Free Honour by Elif Shafak Page A

Cadillac Fleetwood or the new Mercedes-Benz. Not every man in town could afford these models – their owners were mostly politicians, businessmen, casino patrons or football players. On the walls of the garage there were framed pictures in which the mechanics beamed next to their influential customers.
    Sometimes Adem would escort Baba to the local tea house, where they would while away the day sipping
sahlep
, * linden or tea, and watching men of all ages play backgammon and draughts. Politics was a hot subject. That, football and the stories in the tabloids. With a general election coming up, the tea house was abuzz with fervent debates. The prime minister – the first democratically elected leader in the country’s history – claimed that his Democratic Party would win a landslide victory. Nobody could possibly guess that he would indeed get re-elected for another term, at the end of which he would be hanged by a military junta.
    On such languid afternoons, Adem would imitate Baba (the Sober One), smacking his tongue on a sugar cube, holding the tea glass with his little finger raised in the air. There would be so much smoke around that when they returned home his hair would stink like an ashtray. Frowning ever so slightly, his mother, Aisha, would rush him to the bathroom. He wished she wouldn’t do that. It made him feel grown-up to have the smell of tobacco in his hair. When he confessed this to his father one day, Baba laughed, and said, ‘There are two things in this world that make a man out of a boy. The first is the love of a woman. The second is the hatred of another man.’
    Baba (the Sober One) explained that those who knew only the former softened into wimps and those who knew only the latter hardened like rocks, but those who experienced both had what it took to become a Sword of Steel. As skilled artisans knew, the best way to solidify a metal was to heat it in fire and cool it in water. ‘So it is with a man. You need to heat him in love, cool him in hatred,’ concluded Baba, pausing for his lesson to sink in.
    It worried Adem that he never had emotions this profound, but he kept such anxieties to himself. That same year he had his first asthma attack – a malady that would disappear in his teenage years, but never really abandon his body, chasing him throughout his life.
    From time to time, Baba (the Sober One) would bring home leftovers from a slaughterhouse near by – chunks of meat, bones and entrails. On such occasions, he would borrow his manager’s pick-up van, taking the family on a barbecue picnic. Adem and his two brothers would sit on the bed in the back, boasting about how many sausages or calves’ feet they could eat in one sitting. Baba in the front, with his wife sitting next to him, would make jokes, and, if in an especially mellow mood, would roll down the window and sing. The songs would invariably be tearjerkers, but he rendered them so merrily no one could tell. Their van loaded with pots, pans and linen, their hearts light and gay, they would head to the hills over the Bosporus. It troubled them that there was a cemetery in the vicinity. Yet there wasn’t much they could do. So it was that since time immemorial the dead in Istanbul had resided in the greenest areas with the best views of the city.
    Once there, the boys would look for a suitable spot in the shade. Before sitting, however, their mother would pray for the souls of the deceased, asking their permission to spend time on the land. Fortunately, the dead always answered in the affirmative. After a few seconds of waiting, Aisha would nod, and spread out the mats for everyone to sit on. Then she would light the portable stove, and set up everything needed to prepare the food. Meanwhile, the boys would romp happily about, destroying ant colonies, chasing crickets and playing zombies. As the smell of sizzling beef filled the air, Baba would clap his hands, indicating that the moment had come to open his first bottle