Honor

by Elif Shafak

But I had to tell the story, even if only to one person. I had to send it into some corner of the universe where it could float freely, away from us.

The world being what it was, there was no point in wishing to discover it. Everything there had been, and everything there ever would be, was already present here and now.

Jamila was not angry with her twin or with anyone else. And yet Jamila was also aware that the question had to be asked over and over, like a wound that needed to be dressed regularly.

Deserted places that once teemed with life had a kind of sadness, a ghost grief, which floated in the breeze, seeping into every crevice.

A midwife, someone who brought babies into this world, was semi-sacred. She dangled between the invisible world and the visible one, on a thread as delicate as a strand of spider’s silk.

She had been in love once, and it had tasted sour and dark.

The valley was alive with spirits.

He noticed, for the first time, the susurrus of the wind, the quills of light in the air.

The dark-haired Turkish man with the expression of infinite despair, who wore his apprehension like a moth-eaten jacket.

Men like him, once they started frequenting this place and fantasizing about the romantic escapades that life had denied them, did not go back to their homes until they experienced something memorably disastrous.

When he retreated into his inner self such was his completeness that he didn’t need any distraction. He could have lived in the belly of a fish and have been all right.

And yet beneath the heavy odour that enwrapped everyone and everything, there were other aromas: of flowers, spices and leaves – lives in transition.

Everything belonged to all and not much belonged to anyone.

I realize we are the same age. Not only that. We are the same material.

A man in gaol is a man incarcerated in the past anyway.

The native land remained immaculate, a Shangri-La, a potential shelter to return to, if not actually in life, at least in dreams.

It was always dusk in there, morning or afternoon made little difference.

Istanbul . . . Deep in the slow, whirling memories the city’s name stood out from the hundreds I had stored away throughout my life. I placed the word on my tongue, sucking on it slowly, eagerly, as if it were a boiled sweet.

No, my father Adem Toprak did not beat his wife or his children. And yet on that night, and on other nights in the ensuing years, he would easily lose his temper and turn the air blue with words that were full of pus and bile; he would smash objects against the walls, all the while hating the entire world for pushing him to the edge, where he feared the shadow of his abusive father was waiting to tell him he might not, in the end, be that different from him.

Adem glanced around in panic, and in the swirl of chaos he caught his breath at the sight of her, standing on a flat roof, looking at him, calm and composed, as if she were aware of being the only serene thing in a world out of control.

Words, like wandering tribes, were of no fixed address. They travelled far and wide, scattering over the earth.

There is no wisdom without foolishness. And no pride without shame.’

Numb as a turnip.

A woman who knows your weaknesses and your failures better than you do, all your dead spaces, and has the map of your soul drawn into her palm, and loves you all the same.

And a lamentable father is like a fishbone lodged in your throat.

Love was such a remote possibility that they didn’t even pretend. My sister knew it. She was aware the three of us were here only because of duty, surrender and indifference, not because of love.

His accent made her giggle, which she did by lowering her head and closing her mouth – the one universal gesture repeated by people who were uncomfortable with either their teeth or their happiness.

When you kneaded bread, the earth seeped into your veins, solid and strong.

He would work and work, devouring his past as hungrily, as tenaciously, as a caterpillar eats away every leaf in eyesight, and then he would wait for someone to pull him out of this cocoon, miraculously transformed.

Still, he didn’t feel fully awake. Still, he carried the night in him.

They viewed all these films not so much as stories from a bygone period as destinies still unfolding somewhere.

Her love was one that made up for the lost pieces and the lost time.

My mother used to say that premonitions are God’s whispers in a dark forest.

This woman who was no woman; a witch who paced the tightrope between two worlds.

Everything in the universe, no matter how little or how insignificant, was meant to be an answer to something else.

Poison was a gift from God. A divine blessing that often went unappreciated. You could see it as a curse or a cure, like almost all things in life. Nature was beyond good and bad. What could heal could make you sick. What could make you sick could heal. Jamila was convinced that the job of a poison-maker was no different from that of any other craftsman.

Jamila knew that a diamond of this splendour could exile a person from his own soul.

In this world every creature was made to challenge, to change and to complete something else.

With his cheeks drained of all colour and his fate creeping through his veins, he could have been of any age and no age at all.

If only she could make the man swallow the right amount, he would tumble into a lavender slumber, a final dream.

The good and the bad, the sublime and the base, the greed and the grace.

Oddly, I was not upset at my mother. I was annoyed at her for other things, big and little; but, now that I realized she had another world of her own, or was trying to build one, against all the odds, something in me wanted to protect her.

It was as if the sky had slit open to reveal another universe, and everyone and everything was painted with God’s brush.

Every bitterness is heavy bag. Why carry? You are hot-air balloon.

a behemoth waking from a sluggish winter dream.