Honor

Honor (2011), a novel by Turkish novelist Elif Shafak, follows three generations of the Turkish Kurd Toprak family to uncover the deep roots of Iskender Toprak’s “honor killing” of his own mother. Dedicated to “those who see and those who hear,” the novel dissects the particular form patriarchy takes in Turkish communities and fiercely criticizes the normalization of violence against women. The novel was warmly received by critics, who felt that “Shafak turns what might seem a polemic against honor killing in lesser hands into a searing but empathetic and ultimately universal family tragedy” (Kirkus Reviews).

The novel opens in the voice of British-Turkish Esma, as she reflects on the events that lead to the imprisonment of her brother Iskender. He was only 16 years old when he stabbed their mother, Pembe, on the steps of the family home in Hackney, London. Esma has thought often of killing Iskender in revenge, but now she is prepared to take him in and help him readjust to life outside prison.

The murder was investigated as an “honor killing,” with the police seeking to establish whether the teenage boy acted on his own initiative or at the prompting of his wider family. Iskender, who goes by “Alex” with English people, became the focus of an outcry against a barbaric “Muslim” custom. As he explains from his cell: "A journalist came to see me... She visited me a few times, seemed to be on my side. 'Please rest assured, Alex, I only want to understand the story, and increase awareness in society by writing about it.' How noble is that! Then she goes and pens the shittiest article. I was mucked around with as a child. It was all Mum's fault: as the elder son, I'd been spoiled by her. 'This is a typical case of Middle Eastern patriarchal tradition,' blah, blah, blah."



From here, the novel moves back more than half a century, to the beginning of a multi-generational saga. In a Kurdish area of Turkey, a woman named Naze knows it is her duty to produce a son. This is a place where women grieve for the birth of a daughter. Instead, she has twin girls, whom she names Kader (meaning “Destiny”) and Yeter (“Enough”). Her husband, worrying that these names dare fate, renames them Pembe and Jamila. The girls come to be known as Pembe Kader (“Pink Destiny”) and Jamila Yeter (“Enough Beauty”).

The girls are identical in appearance but very different in character. A young man named Adem falls in love with Jamila, but when Jamila is abducted by another man, Adem—and their whole community—regard Jamila’s honor as compromised. Adem marries Pembe instead.

It is clear from the first that this partnership is doomed, but the young couple moves together to Istanbul, where they have their first child, Iskender, and then on to London, where Esma and finally Yunus are born.



Meanwhile, Jamila remains in their home village. Refusing to marry, she becomes a semi-legendary “virgin midwife,” a lone woman who travels under the protection of God to assist in difficult births.

In London, freed from the restraints of Turkish customs, Pembe and Adem seek fulfillment outside their relationship. Nevertheless, they continue to cling to their own version of Turkey and Turkish values: “The native land remained immaculate, a Shangri-La, a potential shelter to return to, if not actually in life, at least in dreams.”

In practice, this means that Adem has more freedom than Pembe to pursue the love that is not present in their marriage. He starts gambling and begins an affair with Roxana, who works as an escort at one of his favorite gambling venues. By the late 1970s, Adem has gambled away his family’s money and abandoned them. Forced to support her children by herself, Pembe takes a job at a local hair salon, where she comes into her own and assimilates more closely into the British way of life. Eventually, she meets Elias, an enthusiastic cook and film buff with whom she meets in secret at old movie theatres. Still enslaved to traditional values, Pembe not only keeps their relationship a secret, but insists on its being purely platonic.



Meanwhile, Pembe’s children have each coped in a different way with the challenge of growing up as Turkish Kurds in a foreign city. Iskender, born in Turkey and raised as a “little sultan” by his mother—who never ceased to regard her birthing a boy as an achievement—remains traditional in outlook. His loyalty to Turkish and Muslim values hardens as a result of racist bullying. Soon he is part of a semi-radicalized gang of Muslim youths.

The youngest sibling, Yunus, becomes immersed in 1970s London’s hippie subculture. At the age of seven, he is taken up as a kind of mascot for the hippies of a nearby squat. Wise beyond his years, he absorbs their values (and ends up with a tattoo).

While Yunus adopts an extreme form of Western liberalism and Iskender becomes increasingly radicalized, bookish Esma must try to keep the peace in her family, seeking a way to accommodate both sets of values. Iskender becomes increasingly convinced that there is no meaningful way for them to assimilate: “We Topraks were only passers-by in this city—a half-Turkish, half-Kurdish family in the wrong end of London.”



One by one, each member of the family learns of Pembe’s affair. Back in Turkey, Jamila understands from a dream that her twin is in trouble; her extensive network of contacts provides her with a means to travel to London without papers.

The last member of the family to learn of Pembe’s affair is her “little sultan” Iskender. When he does, he decides that in his father’s absence it is incumbent on him to defend the family’s “honor” by killing her.

However, he arrives at the family home as Jamila arrives from Turkey. Mistaking his aunt for her identical twin, Iskender kills Jamila.



In the aftermath of Jamila’s death, Pembe renounces not only her affair but also her identity. She moves back to Turkey to live as her murdered sister.

While Iskender has been in prison, much has changed. Adem, abandoned by Roxana, has killed himself. Iskender has changed, too, and he hopes to redeem himself and earn his mother’s forgiveness. It falls to Esma to explain that his mother has long since died of a rare disease.