Shafak’s prose is often conflicted — a tug of war between places of origin against adopted places, from personal desires against cultural expectations, conflict between genders, young and old, brothers and sisters. Novels are built by the premise of conflict, but none more true than Shafak’s prose and especially in Honour.
The novel starts of ambiguously — a middle aged woman meditating what her day will be like picking up her brother from an English prison after years of detention. We know very quickly that the brother is a murderer, and the sister, Esma, isn’t sure how to feel about him. Blood is thick and irrevocable — she doesn’t know whether to love him or hate him for his crime.
The next chapter jumps decades back, a couple of generations before where the mother of the sibling was born along with her twin sister, in a Kurdish village somewhere in Turkey. The jump is abrupt and you’d discover that in no time, you will need to learn a lot of characters existing in different eras. But the book is better for it.
The contrast between the Kurdish village and London is stark. One place is brutal but often beautiful, the other is drab and unsettling. The book alternate between these two places, where the events in the past affect the consequences of the future. However, there are more scenes in London than there are in the village. London makes for a more vivid battleground. The reader should read between the lines here to what is not only implied — the shame of the woman carries the same, if not a heavier weight than the honour of the man.
Gendered reading — Honour and Shame
Nowhere is this conflict stronger when Shafak explores the roles between genders. The “Honour” of the title is the property of the man — man has honour, fights for honour and protects honour; while women only have their shame. Women who follow their passions are consequently punished — stigmatised from their own families to the point that they indirectly (some would argue directly) murder them. In the case of Pembe’s sister Hediye, she was the offered the gift of rope and solitude so she can hang herself in the comfort of her own home.
Honour puts a man in his high horse. Adem did not marry Jamila not because of the knowledge that she may have been sexually assaulted, that she is tainted. This perceived shame was enough for him to call off the wedding and married her twin instead, despite the fact that he loved Jamila and not Pembe. Culture takes precedence over passion.
But this highlights the real issue that Shafak wants to address — Does a woman have the right to follow her passions? Does she have the right to be happy? Pembe was happiest when she was watching movies with Elias, that he offered her kindness and attention. Pembe’s husband, Adem is a wayward gambler who left his family for a Bulgarian gold digger, leaving the family worse off. Does he have the right for his honour? Adem, as loathsome as he was, is starkly convincing.
Internal struggle of adaptation — the immigrant story
We’ve seen the story of the immigrant family making do in England before, and despite the similarities with Zadie Smith and Kureishi, Shafak’s Honour stands on its own. Shafak addresses the difficult questions of being an immigrant — the language barrier, the temptations, the homesickness amongst many. We can see this internal conflict in Pembe and her relationship with Elias, but these internal struggles are somewhat more apparent in Iskender.
Even Iskender’s name is a battlefield. In England, he is Alex until he met the Orator who advised him to use his original name. His gang is a bunch of misfits from other countries of origin, his girlfriend is English and despite all this, he cares about the Honour of the family. Being the man of the house, he struggles to conciliate between the duty of his religion to the laws of the country. His arc goes a full circle of the story, regretting his action his only wish was conciliation with Pembe.
Final thoughts
When it comes to Shafak’s work, I’ve only read the Bastard of Istanbul before Honour and I was bitterly disappointed because I had so much hope for the book. Honour was much more than I expected, and it is much better written. Shafak prods the reader to ask difficult questions. But there is believability in the story — The characters are conflicted people and the stakes are high.
The final pages of the book was the most fascinating for me, in the afterthought of ‘Dreaming in English’. Shafak is a Turkish migrant in England, and her stories reflect that. She is comfortable and writes respectably in English, before she takes her manuscript to the translators who’d translate her books into Turkish, and she edits their translations to add her own colours to the story.
