Honour (11 page)

Adem stared at the box in his hand. Maybe it was meant for someone else. He took a deep breath. He had planned to approach the matter indirectly, but now he could see there was no way to do that. ‘Today at the wedding, I saw a girl.’

‘A girl?’

Slowly, Adem watched the man’s face as he raised his eyebrows, taking in the implication.
Oh, God! The boy thinks he has fallen in love.

‘Tell me about this girl,’ the headman urged. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Jamila,’ Adem replied, feeling his face grow hot.

‘Jamila . . . I don’t know any Jamila.’

‘Long brown hair. Big green eyes.’

Taking slow puffs from his water pipe, the headman shook his head. ‘Nope. There’s no such girl here.’

‘She speaks Turkish.’

‘Oh . . . I think I know who you mean. Berzo’s girls. They all went to school. Are you referring to Enough Beauty?’

‘Enough Beauty?’

‘Yes, she and her twin, they were named twice. Pink Destiny and Enough Beauty,’ said the headman, but offered no other explanation. ‘Look, you’re too young to know this, but a man’s love is the reflection of his character.’

Adem listened, not knowing what to make of this.

‘If the man is quarrelsome, his love is full of fights. If he is placid and kind, his love is a balm. Should he pity himself all the time, his love will crumble to dust. If he is a jolly chap, his love will abound with joy. Before losing your heart to a woman, you need to ask yourself what kind of love can you give her?’

‘Well, I’m a good man,’ Adem said.

‘The only good man I know of was the prophet, may peace be upon him,’ said the headman. ‘Anyway, Berzo has too many girls. Custom requires that they marry the eldest one first. And Jamila is the youngest. However, I can see that it might be a perfect match. The family has gone through hardships. The mother, Naze, died in childbirth, poor woman. She so wanted to have a son. Berzo got married again. But the new wife has given him no children yet. And then the eldest girl, Hediye . . .’

‘What happened?’

‘That man is doomed, son. He might want to marry off the girls quickly. Jamila might not have to wait.’

Adem broke into a grin. There was a hope, after all, however slight.

‘But don’t forget they are poor,’ the headman whispered. ‘Your father and brothers might not approve of a Kurdish bride, a villager. On the other hand . . . your family doesn’t have the best of reputations since your mother ran away with another man. Perhaps it’s better for you to choose someone here, out of the way.’

All at once Adem’s face darkened. He’d had no idea that the man knew about his family’s shame. Words, like wandering tribes, were of no fixed address. They travelled far and wide, scattering over the earth.

A Place near the River Euphrates, December 1977

In the stillness of the night, Jamila was dozing by the fireplace, her head tilted to one side. Her left hand was dangling over the edge of the chair and her right hand was firmly clutching a letter. She had fallen asleep while reading it for the fifth time.

Her sleep was uncomfortable, full of demons. Colour had rushed into her cheekbones, and a light sheen of sweat gleamed on her face. In her dream she was in a town that looked both oddly familiar and unlike anywhere else in the world. A river ran through its centre, wide and unruly, with vessels of all sizes lapping at their moorings, bobbing up and down. Jamila found herself alone on the waterfront, peeking inside one of the fishing boats. There was a gathering of people inside the cabin, their expressions sullen, their bodies pliant and viscous, as if made of wax. They were talking fervently about . . .
her
.

A half-moan, half-sigh, escaped Jamila’s lips. One of the group – a man who strangely resembled Adem – noticed her and alerted the others. Furious and spiteful for no reason at all, they scampered off the boat and on to the dock, hunting for her. She sprinted away as fast as she could, passing through serpentine alleyways and cobbled squares, but soon she got tired, her feet heavier than cement blocks. She would wake up in a little while: when her pursuers finally cornered her in a blind alley, she would catapult herself, with all her might, out of the dream, panting. But at the moment she was still there, in the town of her nightmare.

The air in the hut felt musty, stale. The last log in the fireplace cracked and burst into flame, sending out a shower of golden sparks like dust from a magic wand. Outside in the valley a bird cried out. There were footsteps, but they were distant, indistinct. Jamila didn’t hear them. Not yet. She was still running for dear life, having just turned the bend into the dead-end street.

Right now, Jamila’s face looked older than that of a 32-year-old woman. There were wrinkles around her neck, twisty lines that resembled an arcane alphabet chiselled in wood. The truth was she had stopped feeling young years ago.

With a sudden jerk Jamila’s body was pulled back and she woke up, the carved panel of the chair imprinted on her cheek. There was such a nasty pain in her left shoulder that she dared not move at first. Gently, she massaged her stiff limbs with one hand while still holding the letter with the other. For a moment she stared at the paper through empty eyes, as though she had forgotten what it was. But, unlike the boats in her dream, the letter was real. It was as real as the mountains that surrounded her and just as portentous. Jamila began to read it again.

Sister of mine,

Since I came to this island, where I have yet to see the sea, I have wished many times that you were by my side. But never as much as I do now. If you were here, I would put my head in your lap, and tell you that I am falling. Will you hold me?

Adem is no husband to me. He doesn’t come home any more. He has found himself another woman. The children don’t know it. I keep everything inside. Always. My heart is full of words unsaid, tears unshed. I don’t blame him. I blame myself. It was the biggest mistake of our lives that I was his bride, instead of you. It’s true, he never loved me the way he loved you. He is a man who has many regrets and no courage. I feel sorry for him.

How I wish we were children again, you and I. Stealing coins from wish fountains. If only we knew then what we know now.

Did I tell you what Adem once said to me? ‘I wish I had a magic eraser,’ he said. ‘There are so many things I would like to change.’ And, though he didn’t confess this, I know he also meant us. I should have never married him. It wasn’t in my hands, but I didn’t try to prevent it. Not really. I so wanted to get out of the village. He was my ticket to other lands. Jamila, you must be upset at me, are you? I would be, if I were in your shoes.

Do you ever think of our sister Hediye? The other day I made
halva
for her soul. I distributed it to my neighbours. They were a bit surprised, not being familiar with our customs. It was a shame that we didn’t mourn her the way we should have. Do you feel the same way?

Your loving half, Pembe

Jamila stood up, rubbing the calluses on the palms of her hands. She approached the window and peered into the night. She thought she had heard a sound, but upon listening more carefully, she doubted it. Sighing, she went back, put the kettle on the stove and began to make tea.

*

‘There are so many stars in the sky tonight,’ Adem had said. It was a bone-chilling evening in the year 1961.

Leaning closer, his eyes raking her face, Adem told her that some loves were like the brightest stars. They winked at human beings, filling hearts with hope and joy, even when the times were bad. Some other loves resembled the Milky Way, with the ghosts of their ancestors trailing behind in a pale stripe of afterglow.

‘What about our love?’ Jamila asked. ‘Is that a star too?’

Adem flinched at the ease with which she embraced the word. He had been contemplating how to tell her that he loved her, but here she was saying it herself. She was brisker than him, and bolder. For him everything was happening too fast, leaving him dazzled and intimidated in equal measure. Yet there was no time to wait for time to catch up with them. No time to walk holding hands, no time to taste furtive kisses, no time to get to know each other.

His face wore a gallant smile as he said, ‘Our love is a star with a huge double tail. Do you know what that is?’

Jamila had shaken her head.

‘It’s called a comet.’

‘A comet . . . ’ Still repeating the word, Jamila leaped to her feet, grabbed the sickle off the wall and hacked off a lock of her long hair.

‘For me?’ Adem asked, surprised.

‘It will remind you of me. Always keep it with you.’

In her face were affection and concern, and something that he hadn’t seen in anyone else: trust.

‘I don’t need to keep it with me; you’ll be next to me all the time,’ he said. But he put her gift in his pocket, as if he didn’t believe his own words.

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