This is a story of a Turkish-Kurdish family living in London and how the family’s sense of Honour is held by the “appropriate” behaviour of the women while the men live how they wish with approbation.
[Trigger
Warning: Domestic Violence]
[Spoiler alert]
This book is about violence against women and girls in an intimate familial setting in the name of honour. Set in the 1970’s, the main characters are twin girls, born in a village in Kurdistan. From a young age they are subjected to honour abuse as one is kidnapped in retaliation for an issue with the marriage of her older sister and , having been taken by men, is punished herself for then being tainted by any sexual abuse that may have been foisted on her. Her Turkish suitor marries her twin instead and they leave for Istanbul and then on to London.
Here, again, the men are free to have affairs, visit prostitutes, gamble, and the father abandons his wife and by now three children, to live with a lap dancer who he pursues to the Gulf when she leaves him for a wealthier suitor. But it is when the mother develops a platonic relationship with a kind, older man she meets accidentally, that the family’s honour is brought into question. The eldest son, despite still being at school, is now the head of the family and, ripe for radicalisation, is pressured to take action when the mother’s indiscretion is discovered. His action has tragic consequences, and he ends up serving a long sentence in prison.
While there is
a sense of growing, learning and redemption in the characters at the end, with one
twin dying before her time, one twin murdered and the father dying by suicide, it
is a tragic story.
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