CAIRO, AUG 20: Nora Marzouk Ahmed's seven-day honeymoon ended when her father chopped off her head and carried it down a dusty neighborhood street as a punishment for dishonouring the family. Her crime: she had eloped.pHolding his 25-year-old daughter's freshly severed head, Marzouk Ahmed Abdel-Rahim said to hundreds of aghast onlookers in the low-income cairo neighborhood yesterday: ``Now, the family has regained its honour.''He then surrendered to police.

Nora is not an isolated victim in Egypt, where activists say scores of women are killed or beaten every year by their fathers, brothers or husbands for actions deemed to have sullied the family honor.

Their deeds could include pre-marital sex, eloping, being seen publicly with a man who is not a relative or going outside without a veil.

``Honour and integrity in Egypt have become warped,'' Nawal Saadawi, a leading Egyptian feminist writer, said. ``For many Egyptian men, integrity is now linked to the actions and behaviour of the women in the family.''

There are no official figures. Many cases, activists say, escape scrutiny because families describe the deaths as accidents to prevent further scandal.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.