For the Sake of Honour

Turhan was the wife of a Turkish farmer and the mother of two small children. With pale skin and long and black hair, she was a beautiful woman and many men loved her. She was esteemed for her modesty as well as her beauty.

Turhan's husband, Sirhan Bey, was living and working in Frankfort, Germany, since an older brother stood to inherit the family farm. He loved her madly, but she loved another man. Turhan was pregnant when Sirhan came back from Germany after five years.

Turhan’s family wanted to kill her, but Sirhan wanted to know her lover's identity first. Turhan wouldn’t reveal to anybody her lover’s name because her lover was an important man in the village, she said. That was all that she would say.

One night, Sirhan Bey saw her sneaking out of the house. He followed her to the house of an old dervish, Sheik Muciber Emin. Through a window, Sirhan heard Turhan crying and asking for help. "They're going to kill me!" she sobbed hysterically. "What do I do?"

Though it was clear to Sirhan that the dervish was Turhan's lover, Sheik Muciber didn't seem to care if Turhan was about to die and he sent her away.

To his horror, Sirhan saw his wife plunge a dagger into the dervish's heart. However, he allowed Turhan to escape as the dervish bled to death and told nobody about what he had witnessed. This was because Sirhan wanted to punish his wife himself rather than let the authorities do it. When Sheik Muciber's body was discovered some days later, people were scandalized, because many even considered him a saint. "Who would do such a thing?" people asked out loud. "It must have been some kind of devil."

After Turhan gave birth to a son, Turhan's brother, Abdel Bey, stabbed her in the heart with her husband's consent and killed her. Even though people can't legally stone adulteresses to death anymore, they do have honour killings in Turkey. Abdel Bey was never arrested or prosecuted, though people knew that he had murdered his sister. No one would testify against him.

According to the Muslim custom, Turhan was buried in an unmarked grave in the cemetary. The night after her burial, Turhan appeared to her husband in a dream. She looked hideous, with fiery red eyes, a scaly green complexion, and snakes for hair. "I will haunt you for the rest of your days," she hissed. "You cannot escape me!"

Sirhan Bey kept having these dreams. He started having hallucinations in the daytime as well, seeing his wife's face in the sky at dusk, or hearing her voice in a rushing mountain stream. Then one day, while he was alone in the woods, Turhan walked up to him and threw her arms around him. They found Sirhan hugging a tree, sobbing.

Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. One morning, Sirhan's family found his body in a shed by the barn, hanging by the neck. Turhan's visitations had driven him mad, it seemed. Sirhan Bey was buried in an unmarked grave in the same cemetary as his wife.

It was for Sirhan's family to raise Turhan's love child with the dervish, as well as her other two children.