Honour (30 page)

‘What do you mean she served her an empty cauldron?’ asked Jamila, her eyes wide open.

‘I swear she did,’ whispered Pembe. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t empty. But it was peculiar. If there had been food inside, I would have seen steam, right? Or smelled something. Nothing!’

‘Go back to work,’ said Jamila, because she didn’t know what else to say.

In the afternoon they swapped places. This time Pembe let Jamila prepare the dye while she wove. It was tiring. The muscles behind her eyes hurt, and her fingertips were sore. Parts of her body that she never thought about began to ache.

Secretly, Pembe included a motif in her carpet that wasn’t part of the intended pattern. If anyone noticed it, and she was sure someone would, they would get upset. But she couldn’t help it. It was a tiny mark, an
h
, as a reminder of her sister’s name. When the carpet was finished, it would be sold to a local merchant, who would then sell it to a bigger merchant. From there the carpet would be carried to a smart shop in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. A tourist couple in the city for a few days would notice it in the window. They would buy it, even though it would cost them dear. The carpet would then be transported to Paris, Amsterdam or New York, wherever the couple lived, the letter
h
for ever concealed, but for ever alive all the same.

At dusk the family returned home – the seven sisters and their stepmother. As they neared the garden walls, a wave of nervousness surged through Pembe’s body. She broke into a run. She had a bad feeling, less dread than fury, a mounting rage against no one but herself for not having acted earlier. About what, she didn’t know.

It was she who found Hediye, her body limp like a rag doll, her neck broken, hanging from a brass hook in the ceiling, which had been used many times in the past for the hammocks in which babies were rocked to sleep.

She had hanged herself with the rope served to her in the cauldron.

*

The cowboy named Bad tried to smile, as a noose was pulled tightly around his neck. ‘You’re joking, Blondie,’ he said, his voice breaking. ‘You wouldn’t . . . you wouldn’t play a joke on me like that.’

Blondie squinted, and with a tilt of his head answered, ‘It’s no joke. It’s a rope, Tuco.’

Clamping her lips tightly, Pembe realized she could not watch these scenes. She half stood up. ‘I go now.’

‘What? But why, my love?’ Elias asked. ‘Why are you leaving early today?’

‘Yes, no . . . I go now.’

‘Is it because of the film? You didn’t like it?

‘No . . . yes . . . I’m sorry.’

‘Shall I come with you?’

‘You stay, please.’

With that Pembe rose to her feet, leaving him without any explanation. As she walked hastily towards the exit and passed by the rows at the back, the person sitting there rubbed his temples to hide his face with his hands.

When the film was over and the lights went back on, Elias stood up with everyone else. He didn’t know what to make of Pembe’s sudden departure. He trudged to the foyer, his heart aching. Someone tapped him on his shoulder.

‘Excuse me, do you have a light?’

A young lad, a teenager. Too young to be smoking. But it was none of his business to tell him that, and even if he did, he knew the boy wouldn’t listen.

‘Sorry, I don’t smoke,’ Elias said.

‘Really?’

There was something in the teenager’s stare and such awkwardness in his remark that Elias flinched. But before he could say another word, the boy gave a slight nod, and said, his tone hard and level, ‘Well, have a good one.’

‘Thanks. You too.’

Leaving the boy there, still watching him, Elias walked out through the double doors, his coat brushing the grey threads that Pembe had left there only an hour ago.

Abu Dhabi, November 1978

Only a week after the fight in front of the club, Roxana left Adem for another man – an Australian businessman with interests in the Gulf.

After losing her, a blanket of numbness fell over Adem, like night covering a valley of ghosts. Distracted and distant, he was here and nowhere, his mind drifting, his self-confidence dwindling. He did not know what the truth was any longer, and whether he had ever grasped it. His life had been a maze of mirrors, in each mirror he had seen a different reflection of himself, but which one of them was the real Adem, he couldn’t tell. Despite everything, he did not return home. Nor could he stay in the flat he had shared with Roxana, which was, in fact, let in her name. Going to Tariq’s house was not an option, unless Adem was willing to listen to him preach. So he sought refuge with his friend Bilal, who, though not sympathetic to his woes, was at least not dismissive of them.

Days passed with an excruciating slowness. There was a pain in his stomach, as if he had swallowed an iron weight that pressed down on the core of his body. Having little appetite, he skipped meals. He smoked three, often four packs of cigarettes a day. Asthma, his childhood illness, came back. As it became increasingly clear to everyone around him that he couldn’t go on like this, Bilal tried to persuade him to return to his family.

‘I can’t do that,’ Adem said. ‘If I go back now, I’ll leave again tomorrow.’

‘But why are you running away from your own?’

‘Why?’ was a question Adem wasn’t used to asking himself, or others for that matter. He knew how to deal with ‘How?’(how to place biscuits in a box, how to operate a machine) and ‘What?’(what to do at the roulette table, what to bet on), but ‘Why?’ was too abstract, and hardly fathomable.

Near by, a police siren went off and they were both distracted momentarily. When Adem started to speak again, his voice was solemn, his shoulders low. ‘Look, I’ve been thinking this through. The Chinese will never let me off the hook. And my debt is not getting any smaller. I need to get out of here; this city is killing me.’

‘Where are you gonna go?’ asked a baffled Bilal.

‘Actually, I was thinking of Abu Dhabi.’ That was where Roxana had gone, but he wasn’t going to tell this to his friend. Instead he said, ‘I heard they’re building a new city out there. Offices, apartment blocks, shopping malls . . . They’re going to need workers. Thousands of them. Not only for a year or two, but for a long time.’

‘Isn’t it all desert down there? How do they build skyscrapers on soft sand?’

‘Oh, the sand might not hold up, but the banknotes will.’

They mulled over every detail. How much money Adem would earn a month, how long it would take him to buy a Mercedes-Benz, honey-coloured and so well polished that you could watch the reflection of the clouds passing above on its bonnet, and how good it would feel when he came back to England a successful man laden down with gifts for his children. Between them they crafted a dream so vivid that a few days later Bilal was bewailing his own lot. ‘Ah, if I didn’t have a family and a bloody job in London, I’d come with you.’

‘You can join me after. I’ll write to you, give you my address.’

‘The Arabs will treat you differently. It’s not like you’re second class there, you’ll be their guest!’ Bilal said.

A guest basking in the sun. Even the thought of it warmed Adem’s heart. It had been eight years since he had come to London to work and yet he was still an outsider, an interloper. All the other immigrants he knew of had fared much better, and were happier, but not him. Even if there was a brighter future here, especially for the new generation, he was not part of it.

Surely, the Arabs would not be like the Brits and Abu Dhabi would not be London. No rain coming down in buckets, no pork sausages wrapped in glazed bacon as if to double the sin, no pint-sized kitchens in mouldy houses, no tomatoes without taste, no youngsters dyeing their hair purple and terrorizing the streets with their drunken madness. The Brits were always polite: they spat in your face so courteously that you expected them to hand you a handkerchief afterwards. You could not come to blows with an English gentleman, for he would hit you with faint praise. It took years to figure out when the English were complimenting you and when they were telling you that you had screwed up. With the Arabs, things would be more direct, more transparent. You would know that when someone said ‘Welcome’ they really meant it. Perhaps he would manage to bring the children over after a while. That would be nice.

Still, even as he fantasized about his life in sun-drenched Abu Dhabi, Adem knew the bit about the children joining him was a pipe dream. Esma was a Londoner through and through, and loved this country,
this civilization
. As for his younger son, what a special boy he was.
Such an old head on such young shoulders
, Pembe always said. Yunus was the wisest of all the Topraks, though he was weak in the face of love – a malady that ran in the family. And Iskender . . . it embarrassed Adem to recall their quarrel, but, more than that, to have to admit that he’d failed to live up to his son’s expectations.

When you first became a father, you assumed your child was an extension of yourself. He gave you pride, and a sense of achievement and rootedness, until you came to realize, little by little, that a child was a being of his own making. He would keep to his own destiny, no matter how much you wished, prompted or forced him to follow in your footsteps. The moment Adem grasped this truth he couldn’t help but feel cheated, beaten. This was not how he had behaved when he was a teenager. He had listened to his
baba
, always respectful, always obedient. If only he had known he had wings, and was of a different species, he, too, could have flown. But now it was too late. The freedom he had failed to secure from his father, his own child was now demanding from him.

Adem was done with London. Though mindful of the difficulty of leaving his children, he wished to go, though not for too long, of course; free as a feather, floating once again on a current stronger than he was. Abu Dhabi would be new. Abu Dhabi would raise his spirits. Once there he would find Roxana – everything in its own time. She would come back to him and he would accept her. The only problem was that he didn’t have the resources for the trip. The old dilemma confronted him once again: in order to make money you had to have money first.

Upon the advice of Bilal, he went to see a man everyone called Mamut Baba. With a wispy goatee, dark slanting eyes that gleamed above high cheekbones, and a mouth set in a grim line, he was one of those people who radiated worldly power without being physically imposing. Born and raised in Bukhara, he had run away from the Soviets and spent many years in different parts of Europe, finally arriving in London. He spoke several languages and helped Uzbeks, Iranians, Turks, Arabs, Chinese, Mexicans and Portuguese . . . As long as he liked you, he helped you. Young people who couldn’t find jobs, fathers whose daughters had eloped, families with bad blood between them, shopkeepers who couldn’t pay their rent – they all went to Mamut Baba.

The room was full of men of every age, sitting on the carpeted floor, conversing in low tones. In the middle of the circle, with his back to the wall and an elegant fawn cape on his shoulders, sat Mamut Baba. His nine-year-old son – a wiry boy with dark eyebrows – was perched next to him, his gaze glued to a new handheld electronic game from America, his thumbs twiddling nonstop. From time to time a flush of excitement crossed the boy’s face as he won or lost a game, and he would almost cry out, his lips closing around a ghost of a shout.

‘Look at him,’ Mamut Baba said blithely. ‘At this age he is better with technology than I am. When a machine breaks in the house his mother asks him to repair it, not me.’

The men in the room listened, nodding and smiling when necessary.

‘But that’s the way it should be. Every generation must keep up with the technology of the day. We should not fall behind the times.’

‘But . . .’ Adem heard himself murmur and immediately fell quiet. The word had escaped him without thinking, almost like a sigh.

He noticed a gaunt, bearded man frown at him, annoyed that he had cut in while the master was speaking. Wriggling under the young man’s stare, Adem lowered his face, not knowing that he had just set eyes on a friend of his son, the Orator, a prominent member of this circle.

In the meantime, Mamut Baba was glancing left and right, trying to see who had spoken up. ‘What was that? I couldn’t quite hear.’

Now feeling obliged to come forward, Adem cleared his throat. ‘Uh-hmm, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt like that.’

‘That’s all right, my good man. Go ahead,’ said Mamut Baba affably. ‘Do tell us what you were thinking.’

‘Well, I used to work at the United Biscuits Factory. The biscuits follow each other along the conveyor belt without an end,’ Adem said, looking, despite himself, at the Orator, searching for a sign of encouragement where there was none. ‘You do the same thing again and again, thousands of times. It numbs your brain. I was thinking these games our kids play, could all that repetition be good for them?’

Mamut Baba studied Adem with a new expression – a mixture of patience and tolerance. Then he embarked on a long speech about science and technology, which Adem found too abstract to follow. An hour later, as he was about to leave with everyone else, Mamut Baba asked him, and a few others, including the Orator, to stay for dinner.

The five of them sat on the carpet, circling a round, low table, and waited for their food to be served. It was then that Adem was able to bring up the subject.

‘I need a loan to go to Abu Dhabi,’ he said. ‘When I’ve made enough money there, I’ll return and pay you back.’

‘How about your family?’ Mamut Baba asked, as he tore a piece of bread.

‘My son Iskender will take care of the house. He’s a big boy.’

At the mention of the name the Orator eyed Adem with interest.
So this is the absent father the lad was talking about.
Just then the door opened, and a woman came into the room carrying a large tray crowded with plates. She was fully covered in a cinnamon-coloured
burqa
that exposed only her hands, and two dark eyes behind the slits in her veil. She served a creamy garbanzo soup in glass bowls, set the rice and lamb in the middle, distributed the flat breads, filled the water glasses, and disappeared.

‘Does your wife wear the
hijab
?’ Mamut Baba asked.

Adem felt tense, his stomach twisting into knots. Ever since Iskender had told him Pembe was seeing someone, he didn’t want to hear a word about his wife, and was suspicious of anyone who referred to her in passing. ‘Well, I’ve seen more veiled women in this neighbourhood than in Istanbul,’ he offered. ‘In my family, we don’t have the habit.’

Mamut Baba drew himself up, saying, ‘But if some day God grants you another marriage, consider a veiled wife. Their eyes see only their home.’

Breathing in deeply, Adem felt bile rising in his throat. He tried to swallow it, but failed. Was this an awful insinuation or just idle talk? Could people be casting aspersions about Pembe? The silence thickened, swelled.

‘I must go. Thanks for the soup,’ Adem said, rising to his feet.

Before anyone had a chance to stop him, and without a proper goodbye, he left the room. On the way out he passed by the kitchen, where Mamut Baba’s wife and son were having dinner at a small table, the boy enjoying his food while fidgeting with his handheld game, breaking his own record.

*

Arriving in Abu Dhabi in November 1978, Adem became a construction worker. Over time, he would witness, admire and secretly dread the rise of buildings higher than anything he had seen before. In a city with a burning desire to transform and transfigure, he was a man who had only his past and no prospect of change.

The first few weeks were the hardest. Not only because the work was tough, but also because he had to abandon most, if not all, of his expectations. Of the fantasy he had shared with Bilal, the only thing that was real was the sun, hot and harsh on his skin. In the evenings, tired and covered in dust, he would return to the shed he shared with seven fellow workers. Men from different backgrounds, but lacking in similar qualities. On the odd occasion he had a free hour he searched for Roxana in every possible place he could think of – pacing up and down outside shopping malls, restaurants and boutiques.

One night he dreamed of Pembe, her hair loose and flowing. They entered a narrow corridor, walking hand in hand. When they finally reached the end, Adem realized, much to his horror, that Pembe had put on Roxana’s frilly costume and was just about to go on stage, ready to dance in a strip club. He shouted with all his might to stop her, and, when that didn’t help, he pulled her down off the stage. But the woman he held in his arms was Roxana – her face a mask of anger. He woke up to the realization that his shout had awakened the other men.

A few weeks into his new life and with still no trace of Roxana, Adem discovered a place that was to him what an oasis is to one lost in the desert. A makeshift gambling den that some workers had set up to win a quick buck and spice up the monotony. In an airless, dank flat, between forty to fifty men, swearing, shouting, smoking and praying in many languages, crammed together to watch a cock-fight. From time to time they would organize spider-fights and cricket-races, none of which Adem had seen before. But it was behind the wooden screens that the real wagering took place, and where he always headed.

All he had was what was left of the money Mamut Baba had sent via a courier two days after he had walked out of his house. He could have returned the money, but he hadn’t. He didn’t have much pride left and the need to leave London had weighed heavier than anything. Now he put aside his wages for his children and tossed the dice with Mamut Baba’s cash. He played every night. Whereas others went slowly and took it easy, he pushed on. Most of them were amateurs, he could see that. The air was ripe with the anxiety of getting caught by the authorities – the fear of being deported. Many workers felt this tension, but, strangely, not Adem. Bolder than ever, braced by a wild impulse, he would wager, and then wager again. When the Mamut Baba money came to an end, he began to dip into his wages – only dip, initially. Before long, he was betting his entire weekly pay in one night.