The results of a ComRes poll carried out by the BBC in 2013 state that over two thirds (sixty-nine per cent) of young British Asians across all the major faiths believe that families should live according to the concept of honour, or izzat. Three per cent believe that the ultimate sanction of honour killings is justified, including the same number of Muslims and Hindus, but rising to four per cent of Sikhs and Christians.
Banaz Mahmod, whose story is referenced in this novel, entered an arranged and abusive marriage at the age of sixteen. Her crime was to abandon this marriage in 2005 and choose her own partner. Her father, her uncle and other members of the family met shortly afterwards at the family home to discuss killing Banaz and her boyfriend. After two separate visits to the police station in Mitcham, during which Banaz named the people she believed were planning to kill her, the first attempt was made on her life. This attempt was reported to the police and Banaz agreed to co-operate in bringing charges against her family. The following day, on January 24, 2006, following a two-hour ordeal in which she was savagely beaten and raped, Banaz was murdered by two men hired by her father and uncle. Three months later, her body was discovered in a suitcase, buried in a garden in Birmingham. Her killers fled to Iraq, but were eventually extradited and jailed, along with Banaz’s father, her uncle and three others involved in the disposal of her body.
Rahmat Sulemani, the young man Banaz had chosen to spend her life with, and who himself had been targeted, said, ‘My life depended on her. She was my present, my future, my hope. She was the best thing that ever happened to me. My life went away when Banaz died. There is no life. The only thing which was keeping me going was the moment to see justice being done for Banaz.’
In May 2016, while I was writing this book, a decade after the woman he loved was murdered, Rahmat Sulemani hanged himself. Though he was alive when police officers found him, he died in hospital five days later.
There is no life…
Mark Billingham
London, September 2016
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to the authors and editors of several books and academic publications that were enormously helpful in the writing of this novel: ‘Honour’ Killings In The UK by Emily Dyer, published by the Henry Jackson Society (2015); Honour Killing, Stories Of Men Who Killed by Ayse Onal (2008); ‘Honour’ Killing & Violence, Theory, Policy & Practice (2014), edited by Aisha K. Gill, Carolyn Strange and Karl Roberts; Honour by Elif Shafak (2015).
All were compelling and disturbing in equal measure, and Love Like Blood could not have been written without them.
I owe an enormous debt to the early readers – Nithya Rae, Manpreet Grewal and Afeera Ahmed – whose feedback was invaluable.
Thanks so much for taking the time.
Those who take the time with every book have once again confirmed how fortunate I am to have such amazing publishers. Ed Wood is a frighteningly smart, sensitive and eagle-eyed editor, and it’s an unalloyed pleasure to work with him and the rest of the incredible team at Little, Brown and Sphere: David Shelley, Tamsin Kitson, Catherine Burke, Robert Manser, Sean Garrehy, Laura Sherlock, Emma Williams, Sarah Shrubb and Thalia Proctor. At Grove Atlantic in the US, I am equally lucky to be working with Morgan Entrekin, Allison Malecha, Deb Seager, and Justina Batchelor, while in Germany, Tim Jung at Atrium has comprehensively saved my bacon. Or schnitzel…
Thanks to my wonderful agent Sarah Lutyens and to Francesca Davies and Juliet Mahony at Lutyens & Rubinstein. Thanks, as always, to the wise and wonderful Wendy Lee and to Martyn Waites (and Killing Joke) for the title.
And, of course, to Claire.
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