Honour by Elif Shafak Page A

cornered animal. He felt hounded, ground down, as if injected with a poison that didn’t kill but slowed the prey. Wherever he turned he could see his predators’ shadows. There was nowhere to escape – unless he left England for good. But he could not abscond, with his children and wife relying on him. And if he wanted to take his family with him, he would have to find money. A lot. He was stuck. The Chinese were aware of this too. That’s why they didn’t even bother to check on him every day. They knew they could find him whenever they wanted to – whenever he skipped a payment. But there was another reason why Adem couldn’t go anywhere: Roxana.
    *
    Six weeks ago, Adem had woken one morning to a sensation of exhilaration and elevation so intense it was like soaring in a dream. The portents were there. The signs had never betrayed him before. His palms were itchy, his heart was beating faster than usual, his left eye twitching ever so slightly. Nothing bothersome. Just a faint tic that came and went, like a coded message from the skies. An ordinary day in other respects, but the feeling stayed with him. All afternoon everyone was polite to him and he was polite to everyone. It was a fine, sunny day, and the sky’s reflection in the Thames was vivid and full of promise.
    After sunset he went to the gambling den. One day soon, not long from now, he would stop doing this. He would break the habit, chop it off his body, as if he were pruning a sick branch from a healthy tree. Just as it was impossible for the tree to regrow the branch, he would never have the urge again. But not now. He wasn’t ready to give it up quite yet.
For today it’s all right
, he assured himself.
Today the signs are favourable.
    It was the basement of a double-fronted terraced house in Bethnal Green, resplendent with age. Inside it was a different world, though. There were five rooms: in each of them men played snooker or gathered around roulette, blackjack or poker tables. The air was thick with smoke. Those with more money or less fear were in the room at the back. From behind the tightly shut door one could hear the murmurs, the occasional gasps and grunts, and the rattle of the roulette wheel.
    It was a place for men. The few women who minced around were already spoken for and therefore unapproachable. There were unwritten rules here that everyone obeyed. Indians, Pakistanis, Indonesians, Bangladeshis, Caribbeans, Iranians, Turks, Greeks, Italians . . . Everybody spoke English but swore, conspired and prayed in his mother tongue. The Lair, they called it. Run by a taciturn Chinese family who had lived in Vietnam for generations and been forced to leave after the war. Adem always felt uneasy next to them. The Chinese were not protective of each other like the Italians, nor were they temperamental like the Irish. There was always an unknown quality to their demeanour. A bit like the weather, they were prone to changing on a whim.
    That evening Adem played blackjack and a few dice games, and then moved to the roulette wheel. He placed his first bet on black. It was an auspicious start. Next he did a combination bet. He won again, but the amount was not much. He switched to red and won thrice in a row, each time leaving his winnings from the previous bet on the current one. It was one of those magical moments when he could
feel
the roulette wheel. Just like him, the wheel lacked a solid memory. You could place the same bet over and over, and your chances of winning would still be the same. Roulette didn’t observe any recognized patterns. So he played without memory, concentrating on every new bet as if it were his first and his last.
    The men in the room gave him a thumbs-up, patted him on the shoulder and muttered words of encouragement. It was a remarkable feeling to be respected by strangers. To be admired and envied. He played another round, still triumphant. Now the crowd around the table had thickened. Fifteen minutes later he