Honour (18 page)

London, 5 January 1978

Tariq was the proud owner of a corner shop on Queensbridge Road. Six days a week, twelve hours a day, he sold sweets, snacks, toiletries, fizzy drinks, frozen food, cigarettes and sundries. He also had a stand where he displayed myriad newspapers and magazines, some of which made him frown each time his eyes slid over them –
Mayfair
,
Men Only
,
Fiesta
,
Knave
,
Penthouse, Club International
. There was too much indecency in this country; all this nakedness was no good. He couldn’t understand for the life of him how some men found pleasure in these publications, and neither could he comprehend the women who posed in them. Didn’t they have families – fathers, husbands or brothers? He kept the obscene material at the far end of the rack, under the tins of tuna and condensed milk, where their fans could still find them, but they would not bother innocent eyes.

Feeling hungry, Tariq checked the clock on the wall. It was only a quarter past eleven. His wife, Meral, brought him lunch in a tin pail every day at half past twelve –
kofta
with minted yoghurt, smoky aubergine purée, rice with garbanzo beans. A samovar would hiss in the background, ready to serve. For during an ordinary day, from morning till late in the night, Tariq guzzled around thirty glasses of tea, which he liked dark and plain, and with a sugar cube that he sucked on each time.

While he ate, Meral would make herself busy, mopping the floor, dusting the shelves and polishing the sign in the window that said
Oasis Mini Mar et
. He intended to fix the
k
but he never seemed to have the time to do so. Besides, the customers didn’t seem to mind.

When the food was finished, Meral would take the empty pail and head home to finish her chores. Perhaps one day he would ask his wife to help him run the store, but he would never allow her to work in a distant place among strangers, the way Adem let Pembe. It just wasn’t right. Unless there was a financial crisis, a woman should not have to look for a job.

Neither before nor after lunch did Tariq visit the local mosque, like some of the shopowners in the area. He was not a religious man – although those who saw him with his bushy beard and a rosary in his hand tended to assume the contrary. The beard he kept because it suited his face and also hid the pockmarks underneath. And the rosary was more out of habit than piousness. He had a collection of them at home – bright amber, light turquoise, coral pink, opaque onyx, jade green. Fast and steady, he fingered the beads, filling the shop with a constant clatter, which he didn’t notice, over the drone of buses going past or cars screeching to a halt at the lights.

Of the three brothers, Tariq was the eldest, and had been the first to leave Istanbul to work abroad. Initially he was employed at a factory that produced machinery in a small town called Troisdorf in Germany. He had found the job taxing, the Germans unreachable and their language impossible. The Germans invited you to their country to work, not to mingle, and expected you to leave as soon as you were no longer needed. Adapting to their ways was like trying to embrace a hedgehog. There might be a secret tenderness, a gentle core underneath, but you couldn’t pass the sharp needles to tap into it. The immigrant community could have helped him find his feet to feel less vulnerable, and thereby less resentful, but Tariq had never been skilful at making acquaintances, and the years in Germany were no exception.

Once, however, he befriended a Tunisian co-worker, and the man had taken him to Große Freiheit in the red-light district in Hamburg. Neon signs, music clubs, peals of laughter in all languages. Tariq was appalled to see women displaying their bodies like mannequins in shop windows. But their aloof expressions, the poise in their stare, were just as disturbing. They were not like the prostitutes in old Turkish films, buffeted and beaten by life.

‘You like go in?’ his friend asked in pidgin German, so he’d understand, pointing to an entryway decorated with blinking bulbs.

‘What’s in there?’

A smirk made its way across the man’s face. ‘What’s in there?’ he repeated in mock horror. ‘Pussies, man. Blonde pussies.’

Tariq dropped his eyes, scowling at the stains on his boots. He mumbled a response so low it went unheard. ‘I don’t want to.’

His friend gave him a look of disdain. ‘Up to you, man. If you can’t do it, you can’t do it.’

Tariq thought about hitting him, delivering a kick in the shins with his muddy boots, but the urge went away as swiftly as it had come. He watched the man whisk in through the door and out of sight, leaving him in the dimly lit street, where he could now hear a woman singing behind closed windows.

The same week at the factory Tariq learned from other workers that the man was telling everyone about how he had bottled out at the brothel,
saying he
didn’t feel ‘up’ to it.
People sniggered behind his back. Some suggested he could be a queer. Tariq was already planning to get married that same year, but the incident accelerated his plans. When he brought his bride from a town in Anatolia – a third cousin on his father’s side – he asked Meral to visit the factory every day for the first month, so that they could all see he wasn’t one of those queers, and shut their mouths.

*

At 12.25 the shop door swung open and Meral ambled in, her cheeks rosy from the wind. Today’s menu was lentil soup, stuffed green peppers and
tulumba
.
*
She watched him eat for a while, taking pride in his appetite. Then she said, ‘Pembe stopped by this morning.’

‘What does she want?’

‘She didn’t ask directly but I think they’re in need of money.’

‘Money, money, money . . .’ Tariq droned.

Tariq had once seen a film in which the hero turned into a gangster to save his younger brother from poverty, and to provide him with a better future than the one God had seen fit to give him. In the end, unexpectedly, the younger brother, who had now become a police inspector, arrested the hero, even though he respected, loved and admired him, and was indebted to him for life.

But their own family story was not one of villains and heroes. Though he had done his best to help his two brothers keep their heads above water, wanting to believe that with some support they could change their destinies, Tariq knew that he was a limited man, and so were Adem and Khalil. His brothers had followed in his footsteps and become immigrant workers – one in Australia, the other in England. After a few years Tariq quit his job in Germany and went to England, where they said the weather was horrible but the people were polite.

Now, as Tariq dunked his bread in his soup, he inquired, ‘Does Pembe know where he is?’

‘She doesn’t have a clue. But . . .’ Meral paused, as she poured boiling water into the porcelain pot on the samovar. ‘She knows that he’s moved in with another woman.’

‘Well, what do you expect, if she’s not woman enough to keep her husband home . . .’ Tariq said, leaving the sentence unfinished.

Adem should have never married
that
woman. There were better girls for him and yet, inexplicably, he had fallen for Pembe. Why her, and why so suddenly, Tariq had never understood. Not that he didn’t see Pembe’s beauty. But in his eyes this only added to her unreliability. Men were mistaken when they coveted attractive women. They could flirt with them in their bachelor days, but a spouse ought to have attributes other than good looks. From the very beginning he had opposed this marriage. But Adem had been alone in that godforsaken Kurdish village when he asked for Pembe’s hand. Alone, and terribly young.

When their mother ran away with another man, Tariq had been sixteen years old, Khalil thirteen and Adem only eleven. In all the millions of homes in Istanbul mothers did their very best to keep their families together and children content, and yet their mother, only theirs, had walked out on them.

Not everyone would understand this, but their honour was all that some men had in this world. The rich could afford to lose and regain their reputation, buying influence as perfunctorily as ordering a new car or refurnishing their mansions, but for the rest of the world things were different. The less means a man had, the higher was the worth of his honour. The English didn’t understand these ancient rules. Their wives could kiss other men, drink and dance with strangers, and they would look on smiling.

A man who had been cheated of the honour that was his due was a dead man. You could not walk on the street any more, unless you got used to staring at the pavement. You could not go to a tea house and play a round of backgammon or watch a football match in the beer house. Your shoulders would droop, your fists would be clenched, your eyes would sink into their cavities, and your entire being would be a listless mass, shrinking more and more with every rumour. No one would pay heed to you when you spoke; your word would be no more valuable than dried dung. The cigarette you offered would be left unsmoked, the coffee you drank bitter to the end. You would not be invited to weddings, circumcisions or engagements, lest you bring your ill luck with you. In your own corner and surrounded by disgrace, you would dry up like a desiccated fruit. Tariq knew this first hand because it had happened to his father. Baba hadn’t died of cirrhosis. The alcohol may have sped things along, but in the end it was dishonour that had killed him. Adem and Khalil had been too young to understand this, but Tariq had seen it happen.

After Meral left, Tariq took a quiet moment to think. So far he had seen his brother’s condition less as a vice and more as a calamity that had befallen him. Gambling was a sickness, the worst kind. But squandering your money on a dancer, a woman who was no different than the ones who posed in magazines, was worse. He had to have a serious talk with Adem, that is, if he could find him. When a man neglected his home to this extent, the rest of the family might easily go off the rails. To make sure this didn’t happen, Tariq would have to keep a close eye on Pembe and the kids. They shared the same surname. If one of them was disgraced, shame would attach itself to him as the eldest Toprak. Their honour was his honour.

London, January 1978

The Phoenix Cinema had been founded in 1910. A modernist, tiled façade, a short flight of stairs to the foyer, Art Deco auditorium. It had served the nation by showing newsreels and escapist films throughout the war, but luckily remained unscathed by German bombs. Recently, after having been taken over by a small film distributor, the cinema had started to show obscure and art-house movies, although Hollywood classics were also occasionally on offer. But its location was so far from the centre that it was almost always empty.

Today there were only four in the audience – a young couple who seemed less interested in the movie than in inventing new kissing techniques, and a man who sat with his flat cap on and looked older than the cinema itself. The fourth was Elias, stiff and anxious, sitting somewhere in the middle, all by himself. It had been several minutes since the film had started, but he still kept glancing at the entrance. She hadn’t come.

Elias watched the opening scene filled with apprehension.
A picture with a smile, and perhaps a tear
, it said on the screen. Despite himself Elias’s face softened at the sight of Charlie Chaplin. He had always loved Chaplin – his humour interlaced with sorrow, his infinite humanity, those sad, soot-black eyes. Slowly, he found his tension leaking away and his mind drifting into the story of
The Kid
.

After a while Elias felt a slight movement at the end of the row, but he dared not turn to see who it was. Someone approached him in the dark and sat by his side, quiet as a shadow. His heart thumping behind his ribcage, Elias made out Pembe’s face, beautiful and radiant, out of the corner of his eye. Her gaze was glued to the screen, her chest rising and falling.

I’m so glad you came
, Elias wanted to say.
You know, I was so worried you were upset with me.
But he respected her silence and whispered not a word. Together they focused on the film.

Pembe watched
The Kid
with wide-open eyes, the look of surprise on her countenance deepening with each scene. When Chaplin found an abandoned baby in a rubbish bin, and raised him like his own son, she smiled with appreciation. When the child flung stones at the neighbours’ windows so that the tramp – disguised as a glazier – could fix them and earn some money, she chuckled. When social services took the boy away, her eyes welled up with tears. And finally, as father and son were reunited, her face lit up with contentment, and a trace of something that Elias took to be melancholy. So absorbed did she seem in the film that he felt a twinge of resentment. What a funny thing it was to be jealous of Charlie Chaplin.

Elias observed her as she unpinned her hair, and then pinned it back. He caught a whiff of jasmine and rose, a heady, charming mixture. Only minutes before the film came to an end, he found the nerve to reach out for her fingers, feeling like a teenager on his first date. To his relief, she didn’t move her hand away. They sat still – two sculptures carved out of the dark, both scared of making a move that would disrupt the tenderness of the moment.

When the lights came back on, it took them a few seconds to grow accustomed to real life. Quickly, he took out a notepad and wrote down the name of another cinema in another part of the town. ‘Next week, same day, same time, will you come?’

‘Yes,’ she faltered.

Before he’d found a chance to say anything else, Pembe leaped to her feet and headed towards the exit, running away from him and everything that had taken place between them, or would have taken place, had they been different people. She held in her palm the name of the place they were to meet next time, grasping it tightly, as if it were the key to a magic world, a key she would use right now were it in her power to decide.

And so it began. They started to meet every Friday at the same time, and occasionally on other afternoons. They frequented the Phoenix more than any other place, but they also met at several other cinemas, all far-away from their homes, all unpopular. Since the films did not change quickly, they ended up watching
The Kid
twice. But they also went to
The King and I
,
The Thief of Baghdad
,
King Kong
,
The Passion of Joan of Arc
,
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
and
Ben-Hur.

They viewed all these films not so much as stories from a bygone period as destinies still unfolding somewhere. Whichever film they went to see, it was always the same. She kept her eyes on the screen while he kept his eyes on her. Elias loved the way her expression altered with every new twist in the plot. He had the impression that he was meeting the numerous women dormant inside her, glimpsing sides of her character that were hidden from everyone, perhaps even from herself. Every so often, she also stared at him in the same way, as if keen to discover the depths of his soul. Elias shuddered, wondering what she really saw there, and whether she thought it was worth loving him.

In time he found out more things about her, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that he would complete only long after she had gone. He came to learn that, despite her name, her favourite colour was amethyst. She loved singing old Kurdish love songs and had quite a fine voice. In addition to pork, which she didn’t consume for religious reasons, she would never eat shrimps, snails, calamari or cranberries, all of which made her teeth clench, and yet she could suck on slices of lemon all day long. He also found out how young she was. Though the way she dressed and carried herself made her look older, she was, in fact, sixteen years his junior.

Slowly he was beginning to make sense of the situation. This unfathomable, almost enigmatic attraction that he felt for her, a woman so alien to the life he had led, was like a childhood memory coming back. For a reason unbeknownst to his conscious mind, but not to his heart, he felt the need to love and to protect her against the whole wide world. He’d had a taste of this emotion with the three women in his life: his sister, his mother and his ex-wife. Yet what he felt for Pembe was different from anything he had known before. She was his gateway to a world that, though more ambiguous and dangerous, also felt more real. It disturbed him enormously that it was an illicit love, but the possibility of losing her at any moment only added to his aching desire for her. She was the missing link in his life, the connection to his past, his ancestors, his Eastern side. Her love was one that made up for the lost pieces and the lost time.

Each time, shortly before the lights in the cinema came back on, they would move away from each other, and then go their separate ways. Thus they would never be seen together – or so they hoped.

She always strode out before him. He would linger behind, pacing inside the cinema, observing the posters on the walls, the litter on the floor, the sweets and the fizzy drinks, still thinking of the film, and of the light in her eyes, trying to get used to the emptiness she had left behind.

***

Shrewsbury Prison, 1991

In the middle of the night I wake with a start. It’s dark in the cell except for the sickly yellow light creeping in from the corridor. They are supposed to have a calming effect on our nerves, these bulbs. Some shrink’s idea. In fact, they make me want to puke.

The bed feels rough, like lying on blocks of cement. But that’s not the reason why I’ve woken up at such an ungodly hour. Something is wrong, I can tell. I hold my breath and listen. The snoring, the farting, the moaning, the rustling, the clenching of teeth from the cells near by. People outside think that a prison is a terribly quiet place. It’s not true. But tonight, despite the usual sounds, it feels strangely empty. Something is missing. Or else I’m losing my marbles.

My mother used to say that premonitions are God’s whispers in a dark forest. From time to time, He would tell us to be careful, not to be friends with someone, not to push open certain doors, though we would never pay attention. But I’m not sure that’s what’s happening to me right now. A premonition is a sense that something bad is going to happen. What I feel is different. It’s the kind of sorrow that hits you after something has already happened, and it’s too late.

I prop myself up on my elbow, and prick up my ears. At first I suspect my mother’s ghost has visited me, but I quickly realize she’s not around tonight. My heart isn’t pounding, which is what happens every time I sense her presence. No weird glow in one corner of the cell either, like freshly fallen snow. No soft rustling, as if from silk curtains. No scent of jasmine and rose. No smells of sesame
halva
. I’ll never forget when that happened for the first time. It freaked me out like hell.

She used to visit me more often in the past. Then less and less frequently. Lately she doesn’t appear at all any more. I dread that she’ll never show up again. It’s a stupid thought, but as long as she comes to see me there’s a hope that she might forgive me.

At the beginning I was scared out of my wits. I couldn’t go to sleep for fear that she would arrive in the midst of the night and strangle me. It took me a while to learn that ghosts don’t do such things. You think they’re after revenge. But they only want to understand. So they fix their empty gaze on you and wait for an explanation. They stare into your soul. They don’t communicate. They don’t ask. At least my mother doesn’t. It’s like a silent film, except in colour.

But tonight Mum hasn’t dropped round. My alarm bells have nothing to do with her. What is it, then? I exhale. I inhale. Then I hold my breath. I listen, this time more carefully. Suddenly it hits me. Trippy isn’t snoring. Nor is he twitching, tossing or talking in his sleep, which he always does, no matter how worn out or high. I get off my bed and approach him. His back is turned towards me. ‘Trippy.’

No answer. He doesn’t move. ‘Patrick, you okay?’

I don’t know why I call him by his real name, which I haven’t done in years. But the word pops out. I fling the blanket off him. There is a foul smell. He looks strangely small, as if he has shrunk overnight. I shake him by the shoulders. He doesn’t budge. I shake him harder. His feet dangle in a funny, clumsy way, like a broken puppet’s. His arms are heavy, even though he is the skinniest bloke I know.

‘Trippy, don’t fuck about, mate! Stop it, man.’

I reach for his pulse. His neck is stiff and cold. ‘Colder than a witch’s tit,’ he would say. There is no heartbeat. I prop his head against my arm and breathe into his mouth. The mouth that kissed his missus, and a few other women. The mouth that swore all the time, but also prayed. The mouth that ruined him, but was his saving grace. There is no reaction.

I start to laugh. Because it’s ridiculous. The Angel of Death is either blind or has gone senile. Azrael should give up work. Doesn’t God see that the henchman isn’t doing his job properly? Why do the wrong people always die? I’ve been teaching Trippy how to use his fists. He was an awful student, slow on the uptake. But it was coming along. I’ve been making him hit me in the same place: on my abdomen. There are deadlier places on a man’s body. Like the head, the neck, the Adam’s apple, even the bridge of the nose. But if he hit me there it would look like a real brawl. Then Trippy would get in trouble. Punching me in the abdomen is less suspicious. Everyone knows I box for fun.

With the right force the abdomen is a fatal target. Internal bleeding. Pronounced dead in a few hours if left untreated. And there is no doubt in my mind that it would be left untreated.

Trippy didn’t know all this, of course. It would be an accident. An inspector would come and scribble on his notepad. His secretary would type the report and leak it to the press. A tabloid would show interest: ‘Honour-Killer Dies in Gaol’. Officer McLaughlin would cut out the clipping and place it in his file. They would talk about me, for a while. No one would feel sorrow. Then the case would be dropped. As clean as the plate from which a hungry man eats. Trippy would be off the hook and I would be gone. Free at last.

Houdini was just a reminder. Officer McLaughlin says there is no such thing, that it’s just a cock-and-bull story, the magician didn’t die of blows, as idiots like me tend to believe. But I don’t care whether Houdini really died of this or that. Every time I see his poster I remember that it’s possible to be punched to death. Then again, he reminds me of other things too. Sad things. It was because of Houdini that Uncle Tariq found out about my mother’s lover and so did everyone else, including me.

I move Trippy to the side and sit next to him. Something cracks under me. I look to see what it is. I pick it up and start to chuckle again. ‘You sad bastard.’

It’s a syringe. When did he do that? Was it a mishap? Was it a golden shot? How is it that I didn’t notice a thing? Did he wait until I had gone to sleep? I’m a log. I’m a bloody bag of shit. I sleep like a fat hedgehog in his winter nest. I’m disgusted at myself. I check the bed. The sheet is wet with pee, saliva and vomit. His body tried to flush out the poison. Then I notice Trippy’s left fist, clenched hard, the joints on his fingers like spikes. I force the fingers open. There is a piece of paper. I approach the bars so that I can read it under the light from the corridor.

Alex, brother. if you’re reading this it means I’ve made the cut. You wanted to go before me, didn’t you? You prat. You think I didn’t know? But I was gonna help you. Honest to God I was. It’s just I couldn’t take it no more. Don’t get pissed off. I’ll wait for you. Whatever that is up there. I’ll go and check it out. No more tricks. No more Houdini. You were a good mate. When I see your ma I’m gonna tell her that.

Your friend Trippy

Tears roll down my cheeks. I slap my face. It doesn’t help. I pull my hair. With one hand, then with both. Harder. Harder. I can feel the skin give way, the hair rip out. And all this time I’m making this sound like a dog whimpering in the street. A car has hit me and run. My bones are broken. Trippy has run over me.