Murielle Degauque was, by all accounts, a normal child. A typical girl next door, you might say. True, as a teenager growing up in southern Belgium, she dabbled in drugs and preferred boys to books. But there was nothing to indicate that she would become the first Western woman to launch a suicide bomb attack in the name of jihad when she blew herself up in Iraq last month. "She was absolutely normal as a kid," said Jeannine Samain, who lives a few doors down from the Degauque family home in Monceau-sur-Sambre. Speaking to the Belgian newspaper La DerniÚre Heure, Degauque's parents, Jean and Liliane, described the typical growing pains of an adolescent girl. She had a talent, they said "for sticking with the difficult kids" . On one occasion they had to travel 170km to the Ardennes to find her. Of her boyfriends, her mother said: "I don't know how many there were."
| Something of a round heels, was she? |
Degauque's relationship with Goris was not her first serious one; she had already married and divorced a Turkish man and met and then left an Algerian.
| That was after the guy with the hat, and before the garage band musician... |
When she returned to Belgium, Liliane and Jean Degauque found that their daughter had changed. She changed her name to Myriam and wore a veil. When visiting the family home in Monceau-sur-Sambre, Issam Goris would eat with Jean; the women would stay in another room. Neighbours noticed the change too. Ms Samain recalled the last time she saw Murielle eight months ago: " She was veiled. By that time she would just say bonjour and that was it." Some reports suggest that the couple travelled to Iraq in the autumn by car via Turkey. In any event it appears that Issam was killed by American forces.
Rest at link.