by Elif Shafak
‘What’s that?’
‘Oh, it’s a long story,’ she said with a shrug.
‘My sister says there’s no such thing as a long story. There are only short stories and the ones we don’t want to tell.’
‘Uh-hum, that’s cool. And what does your sister do?’
‘She’s gonna be a writer. She wants to write novels where nobody falls in love because love is for fools.’
The girl laughed. Then she told him the story of her tattoo. Once she’d had ‘Toby’ inscribed above her wrist, the name of her boyfriend. He was in the music biz, always tanked. But she loved him all the same. One day she told him she was pregnant, even though she wasn’t: she just wanted to see what his reaction would be. Men went one way or the other when they heard such news. You never could tell. They changed – the kindest of them reacted heartlessly, while the most stand-offish turned docile, considerate, totally Zen.
‘How did your boyfriend do?’ Yunus asked.
‘Oh, he went mental. He really lost it, the rat-arsed fecker!’
Toby’s response was to question whether it was his baby. And, even if it was, he said, she still had to sort out this mess. And that was when she ditched him, strong as the urge had been not to. Erasing a tattoo was no small feat, and there would always be a scar. She wasn’t against scars – they were part of life – but she didn’t want his scar on her. So she went to a tattoo artist and had him turn Toby into Tobiko.
‘Wow. And what does it mean?’
‘Oh, it’s a Japanese dish,’ she explained. ‘Flying-fish eggs.’
‘Flying-fish eggs,’ Yunus whispered, as if he didn’t want to break the spell. In front of his eyes dozens of flying fish jumped out of the water and glided gracefully towards the setting sun. Yunus, the boy named after the prophet who had survived the belly of a whale, was in love.
From then on he appeared at the squatters’ house at the slightest opportunity. They let him stay, even when there were no errands. He sat next to Tobiko, hanging on her every word, though he could rarely follow the conversation. Unemployment, false consciousness, workers’ rights, cultural hegemony . . . If you remained outside the capitalist system, it was impossible to make any meaningful change inside it, he learned. But if you became part of that order, it would destroy your soul. So how do you transform something from within but remain detached from it at the same time, mate? Yunus pondered hard as he drank smoky tea and the occasional sip of wine, but no matter how high he floated he could not come up with an answer.
At night Yunus would dream of the squatters’ house drifting in a sea so perfect it blended with the sky, where seagulls soared and swooped. He would see the squatters paddling in the water, loud and naked, like cheerful mermaids. Tobiko would be there, standing on a cliff, her long black hair fluttering in the wind as she waved at him, pure joy. Yunus would wave back, feel the sun on his face, dive deep into the blue and swim until his muscles ached.
In the morning he would wake in a wet bed.
*
There wasn’t much cooking done at the squat, save for their speciality dish: chilli con carne. Mince, tinned tomatoes and bags of kidney beans. In lieu of dinner there were biscuits, chocolate bars, apples, bananas and supermarket pastries near their expiry date. If in the mood Tobiko would bake fairy cakes with whatever was available in the kitchen and add generous amounts of hashish to the mixture.
Hackney Council had long been trying to evict the squatters so that the house could be renovated and sold for a healthy profit. There was an ongoing war between the two groups. Most recently the LEB, having discovered that the squatters had figured out how to connect their electricity, had sent someone round to cut it off. Now there were candles and oil lamps on every floor, eerie shadows crawling across the walls. The toilet was repeatedly blocked, the stench often vile. Yunus could not understand why Tobiko continued to live there. If only he were older and had his own job and flat, he would ask her to live with him. But then she would probably bring the Captain with her and the Captain would have to invite the entire gang, because leaders needed people to lead, and thus everyone would end up in his place, which in a few weeks would be exactly like the squatters’ house.
The man everybody called ‘the Captain’ was a rail-thin bloke with hair falling into his flint-grey eyes, teeth slightly stained from tobacco and a ring on every finger, including his thumbs. He had a penchant for saying aloud whatever came into his head. He loved to talk, his gravelly voice growing more passionate with each new point, his audience spellbound. The Captain was the first person to call Yunus a ‘Muzzie’. The boy had never heard the word before and didn’t like it at all.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Tobiko, when Yunus shared his concern with her. ‘Despite appearances, he’s not a racist. Because how can he be a racist when he’s anti-fascist, right?’
Yunus blinked.
‘What I mean is, he likes to pigeonhole people, just to know where everybody stands. His mind works like that.’
‘My sister, Esma, loves words too,’ Yunus cut in, knowing it was a silly comment but saying it anyhow.
Tobiko smiled. ‘The Captain doesn’t love words. He makes love to them.’
Envy and despair must have shown on the boy’s face, for suddenly Tobiko pulled him towards her and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Darlin’, how I wish you were ten years older!’
‘I will be,’ Yunus said matter-of-factly, even though he had blushed up to his ears. ‘In ten years.’
‘Mind, in ten years’ time I’ll be a dried prune, old and wrinkled.’ She ruffled his hair – a favourite gesture of hers that he hated, though he could never admit that to himself.
‘I’ll age fast,’ Yunus ventured.
‘Oh, I know you will. You’re already the oldest little boy I’ve ever known.’
With that she kissed him again, this time on his lips, light and wet. He felt as if he were kissing rain.
‘Don’t you ever change,’ Tobiko whispered. ‘Don’t let the greedy capitalist system get to you.’
‘O-kay.’
‘Give me your word. No . . . wait. Promise on something that matters to you.’
‘How about the Qur’an?’ asked Yunus timidly.
‘Oh, yeah. That’s brilliant.’
And there and then, his lips quivering, his heart hammering, seven-year-old Yunus made an oath to Allah that he would never ever let the capitalist system get anywhere near him, though he didn’t have the foggiest idea what that could mean.
***
Shrewsbury Prison, 1990
Finally it has arrived. A poster of Harry Houdini. The man who could not be chained or shackled. Or imprisoned, for that matter. My idol. It’s one of his earlier shots. Black and white, and many shades of grey. Houdini is young in the picture, a wiry magician with a wide forehead and stunning eyes. The sleeves of his tuxedo are rolled up, displaying half-a-dozen handcuffs around his wrists. Not a trace of fear on his face. Just a vague, pensive air to him. You would think he was surfacing from a dream.
I put it up on the wall. Trippy sees it and breaks into a grin. My cellmate’s name is Patrick, but no one remembers that. Whenever he sees something that grabs his attention – which happens fairly often, even in a place as dull as this – he says, ‘Man, that’s trippy!’ Hence the name.
Trippy is younger than me, a touch shorter. Sallow skin, hair receding at the top, dark brown eyes, heavily lashed. No matter what a con’s age, his mother thinks he is a good boy corrupted by bad friends. Usually, that’s bollocks. In Trippy’s case it’s true. Nice lad from Stafford, messed with some nasty pieces of work. The funny thing is those prats were able to beat the rap, but Trippy is banged up for ten years. That’s how it is. Nothing happens to jackals. Only the ones who play at being a jackal get caught. I’m not saying we’re any better. Passing yourself off as a jackal is worse than being one, sometimes.
This I have never told him, but Trippy’s eyes remind me of Yunus’s. He’s the one I miss most. I’ve never been a true brother to him. I wasn’t there when he needed me, too busy fighting the wrong battles.
Yunus is a big man now. A talented musician. So they say. He has been to see me only twice in twelve years. Esma still visits from time to time, though not lately. She comes to tell me how much she misses, pities and hates me, in that order. Not Yunus. He has cut and run, like he always did. Even Esma’s sharpest words don’t hurt as much as my little brother’s absence. I would like him to forgive me. If he could find it in his heart, that is. Not because I expect him to love me. That’s a pipe dream. I want him to forgive me for his own good. Anger is toxic – gives you cancer. People like me are used to it, but Yunus deserves better.
‘Who is that man?’ asks Trippy, pointing at the wall.
‘He was a great magician. The best.’
‘Really?’
‘Yup, some of his tricks are still a mystery.’
‘Could he make people disappear?’
‘He could make bloody elephants disappear.’
‘Wow, that’s trippy!’
We spend the afternoon talking about Houdini, our heads filled with stories, and, in Trippy’s case, with dope. I like to have my spliff every now and then. But that’s about it. No pills, no smack. Never tried it, never will. I’m not going down that road. When I remind Trippy he has to quit, he puts his thumb in his mouth and makes a sucking noise: ‘I’m not a baby.’
‘Shut your gob!’
He grins like a naughty boy, the dope-head. But he doesn’t push it. He knows he’s the only one who can talk to me like that and he knows my limits.
Shortly after the evening roll call Martin appears with a short, stocky guard we’ve never seen before. The man has a dimple in his chin and hair so black I wonder if he dyes it.
‘Officer Andrew McLaughlin has started today. We’re visiting a few cells.’
Martin is going to retire soon and he wants to make sure we’ll respect this young man who’s here to replace him. There is an awkward silence, like we are all embarrassed and don’t know what to say. Suddenly Martin’s eyes land on the poster behind me.
‘Whose idea was that?’ he murmurs and without waiting for an answer he turns to me. ‘Yours, wasn’t it?’
Martin is a lousy actor. He has already seen this poster. If he hadn’t approved, I’d never have got it. But now he acts as if he’s seeing it for the first time. Just to show the new boy he might be retirement age but he still doesn’t miss a trick. He says that all these years he’s watched men put up all sorts of pictures on their walls – of their wives and family, religious icons, film stars, football players, cricket players, Playboy bunnies – but Houdini, that takes the biscuit.
‘Maybe you’re losing your mind,’ Martin says with a chuckle.
‘Maybe,’ I say.
Officer McLaughlin approaches and sniffs the air around me, like a hunting dog on a trail. ‘Or maybe he’s planning to escape. Houdini was an escapologist.’
Where did that come from? The vein on my forehead throbs mildly. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘Yeah,’ Martin asks, his eyes suddenly harder. ‘Why would he do that?’
Then he turns to the new screw and explains. ‘Alex has been here since ’78. He has only two more years to go.’
‘One year and ten months,’ I correct him.
‘Yeah,’ Martin says and nods as if that sums up everything.
In Martin’s face, as usual, there are two feelings competing – revulsion and respect. The former was there from day one and has never disappeared – contempt for a man who committed the worst crime imaginable and screwed up the one life God gave him. The respect came much later, and most unexpectedly. We have a history together, Martin and I.
But Officer McLaughlin’s face tells a different story. ‘I think I know your case,’ he says flatly. ‘I remember reading about it and saying to myself how could anyone do that to his own mother.’
I realize we are the same age. Not only that. We are the same material. We might have frequented the same streets as teenagers, kissed the same girls. The strangest feeling seizes me – as if I’m looking in a skewed mirror. McLaughlin is the man I could have become had I followed a different path. And I’m the convict he might have turned into had he not managed to duck at the last minute.
‘Fourteen years, eh? What a shame,’ he says.
Martin coughs nervously. You don’t remind a man of his crime in passing, like chatting about the weather. You do that only when push comes to shove. Usually no one reminds anyone of what went before. A man in gaol is a man incarcerated in the past anyway.
‘Alex has turned a corner in the last few years,’ Martin butts in, like a tourist guide. ‘He’s gone through some dark times and is now coming back.’
Dear old Martin. Such optimism. I’ve been through hell, true. But he knows and Trippy knows and I know and my mother’s ghost knows that I’m still there.
I had an awful reputation. I suppose I still do. I easily went for a rib. It was hard to predict what would piss me off. Even I couldn’t tell most of the time. When I was off key I got violent. My left punch was as strong as a brick, so they say. Sometimes I just burst out. The only other cons who would get like this were the junkies. When they craved goods and there was no supply, they lost their rag. But I’m no addict. And that makes me scarier, perhaps. This is my sober state of mind. I harmed myself. My head. Because I didn’t like what was in there. I burned cigarettes inside my palms. They swelled, like puffy eyes. I slashed my legs. Lots of meat on a leg, the thighs, the knees, the ankles. Plenty of possibility. In Shrewsbury a razor is as precious as a ruby, but not as impossible to find.
‘You two will get to know each other,’ says Martin.
‘Well, I’m sure we will,’ says Officer McLaughlin.
Trippy is watching the tension build, uneasy. He knows what’s happening. He’s seen it before. Sometimes a screw takes against one of us and that’s the end of the story. You get off to a bad start and it never gets any better.
The tourist guide makes another attempt at reconciliation. ‘Alex is a boxer. He’s our athlete. He earned a medal when he was at school.’
It is a funny thing to say in my defence and needless to say no one laughs. I want to thank Martin for backing me, but if I move my eyes away from the young officer, even for a second, I will leave myself open.
He has to see I’m no wimp. The last time I was one, it was over twenty years ago. I was a boy in a tree running away from circumcision. It didn’t help. Since then I’ve never been weak. I’ve been wrong. Fucking wrong. But never weak. So I don’t flinch, I don’t blink, I keep staring into the eyes of this McLaughlin, who is staring into my eyes probably for the same bloody reasons.
Then they leave.
*
I wake up in the middle of the night with a start. At first I think my mother has visited me. But, hard as I try, I can’t feel her presence. No rustle like a leaf falling, no soft glow like moonlight trapped. There is only Trippy, snoring, farting, grinding his teeth, fighting his demons.
I sit bolt upright on the bed and look around to find out what on earth could have woken me up. And then I see it. There on the floor is a paper. Somebody must have pushed it through the bars in the door. In the dimmest light penetrating from the corridor, I pick it up. It’s a newspaper clipping. The Daily Express.
BOY KILLED HIS MOTHER FOR ‘HONOUR’, 2 DECEMBER 1978
A 16-year-old boy of Turkish/Kurdish origin stabbed his mother to death in Hackney in an act of honour killing. Iskender Toprak stabbed Pembe Toprak in front of the family home on Lavender Grove.
It is claimed that the 33-year-old mother of three had an extramarital affair. Neighbours said, though they remained married, Adem and Pembe Toprak no lo
nger lived together. ‘But when the father is absent like that the mother’s honour is guarded by the eldest son, which in this case was Iskender,’ said an eyewitness. The police are now investigating whether the teenager, who is still at large, acted alone or was used as a pawn by other family members to carry out a collective murder plan.
A spokeswoman for Scotland Yard told The Times that this case was neither the first nor would it be the last in the UK and Europe. She announced that at the moment they were investigating 150 deaths that could be linked to honour killings. ‘Sadly the number could be higher since not all cases end up in the hands of the police,’ she said. ‘Family and neighbours know more than they tell. Those closest to the victims are the ones who suppress valuable information.’
‘It is a growing cancer in modern society,’ the spokeswoman added, ‘given that in numerous communities the honour of the family is deemed to be more important than the happiness of its individuals.’
My hands shake so hard that the newspaper clipping flaps as though in a mighty wind. I’m dying for a cigarette. Or a drink. Something strong and simple. My father never knew this, but me and the boys used to have a cider or beer every now and then. Never whisky, though. That was another league. I had my first taste of it under this roof. You can find anything in gaol, if you know your way around.
I fold the paper in half, creasing the corners down into the middle. A square, two triangles, a rectangle . . . I make the corners meet, pull the triangles apart and there it is: a paper boat. I put it on the floor. There is no water to make it float. No gust to push the sails. You would think it was made of cement. It doesn’t go anywhere. Like the pain in my chest.
Iskender Toprak
Esma
London, December 1977
We lived in Hackney, on a street called Lavender Grove. It was a constant disappointment to my mother that there were no lavender bushes around, only the name. She never stopped hoping to find some one day, in someone else’s garden, or around a corner, a forgotten grove, a sea of purple.