(Adkins 78). Thus gossip can be “a rich medium for revealing, critiquing, or reinforcing power dynamics,” within institutions but also by extension within communities (Adkins 77).50 Here we should note that in her essay collection Aramızdaki Ağaç, Sema ←37 | 38→Kaygusuz describes “dedikodu” (meaning both “rumor” and “gossip” in Turkish) as a form of communication which makes humankind a frightening community. It is a sort of cannibalism because somebody’s “human flesh” is provided and then this “meat” is eaten (“ötekinin etini vermek”/“insan eti yemek”: 100). Someone is thus eaten alive, turning her/him into a socially dead person as a consequence of a community’s destructive judgment.51
Social studies and literature show that honor automatically turns into a collective matter which needs to be defended and/or restored, as soon as a woman violates honor-specific codes through her immoral behavior. At this point, saving the family’s reputation in public is regarded as a collective responsibility which mostly concerns male family members but sometimes also requires women as their helpers.52 Considerable efforts to cleanse family honor are a key characteristic or even a requirement of honor cultures, sometimes leading to an honor killing (see Churchill 59, Ermers 273) or other types of violence.53 In contrast, ←38 | 39→the honor code women are expected to follow is not so much about honor itself since, according to patriarchal thinking, they can only lose their honor but not restore it; it is rather about how to keep their (sexual) purity intact and avoid (sexual) shame so that they do not stain the intact (collective) family honor by becoming the source of neighborhood gossip.
According to Cihangir, King, Rodriguez Mosquera et al. and others, the ideologeme of a woman’s sexual purity is directly linked to her family’s reputation and social status. Since a person’s honor is not an individual but a collective matter that is permanently exposed to external judgment, this group value is extremely fragile. The patriarchal structure typical of honor cultures promotes ←39 | 40→male power and male honor, which explains why the focus lies not so much on a woman’s honor but rather on her shame.54 In Hofstede’s analysis of cultural dimensions, the scoring results concerning power distance also reflect the patriarchal structure of such societies,55 which goes hand in hand with an over-emphasis on both masculinity and collectivism. The fact that there are no words in dignity cultures to describe male and female honor separately may once again serve to prove that such a concept does not exist in cultures where honor is not a gender-specific, collective issue.
As it is not possible to cover all fiction dealing with honor-based topics, this book can only present a selection of contemporary literary works focusing on honor cultures. In terms of languages, this scope is mostly limited to novels and short stories in English and French original texts or translations and to those written in Turkish. However, the range of represented countries is relatively wide, comprising among others Afghanistan, Algeria, India, Iran, Morocco, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, and also immigrant communities of England. For our comparative analysis, we have tried to choose a fairly equal number of male and female authors whose works were published in the period between 1985 and 2017. In alphabetical order of authors’ last names, the list of works includes
• Khader Abdolah: Persian-Dutch; My Father’s Notebook (2000) is partly set in Saffron Village and Isfahan, depicting recent Iran, with occasional flashbacks ←40 | 41→to the Pahlavi kingdom under Reza Shah, and partly in the Dutch region Flevopolder.
• Leila Aboulela: Sudanese; Minaret (2005) is set in Khartoum and London between the years 1984 and 2004.
• Ramziya Abbas al-Iryani: Yemeni; short story “Misfortune in the Alley” (2005) presumably set in Yemen, included in Dalya Cohen-Mor’s literary anthology.
• Nazik al-Mala’ika: Kuwaiti; born in Iraq; poem “Washing off disgrace” (“Ghaslan lil ‘Ar”: 1957), included in Women of the Fertile Crescent.
• Saphia Azzeddine: French-Moroccan; Bilqiss (2015) mostly takes place in an unnamed Muslim country.
• Tahar Ben Jelloun: French-Moroccan; L’Enfant de Sable (1985) takes place in Marrakesh; La Nuit Sacrée (1987), which is the sequel to L’Enfant de Sable and has the same setting.
• Kamel Daoud: Algerian; Zabor ou Les Psaumes (2017) takes place in an Algerian village called Aboukir (today Mesra).
• Négar Djavadi: French-Iranian; Désorientale (2016), partly set in the waiting room of a hospital in Paris and partly in different places of Iran, covering the end of the 19th century through flashbacks up to the present.
• Mehmet Eroğlu: Turkish; Kıyıdan Uzakta (2018) takes place in contemporary Turkey, on the seaside of the Karaburun Peninsula in the Aegean Region.
• Saleem Haddad: of Lebanese-Palestinian and Iraqi-German origin; Guapa (2016) is set in a nameless Arab country, covering 24 hours with flashbacks to the 1980s and to the protagonist’s stay in America.
• Khaled Hosseini: Afghan-born American; The Kite Runner (2003) takes place in Kabul, Peshawar and Fremont (California) between the years 1975 and 2002; A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007), mostly set in Kabul and a village outside of Herat in the years between 1958 until today.
• Sema Kaygusuz: Turkish; Barbarın Kahkahası (2015), meaning The Barbarian’s Laughter, takes place in the motel Mavi Kumru in mid-August of an unknown year and lasts four days; also a few works from her short story collection The Well of Trapped Words (2015).
• Yasmina Khadra (pen name of Mohammed Moulessehoul): Algerian; Ce que le jour doit à la nuit (2008), set in Algeria between the 1930s and 1962, with the last chapter taking place in today’s Aix-en-Provence.
• Sahar Khalifeh: Palestinian; The Inheritance (1997) takes place in New York and the outskirts of Wadi al-Rihan today with flashbacks to the protagonist’s childhood.
• Zülfü Livaneli: Turkish; Bliss (2002), mostly set in an Anatolian village.
←41 | 42→
• Sindiwe Magona: South African; Mother to Mother (1998), set in Guguletu, a suburb of Capetown in August 1993, with occasional flashbacks to 1972.
• Orhan Pamuk: Turkish; Silent House (1983), set in a village not far from Istanbul in 1980.
• Atiq Rahimi: French-Afghan; Syngué Sabour. Pierre de patience (2008), set in Afghanistan or somewhere else (“Quelque part en Afghanistan ou ailleurs”), according to the writer.
• Saliha Scheinhardt: Drei Zypressen (1986), includes three short stories (Erzählungen) that are set in both Turkey and Germany.
• Elif Shafak: Turkish; The Bastard of Istanbul (2006) set in Istanbul and America, as well as Honour (2011), which takes place in a village near the Euphrates and London between the 1970s and today.
• Ayfer Tunç: Turkish; Kapak Kızı (1992) [Cover Girl], takes place on a train between Ankara and Istanbul; Yeşil Peri Gecesi (2010) [The Night of the Green Fairy], partly based on Kapak Kızı and set in Istanbul.
• Robin Yassin-Kassab: British; The Road from Damascus (2008), mostly set in London, with a small part of the plot taking place in Syria.
This list is not exhaustive and we apologize for any omissions.
1.1 Sources of female honor violation
Psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists alike “view values as the criteria people use to select and justify actions and
