Honor (9781101606148) by Elif Shafak Read Free Book Online

confined between walls, what was the use of her travelling to a faraway country? Why couldn’t human beings live and die where they were born? Jamila found big cities suffocating, and was daunted by the thought of unknown places – the buildings, the avenues, the crowds pressing on her chest, leaving her gasping for air.
    In her letters, usually towards the last paragraph, Pembe would write, ‘Are you angry at me, sister? Could you forgive me in your heart?’ But she already knew what the answer would be. Jamila was not angry with her twin or with anyone else. And yet Jamila was also aware that the question had to be asked over and over, like a wound that needed to be dressed regularly.
    They called her Kiz Ebe – the Virgin Midwife. They said she was the best midwife this impoverished Kurdish region had seen in a hundred years. Pregnant women felt relieved when she was in charge, as if her presence would ensure an easy labour, keeping Azrael at bay. Their husbands would bob their heads knowingly, and say, ‘The Virgin Midwife is in command. Everything will go well. Thanks first to Allah, then to her.’
    Such words amounted to nothing; they only deepened Jamila’s fear of not living up to people’s expectations. She knew she was good – as skilled as one could get before starting to decline from old age, poor eyesight or sheer bad luck. Like every midwife, she was aware of the danger of her name being uttered in the same breath as the name of God. When she heard the peasants speak such blasphemy, she would murmur to herself,
Tövbe, tövbe.
* They didn’t have to hear her; it was enough that God did. She had to make it clear to Him that she was not coveting His power, not competing with Him, the one and only life-giver.
    Jamila knew what thin ice she was walking upon. You thought you were experienced and knowledgeable until you came across a delivery that filled you with dread, making you almost like a novice again. Every now and then something would go wrong, terribly wrong, despite her best efforts. At other times she couldn’t make it to a labour in time and when she arrived would find that the mother had just given birth on her own, sometimes even having cut the umbilical cord with a blunt blade and tied it with her hair. Jamila took these incidents as signs from God in which he was reminding her of her limitations.
    They came from distant villages and forsaken parishes to fetch her. There were other midwives closer to their homes, but they sought her out. She was quite popular in this part of the world. There were dozens of girls who had been named after her –
Enough Beauty
.
    â€˜May she carry your name and be half as chaste as you,’ prayed the fathers of the girls she brought into this world.
    Jamila nodded, saying nothing, conscious of the insinuation. They would like their daughters to be modest and virtuous, and yet they wanted them to get married and have children in due course. Their daughters’ names and dispositions might be similar to the midwife’s, but their fates had better be different.
    Approaching the window, a knitted shawl on her shoulders, a lamp in her hand, Jamila squinted into the dark. Under the deep mantle of the night, the valley was sleeping, bare and barren, bleary with tangled bushes and arid soil. She had always imagined a softness beneath this harsh landscape, which she likened to a rough man who hid a tender heart. Still, she didn’t have to live on her own in so remote a place. She, too, could have gone. Somewhere. Anywhere. Not that she had the means or any relatives who were willing to help her start anew elsewhere. Already thirty-two, she was past her prime and beyond proper marriage age. It was too late for her to start a family.
A dry womb is like a melon gone bad: fine on the outside, desiccated inside, and good for nothing
, the peasants said about women like her.
    Even so, she could marry a