98 GENDER PERSPECTIVES ON TORTURE: Law and Practice male-headed entities rather than more autonomous mother and child units” (Kandiyoti 1988: 275). Kandiyoti further explains: Different forms of patriarchy present women with distinct “rules of the game” and call for differ­ ent strategies to maximize security and optimize life options with varying potential for active or passive resistance in the face of oppression. (1988: 275) Ultimately, the men make the rules, but if women are able to play by those rules, they gain for themselves a form of symbolic capital. Specifically, they can present themselves as conforming women, enabling their survival in the field of patriarchy (Kandiyoti 1988). With the honor schema, misbehavior by one woman dishonors the entire patriarchal familial unit, male and female; to ensure their survival and security, women, as much as men, monitor the behavior of their kinswomen. Up until the trial in May 2012, Shafilea’s mother denied that she had any knowledge of what happened to her daughter. The defense counsel stated that, on the night in question, Iftikhar was very angry “… hitting [Shafilea], slapping her with his hands towards the facial area and punching her two to three times to the upper part of her body. [Shafilea’s mother] tried to intervene but she was told to go away” (author’s personal notes, 2012). When she tried again to help her daughter, she was “pushed away by both hands and also punched with a clenched fist” (Gill 2014: 187). Contrary to Alesha’s account, Shafilea’s mother claimed that only her third eldest daughter, “M” (then aged 12), was present. “Extremely scared” and fearing for M’s safety, Shafilea’s mother took her upstairs. Some 20 minutes later, she heard a car leave and came downstairs to find Shafilea and her husband gone, along with her car. At 6:30 a.m. the next day, her husband returned without Shafilea (author’s personal notes, Gill, 2012). In response to these allegations, Shafilea’s brother, who was 13 at the time of her disappearance, told the jury: “I think it’s a lie what she’s saying but that’s her account to give.” He also said: “It’s a whole pack of lies that [Alesha’s] told and I don’t believe a word of what she’s saying” (see Gill 2014: 187). He described the Ahmed household as a “happy family” before Shafilea disappeared and told the jury that “nothing out of the ordinary” happened on September 11, 2003. He claimed that he only knew his sister was missing the next morning (author’s personal notes, Gill, 2012). Ultimately, the jury accepted Alesha’s version of events and on August 3, 2012, Shafilea’s par­ ents were convicted of her murder. Both received life sentences. While the true facts of the case may never be known, all the accounts of what happened on September 11, 2003, circle back to the key role of “honor.” They also simultaneously demonstrate how cultural explanations for Shafilea’s death are insufficient; it was a product of many factors, including the relationship between “honor,” gender, and power inequalities within the Ahmed household. Cultural Predicaments The Ahmed family lived in a context that was simultaneously British and Pakistani, in what Homi Bhabha (1994) refers to as a “third space.” This applies to both generations, albeit in different ways. Shafilea’s social location was determined partly by her being born in the 1980s in postcolo­ nial Britain and partly by the fact that her parents had migrated from a rural area of Pakistan. The patriarchal gender system that Shafilea was ensnared in did not derive simply from the Ahmeds’ “backward” rural roots standing in opposition to the enlightened culture of British society outside the Ahmed home. Instead, Shafilea lived her life life under the constraints imposed by both the British patriarchal values to which all women in Britain are subject and the patriarchal values of her parents’ rural Pakistani upbringing.