Free Honour by Elif Shafak Page B

of
raki
.
    Sometimes he would start slowly and gradually pick up the pace. At other times, he would set off fast, downing three glasses in the time it would normally take him to finish one. But, one way or the other, by the end of the lunch he was always a few sheets to the wind.
    No sooner had Baba emptied the first bottle than he would start to show telltale signs. He would scowl more often, cursing himself, and every few minutes would scold the boys over something so trivial nobody could remember what it was afterwards. Anything might annoy him: the food was too salty, the bread stale, the ice not cold enough. In order to soothe his nerves, he would open up a second bottle.
    Towards the end of one picnic, as the sun was beginning to set and the seagulls were shrieking, time seemed to come to a halt, a sharp smell of anise hanging in the air. Baba added some water to his drink, watching the translucent liquid turn to a milky grey, as blurred as his thoughts. After a while, he rose awkwardly to his feet, his eyes solemn, his chin raised, and made a toast to the cemetery.
    ‘You fellows are so damn lucky,’ he said. ‘No rent to pay, no petrol to buy, no mouths to feed. No wife nagging you. No boss reading you the riot act. You don’t know how blessed you are.’
    The graves listened, a low wind swirling the dead leaves to and fro.
    ‘From dust we came,’ Baba declared, ‘and to dust we must return.’
    On the way home, he insisted that the boys sit in the front with them. No matter how careful they were, stifling every gasp, watching their every word, something always happened, something dire enough to send their father into a lather. The potholes in the road, a missing traffic sign, a stray dog running in front of the van, the news on the radio. This new man, Khrushchev, didn’t seem to know what he was doing; his brain addled by vodka, a vulgar drink that could not hold a candle to
raki
; Nasser expected too much of the Arabs, who spoke the same language but never listened to one another; and why didn’t the Shah of Iran divorce this second wife of his, who obviously couldn’t give him an heir?
    ‘What a mess! What a shitty world!’
    Baba (the Drunk One) cursed the municipality, the mayor, the politicians. For a few happy minutes his irritation was aimed at the world outside, sparing his family. Usually, someone in the van would do or say something to annoy him. One of the children would wriggle, hiccup, burp, fart or guffaw.
    On this day Aisha begged him to drive more slowly.
    ‘What in hell is wrong with you?’ he inquired in a tone so composed it hardly matched the severity of the question. ‘Can’t I have a moment’s peace? Hmm? Do you want me to explode? Is that what you want?’
    Nobody answered. The boys stared at their scrubby knees, or at a fly that had flown in through the open window and now couldn’t get out.
    Baba raised his voice. ‘I work my fingers to the bone. Every fucking day. Like a mule! Just so that you lot can eat. Am I the jackass of this family?’
    Someone said *  – a lame attempt at appeasement, considering what came next.
    ‘You’re vampires, all of you, sucking my blood.’ He took his hands off the steering wheel to show his wrists, thin and sallow. ‘Do I have more blood to feed you? Have you left me any?’
    ‘Please hold on to the wheel,’ his wife whispered.
    ‘Shut your damn mouth! I’m not going to learn how to drive from you.’
    Adem could not help but feel sorry for Baba, who clearly was the victim, the sufferer. Guilt would gnaw at his every fibre. They had done it again. They had upset him, although he had warned them over and over. How Adem wanted to make it up to him, to kiss his hand and promise never to suck his blood again.
    ‘Do I tell you how to cook lentils? Of course I don’t. Because that’s not my job. And driving isn’t
your
job, woman! What do you know about cars?’
    Another time he slammed on the brakes so hard that the van spun round