Honor

by Elif Shafak

  Years later, she would learn more about comets, about the ways they could crash into one another. Although Adem had probably been unaware of this at the time, she came to realize that, just like two comets, they had headed with amazing speed towards collision, trailing behind them the burden of promises unkept, dreams unfulfilled.

  *

  Jamila took the kettle off the fire and poured tea into a small glass. Before her first sip, she popped a sugar cube into her mouth and sucked on it broodingly. Then, with unnecessary force, she grabbed a pen, as many unused to writing tend to do. Unlike her twin, who wrote half in Turkish and half in Kurdish, she stuck to Kurdish only.

  My dear Pembe, my flesh and blood, my other half, my endless longing,

  I am never angry at you. Our lives are created by Allah, and Him alone.

  These days I wake up with a heavy feeling. Something under way. I cannot sleep in my bed any more. I fall asleep on chairs. Nothing helps. I have nightmares. It will pass, of course. Nothing to worry you about.

  Jamila put down the pen; her hand had gone slack, and her forehead was creased. She could hear people approaching from the north-west – three or four visitors, she guessed. She could detect the snap of twigs under their heavy boots, and the clatter of the pebbles that they sent down into the valley below.

  They could be soldiers. They could be brigands. They could be anyone. Jamila glanced at the door. It was bolted, and the windows were closed with worm-eaten wooden panels. She put on her headscarf, took her rifle off the wall. There was nothing else she could do.

  She wanted to finish the letter. She had to tell Pembe more about this gnawing feeling inside and warn her not to do anything careless or improper about her marriage. But had Pembe ever been cautious in her life? Her twin, that skinny girl who always asked impossible questions, and even wanted to know why tree roots were in the ground and not up in the air where they could drink rainwater instead – she had grown up but not changed.

  Weighing it up in her heart, it also worried her that her sister had a face like an open book. Whatever Pembe felt, from the smallest delight to a hint of sorrow, she projected. If she could not hide the most uncomplicated emotions, how could she possibly conceal her indifference towards her marriage from everyone?

  Outside, the footsteps drew closer until they stopped at her doorstep. There was the slightest tap, bashful but persistent. Jamila took a deep breath, muttered a quick prayer and opened the door.

  There were three men with a couple of dogs at their heels. They were outlaws, she could see that. Splinters of ice clung to their moustaches like icicles dangling from eaves. One of them came forward. A heavily built man with deep-set eyes and a gold-capped tooth. She had seen him before: he was their leader.

  ‘My wife,’ the bandit said curtly. ‘You must come with us.’

  ‘When did the pain start?’

  ‘Two hours, maybe more.’

  Nodding, Jamila took her coat and her rifle, and followed them.

  Later in the night she was in a derelict house with bullet holes in the door and a corrugated-iron roof overhead, her face covered in blood and sweat, her hands holding the strangest baby she had ever come across.

  It was a girl or, more precisely, a girl and a half. She had a baby boy’s body attached to her chest and abdomen. They had started their journey in their mother’s womb as twins, but one of them had developed while the other had stopped halfway, as if he had feared the world to come and changed his mind. The undeveloped baby had remained joined to her twin.

  ‘You must go to the city,’ Jamila said. ‘They’ll have to perform surgery. The second body needs to be removed. Then your child will be all right.’

  The smuggler stood transfixed, his eyes narrowed in a way that was neither disbelief nor acceptance. ‘Is it an omen?’

  Jamila was half expecting this question and she answered gently, ‘It is not an omen. Such births are rare, but it happens. Some twins cannot separate.’

  ‘There was a goat with five legs. Just like that,’ he said, as though he hadn’t heard a word of what she had said.

  ‘This child of yours is special. She needs your love,’ Jamila said, realizing how few words she could find to comfort this man of the mountains. ‘If anyone tells you otherwise, that person is not your friend. Do you understand?’

  The man looked away.

  Yet when Jamila was back in her cottage, exhausted but still unable to sleep, she wondered if it had indeed been a sign. Not for the bandit and his family, but for her. She sat down and finished the letter to her sister.

  I’ve just come back from a difficult birth. Conjoined twins. One dead, one alive. If you were here, you would ask: ‘Why does He let this happen? It’s unfair.’ But this is not how I look at it. I surrender fully, unconditionally, I do my best to help my people.

  My dear, we cannot erase the past. That’s not in our hands. I am not, and I never was, upset at you or at Adem. Can you stop a gusty wind from blowing? Can you make the snow turn any colour other than white? We easily accept that we have no power over nature. But why don’t we admit that we cannot change our fates? It’s not that different. If Allah guided us on to separate paths, there must have been a reason for that. You have your life there; I have my life here. We have to accept. But I am worried about your marriage. Can’t you try harder to make it work? For the sake of your children, you must.

  You mention Hediye. How strange, I have been thinking about her too, lately more than ever.

  Your loving sister, always,

  Jamila

  No Wisdom without Foolishness

  A Village near the River Euphrates, 1961

  In the afternoon, the call of the muezzin wafted through the small Kurdish village. Adem listened, a dreadful sensation growing in the pit of his stomach. Time trudged on agonizingly slowly, and yet also too hurriedly. He had postponed going back to Istanbul for a few days, but he couldn’t delay his return any longer. He went to the mosque with the headman, and prayed for the first time since his mother had left home.

  ‘Allah, my God, I know I don’t pray often enough,’ he whispered as he sat on the prayer rug. ‘I didn’t fast during the last Ramadan. Or the one before. But help me, please. Let Jamila’s eyes see no other than me. Ever!’

  ‘Are you all right, lad?’ asked the headman when they walked out into the bright day. Despite the sun, the air felt chilly.

  ‘I need to marry her.’

  ‘Aren’t you too young for that?’

  ‘I’m old enough to get betrothed.’

  ‘Yes, but you don’t even have a job. You haven’t done your military service. Why are you rushing?’

  The day before Adem had gone to visit his brother Khalil in the barracks, and, with his help, had sent a telegram to Tariq in Istanbul.

  BROTHER I MET A GIRL STOP SHE’S THE ONE STOP I KNOW I’M YOUNG STOP

  BUT THIS IS GOD’S CALL STOP WILL MARRY HER STOP NEED YOUR BLESSING STOP

  AND MONEY STOP

  Adem didn’t tell the headman any of this. Instead, he said, ‘Because I’ve found the girl I’ve been waiting for, and I’ll die if I can’t have her.’

  ‘You need to talk to her father, then.’

  ‘What if he says he doesn’t want to see me?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll talk to Berzo for you. He won’t eat you.’

  ‘Why are you helping me?’ Adem asked after a brief pause.

  This elicited a chuckle from the headman. ‘Because somebody should. You don’t seem like you could do much without assistance.’

  Getting a meeting with Jamila’s father was easier than Adem had imagined; bringing the subject up, however, seemed impossible. Never a talkative person, Berzo had turned more taciturn after the death of his wife and his daughter Hediye. So when Adem visited Jamila’s house with the headman by his side and the box of baklava under his arm,
he found a sullen man, his eyebrows clamped down, his stare glassy.

  ‘I came here to talk about your daughter,’ Adem said, after they were served tea and dried figs. Then, remembering that the man had a great many, he added, ‘Your daughter Jamila, I mean. Enough Beauty.’

  ‘No call her that!’ the man said in broken Turkish.

  ‘Sorry . . .’ Adem faltered.

  Jamila’s father let out a stream of words in Kurdish, which the headman translated curtly as ‘He says only the girl’s late mother can call her Enough.’

  Adem felt a self-pity that bordered on despair. Thankfully, the headman intervened. ‘This young man is an outsider, true. But he’s an honest person and he comes from an honourable family. I know his father. Adem’s intentions are pure. He would like to marry your daughter.’

  Once again Jamila’s father spoke in Kurdish; once again his words were partially translated: ‘What kind of a marriage proposal is this? Where are your parents?’

  ‘My mother is dead,’ Adem lied. ‘And Baba is ill.’ At least that part was true. ‘I’ve two brothers. The elder one, Tariq, is like a father to me. I’ve already sent him a telegram.’

  Lapsing into an unwieldy silence, they sipped their teas, finished their figs. Finally, Jamila’s father said, ‘You cannot marry her. She’s already spoken for.’

  ‘What?’ Adem blurted out. Why hadn’t she told him? He turned to the headman, who averted his gaze.

  Switching to broken Turkish again, Berzo went on, ‘She’s engaged to a relative. They marry next year.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘You want to marry a daughter of mine, take Pembe. They are same. You like one, you like the other.’

  Adem shook his head, his eyes defiant. ‘No, I want Jamila. She’s the one in my heart. You give Pembe to your relative.’ He was crossing a line but he couldn’t help it.

  Berzo slurped the last of his tea, smacking his lips with a little grunt. ‘It cannot be. My last word.’

  When the two of them were outside in the garden, Adem threw up his hands, bellowing at the headman. ‘What’s going on here? You owe me an explanation. What are you hiding from me?’

  The headman took out his pouch and began to roll a cigarette. ‘A year ago Jamila’s elder sister Kamile was going to get married. Just before the wedding the two families got into a fight. I don’t even remember what it was about, but it turned nasty. Berzo called off the wedding. The groom’s family was so upset they kidnapped Jamila in retaliation.’

  ‘What?’ Adem rasped.

  ‘They kept her somewhere for a few days. Then Berzo sent for them and gave his consent to Kamile’s marriage. In return they brought Jamila back.’

  ‘Did they . . . touch her . . .?’

  ‘Hmm, nobody knows for sure. They say they didn’t lay a hand on her, but they’re shifty and the girl never explained. Her father beat her several times but still not a word. A midwife examined her. She says Jamila has no hymen but some girls are born like this.’

  Adem was shivering.

  ‘The good news is that the family of Kamile’s husband accepts the girl as a bride for an old relative. A widower. Her honour is saved.’

  Gripped by a new realization, Adem glared. ‘You knew about this all along.’

  ‘A headman knows everything that takes place in his village.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘There still was a chance you could get her. And, if not, you had to find it out for yourself.’

  Adem wasn’t listening properly, blinded by fury. ‘I thought you were my friend. A wise man!’

  ‘Nobody is wise,’ the headman said. ‘We are all half-fool, half-wise. There is no wisdom without foolishness. And no pride without shame.’

  But Adem was already storming away, almost running, as if he were being chased. Only this time there was no pack of stray dogs behind him. He found Jamila in the house of a neighbour, weaving a carpet with women of varying ages. When they saw him looking through the window, the women giggled and covered their faces. Instantly, Jamila leaped to her feet and dashed outside.

  ‘What are you doing here? You’re shaming me!’ she said.

  ‘Shame! Yes, exactly,’ Adem snapped. ‘The word I was looking for.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Well, you tell me. Apparently, there’s some explaining that you need to do.’

  All at once Jamila’s stare hardened. ‘All right, then, let’s talk.’

  They walked to the back of the house where recently someone had been making flat bread on the tandoor, and though the fire had gone out there were a few embers among the ash, still glowing. Around it there were patches of grass, strips of green, like a harbinger of spring.

  ‘Your father says you may not be a virgin.’ He hadn’t meant to say it so bluntly, but that was how it came out.

  ‘He told you that?’ Jamila said, avoiding his eyes.

  Adem had expected her to react more dramatically, protesting in the face of such insolence, crying her heart out. But she was oddly composed as she raised her head and looked at him.

  ‘What about you?’ she asked.

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘What did you say?’

  He wasn’t expecting this question. ‘I want to know the truth!’ he said.

  ‘The truth is what you make of it.’

  Rage rose like bile in his throat. ‘Shut up. Stop fooling around with me.’

  ‘But I wasn’t,’ Jamila said, a tired look on her pretty features. ‘Will you love me the way I am?’

  He said nothing. He wanted to say ‘yes’, but it just didn’t reach his lips. As he glanced towards the mountains, he heard her mutter, before she marched away, ‘Well, I suppose I won’t be seeing the golden stones of Istanbul after all.’

  That day in the Kurdish village Adem spent the rest of the afternoon on the move, quarrelling with himself. His feet crunching audibly upon a pile of dirt, he paced circles around a mound overlooking Jamila’s house. He could see the garden where he had first run into her. It had been five days since he had come to this godforsaken village. In five days his life had changed so much he didn’t think it would ever be the same again.

  One part of him wanted, in fact was desperate, to go to Jamila’s father and tell him that he didn’t care. He loved her, and, as far as he could see, she loved him. That was all that mattered. Everything else was trivial. He would marry her and take her far away from here as promised.

  Another part of him, however, was doubtful, disturbed. Jamila had not defended herself or sworn her chastity, and her silence was so unsettling. What if she was not a virgin? How could he live with this doubt for the rest of his life? What would his brother Tariq say when he learned that he had found himself a tainted wife – an exact replica of their mother?

  Tariq! What was he going to tell him? By now he must have read the telegram. Even the thought of having to confront his eldest brother was enough to tie knots in Adem’s stomach. He couldn’t go back to Istanbul and say it was all a horrible misunderstanding. Hours later, when he entered the headman’s house, he found him smoking a pipe, waiting.

  ‘There you are, city boy! No village girl for you, uh?’

  ‘That’s not true. I haven’t changed my mind,’ Adem said resolutely. ‘I do want to marry.’

  ‘Really?’ The headman’s eyes glinted with appreciation. ‘You surprise me, lad. I thought you wouldn’t want Jamila.’

  ‘And I don’t,’ Adem said, after a pause. ‘I’ll take the other one.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The other twin. I’ll have her.’

  Deep down in his heart, beneath the boldness he had presented as his personality, Adem knew he should feel awful about the turn of events. Strangely, he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t feel anything at all. Would a splinter of wood suffer
pain while being carried along by a roiling river? Would a feather experience anxiety as it was wafted on the winds? That’s how it was with him on that day, and for many more to come.

  ***

  Shrewsbury Prison, 1991

  Trippy has had a bad day. There are bad days here and not-so-bad days – and then there are ‘zoned-out days’, when you feel like a wrecked car. Despite the name, the last are not the worst. A zoned-out day is a bit like one of those nights when you feel so zonked that you can’t possibly sleep. At times like that you’re in a vegetative state, and do nothing, think nothing. Numb as a turnip. On such days you’re too depressed to know you’re down in the dumps. Somebody takes care of you or nobody does. Either way you don’t mind. And the not-so-bad days, as to be expected, are rather passable. It’s the bad days that are the worst – the ones that get to you and damage your soul.

  A calendar is a daft invention. If time flies, as they say, it does not do so with equal speed at every moment. If only there could be a way to assess each day of the week separately. Let’s say, a not-so-bad day is marked in white and equals one point. Then a zoned-out day would be red and have two points. And a bad day would be black and have three points.

  A man who has lived thirty bad days will age three times faster than a man who has lived a month full of not-so-bad days. Do the maths and then you’ll know why some people get old faster. As for me, ever since I came here I’ve had so many bad days, one after the other, my calendar is swathed in black. It reminds me of the kohl my mother used to outline her eyes.

  Trippy’s wife has asked for a divorce. He knew and I knew and every man in this dump knew it was bound to happen, sooner or later, and yet we were all shocked and appalled. Not because there is anything shocking or appalling about it. Divorces and breakups are pretty ordinary in our neck of the woods. But we still were duly thunderstruck for Trippy’s sake. When you hear the news that the wife has walked out on a friend, you don’t say, ‘Yeah, I knew all along that was bloody going to happen.’ You’d make him feel like a dick-head. A public failure.