I Love I Hate I Miss My Sister by Amélie Sarn (review)

Eighteen-year-old Sohane, after listening mutely to a discussion among her fellow French classmates about how degrading it is for Muslim women to have to wear the hijab and more, decides that it is just as much an infringement on her freedom to not be allowed to wear a head scarf. Her sister, Djelila, on the other hand, embraces life as a secular French teen, questioning her traditional uncle and standing up to a group of Muslim thugs in their apartment complex who accuse her of being a slut for wearing jeans. While Sohane is expelled from school for refusing to remove her scarf, Djelila pushes her limits even further, until one of the boys grabs her, throws gasoline on her, and immolates her in the basement of the apartment complex. Sohane is overtaken by grief and guilt, and tells her story in broken fashion, flashing between memories and present reflections as she processes the pain of losing her sister twice, first by trying to hold her back and scolding her for her decisions, and then by not protecting her when the danger was very real. Sohane’s most poignant cri de coeur arises when she rails against her and Djelila’s becoming symbols of someone else’s values; as a “victim of the rise of fundamentalism,” her decision to wear the hijab can never be viewed as anything other than a political statement or a forced choice, and she is even shut out from the protests that arise using Djelila as a poster child to oppose violence against women in the Muslim community. Based on actual events, including a law banning religious attire in French schools in 2004 and the murder of a Muslim girl in 2002, this French import insists on a fair and balanced look at not just two equal and opposite perspectives on these issues, but at the multiple, refracted, messy nuances in between.