Honor (9781101606148) Read Free

times when he displayed a temper, he had a calm disposition – even if it saddened him profoundly not to have a son to carry his name to the ends of the earth. Though a man of few words and fewer smiles, he communicated with his children better than his wife did. In return, his eight daughters competed for his love, like chickens pecking at a handful of grain.
    Travelling to the city was fun and exciting; waiting at the hospital was neither. Lined up in front of the doctor’s door were twenty-three patients. Pembe knew the exact number because, unlike the other eight-year-old girls in her village, she and Jamila went to school – a decrepit, one-storey building in another village forty minutes’ walk away – and could count. There was a stove in the middle of the classroom that spurted more smoke than heat. Younger children sat to one side of it, older children to the other. As the windows were rarely opened, the air inside was stale and as thick as sawdust.
    Before starting school Pembe had taken it for granted that everyone in the world spoke Kurdish. Now she understood that wasn’t the case. Some people didn’t know Kurdish at all. Their teacher, for instance. He was a man with short-cut, thinning hair and a doleful look in his eyes, as if he missed the life he had left behind in Istanbul and resented having been sent to this forsaken place. He got upset when the students didn’t understand what he was saying or made a joke in Kurdish at his expense. He had recently introduced a set of rules: whoever uttered a word in Kurdish would have to stand on one foot by the blackboard with their back turned to their classmates. Most students stayed there for a few minutes and were then pardoned on the condition that they didn’t repeat the mistake; but from time to time someone was forgotten in the course of the day and had to spend hours in the same position. The rule had generated opposite reactions in the twins. While Jamila clammed up completely, refusing to speak any language whatsoever, Pembe tried hard to excel in Turkish, determined to learn the teacher’s language and, through that, to reach his heart.
    Meanwhile, their mother, Naze, didn’t see the point in their going to such lengths to master words and numbers that would be of no use, since they would all get married before long. But her husband insisted that his daughters be educated.
    â€˜Every day they walk all that way back and forth. Their shoes are wearing out,’ Naze grumbled. ‘And what for?’
    â€˜So that they can read the constitution,’ said Berzo.
    â€˜What’s a constitution?’ she asked suspiciously.
    â€˜The law, you ignorant woman! The big book! There are things that are allowed, things that are forbidden, and if you don’t know the difference you’re in deep trouble.’
    Naze clucked her tongue, still not convinced. ‘How’s that going to help my daughters get married?’
    â€˜What do you know? If one day their husbands treat them badly, they won’t have to put up with it. They can take their children and leave.’
    â€˜Oh, where will they go?’
    Berzo hadn’t thought about that. ‘They can seek shelter in their father’s home, of course.’
    â€˜Uh-hm, is that why they trudge so far every day and fill their minds with that stuff? So that they can return to the house where they were born?’
    â€˜Go and bring me tea,’ Berzo snapped. ‘You talk too much.’
    â€˜Perish the thought,’ Naze murmured as she headed to the kitchen. ‘No daughter of mine will abandon her husband. If she does, I’ll beat the hell out of her, even if I’m dead by then. I’ll come back as a ghost!’
    That threat, empty and impetuous though it was, would become a prophecy. Even long after she had passed away, Naze would come back to haunt her daughters, some more than others. After all, she was a stubborn