Wikipedia says: "An honour killing or shame killing is the murder of a member of a family, due to the perpetrators' belief that the victim has brought shame or dishonour upon the family or has violated the principles of a community or a religion with an honour culture.

"Typical reasons include divorcing or separating from their spouse, refusing to enter an arranged, child or forced marriage, being in a relationship or having associations with social groups outside the family that is strongly disapproved by one's family, having premarital or extramarital sex, becoming the victim of rape or sexual assault, dressing in clothing, jewellery and accessories which are deemed inappropriate, engaging in non-heterosexual relations or renouncing a faith."

This is the story of one such honour killing where the victim remained miraculously alive.

It happened in a small village in the West Bank in a community that still believed in honour killing, where a family which did not kill the offending girl was dishonoured by the entire community.

The victim, all victims, are girls. In our case Souad, born in a family where the father's word is supreme and where the mother is acquiescent. The girls are considered as a misfortune, easily killed at birth, and otherwise condemned to a status that is lower than that of the domestic animals.

They take the animals to graze, clean the house and are beaten anytime they are late, dawdle or do their work in a wrong way.

Of course, they are not sent to school. Their brother, however, is sent to school but even so he turns into a bully.

Souad has no idea about sex but a neighbour gets interested in her, uses her and gets her pregnant.

Because of this, she is burned alive by a brother-in-law. Her family would have preferred if she died but somehow, miraculously, she survives, although she remains badly burnt.

That is where a fairy in the person of Jacqueline, who works with an NGO to save girl victims of domestic violence, intervenes.

To summarise the rest of the interesting book, Jacqueline manages to spirit Souad away to a clinic in Switzerland where her injuries are healed and she begins to live a normal life, such as is lived by millions in the West who do not realise how lucky they are that they were not born in communities where honour killings still happen.

For although this story happened in the West Bank, there are other communities where honour killings still take place, such as India.