by Elif Shafak
A man who had been cheated of the honour that was his due was a dead man. You could not walk on the street any more, unless you got used to staring at the pavement. You could not go to a tea house and play a round of backgammon or watch a football match in the beer house. Your shoulders would droop, your fists would be clenched, your eyes would sink into their cavities, and your entire being would be a listless mass, shrinking more and more with every rumour. No one would pay heed to you when you spoke; your word would be no more valuable than dried dung. The cigarette you offered would be left unsmoked, the coffee you drank bitter to the end. You would not be invited to weddings, circumcisions or engagements, lest you bring your ill luck with you. In your own corner and surrounded by disgrace, you would dry up like a desiccated fruit. Tariq knew this first hand because it had happened to his father. Baba hadn’t died of cirrhosis. The alcohol may have sped things along, but in the end it was dishonour that had killed him. Adem and Khalil had been too young to understand this, but Tariq had seen it happen.
After Meral left, Tariq took a quiet moment to think. So far he had seen his brother’s condition less as a vice and more as a calamity that had befallen him. Gambling was a sickness, the worst kind. But squandering your money on a dancer, a woman who was no different than the ones who posed in magazines, was worse. He had to have a serious talk with Adem, that is, if he could find him. When a man neglected his home to this extent, the rest of the family might easily go off the rails. To make sure this didn’t happen, Tariq would have to keep a close eye on Pembe and the kids. They shared the same surname. If one of them was disgraced, shame would attach itself to him as the eldest Toprak. Their honour was his honour.
The Missing Piece
London, January 1978
The Phoenix Cinema had been founded in 1910. A modernist, tiled façade, a short flight of stairs to the foyer, Art Deco auditorium. It had served the nation by showing newsreels and escapist films throughout the war, but luckily remained unscathed by German bombs. Recently, after having been taken over by a small film distributor, the cinema had started to show obscure and art-house movies, although Hollywood classics were also occasionally on offer. But its location was so far from the centre that it was almost always empty.
Today there were only four in the audience – a young couple who seemed less interested in the movie than in inventing new kissing techniques, and a man who sat with his flat cap on and looked older than the cinema itself. The fourth was Elias, stiff and anxious, sitting somewhere in the middle, all by himself. It had been several minutes since the film had started, but he still kept glancing at the entrance. She hadn’t come.
Elias watched the opening scene filled with apprehension. A picture with a smile, and perhaps a tear, it said on the screen. Despite himself Elias’s face softened at the sight of Charlie Chaplin. He had always loved Chaplin – his humour interlaced with sorrow, his infinite humanity, those sad, soot-black eyes. Slowly, he found his tension leaking away and his mind drifting into the story of The Kid.
After a while Elias felt a slight movement at the end of the row, but he dared not turn to see who it was. Someone approached him in the dark and sat by his side, quiet as a shadow. His heart thumping behind his ribcage, Elias made out Pembe’s face, beautiful and radiant, out of the corner of his eye. Her gaze was glued to the screen, her chest rising and falling.
I’m so glad you came, Elias wanted to say. You know, I was so worried you were upset with me. But he respected her silence and whispered not a word. Together they focused on the film.
Pembe watched The Kid with wide-open eyes, the look of surprise on her countenance deepening with each scene. When Chaplin found an abandoned baby in a rubbish bin, and raised him like his own son, she smiled with appreciation. When the child flung stones at the neighbours’ windows so that the tramp – disguised as a glazier – could fix them and earn some money, she chuckled. When social services took the boy away, her eyes welled up with tears. And finally, as father and son were reunited, her face lit up with contentment, and a trace of something that Elias took to be melancholy. So absorbed did she seem in the film that he felt a twinge of resentment. What a funny thing it was to be jealous of Charlie Chaplin.
Elias observed her as she unpinned her hair, and then pinned it back. He caught a whiff of jasmine and rose, a heady, charming mixture. Only minutes before the film came to an end, he found the nerve to reach out for her fingers, feeling like a teenager on his first date. To his relief, she didn’t move her hand away. They sat still – two sculptures carved out of the dark, both scared of making a move that would disrupt the tenderness of the moment.
When the lights came back on, it took them a few seconds to grow accustomed to real life. Quickly, he took out a notepad and wrote down the name of another cinema in another part of the town. ‘Next week, same day, same time, will you come?’
‘Yes,’ she faltered.
Before he’d found a chance to say anything else, Pembe leaped to her feet and headed towards the exit, running away from him and everything that had taken place between them, or would have taken place, had they been different people. She held in her palm the name of the place they were to meet next time, grasping it tightly, as if it were the key to a magic world, a key she would use right now were it in her power to decide.
And so it began. They started to meet every Friday at the same time, and occasionally on other afternoons. They frequented the Phoenix more than any other place, but they also met at several other cinemas, all far-away from their homes, all unpopular. Since the films did not change quickly, they ended up watching The Kid twice. But they also went to The King and I, The Thief of Baghdad, King Kong, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Ben-Hur.
They viewed all these films not so much as stories from a bygone period as destinies still unfolding somewhere. Whichever film they went to see, it was always the same. She kept her eyes on the screen while he kept his eyes on her. Elias loved the way her expression altered with every new twist in the plot. He had the impression that he was meeting the numerous women dormant inside her, glimpsing sides of her character that were hidden from everyone, perhaps even from herself. Every so often, she also stared at him in the same way, as if keen to discover the depths of his soul. Elias shuddered, wondering what she really saw there, and whether she thought it was worth loving him.
In time he found out more things about her, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that he would complete only long after she had gone. He came to learn that, despite her name, her favourite colour was amethyst. She loved singing old Kurdish love songs and had quite a fine voice. In addition to pork, which she didn’t consume for religious reasons, she would never eat shrimps, snails, calamari or cranberries, all of which made her teeth clench, and yet she could suck on slices of lemon all day long. He also found out how young she was. Though the way she dressed and carried herself made her look older, she was, in fact, sixteen years his junior.
Slowly he was beginning to make sense of the situation. This unfathomable, almost enigmatic attraction that he felt for her, a woman so alien to the life he had led, was like a childhood memory coming back. For a reason unbeknownst to his conscious mind, but not to his heart, he felt the need to love and to protect her against the whole wide world. He’d had a taste of this emotion with the three women in his life: his sister, his mother and his ex-wife. Yet what he felt for Pembe was different from anything he had known before. She was his gateway to a world that, though more ambiguous and dangerous, also felt more real. It disturbed him enormously that it was an illicit love, but the possibility of losing her at any moment only added to his aching desire for her. She was the missing link in his life, the connection to his past, his ancestors, his Eastern side. Her love was one that made up for the lost pieces and the lost time.
Each time, shortly before the lights in the cinema came back on, they would move away from each other, and then go their separate ways. Thus they would
never be seen together – or so they hoped.
She always strode out before him. He would linger behind, pacing inside the cinema, observing the posters on the walls, the litter on the floor, the sweets and the fizzy drinks, still thinking of the film, and of the light in her eyes, trying to get used to the emptiness she had left behind.
***
Shrewsbury Prison, 1991
In the middle of the night I wake with a start. It’s dark in the cell except for the sickly yellow light creeping in from the corridor. They are supposed to have a calming effect on our nerves, these bulbs. Some shrink’s idea. In fact, they make me want to puke.
The bed feels rough, like lying on blocks of cement. But that’s not the reason why I’ve woken up at such an ungodly hour. Something is wrong, I can tell. I hold my breath and listen. The snoring, the farting, the moaning, the rustling, the clenching of teeth from the cells near by. People outside think that a prison is a terribly quiet place. It’s not true. But tonight, despite the usual sounds, it feels strangely empty. Something is missing. Or else I’m losing my marbles.
My mother used to say that premonitions are God’s whispers in a dark forest. From time to time, He would tell us to be careful, not to be friends with someone, not to push open certain doors, though we would never pay attention. But I’m not sure that’s what’s happening to me right now. A premonition is a sense that something bad is going to happen. What I feel is different. It’s the kind of sorrow that hits you after something has already happened, and it’s too late.
I prop myself up on my elbow, and prick up my ears. At first I suspect my mother’s ghost has visited me, but I quickly realize she’s not around tonight. My heart isn’t pounding, which is what happens every time I sense her presence. No weird glow in one corner of the cell either, like freshly fallen snow. No soft rustling, as if from silk curtains. No scent of jasmine and rose. No smells of sesame halva. I’ll never forget when that happened for the first time. It freaked me out like hell.
She used to visit me more often in the past. Then less and less frequently. Lately she doesn’t appear at all any more. I dread that she’ll never show up again. It’s a stupid thought, but as long as she comes to see me there’s a hope that she might forgive me.
At the beginning I was scared out of my wits. I couldn’t go to sleep for fear that she would arrive in the midst of the night and strangle me. It took me a while to learn that ghosts don’t do such things. You think they’re after revenge. But they only want to understand. So they fix their empty gaze on you and wait for an explanation. They stare into your soul. They don’t communicate. They don’t ask. At least my mother doesn’t. It’s like a silent film, except in colour.
But tonight Mum hasn’t dropped round. My alarm bells have nothing to do with her. What is it, then? I exhale. I inhale. Then I hold my breath. I listen, this time more carefully. Suddenly it hits me. Trippy isn’t snoring. Nor is he twitching, tossing or talking in his sleep, which he always does, no matter how worn out or high. I get off my bed and approach him. His back is turned towards me. ‘Trippy.’
No answer. He doesn’t move. ‘Patrick, you okay?’
I don’t know why I call him by his real name, which I haven’t done in years. But the word pops out. I fling the blanket off him. There is a foul smell. He looks strangely small, as if he has shrunk overnight. I shake him by the shoulders. He doesn’t budge. I shake him harder. His feet dangle in a funny, clumsy way, like a broken puppet’s. His arms are heavy, even though he is the skinniest bloke I know.
‘Trippy, don’t fuck about, mate! Stop it, man.’
I reach for his pulse. His neck is stiff and cold. ‘Colder than a witch’s tit,’ he would say. There is no heartbeat. I prop his head against my arm and breathe into his mouth. The mouth that kissed his missus, and a few other women. The mouth that swore all the time, but also prayed. The mouth that ruined him, but was his saving grace. There is no reaction.
I start to laugh. Because it’s ridiculous. The Angel of Death is either blind or has gone senile. Azrael should give up work. Doesn’t God see that the henchman isn’t doing his job properly? Why do the wrong people always die? I’ve been teaching Trippy how to use his fists. He was an awful student, slow on the uptake. But it was coming along. I’ve been making him hit me in the same place: on my abdomen. There are deadlier places on a man’s body. Like the head, the neck, the Adam’s apple, even the bridge of the nose. But if he hit me there it would look like a real brawl. Then Trippy would get in trouble. Punching me in the abdomen is less suspicious. Everyone knows I box for fun.
With the right force the abdomen is a fatal target. Internal bleeding. Pronounced dead in a few hours if left untreated. And there is no doubt in my mind that it would be left untreated.
Trippy didn’t know all this, of course. It would be an accident. An inspector would come and scribble on his notepad. His secretary would type the report and leak it to the press. A tabloid would show interest: ‘Honour-Killer Dies in Gaol’. Officer McLaughlin would cut out the clipping and place it in his file. They would talk about me, for a while. No one would feel sorrow. Then the case would be dropped. As clean as the plate from which a hungry man eats. Trippy would be off the hook and I would be gone. Free at last.
Houdini was just a reminder. Officer McLaughlin says there is no such thing, that it’s just a cock-and-bull story, the magician didn’t die of blows, as idiots like me tend to believe. But I don’t care whether Houdini really died of this or that. Every time I see his poster I remember that it’s possible to be punched to death. Then again, he reminds me of other things too. Sad things. It was because of Houdini that Uncle Tariq found out about my mother’s lover and so did everyone else, including me.
I move Trippy to the side and sit next to him. Something cracks under me. I look to see what it is. I pick it up and start to chuckle again. ‘You sad bastard.’
It’s a syringe. When did he do that? Was it a mishap? Was it a golden shot? How is it that I didn’t notice a thing? Did he wait until I had gone to sleep? I’m a log. I’m a bloody bag of shit. I sleep like a fat hedgehog in his winter nest. I’m disgusted at myself. I check the bed. The sheet is wet with pee, saliva and vomit. His body tried to flush out the poison. Then I notice Trippy’s left fist, clenched hard, the joints on his fingers like spikes. I force the fingers open. There is a piece of paper. I approach the bars so that I can read it under the light from the corridor.
Alex, brother. if you’re reading this it means I’ve made the cut. You wanted to go before me, didn’t you? You prat. You think I didn’t know? But I was gonna help you. Honest to God I was. It’s just I couldn’t take it no more. Don’t get pissed off. I’ll wait for you. Whatever that is up there. I’ll go and check it out. No more tricks. No more Houdini. You were a good mate. When I see your ma I’m gonna tell her that.
Your friend Trippy
Tears roll down my cheeks. I slap my face. It doesn’t help. I pull my hair. With one hand, then with both. Harder. Harder. I can feel the skin give way, the hair rip out. And all this time I’m making this sound like a dog whimpering in the street. A car has hit me and run. My bones are broken. Trippy has run over me.
I rise to my feet. My head is about to explode. Adrenalin is bringing back a feeling I once knew well: anger. I thought I had left it at the roadside. Two years ago I put it in a sack, tied it tight up and drowned it, like an unwanted kitten. I promised myself to spend the rest of my life trying, at least trying, to be a better man. But so much for trying. It’s found me again. It’s followed me, sniffing its way back home. And here it is, my old playmate Mr Anger. Loyal as ever.
I pull down the Houdini poster and rip it to pieces. I hurl my bed sheet and blanket and pillow. I kick the walls, I pound the walls, I pounce upon the walls, I hit my head against the walls.
Lights. Footsteps. Hassle. Someone enters the cell. ‘What the hell?’
Others flock in.
They push me to the floor, and keep my head down. The lights are turned on. Too much light. My eyes hurt. Is that Officer Andrew McLaughlin towering over me? What’s he doing here? Night shift? The man loves his job.
They’re poking around, checking for Trippy’s pulse. They find the syringe. They see the note. One of them starts to read it aloud. Shit. I free myself, catch them unawares. I jump to my feet. Before they know it I seize the note.
‘Hey . . .’ a young screw exclaims, as if I have cheated in a game; and he is pissed off.
Officer McLaughlin takes a step forward. ‘Give me that.’
‘It’s mine.’
‘Nothing is yours, you moron. Now give it to me.’
We stare at each other. Finally the moment has come. He can show me how much he hates me. And I can show him the feeling is mutual. No more pretending. No more fake attempts to be better men than we are. We are what we are. I put the note in my mouth.
‘Oh, don’t you even think about that,’ Officer McLaughlin says. ‘You’ve watched too many films, huh?’
I start to chew. Slowly. No need to hurry. They are all staring at me.
‘Alex, you are gonna regret this so bad. I am giving you one last chance to save your arse. Stop it.’
Chew, chew, chew. Never knew paper tasted so chalky. I wonder if Trippy can see me. When we die do our souls leave our bodies right away and float up to the sky like a hot-air balloon? Or do they linger for a while? Did my mother’s soul stay around and watch my hand pull out the knife that had stabbed her?
I swallow the note.
The first punch lands on my chin. I’m totally unprepared. My teeth bang against each other pretty hard. Officer McLaughlin knows where to hit. Not like poor Trippy. The other screws look away. They don’t approve of it, I can see. They have wives, children. Good citizens. They want to sleep peacefully at night. Nobody wants blood on their hands. But they don’t try to stop him either. Because that’s the thing with bullies. Nobody says ‘Enough!’ to them. That’s why bullies are who they are. And I should know, because I was, and still am, one of them.