Nathacha Appanah: "These women were murdered because they wanted to leave, because they had made a decision"

BarcelonaThe brutal death of two women, murdered by their husbands, triggered a mechanism in the mind of journalist and writer Nathacha Appanah (Mahébourg, Mauritius, 1973). She decided to silence the murderers, stand by the victims, and tell her own story as well. In The Night at the Heart (Angle/ADN), translated from French into Catalan by Andreu Gomila, the writer weaves together the three stories to confront the ghosts, to not let anyone erase who these women were, and to reflect on a society where femicides are all too frequent.

In the book, she reflects on what drives an adult man of 50 to seduce a 17-year-old girl, to hold her captive, to isolate her from her family and friends, to watch her, and to beat her; on whether there is premeditation, if he needs to find an ideal victim, and if you were one. Does the ideal victim exist?

— The novel begins by precisely flipping these roles: who is the victim and who has the right to be one. I wanted to question the very definition of ideal victim, because I myself asked what made me fall into this trap. No one is predisposed to be a victim of violence. We must change the focus: the question should not be what makes you a victim, but what makes you an aggressor.

We live in a society that often leaves little room for humanism and demands great pressure to be productive and do everything well. Does this lack of tools make us more vulnerable when it comes to protecting ourselves?

— I do not think so. This type of violence against women and children has existed since the beginning of time. However, what is undeniable is that we live in an increasingly violent, intolerant, and radicalized society. We see it clearly in the division between men and women: after advances like the Me Too movement, there has been a backlash from certain groups.

In other words, at its core, it is a deeply structural and social problem.

— Absolutely. When there is domestic violence, there is a tendency to individualize it, as if it were only the problem of one family, one person, or a specific group. It is a mistake: it is a global social problem. I dream of the day when intimate or spousal femicides leave the crime section. Building a society is up to all of us—fathers, mothers, journalists, writers—and the fundamental issue is understanding why many men continue to think they have the right to possess a woman's body to the point of destroying it.

When I asked you earlier if we lack tools, I was also referring to the difficulty in imagining another type of society and fighting these models.

— Hannah Arendt already spoke of the "thoughtlessness" when she analyzed the banality of evil. Many aggressors excuse themselves by saying "I didn't think," but the reality is that there is a void in the reflection on what it means to be a father, brother, or husband. Unlike men, women—as writers or readers—constantly question our role in society. When certain men read about violence, they often distance themselves by saying "I am not like that, I would never do that" and refuse to read or understand it. But rejecting this understanding is to renounce learning.

The novel tells the story of three women, and the narrator is the only one who survives. Why did you choose to write this voice in the first person?

— It was a very well-thought-out decision. I am a fiction writer and writing about the self felt complex to me. But after two years of working on the history of Chahinez's family, of Emma's, and of their trajectories, I asked myself: "If they were alive, would they give me permission to tell their life story?" They were women very protective of their privacy. For a matter of ethical and moral equality with them, I felt that I had to assume the same risk: saying I and putting my own story out there.

In the novel, it describes very well what happens after the first time, the slow process that impregnates like a thin second skin. How is this process experienced?

— It is a kind of internal collapse. Being in a violent home permanently means being constantly afraid: afraid for yourself and, if you have children, afraid for your children. There is our body, our face, people recognize us, but inside we are empty. We no longer have dreams, we no longer have desires; sometimes we no longer talk to our family because they don't understand why we stay. Friends get tired of it. And it becomes impossible to explain with words what is really happening. A toxic relationship is like the night: things happen when everyone is asleep, when no one is watching. Many of these men have a very manipulative character and know with great precision the other person's weakness. My weakness was my age, the way he had completely turned my brain around, and the fact that he had isolated me from my family. I was completely alone. It is like being in a forest full of traps everywhere and where there are eyes that are constantly watching you.

Chahinez was a woman you describe as very independent, very brave, with a desire to do things, but when she dies, the press describes her as a fragile and vulnerable woman. In a way, is that what we tend to do as a society when a woman is a victim, do we treat her as a victim, without taking into account who she was?

— Yes, absolutely. It is a way of defending ourselves. We tell ourselves that these women are murdered because they are vulnerable: we believe it, we are forced to believe it. Can you imagine if we told ourselves the opposite? That we told ourselves that these murdered women were very strong women? It would be a great shock and a total failure for everyone. To say that this woman was fantastic, that she filed a report, that she left her husband, that she had a job and that she was intelligent... at that moment we would ask ourselves much more essential questions. Instead, by saying that she was a weak woman, a little mother... and furthermore, in the case of Chahinez, who wore a veil –which for many means that she was submissive–, we tell ourselves that perhaps it is like that. I think it is time to turn this around. What should always be said is that these women are murdered because they want to leave, because they have made a decision.

The brutality is extreme. Chahinez's husband shoots her and burns her. How has the process been of finding the language to describe such extreme brutality?

— Language has concerned me from the beginning: how to tell this story and from what position do we place ourselves to convey it? It seemed to me, especially in Chahinez's case, that the brutality with which she was murdered is impossible to describe. Human language is impotent, but there is the writing of silence and absence. In fact, it is interesting because in French all the words that describe the way of killing or controlling are from animal vocabulary (domesticate, trap...). As if we human beings were not capable of assuming that it is we who do it. Behind conjugal feminicides, intimate feminicides, there is an intention of destruction. It is not just "I kill my wife", no: I make her body unrecognizable. Fire is the most implacable way of erasing the trace, they even burn the house.

Is it possible to understand why these men do this?

— I wanted to write a book where understanding was on the other side. However, I realized that when these stories reach the justice system, there is an attempt to understand what might have happened to the aggressors to make them do evil: if they suffered abuse, if they had a terrible childhood, if they were very unhappy... I knew that, in the case of these three, they had been very loved by their families. Their violence is a personal decision. It has nothing to do with their education or their culture. They made the decision to kill, and it is strictly their own decision.

There is also society's tolerance towards this. In the book, one of Emma's three deaths is discussed. They let the murderer out of prison to go to her funeral.

— It is terrible. When I found out about this I was so moved... I wondered how they could let him go. And, in fact, it is simple: because when women are murdered in this way –at least when they killed Emma, although today, luckily, this has changed quite a bit–, the general opinion is that she was somewhat responsible for her own death. He, poor thing, had a moment of great rage and did not do it on purpose, he did not want to kill her.

The narrator reads many studies, researches, asks herself many questions, but continues to feel ashamed. She wonders if her parents are ashamed of her.

— Yes, shame is one of the most perverse feelings that exist, because it is part of our gender. Often, women are raised to feel shame: for our breasts when they grow too early, for the shapes of our body, for being too or not feminine enough, for our period... Then there is the shame of desire and many others. When you are in a toxic marital relationship, the shame is directed at yourself: you feel ashamed for staying, for continuing to endure it. When I started writing the book, I was very angry with the young girl I had been, precisely because she was ashamed. Now I am less so, but from time to time that shame resurfaces. I would like a recipe to get rid of it completely, but I cannot find it... But in any case, for me the self was difficult, and I am very proud of having done it. Sometimes I think it is as if I had the 17-year-old girl I was in front of me and I did not lie to her. Because this book is for Chahinez and for Emma, but it is also a bit for me, for the one I was and for the one I could not be.