Honour by Elif Shafak

revelation: he could not remember his mother’s face any more. He stopped for a moment, gooseflesh sweeping up and down his body – a pause that caused him to miss the next cluster of biscuits. Bilal, standing several feet down the assembly line, noticed the mistake and quietly covered it up. Had Adem realized what had happened, he would have given his friend a grateful nod, but in that moment he was still trying to recall what his mother used to look like.
    There was a woman in the back of his mind, distant and hazy, as if she were standing in a fine mist. She was tall and slim, her face like marble, her pale eyes calm, concerned. A wedge of sunlight from a latticed window fell on the back of her head, leaving half her face in shadow. Her hair was coppery-brown, the colour of autumn leaves. But as the light dimmed, it changed to a shade so dark it appeared ink-black. Her lips were full and round. Perhaps not; Adem could not be sure. Perhaps she had thin lips that turned down at the corners. The woman seemed to change every second. Hers was a face sculpted out of melting wax.
    Or perhaps he was confusing the memory of the woman who had borne him with the image of his wife. The long, wavy, chestnut hair that he now saw belonged to Pembe, not to his mother, Aisha. Had his wife become such an inseparable part of his existence that she eclipsed all his memories – even those from a time before they had met? He shifted his weight from one foot to another and closed his eyes.
    Another recollection came. He and his mother were in an emerald-green field that overlooked a dam. He must have been eight. His mother had let down her hair, which Istanbul’s notorious
poyraz
* kept blowing about her face. Ahead of them, the sky was a generous blue, flakes of gold, pewter and silver skittering across the faraway hills. Of the dam’s numerous gates only a few were open, and the lake level was low. The boy felt dizzy as he watched the waters churning beneath them. Any other day his mother would have warned him not to get so close to the edge, but oddly not that day.
    ‘Sheitan waits on the ledges to pull down whoever gets too close.’
    That’s why they fell all the time – toddlers who leaned over balcony railings, housewives who stepped on windowsills to clean the windows, or chimney sweepers who clomped about near the eaves. Sheitan would clutch their ankles with his claws and yank them down into the emptiness below. Only cats survived because they had nine lives and could afford to die eight times.
    Hand in hand, they had walked down the hill, until they reached the huge walls that sloped all the way down one side of the dam. Aisha sighed at the top of the gully, her lips moving. She seemed to have forgotten that the Evil One loomed close. Or perhaps not, because, once he concentrated on what she was saying, the boy realized she was praying – to ward off misfortune, no doubt. He was relieved, but only momentarily. What if the Devil were hiding somewhere behind the bushes, ready to push them into the void? With a sudden impulse, he pulled his hand from his mother’s and glanced around until he was certain there was no one else there. When he turned his head again, she wasn’t by his side.
    Bit by bit, second by second, he watched her fall.
    *
    Adem opened his eyes to find Bilal staring at him with something akin to alarm on his face.
    ‘What’s going on, man?’ Bilal asked over the clatter of the machines. ‘You’ve missed more than a dozen batches.’
    ‘Nothing.’ Adem put his right hand to his heart and patted. ‘I’m fine.’
    Bilal’s smile was slow but genuine. Nodding, he went back to his work, as did Adem. During the rest of the afternoon he managed to tackle every single biscuit. But those who knew him well could sense something was niggling him. Outside his control, beyond his power, an aching unease was crawling in the depths of his soul, sinister as a storm cloud.
    He knew what it was: the fear of a