Honour, Where Shame Stalks A Family

I've just recently finished Honour, the new novel by the best-selling Turkish writer Elif Shafak, and was struck again by how badly a society needs art to understand and improve itself. The book is about a Turkish-Kurdish family who emigrates to England, and their lives have been marred for over two generations by domestic violence. Eskandar, the character after whom the book's Turkish version is titled, is beaten by his father, who was beaten by his father, both of whom also beat their wives. The terrible tragedy at the book's center is an honour killing, the most extreme and fatal form of domestic violence. It is a sweetly told, sympathetic tale that understands family violence as a shared social ill; it shows how women and mothers participate in the cycle of violence by raising their boys as 'sultans,' and how men who abuse their wives are often victims themselves, abused by their fathers in childhood.

I read this book and understood domestic violence in a whole new way, because fiction enables to confront difficult truths indirectly; we let our guard down with fiction, and hear and absorb things that might otherwise make us defensive. Honour is a heart-rending character, and Shafak illustrates how we as Eastern mothers inadvertantly raise our sons to think of themselves as too much at the center of the world; we celebrate their 'manhood' too much, which is so different than celebrating their strength. I will never chase my sons around the house with spoonfuls of food again after reading this book, or turn a blind eye when they shove someone on the playground, even in self-defense.

Turkey has one of the highest domestic violence rates of any country in the world, but is struggling to deal with this in a public, signifcant way. There are now frequent marches in Turkish cities against domestic violence, and widespread media coverage of abuse cases. How fortunate Turkey is,  to have a freer climate where writers can publish novels like Honour, helping hundreds of thousands of people reconsider their old beliefs about family violence, and the role culture plays in handing it down. They are learning through storytelling, the most ancient medium, and eternally the most effective.