal broadcast by the world's media, worrying the Saudi authorities themselves. What was initially a minor event had turned into a full-blown state affair. In these pages, Rania talks to us about the issues that the condition of women in Muslim countries raises and recounts her ordeal and her struggle, without ever condemning Islam and her homeland. This is the particularity of this book: to show that in these conservative countries, women can and should be treated as human beings in every sense of the word, without having to renounce their origins and religion. A courageous and intelligent book that opens a door to hope.