investigating whether the teenager, who is still at large, acted alone or was used as a pawn by other family members to carry out a collective murder plan.
A spokeswoman for Scotland Yard told
The Times
that this case was neither the first nor would it be the last in the UK and Europe. She announced that at the moment they were investigating 150 deaths that could be linked to honour killings. ‘Sadly the number could be higher since not all cases end up in the hands of the police,’ she said. ‘Family and neighbours know more than they tell. Those closest to the victims are the ones who suppress valuable information.’
‘It is a growing cancer in modern society,’ the spokeswoman added, ‘given that in numerous communities the honour of the family is deemed to be more important than the happiness of its individuals.’
My hands shake so hard that the newspaper clipping flaps as though in a mighty wind. I’m dying for a cigarette. Or a drink. Something strong and simple. My father never knew this, but me and the boys used to have a cider or beer every now and then. Never whisky, though. That was another league. I had my first taste of it under this roof. You can find anything in gaol, if you know your way around.
I fold the paper in half, creasing the corners down into the middle. A square, two triangles, a rectangle . . . I make the corners meet, pull the triangles apart and there it is: a paper boat. I put it on the floor. There is no water to make it float. No gust to push the sails. You would think it was made of cement. It doesn’t go anywhere. Like the pain in my chest.
Iskender Toprak
Esma
London, December 1977
We lived in Hackney, on a street called Lavender Grove. It was a constant disappointment to my mother that there were no lavender bushes around, only the name. She never stopped hoping to find some one day, in someone else’s garden, or around a corner, a forgotten grove, a sea of purple.
I loved the neighbourhood. Afro hair salons, the Jamaican café, the Jewish baker’s, the Algerian boy behind his fruit stall who pronounced my name in a funny way and always had a little present for me, the penniless musicians who lived around the corner and rehearsed every day with their windows open and introduced me, without knowing it, to Chopin; the artist who drew portraits in Ridley Road Market for ten bob, and once made mine for only a smile. All creeds and colours.
Before this house, there was a flat in Istanbul – the place where Iskender and I had spent the early years of our childhood but that now belonged to another time, another country. This was where our family had lived prior to our move to England in May 1970, shortly before Yunus was born. Like many expatriates, Mum, too, had a selective memory. Of the past she had left behind, she would reminisce mostly, if not solely, about the good things: the warm sunshine, the pyramids of spices in the market, the smell of seaweed in the wind. The native land remained immaculate, a Shangri-La, a potential shelter to return to, if not actually in life, at least in dreams.
My recollections, however, were of a mixed nature. Perhaps, of the past they share together, children never remember the same bits as their parents. Once in a while my mind ran back to the basement in that old house: the furniture upholstered in azure; the round, white, crocheted lace doilies on the coffee tables and kitchen shelves; the colony of mould on the walls; the high windows that opened on to the street . . . The flat etched in my memory was a dimly lit place where a crackly radio was on all day long and a faint odour of decay lingered in the air. It was always dusk in there, morning or afternoon made little difference.
I was little when the place was
home
to me. I would sit cross-legged on the carpet in the living room and look up with my mouth half open at the windows near the ceiling. Through them I could see a frantic traffic of legs flowing left and right.
A spokeswoman for Scotland Yard told
The Times
that this case was neither the first nor would it be the last in the UK and Europe. She announced that at the moment they were investigating 150 deaths that could be linked to honour killings. ‘Sadly the number could be higher since not all cases end up in the hands of the police,’ she said. ‘Family and neighbours know more than they tell. Those closest to the victims are the ones who suppress valuable information.’
‘It is a growing cancer in modern society,’ the spokeswoman added, ‘given that in numerous communities the honour of the family is deemed to be more important than the happiness of its individuals.’
My hands shake so hard that the newspaper clipping flaps as though in a mighty wind. I’m dying for a cigarette. Or a drink. Something strong and simple. My father never knew this, but me and the boys used to have a cider or beer every now and then. Never whisky, though. That was another league. I had my first taste of it under this roof. You can find anything in gaol, if you know your way around.
I fold the paper in half, creasing the corners down into the middle. A square, two triangles, a rectangle . . . I make the corners meet, pull the triangles apart and there it is: a paper boat. I put it on the floor. There is no water to make it float. No gust to push the sails. You would think it was made of cement. It doesn’t go anywhere. Like the pain in my chest.
Iskender Toprak
Esma
London, December 1977
We lived in Hackney, on a street called Lavender Grove. It was a constant disappointment to my mother that there were no lavender bushes around, only the name. She never stopped hoping to find some one day, in someone else’s garden, or around a corner, a forgotten grove, a sea of purple.
I loved the neighbourhood. Afro hair salons, the Jamaican café, the Jewish baker’s, the Algerian boy behind his fruit stall who pronounced my name in a funny way and always had a little present for me, the penniless musicians who lived around the corner and rehearsed every day with their windows open and introduced me, without knowing it, to Chopin; the artist who drew portraits in Ridley Road Market for ten bob, and once made mine for only a smile. All creeds and colours.
Before this house, there was a flat in Istanbul – the place where Iskender and I had spent the early years of our childhood but that now belonged to another time, another country. This was where our family had lived prior to our move to England in May 1970, shortly before Yunus was born. Like many expatriates, Mum, too, had a selective memory. Of the past she had left behind, she would reminisce mostly, if not solely, about the good things: the warm sunshine, the pyramids of spices in the market, the smell of seaweed in the wind. The native land remained immaculate, a Shangri-La, a potential shelter to return to, if not actually in life, at least in dreams.
My recollections, however, were of a mixed nature. Perhaps, of the past they share together, children never remember the same bits as their parents. Once in a while my mind ran back to the basement in that old house: the furniture upholstered in azure; the round, white, crocheted lace doilies on the coffee tables and kitchen shelves; the colony of mould on the walls; the high windows that opened on to the street . . . The flat etched in my memory was a dimly lit place where a crackly radio was on all day long and a faint odour of decay lingered in the air. It was always dusk in there, morning or afternoon made little difference.
I was little when the place was
home
to me. I would sit cross-legged on the carpet in the living room and look up with my mouth half open at the windows near the ceiling. Through them I could see a frantic traffic of legs flowing left and right.
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