The other women echoed Bhalla Ama’s skepticism. They couldn’t see the wrongs in the cultural restrictions that I was trying to describe, or the physical and emotional harm some traditions inflicted on women. I did not yet understand that one debilitating effect of honor killings is that they make the women who are left behind think nothing of domestic violence, seeing it as natural and ordained. This project was going to be harder than I thought. I had assumed my main task would be to change the minds of the men—I hadn’t counted on having to change the minds of the women too.
