Honour

In a family, a single word can be like a hand-me-down coat. For one child, it’s a perfect fit—warm, familiar, a source of pride and belonging. For another, the sleeves are too long, the shoulders too broad; it’s an awkward, heavy garment they can never quite grow into. This is the nature of inheritance. It’s the invisible things: the stories, the expectations, and the codes of conduct. These codes, especially, can feel like a language spoken fluently by some family members and only haltingly by others. One person understands a glance across the dinner table as a sign of affection, while another feels it as a warning. A shared silence can be a comfortable blanket or a suffocating weight. And the most powerful words, like ‘love,’ ‘duty,’ and ‘honour,’ are rarely defined. They are simply passed down, leaving each generation to wrestle with their fit, sometimes with devastating consequences.

This gap between what a word is meant to mean and how it is actually felt is the territory Elif Shafak has explored throughout her life. As a Turkish-British novelist who has lived in numerous countries, she has always been an observer of cultural codes and the often-unspoken rules that govern families and societies. Shafak noticed how the concept of ‘honour’ was almost exclusively attached to women, becoming a burden rather than a virtue—a heavy coat forced upon them. She wrote Honour to unravel the threads of this inheritance, to understand how a family’s love could become so entangled with a tradition of violence, and to give voice to those who have buckled under the weight of a word they never chose to wear.

Module 1: The Weight of Names and the Burden of Gender

The story begins with a fundamental truth. A name is a prophecy, a burden, or a prayer cast into the universe. We see this with the birth of twin girls, Pembe and Jamila. Their mother, Naze, has already borne six daughters. She is exhausted. She is desperate for a son. In a silent protest to God, she names the twins Destiny and Enough. But their father, Berzo, overrules her. He gives them names that are sweet and conventional: Pembe, meaning Pink, and Jamila, meaning Beautiful. This first conflict sets the stage for a recurring theme. A woman's identity is a battleground for external expectations.

Naze's entire life is defined by the cultural pressure to produce a male heir. Her sadness at the birth of more daughters is a reflection of her precarious social standing. This pressure is a powerful, invisible force that shapes every woman in the story. Shafak shows us that in this world, honor is a concept exclusively for men. As Naze explains to her daughters, men have honor. Women carry shame. She uses a powerful metaphor. Men are like black fabric; they can hide stains. Women are like white cambric; every speck of dirt shows.

This brings us to a critical insight from the book. The architecture of honor is built on the policing of female bodies and choices. It’s a system where a woman’s virtue is the family's collective responsibility, but the consequences of any perceived transgression fall on her alone. It’s about the daily scrutiny of how a woman dresses, where she works, and who she speaks to. We see this later when Pembe’s son, Iskender, orders her to quit her job at a salon simply to stop gossip. The logic is chillingly simple: where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And in the world of honor, a woman must not even allow smoke to appear.

Module 2: The Twin Halves of a Single Soul

Now, let's turn to the central relationship in the novel: the bond between the twins, Pembe and Jamila. They are described as "one body, one soul." This is a literal, almost mystical connection. When Pembe gets a painful injection in the city, Jamila cries out in their village miles away. One’s pain causes the other to bleed. This bond serves as a powerful metaphor for interconnectedness and shared destiny.

Their lives, however, diverge dramatically. This divergence is driven by a core difference in their personalities. Pembe is ambitious. As a child, she dreams of being a sailor and traveling the world. Jamila, in contrast, is rooted. She lacks a singular, driving ambition and finds contentment in her home. This leads to a fundamental principle explored in the book: Individual ambition dictates life's trajectory, creating paths that can never again converge. Pembe follows her ambition to London, marrying and starting a family in a new world. Jamila stays behind, becoming a revered midwife in their Kurdish homeland.

Despite the physical distance, their bond remains the emotional core of the story. Pembe’s migration to London transforms their connection. She sends letters and postcards, describing a world of red buses and clock towers that Jamila can barely imagine. Jamila, in turn, lives a life of profound purpose but also deep loneliness. She is the "Virgin Midwife," a figure of immense respect in her community. Her skill is so great that people whisper she can keep the Angel of Death at bay. Yet, she lives alone, unmarried, her personal life sacrificed to her calling. And it doesn't stop there. Even when separated by continents, family members remain trapped in the psychological roles assigned in childhood. Pembe is always the adventurous one, Jamila the steadfast one. Their letters are a testament to this, filled with love, longing, and the painful awareness that they are two halves of a whole, living incomplete lives. This separation becomes the novel's central tragedy, a wound that never heals.