Honor

by Elif Shafak

  *

  My mother was a superstitious woman. In our house there were evil-eye beads everywhere. She put glass beads in my pockets, in my rucksack. Once I found one sewn into my leather jacket. We never whistled at night, never opened an umbrella indoors or trimmed our fingernails after sunset. Sometimes we wore our underwear inside out to ward off bad luck. At the dinner table we did not hand each other knives. Mum did everything in her power to protect me from others. But she forgot what was festering in me. Nothing can protect a man from what lies inside.

  It was several weeks after my circumcision in Istanbul. The wound had healed, and I had started to play in the street again. It must have been autumn. I remember the trees shedding their leaves and the cakes of mud on the roads. There was a canal near our house. We never swam there. The water was fetid, smelly. People threw all sorts of things in it. Cans, bottles, boxes, plastics, leaflets with Communist propaganda. Once somebody found a gun on the bank.

  On that day I was wandering along the canal, thinking about the gun. Who had owned it? A bank robber? Or an assassin? Had the police found him? I must have been completely absorbed in my thoughts. Otherwise I would have noticed them and changed my direction. Or hid behind a bush until they had gone. But instead I marched right into them. Three boys. A few years older than me.

  ‘Look who’s here? Little Red Riding Hood is out for a walk.’

  ‘Iskender, where’s your mama? She not with you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘She’s always calling you my sultan,’ the first boy said. ‘And all that Kurdish gibberish.’

  ‘The Sultan of the Slums, he is!’

  The first boy, who was standing in the middle and was obviously their leader, did not join in with the taunts. He was observing me. He looked concerned for me, even embarrassed by his friends’ behaviour. I wrongly saw it as a sign, took a step towards him. My protector.

  ‘Is it true you ran away from your circumcision?’ the leader asked. ‘You climbed a tree?’

  I must have looked appalled. How did they know? Who had told them?

  ‘Word gets around,’ he said, as if he had read my mind.

  ‘So what happened? Were you or were you not circumcised?’

  ‘I was,’ I said, and heard the weakness in my voice.

  ‘He says he was,’ the leader said. ‘But can we trust him?’

  They pushed me to the ground. They pulled down my trousers. I was shouting at the top of my voice.

  ‘What is this? So small! Like an okra. No wonder he ran from his circumcision – a cut would have cost him a lot.’

  ‘But he hasn’t been properly circumcised,’ said the leader. ‘We should finish the job.’

  Did he have a pocket-knife in his hand? Or was my mind playing tricks? I’m still not sure. All I remember is that I pissed myself.

  ‘Oh, no. The sultan needs a good wash now,’ said the leader.

  They took off my trousers, and pants, and socks, and shoes. Then they threw them all into the canal. ‘Go and fetch them. Or go home like this and let everyone see your okra.’

  They left. But I didn’t believe they were gone for good. I sat there, hugging my knees, rocking slowly, expecting them to come out from behind the bushes and attack me. I don’t know how many hours went by. Darkness fell. It started to drizzle. I didn’t mind.

  My mother emerged from the shadows with two neighbours. She must have been looking for me everywhere. How did she know I was by the canal, the only place she had forbidden me to go on my own? She asked me nothing. She wrapped her shawl round me, took me home, washed me, combed my hair and put me into clean pyjamas.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘You look like a sultan again.’

  Ten days later I had my own gang. Nothing spectacular. Just the five of us. But they were loyal to me to the bone. Gypsy kids nobody wanted to befriend. They were tough. They smoked. They collected everything: bottle caps, aluminium foil, aerosol cans. They didn’t give a damn about anything.

  We beat up two of the boys but didn’t touch the leader. I wanted to make him sweat. Not knowing if or when I would strike. By then I had had my first serious quarrel with my father. The ram incident. I had promised myself never to be weak again and I was keeping my promise.

  One Sunday morning our doorbell rang. My mother opened it. There was a woman at the door, weeping. She said the day before a gang of boys wearing masks had assaulted her son. They had thrown him into the filthy canal. He would have drowned were it not for a plank that had saved him. He didn’t know how to swim. She said these boys, these gangsters, had forced her son to drink his own pee. She asked, and did not ask, whether my mother knew anything about it, because her son had not given her any names.

  I heard Mum invite the woman into the kitchen, saying she was so sorry for her son. She offered her tea and a slice of cake. But the woman wanted none.

  ‘Yesterday was my washing day,’ Mum said. ‘Iskender helped me take down the curtains and put them back afterwards. So you see, he was with me all day long. In case you were wondering, my son had nothing to do with this.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  After the woman left, my mother walked into the living room, where I was sitting under the window, watching the shoes pass by. I expected her to tell me a thing or two. A slap on the wrist. A pinch on my ear, at least. But she only looked at me long and hard, and I think I saw a trace of pride in her eyes. Then she said, ‘What would you like to eat for dinner, my sultan? Shall I make you lentil soup, the way you like it?’

  We didn’t talk about the boy I had assaulted. Neither then nor later.

  Iskender Toprak

  The Brave Fight

  London, March 1978

  Even before he arrived at the squat, Yunus knew something was wrong. As he approached the old building he noticed the windows on all three floors were boarded up with cartons, crates and corrugated boxes – some of which displayed anarchist symbols. The day before, the temperatures had dropped to below zero and now icicles dangled from the gutters like tears. There was a heavy silence in the air, an eerie tranquillity.

  The night of Tobiko’s birthday, the night he was carried home by the punks, Yunus had arrived home so late, and in such a state, that Pembe – by then crazy with worry and on the verge of ringing round the hospitals – grounded him for several weeks. Every morning she would walk him to school and every afternoon she would pick him up. But today she finally started to work her regular hours at the Crystal Scissors again and Yunus was once more a free agent. Though he had promised his mother to go home directly after school and though he never lied, Yunus found himself, almost against his will, pedalling towards the address he knew so well.

  After parking his bicycle he lolloped up the narrow path to the house, careful not to slip. To his surprise, he found the entrance locked. In the many times he had been there he had never seen the door closed, let alone bolted from inside. The squatters always boasted that this was the only dwelling in London that needed no keys, no padlocks, because it was a house after all, and not a prison of private property like all the others.

  There being no bell, Yunus knocked, first politely, but soon with growing alarm. Several minutes later he was pounding hard.

  ‘Leave us alone!’ somebody shouted from inside.

  Yunus stopped, stunned. Could it be that the squatters did not want to see him any more? Was that why they had quarantined themselves? Timidly but steadily, he started thumping again.

  ‘Get away from us, you chauvinist!’ roared someone else.

  A female voice butted in, ‘Fuck off! We’re gonna fight!’

  Now the boy was horrified. Much as he loved Tobiko, he was not ready to confront a houseful of seething squatters. His voice breaking, he shouted, ‘But it’s . . . it’s me, Yunus here! May I please come in?’

  There wa
s a momentary lull, followed by a ripple of laughter. A few seconds later the door was pushed open a crack. A man stood at the entrance: he resembled Iggy Pop, as shirtless as the singer himself, exposing his bare, hairless chest. When he saw Yunus he beamed and hollered over his shoulder, ‘False alarm, everyone! Coast is clear! It’s the bairn!’

  ‘Hello,’ Yunus said. ‘I was just cycling by and wanted to see how you lot were doing.’

  ‘Never better! We’re getting ready to kick some arse.’

  ‘Whose arse?’ Yunus asked quietly.

  ‘Oh, the authorities,’ Iggy Pop said in a fluster.

  Authority – it was another one of those adult words Yunus had heard before but never quite understood. Once he had asked Tobiko what it meant, and in her urge to make a wisecrack she had told him, ‘It is what fathers have in abundance, mothers never have, and boys like you are, by definition, denied until you’re old enough.’

  And a wide-eyed Yunus had asked, ‘You mean it’s a moustache?’

  So when Iggy Pop uttered the same word, the boy had the impression the squatters were getting ready to attack men with moustaches. Shell-shocked and unmoving, he stood there with a look of disbelief on his face.

  Unaware of the boy’s concerns, Iggy Pop poked his head out the door and glanced left and right to make sure there was no suspicious activity on the street. Then he yanked Yunus into the house, closed the door from behind, bolted it with a makeshift wooden bar, which was secured with nails and wire.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Yunus asked, but the man had turned around and was already clomping up the stairs.

  When the boy reached the second floor Yunus couldn’t believe his eyes. All the squatters were gathered there, some making catapults out of thick rubber, some organizing truncheons, darts and blow-tubes, while others were preparing ammunition. Everyone seemed purposeful and intent, working feverishly under a cloud of agitation. The air was laced with the smoke of cigarettes, incense and weed. A pot of tea, or what seemed like it, sat on a small burner, puffing out steam with a low, tired whistle. To Yunus, even the pot was worked up into a frenzy.

  The Captain was standing in the midst of the commotion, issuing commands like a Scout leader. It was the utter concentration on his weasel-like face that made the boy suspect there was an order to this chaos. One of the many things that crossed his mind at that moment was to get out of there immediately. But his need to see Tobiko outweighed his discomfort. Where was she? Try as he might, he could not see her anywhere.

  Yunus approached a punk – a youngish recruit with spiky hair and round glasses that magnified his eyes – whose nickname was Bogart.

  ‘Hi there, what’re you makin’?’

  ‘Hello, Jonah! You want to give me a hand?’

  Yunus shrugged. ‘Okay, what do I need to do?’

  ‘Pour this liquid into the bottles, is all.’

  Thus the boy took the plastic funnel and began to fill wine bottles with turpentine, making Molotov cocktails. ‘These smell funny,’ Yunus remarked after a while. ‘What’re you goin’ to do with them?’

  ‘Hurl them at the authorities,’ Bogart piped, matter-of-fact.

  Yunus stiffened, a small twitch along his jawline. Why were the squatters so determined to hurl reeking bottles at men with moustaches? And what could he do to spare his father? ‘Are you going to attack all of the authorities?’ he demanded.

  ‘Nah! That’s impossible. There are so many of them, bloody bastards. They breed like rats,’ said Bogart, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. ‘Damn them!’

  ‘I’ll be back,’ Yunus said, as he rose to his feet. He had to do some thinking on his own.

  In every room he entered Yunus found a similar uproar. It was no joke. The squatters were getting ready for a war. And then he saw her – Tobiko. She was sitting on a mat alone, her head bowed, eyes shut, deep in meditation. Yunus perched beside her, taking the opportunity to watch her unmistakable profile. Her black hair, her tattoos, her piercings. He tried to fathom how he, young and penniless as he was, could save her from the imminent battle.

  ‘Is it you, wee one?’ Tobiko asked in a low, beguiling voice.

  Yunus felt himself reddening. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I saw you coming, you twit.’ Turning aside, she gave him a wink and a peck on the cheek. ‘My, you look so serious. What’s up, sweet?’

  ‘I don’t quite get what’s going on here.’

  ‘Oh, it’s the council,’ Tobiko said, her eyes glinting with scorn. ‘They want to kick us out. Can you believe that? They sent an eviction notice that gave us a week to move out. That was nine days ago. We’re expecting them at any moment, the bastards!’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘So that they can flog this property to fat cats like them.’

  As it dawned on him that this had nothing to do with men who wore moustaches, Yunus felt relieved. Then he strained his ears, as though expecting to hear battering rams, police cars or ambulances surrounding the house. But there was only the wind out there – a sharp, chilly wind. Drawing in a slow breath, the boy inquired, ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Nobody is going anywhere,’ Tobiko remarked.

  ‘But the house belongs to them, right?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. Some houses are everyone’s property. If you ask me, all houses ought to be like that.’ Tobiko straightened her back, and continued in a voice as decided as her gaze. ‘Their plan is to throw us out. And our plan is to fight back ’coz if you don’t fight the system, you are the system.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ll change their minds,’ Yunus offered. ‘God is great.’

  ‘God? God has another planet just like ours. There’s another me there and another Jonah. They resemble us but they aren’t us, because how could they be, when we’re down here, right?’

  The boy listened carefully but the words escaped him, like sand slipping through his fingers. He had never heard anyone question Allah before, and for a reason he could not quite comprehend, he felt saddened. ‘Mum says God loves us.’

  ‘Love?’ Tobiko choked, as if the word had stuck in her throat. ‘Love is a fickle thing. Sorry to break the bad news: God has forgotten us.’

  The boy’s eyes grew small, then large again. He peered at his hands, mumbling something incomprehensible, as though reciting a prayer. Among the clutter of words and with some delay, Tobiko heard him say, like a distant echo, ‘But I would never do that. I would never forget you.’

  *

  In the next hour the Captain drew the plan on a blackboard stolen from a school near by. Usually he was oddly sluggish, as if sedated, but as soon as he started his tirade he seemed to pulsate with energy. When the police raided the building, he said, they were all going to go up to the loft, where they had stored enough ammunition for a small army. The beds on the first floor and the tables on the second would be turned on their sides to be used as barricades. From behind the lines they would put up a fight so ferocious that the British media would be obliged to come and observe. As journalists sent pictures of resistance from the scene, young people around the world would question the brutality of Hackney Council. In the end the government, in its attempt to save face, would tell the council to back down, and the squatters would win the day.

  ‘This is far out, man! This’ll be our Paris Commune,’ said Bogart, a lit joint dangling between his lips as he stood only a foot away from the Molotov cocktails.

  ‘Well, the Commune ended pretty bloodily,’ warned Iggy Pop.

  Yunus knew that if the police raided the building at that moment and he was rounded up with the squatters, his mother would probably have a heart attack. He had to get out of there and he had to do it fast. If this was a war, it wasn’t his war. Whatever the authority was, he didn’t want to throw bottles and stones at it. Yet, feeling as he did, he still failed to move. Like a kitten in need of warmth, he stay
ed next to the woman he loved, preparing new ammunition, listening to revolutionary stories, eating hash popcorn and singing ‘Rebel, Rebel’.

  Fortunately for the boy, the clash that he feared did not take place that afternoon. It happened three days later, while Yunus was at school. Their preparations had been inadequate, and, though they put up a brave fight, in a matter of hours they were all arrested.

  Most of the squatters would be released a day or two later, after a thorough-ish police check, and an ear bashing on proper manners and social conduct. The council, meanwhile, was swift to board up the house. The order to gut the house of everything inside wasn’t long in coming.

  The Amber Concubine

  A Place near the River Euphrates, April 1978

  Jamila swirled the pestle inside the mortar, grinding the saffron that was as red as a ruby. These were her last threads, and she didn’t know when she would be able to get the next supply. Some other ingredients were also running low. Marjoram, tarragon, silverweed, devil’s claw. She would have to make several trips to the mountains, including a visit to the smugglers. Yet lately she felt less and less like leaving her house, unless there was an emergency or a delivery, which amounted to the same thing, really.

  All morning she had been in the cellar, working, contemplating. This was her sanctuary, her haven: this dim, dank, sixteen-by-fourteen-foot underground room with no windows and only a small trapdoor at the top of a set of steps. The entire place was lined with wooden shelves from floor to ceiling. On each shelf were jars, flasks, and bottles of various sizes and colours. Wild herbs, tree barks, fragrant oils, seeds, spices, minerals, snakeskins, animal horns, dried insects – hundreds of ingredients that she used for her potions and ointments. Four holes at different angles, narrower than the openings to mole tunnels, ventilated the hushed interior. Nonetheless, a distinct, earthy, pungent smell lingered in the air, although Jamila was no longer able to detect it. If a stranger went down there, however, he would become giddy, overwhelmed by the odour. But that wasn’t likely to happen. No one else had ever been there, and no one else would ever be there in the future.