Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Death from Beauty | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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There is a lot of ambiguity surrounding the death of Suzanne Tamim; has her father waived the civil lawsuit against her alleged killers? Has he waived his legal rights against Hisham Talaat Mustafa, but not Mohsen al-Sukari, or is this news without basis?

Press reports over the past two days contradict each other, increasing the uncertainty and ambiguity, and the fact is that all the news concerning Suzanne Tamim is confusing, and vague, and it seems that it is Suzanne Tamim’s fate to be just as much a mystery in death as she was in life.

If Alfred Hitchcock was still alive, and was going to transform Suzanne Tamim’s story into a film, then a beautiful actress would have to fill the lead role. However beauty – of course – is not always a blessing, and if a modestly beautiful woman must be cautious, then a beautiful woman must be a hundred times more cautious, for beauty – like everything dazzling – attracts both the good and the bad. A beautiful woman may waste her life trying to differentiate between sheep and wolves, between sincere smiles and fake ones.

Suzanne Tamim’s story reminds me of the beautiful French actress Bridgette Bardot whose intelligence led her to tell all the wolves and sheep that “everybody should stop treating me as if I’m only something beautiful, and treat me like a human being like anybody else,” If Suzanne Tamim knew that she was going to be a victim, she would have done what Bardot did, when she shut herself up to live alone in her home in Saint-Tropez. However Suzanne Tamim was the victim of her beauty, and her female intuition failed to warn her and allow her to avert this, and this is something that is similar to what happened – in one way or another – to Marilyn Monroe.

When the news of Suzanne Tamim’s murder was revealed, it can be certain that more than one modestly beautiful woman thanked God for their limited beauty, for a woman with limited beauty can have a lot of friends, and live amongst them in safety. However as for a true beauty, all of her friends want to become lovers, and spurning love does not just cause an end to the friendship and other problems, this causes thousands of problems.

The story of Suzanne Tamim is the story of a beautiful woman, who did not find the light to guide her path, so she lost her way in the darkness.