Book description
Punjab, Pakistan, June 2009. The temperature is 45° and Asia has been
out picking fruit for several hours. It's exhausting, sweaty work, but
Asia and her husband have five children to feed. At midday she goes to
the nearest well, picks up a cup and takes a long drink of cool water.
She refills the cup, drinks some more and then offers it to another
woman.
Suddenly one of her fellow workers cries out that the water belongs to
the Muslim women and that with her actions, Asia - who is Christian -
has contaminated it. An argument ignites and in an instant, with one
word, Asia's fate is sealed. 'Blasphemy!' someone shouts. In Pakistan
this is a charge punishable by death.
First attacked by a mob, Asia was soon after thrown into prison and
then sentenced to be hanged. Since then she has been kept in a
windowless cell. Her family have had to flee their village, under threat
from vengeful extremists. In the wave of accusation that followed, only
two public figures came to Asia's defence: the Muslim governor of the
Punjab and Pakistan's Christian Minister for Minorities. Both have since
been brutally murdered.
Here, in equal measures shocking and inspiring, Asia Bibi, who has
become a symbol for everyone concerned with ending the violence
committed in the name of religion, bravely speaks to us from her prison
cell. Asia Bibi is currently in prison in Pakistan awaiting appeal
from the death sentence she was given in 2009. Her family have had to go
into hiding.
