Honour (35 page)

London, 1 December 1978

There was too much food in the kitchen – in cauldrons and stewpots brimful with delicacies, wafting heavy, pungent smells; casseroles, pastries and desserts were on the worktop, on the table, on the chairs, on the floor. I didn’t know who was going to eat it all, now that there was only me and Yunus. But the mourners kept coming, and they brought their food, determined to feed us. In the living room there were women of all ages sitting side by side. Some were old neighbours; some were people I knew only vaguely; and some I was seeing for the first time. With each new group of visitors, Aunt Meral, as the host, stood up, welcomed them, cried with them. Yunus and I were sitting in one corner, both there and not there
–
like two somnolent fish in an otherwise empty aquarium. Everyone approached us, stared at us, studied us, tapping the glass wall that separated us from them, and then waited for us to react. We saw them and we heard them, but we didn’t feel anything, numb to their words of consolation. Our minds were busy solving a riddle of which only we were aware.

‘Esma, it’s all my fault,’ said Yunus, his voice brittle.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I left Auntie alone . . .’

I held his hand, hugged him. ‘It was Iskender who did this, not you,
canim
.’

‘But if it was Aunt Jamila in the ambulance, where is Mum?’

‘That’s what I’m wondering myself.’

In less than an hour we would learn the answer. Around midday the door opened again, and a new guest walked in, clad in bright green from head to toe, including a feathery hat. The mourners gawked at her sparkling accessories, painted nails, strange ways, speechless.

I, however, was delighted to see her. ‘Oh, Rita . . .’ I said, as I ran to her in tears.

The two of us sat together at the kitchen table away from prying eyes.

‘My mother isn’t dead,’ I whispered.

She nodded.

‘Is she with you?’

Another nod.

Rita said that early in the morning, when she had gone to open the salon, she found her old co-worker sleeping on the doorstep. She asked her what had happened but got little from her. She took her into the room at the back, served her tea and biscuits, pulled the shutters down, gave the apprentice the day off and declared the place closed. She then helped my mother to wash her face and clean herself.

‘Can you keep her safe for a few days?’ I asked. ‘Until we figure this out.’

Rita shook her head. Her boyfriend would never allow her to bring my mother home, and, even if he did, she wasn’t sure he could be trusted with such a secret.

‘There’s one more thing,’ Rita said. She handed me a piece of paper with Elias’s name and address. ‘You have to tell him that your mum is dead. Pembe thinks it’s better this way.’

There was no other exchange. I walked her to the door. Playing her role to the hilt, Rita gave me a tearful hug before she left, ‘I’m sorry, love. Your ma was so dear to me.’

*

After sunset Yunus and I entered the Crystal Scissors through the back door, holding hands. For as long as I live I’ll never forget the moment we ran into her arms, sobbing and laughing all at once. She looked so shaken, her face sunken, dark rings around her eyes.

Yunus’s head rested on Mum’s bosom, as he moaned, ‘It’s all my fault. I left Aunt Jamila alone. I was talking to my friends, I let her walk back on her own.’

Mum kissed him. Then she kissed me, whispering, ‘Did you talk to him?’

I briefly told her about my visit to Elias. She listened, slumped and drained, as if in some half-dream.

‘They’re saying awful things about you,’ Yunus interjected. ‘We don’t talk to them any more.’

That’s how my mother learned that the entire neighbourhood was abuzz with gossip. Some people accused her of bringing disgrace to the family and provoking her son into choosing such a dark path.

I stared daggers at my brother. ‘There’s going to be a funeral in a day. Aunt Meral is organizing everything.’

It was then that Yunus grabbed my mother’s arm and patted it with authority. ‘Don’t worry. I know where to take you. There is one place in London where you’ll be totally safe and no one will hand you over to the police.’

And that’s how my mother, Pembe Kader Toprak, thirty-three years old, and deceased according to official records, began to live in a dilapidated squat in Hackney, occupied by a group of punk rockers.

London, 5 December 1978

Pembe sat propped up in bed, her face a mask of exhaustion. Wrapping her arms around her bent knees, she locked her fingers together. There was a tightening in her chest, a mounting ache, as if something were pressing against her ribs. Breathing was an effort. Swallowing hurt.

She listened to the sounds in the old Victorian house, which was now drenched in darkness, and smelled the faint acrid tang in the air. Dust, sweat, musty furniture, damp laundry, grubby sheets, empty bottles, full ashtrays. Being in a room where several people slept on the floor side by side brought back memories of her childhood. She recalled how she and her seven sisters would slumber the night away, spooning round one another, seeking each other’s warmth. No matter how many blankets there were, she would wake up in the middle of the night chilly and uncovered. Pulling the nearest blanket over her head, she would wrap herself as best as she could, thus leaving another sister exposed.

Now Pembe looked past the sleeping youths at the bleak nothingness beyond the window, feeling a kind of listlessness she had never experienced before. An hour passed by. Maybe more. She had no way of knowing. After a while her eyes caught the first glow of light on the horizon. Shafts of crimson, sharp as arrows. Dawn was breaking above the London skyline. A bitter dread rose in her throat. Soon they would all be awake. Eating, joking, smoking. Though they had agreed to shelter her, and though they did their best not to disturb her, the punks couldn’t help asking questions, unable to grasp what was going on.

Most squatters loved to sleep in late, but, given the current uncertainty with the council, they were being extra vigilant, fully aware that the halcyon days of lie-ins were a thing of the past. Thus around eight a.m. everyone was awake, groping for yesterday’s clothes, lighting the first cigarette of the day, elbowing one another out of the way at the one chipped sink. Even Iggy Pop, who slept with home-made earplugs, was up and about.

In the kitchen Tobiko was watching Pembe make pancakes for an army. She struggled to find something to say but only came up with, ‘Wow, this smells good.’

Pembe gave her a faint smile. Her hands kept working, fast and focused, her mind miles away. A few minutes later she handed Tobiko a large plate topped with pancakes. ‘Go . . . eat . . .’ she said.

Tobiko hesitated. ‘How about you?’

‘I eat later.’

‘You know we love your son,’ Tobiko said out of the blue. ‘He’s like our mascot. And uh-hmm . . . I don’t quite know what the problem is, but Yunus mentioned it was a bit hush-hush and you had to hide for a while. Whatever it is, you’re welcome to stay here for as long as you want.’

Pembe felt a rush of compassion for Tobiko so profound that her eyes welled up. She hugged the young woman, who wasn’t expecting this, but who instantly hugged her back. The moment was broken by Iggy Pop, shouting at the top of his lungs the
agora
. ‘Oi, we’re starving in here. People want food!’

Smiling, Tobiko took the plate and scurried inside.

Alone in the kitchen, Pembe grabbed a tattered broom and began to sweep the floor. If she didn’t do what she always did, she feared she would lose her mind. Thus, in the ensuing hours, she scrubbed, swept, dusted, mopped and polished the entire squat under the bewildered eyes of the residents. Such was her frenzy all day long that no one dared to make fun or to tell her to stop. And it must have been contagious, for a few people offered to help, using mops and makeshift brooms to join in with her madness. Soon, however, they gave up, tired and bored.

Come the evening she was still working, and the punks were still tiptoeing around behind her, watching this woman from another culture, another language, another story, constantly cry and clean, cry and clean.

***

Shrewsbury Prison, 1992

Just three months before my release an old woman in intensive care at a local hospital opens her eyes. She complains of thirst, and a pain in her back. But other than that she seems perfectly fine. When she is ready to talk they ask her about the man who stole her handbag and assaulted her with a broken bottle one chilly day. She describes him. Her memory is in mint condition. And the description in no way matches Zeeshan. Still not convinced, they show her a mugshot of my cellmate. She says itisn’t him. They take Zeeshan and make her look at him through a two-way mirror. She says it isn’t him. The court decides to have the case reopened.

‘You must be over the moon,’ I say. ‘You’ll be a free man soon.’

‘Zeeshan free man already,’ he says. ‘No need to go to moon.’

‘You’ll be much missed, man.’

He looks crestfallen, swallows hard. ‘I go out and think about you,’ he says. ‘You were my best student.’

‘And you, a bad liar.’

He chuckles, his shoulders hopping. ‘Don’t forget to do your homework.’

‘What homework?’

Then he tells me.

The morning Zeeshan is set to leave we meditate together for the last time. Unlike other days, I don’t take the mick. I don’t protest. I sit cross-legged on the hard floor, looking at him. And, for the first time, I manage to keep my mind still, even if only for a short while.

The same evening, with Zeeshan gone, I lie on my bunk, thinking. It sits heavily with me, his absence. Last time I felt like this Trippy was dead. But I try to finish what he asked me to do. My homework. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. My assignment is to write a letter to my mother and hand it to her when I’m out of here.

A pen in my hand, I scrawl different letters on different days. A few of them seem so-so, but there is so much missing, and most of them are pretty lame. I rip them to pieces, start again, getting nowhere. Every day I scribble something, just as I promised Zeeshan. I meditate a bit too. Officer McLaughlin comes and goes; there is no love lost between us, but we’re not at each other’s throats. Not any more.

Then I compose something that somehow seems less dreadful than the others. And this time I decide to keep it. Zeeshan instructed me to copy my letter on to a blank page each day, until I’ve memorized it, and that is what I do next.

Dear Mother,

I’m not going to send this letter. I’ll bring it myself, inshallah, and give it to you, because it’s easier to write the contents than to say them. This year I had my eyes opened. I had this daft cellmate. Daft in a good way. You would have liked him. His name was Zeeshan. Good bloke, helped me a lot. I understand this better now that he’s gone. Too bad, we always appreciate what we have after we lose it.

If I could be sixteen years old again, I’d never do the things that I did to cause so much pain. To you, my sister, my brother, my poor aunt. I cannot change the past. Not a single moment of it. Zeeshan says I can improve myself now. Even of that I’m not sure. But if you’d accept me into your life again, if you could find it in your heart to forgive me, what a blessing it’d be to once more be your son.

Iskender Toprak

London, 12 September 1992

Saturday morning. I am preparing breakfast in our newly fitted kitchen. It has cost us an arm and a leg, more than we could afford. But my husband has insisted on getting the latest of everything. It is his present to me on our eighth anniversary. Espresso-coloured units, maple floorboards, a posh American refrigerator, a whole-fruit juicer, no need to chop, so practical.
Sleek, serene and practical
. That is what it said in the brochure.

I scrape the eggs with a spatula, watching the well-cooked bits at the bottom come to the top, like fragments from the past surfacing into the present. It is not easy to make scrambled eggs when your mind isn’t on the job. You have to have the right timing to achieve a good result, and my timing, I suppose, is never right. I might have a problem with the notion of time in general. I can neither let go of yesterday, nor focus on tomorrow. Of the girl with big ideas and coruscating words not much is left today. When I think of the bright-eyed me, which I do often, I cannot help feeling betrayed, though by no one other than myself.

My daughters are sitting at the table, chirping on about the presenters of
Blue Peter
, their favourite programme. As usual, they hold opposing views. I listen to them but my brain is a kite. It flutters every which way in the wind.

‘Mum, can you please tell your other daughter to shut up?’ bellows Layla.

‘Uh-hmm, yes,’ I say, taking the pan off the heat. The eggs are not exactly ready yet, but I don’t want them to overcook. Not again.

‘Mum!!!’ Jamila exclaims.

‘Sorry, dear, what did you say?’ I ask, but it is too late. When I turn back I find one of them beaming, triumphant, the other upset.

It is my husband who runs to my rescue. ‘Leave your mum alone. She’s got a lot on her mind today.’

‘Why?’ asks Layla.

‘We’ve talked about this,’ says Nadir amiably. ‘Your uncle is coming to meet us. Your mother hasn’t seen him for a long time.’

‘Oh,’ says Layla, though there is no trace of surprise on her face.

I notice Jamila watching her father intently, a glint of defiance flickering in her eyes, dark and almond, so different from the eyes of the woman for whom she was named. Suddenly she says, ‘Are you two lying to us?’

My hand, dishing up the eggs, stops in mid-air. I listen to the ensuing silence, unable to break it.

Nadir is calm, composed, as always. ‘That’s not a nice word to use when talking to your parents, darling. Or to anyone else.’

‘Sooorry,’ Jamila says in a singsong voice.

‘All right, now tell me what did you mean by that?’

Relishing the attention, Jamila purses her lips playfully. ‘Well . . . I don’t think Uncle Iskender works in Alaska. I think . . .’ She scans the table as if hoping to find a clue in there. ‘He’s a Russian spy.’

‘In your dreams!’ Layla butts in.

‘It’s true. He drops bombs on icebergs.’

‘He does not!’

‘Yes, he does!’

I put a few slices of tomato and a leaf of basil on each plate and carry the dishes to the table, wondering if things would have been easier had my older brother been a spy working for the Russians, testing bombs at the North Pole.

Later, when the girls have gone to get ready for a birthday party, Nadir wraps his arms around me, tilting his head sideways. I look at him squarely, taking him in. The way he squeezes his eyes into a tender squint, the smile lines on his cheeks, the fine wrinkles on his forehead. His hair, thick and bushy, is growing upwards, defying gravity, refusing to cover his ears. There are a few grey streaks at the temples, hinting at his age. He is sixteen years older than me. Exactly the same age difference that was between Elias and my mother. A coincidence, of course, I always remind myself.

I love him and yet it didn’t start out as love. We both knew at the beginning I wasn’t devoted to him in the way he was to me. Deep in my heart I concocted a mixture of feelings for him: respect, fondness, admiration and, especially, gratitude for pulling me out of the sludge in which I was wallowing. You sometimes hear people say that being with their partners has turned them into ‘a better person’. You hear it, and you don’t quite believe it, unless it happens to you.

After the last day of November 1978, our family thawed like a snowman under a scorching sun. Suddenly all that was left of our previous life was a grey pile of slush. What had once seemed solid and steadfast quickly became elusive, undependable. Yunus and I lived with Uncle Tariq and Aunt Meral for a while, and, though they were neither unkind nor ungenerous to us, I hated every second of it. I never forgave them for spreading dirt about my mother in the weeks before the murder, and even as I stayed under their roof, ate their food and wore the clothes they bought for me, they were at the top of the list of people I loathed. At first Father sent us cards, gifts and money from Abu Dhabi, though this became more sporadic over the years, until eventually all contact dried up. My uncle and aunt kept his suicide from us as long as they could. Covering, marring, distorting the truth. And I should know, because here I am doing the same thing to my children now. It’s a family tradition, shrouding the truth in veils, burying it deep within the stagnation of everyday life, so that after a while it cannot be reached, even in your imagination.

My memory of those years is a shifting ground, a quicksand of hurt and despair. Having tumbled into it, I found only anger could pull me out, and so it has been for some time. Early days of Mrs Thatcher, huge changes under way. England fast moving away from all that it had been, a behemoth waking from a sluggish winter dream. My exam marks were high, always. The Department of Education showed a special interest in our case, and both Yunus and I were transferred to a boarding school in Sussex. That helped a bit, the distance. But I held on to my rage without realizing that it wasn’t getting me anywhere. I was drowning in my resentments. After boarding school I went to Queen Mary College, where I read English. Then I met Nadir.

He is a man of science, a scholar who believes in universal certainties and objective truths. Born in Gaza, raised in a Palestinian refugee camp, he left his motherland for England at the age of nineteen thanks to a relative who generously supported his education. Shortly after the Beatles released
Yellow Submarine
, Nixon was inaugurated as president and Arafat became the chairman of the
PLO
, Nadir arrived in Manchester, taciturn and timid but faithful. He then pursued a career that was as far from politics as possible: molecular biology. While the world spun faster in a whirl of conflict, he retreated into his laboratory, neat, methodical and controllable, to study the morphology of cells.

His kith and kin are still in Gaza. I have met them several times. A large family. Warm, proud, curious, garrulous. I observed my husband amidst his relatives, cynically searching for signs of change in his character, a swing that would bring out the core beneath the veneer of decorum. But Nadir is the same gentle soul everywhere and with everyone. He never acts on a whim or an impulse. He likes to process, to
cogitate
, a favourite word of his. He is never in a hurry. His motto in life:
Still waters run deep.
No wonder he and Yunus get along so well.

‘You all right?’ he asks me.

I nod. To be alone. That is all I want right now. To take my coat and walk out the door, leaving everything as it is, untouched, the leftovers on the plates, the crumbs on the tablecloth, the stains on the mugs, the pieces of my past.

‘It’s going to be a long day, is all.’

‘Don’t worry about us,’ he says. ‘I’ll pick up the monsters from the party. You ought to spend time with him alone.’

I listen to my husband’s accent. The guttural sounds, Arabic tinges.

‘But that’s exactly what I fear, having time with Iskender.’

Nadir cups my cheeks in his hands, planting a kiss on my lips. ‘Darling, it’s going to be o-kay.’

For a fleeting moment I wish he wasn’t so considerate, so caring. Nadir is the kind of man who, in the face of aggression, physical or verbal, will avoid confrontation at all costs. If anyone does him wrong, as a co-worker at the university once did, he will accept the situation and even hold himself responsible. It suddenly dawns on me that, knowingly or not, I have married the exact opposite of my elder brother.

‘I dunno,’ I say. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t go. My uncle might show up. Or some of his old cronies.’

Nadir arches an eyebrow. He can see it coming back, my bitterness. He seems to be choosing his words carefully. ‘You should go to see him. If he hasn’t changed a bit, if he’s the same man as before, you don’t need him in your life. But you ought to go and be sure.’ Then he pronounces four words that will ring in my ears all day long: ‘He is your brother.’

‘What am I gonna tell the girls when he’s here? Hello, darlings, this is your uncle whom you’ve never met. Why? Well, because he was in prison. Why? Umm, because, you see, he killed your –’

‘You don’t need to explain anything to them. Not yet.’

My eyes water, and when I speak my voice comes out strained. ‘You and Yunus always want things to be simple and easy. But the world is so complicated. Everything is complicated.’

Nadir’s mouth puckers as he dotingly mimics my tone. ‘Forget the world.
Make the most of what we yet may spend,/ Before we too into dust descend.
’

I laugh, despite myself. ‘Is that Khayyam again?’

‘Omar Khayyam it is.’

This man of tender words and uplifting poems. This man who is honest, dependable and righteous sometimes to the point of a naivety that drives me crazy. This man who believes that honour has got to do with people’s hearts rather than their bedrooms. I try to imagine what he sees in me, how it is that he still loves me. Unable to come up with an answer, I murmur, ‘I’d better go and get ready.’

‘All right, darling.’

Once I thought I was cut out for important things, worthy struggles, life-sized ideals. I would become a writer as well as a human-rights activist. I would travel to different parts of the world to campaign for the oppressed and the abused. J. B. Ono – the renowned author of novels in which no one was ever fooled by love. Once I wished to be the centre of the world, but then I came to accept that I was only one of the many characters in a story, and not even a major character at that.

I wrote for a while, once I finished my A-levels, hard though it is to remember now. At university my results were good, my essays inventive, and there were people who believed in me, but something had changed irreversibly. I had lost faith in myself. Like a plant that looks vibrant in the shop but mysteriously droops after it is brought home, my wish to become a novelist wilted as soon as I was out of my familiar environment.

After that I didn’t write. Other than letters, lots and lots of letters. I wrote to Shrewsbury regularly, and to Yunus, whenever we were apart. I also corresponded with Elias (with whom I got in touch) and with Roxana (who got in touch with me), and they each helped me, in their own way, to find the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. And I wrote to my mother, twice a week for the next twelve years.

Then, last summer, after my mother passed away, I started to write down the story of her life. I worked day and night, as if frightened that if I stopped, even for a moment, I would lose the urge, or the urge would lose me, and everything would crumble. The things I described were so personal that some parts hurt, while others latched on to something inside me. Still, shortly after the manuscript was completed I was seized by a sense of estrangement. It wasn’t mine, this story.

The past is a trunk in the loft, crammed with scraps, some valuable, but many entirely useless. Although I’d prefer to keep it closed, the slightest breeze throws it open, and, before I know it, all the contents have flown everywhere. I put them back. One by one. The memories, the bad and the good. Yet the trunk always snaps open again when I least expect it.

The pregnancy was more of an accident than something planned. When I found out, I was shocked, terrified and euphoric, all at once. And upon learning that it was twin girls, I cried for a good hour, feeling, once again, that my life, whatever I chose to do with it, was merely a link in a chain of stories. During those nine months my body was remoulded, as if made of clay. So, I hoped, would be my soul. Now my daughters are seven years old. Layla, with hair like the black satin of the night, and Jamila, named after her late great-aunt, though she doesn’t know why.

Upstairs in my bedroom I hear the phone ring and my husband pick it up. I have a hunch it is Yunus – the boy named after the most reluctant prophet. Lately my younger brother and my husband have been ringing each other daily. A manly camaraderie. I know they are conspiring about me, and my wretched moods. They see me as a time bomb, constantly ticking, ready to explode, and they, always collected and rational, are trying to figure out how to defuse me. I picture myself as a suspicious package on the road, and Yunus and Nadir as bomb-disposal experts, dressed in flameproof suits and helmets, approaching me circumspectly.

‘Darling, Yunus wants to talk to you.’

I pick up the phone, wait for my husband to hang up on his end, and say, as blithely as I can manage, ‘Hi, my dear.’

‘Esma, love. How are you feeling today?’

Why is everyone asking me how I feel? ‘Jolly good,’ I blurt out. ‘How about yourself? How’s the weather over there?’

He ignores my banality and goes to the heart of the matter. ‘Good. When are you going to pick him up?’

In the background I can hear the band rehearsing. The piano, the guitars, the
ney
. My brother has a concert in Amsterdam tonight. A glitzy cultural event. Prince Claus is expected to attend.

‘I’m leaving in an hour.’

‘Look, umm . . . I know this isn’t easy. I feel terrible letting you down. I wish I could be there.’

‘That’s okay. You’ve got things to do.’

I catch a tinge of tartness in my voice. If Yunus, too, has detected it, he doesn’t let on. ‘You know what I was thinking about this morning: that day when I went to visit him. He was happy to hear she was alive. He was . . . so touched. It’s such a pity he couldn’t have seen her and asked her forgiveness.’