shame to her family.84
According to Annie George, “subdued body language, dress, and demeanor” belong to the criteria of appropriate female conduct (37). Recep Doğan stresses that a “mere suspicion that their daughters, wives or sisters have defied the accepted social norms by behaving improperly will provide strong grounds for punishing or even killing them” (“Different” 367). Various male participants of this study claim that the “ideal honorable woman” must be “obedient and loyal,” “modest in behavior,” “not on the lips of men,” must “behave in a certain manner,” “not go out without permission from her husband,” “not let unrelated people enter her house,” be “honest,” respectful,” dignified” and “modest in her dress”; furthermore, she must not be “cheeky, or impertinent, or flirtatious.” An unmarried honorable woman should be “respectful, obedient, and modest in behavior and keeping virginity before marriage” (375). A dishonorable woman, however, is “sexually immodest, flirtatious, cheeky, or impertinent,” “adulterous,” not conforming to existing norms with regard to a woman’s “non-sexual behavior and social status,” “unfaithful,” “disrespectful,” “disobedient”; she “leaves the house without permission” or “tells a lie to her husband” (376). In another article, the same author includes interviews with some men who committed an honor killing, among the reasons for which the inappropriate ways the victims used to dress are also mentioned. Statements of different perpetrators such as “[My sister] used to wear a head scarf. But, I saw that she got her hair ←62 | 63→color changed, wore a colored contact lens, make-up and no head scarf” (8) or “[Our mum] wore décolleté clothes on her body or clothes through which you can see her body” (9) indeed show the violation of honor-related dress codes as one source of stained family honor in men’s opinion. Depending on the regions of a certain country, these norms in the respective honor cultures can be more or less strict.
Sen points out that honor-related codes for women illustrating their decency include “modest sexual behaviour, fidelity in marriage, no pre-or extramarital relationships with men, no unchaperoned rendezvous with men outside the family,85 meeting motherly obligations to children, meeting wifely obligations to husband, meeting daughter’s obligation to parents, meeting daughter-in-law obligations to parents-in-law, and so on” (Sen 47). To make sure that their seductive characteristics are kept to a strict minimum, in various honor cultures men insist on their female relatives’ wearing a veil which covers their hair and sometimes also a part of their face. The notion of “modesty” that is included in the understanding of female honor dictates the covering up of certain body parts that might attract the attention of any men outside the family. Atiq Rahimi explains that “[i];n Afghan society there is the idea that if a woman’s ankle or her hair is visible then it is enticing. […] You have to be sexually obsessed to think that way. So yes, indeed, a woman is reduced to her sexual function” (Grey).
The veil plays an important role with regard to a woman’s rather limited room for action both indoors and outdoors. Lama Abu-Odeh describes the link between moral purity and the veil as follows:
To wear the veil was to be a virgin in fact. To wear the veil was to be spatially segregated from men, the walls of the separation now redefined as the boundaries of the veiled body itself. […] [W];hereas the traditional era expanded the hymen from the biological to the spatial, the Islamic condensed its signification to that of the physical. (“Honor” 950)
The veil thus becomes the public proof and the symbol of a woman’s high morality, showing that she is concerned about protecting her own honor. If she does not correctly cover her hair, however, this indicator makes the men surrounding her assume that she might be willing to break other honor-related codes as well.
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Comparing the aspect of gender discrimination in Orhan Pamuk’s novel Snow and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, Iis Sugianti speaks of the “prohibition and limitation of the role of women in the public area” (43). In a similar vein, Susan Taha Al-Karawi and Ida Baizura Bahar, while analyzing Leila Aboulela’s novel Minaret, give significant sociological insights into the importance of the veil, which serves as a crucial part of a woman’s clothing in many honor cultures: “[The veil] is positively associated with modesty, protection from unwanted male attention and desire, and liberation from the demands of consumerist capitalist economies and their investment in women’s bodies. It signifies security and agency, and functions as a means of mobility in the public sphere” (256). In many novels that deal with the controversial issue of female honor, wearing the veil in an inappropriate manner, not wearing it at all or any other inadequate behavior such as laughing loudly in public quickly turns into a source of honor loss. Only in the case of birth and death are women’s voices allowed to be loud, according to Kamel Daoud’s hints in his novel Zabor ou Les Psaumes: “Curieux renversement: les femmes deviennent visibles, audibles dans les ruelles, exubérantes comme faca à une concurrente (‘La mort est feminine, comme la naissance’)” (192).
In Ayfer Tunç’s novel Kapak Kızı, Anahit is obviously aware of her immoral conduct when she sits with Sadi in a tea garden. The fact that she looks around her all the time to be sure that nobody from her neighborhood catches her with this man shows her emotional distress (see p. 68). She knows that she has already lost her honor by committing the “sin” (“günah,” 69) of having a relationship with a man to whom she is not married. In The Night of the Green Fairy, which can be read as a sequel of Kapak Kızı, we come across other behavioral codes the female protagonist is expected to follow: “I was to speak properly, and not to use any foul language in any way, shape or form. In fact, it would be much better if I were not to speak at all. I was not to wear revealing clothing, no low-cut dresses. I was to be ladylike, well behaved, neat, tidy, courteous and clean. No playing up.” The female protagonist’s well-educated but conservative father-in-law, a professor, has the following perception of honor: “In this invaluable book on morality, you say that honour, the motherland and the flag are the principal values worth dying for; that wearing make-up has many harmful side effects, the most important ones being it makes women seem unchaste and causes premature aging; you advise young Turkish girls to stay chaste and young. […]” The inverse semiotic association of make-up and the flag is ominous in its anticipation of “dying for” appearances. Making women wear a veil or a burqa is one way to hinder other men from seeing them, as does religious Rasheed in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns. He explains to his wives Mariam and Laila the benefits of this garment, which according to him is used for their ←64 | 65→“own protection” (217), symbolizing a woman’s decency.86 A woman’s leaving the house unveiled and without a male family member by her side can be interpreted as immoral behavior, which Rasheed underlines as follows: “I ask that you avoid leaving this house without my company […]. I also ask that when we are out together, that you wear a burqa. For your own protection, naturally. It is best. So many lewd men in this town now. Such vile intentions, so eager to dishonor even a married woman” (217). To Mariam, Rasheed describes the decadence of “uncovered” women who directly talk to him in the presence of their husbands, look him “in the eye without shame,” “wear makeup and skirts,” “show their knees” while “their husbands stand there and watch,” not understanding that “they’re spoiling their own nang and namoos, their honor and pride” (69).87
Rasheed adds that a “wrong look” or an “improper word” from a woman can lead to the spilling of blood (69). He stresses that as a husband it is his duty to “guard not only your honor but ours, yes, our nang and namoos.88 That is the husband’s burden” (217), showing the heroic qualities of a man in defending his wife’s honor. In these statements, the direct link between a woman’s physical appearance and male honor becomes perfectly clear. It is not without reason that the laws established for women by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan all focus on a woman’s modest appearance in public. For instance, “it is not proper for women” (271) to show their faces, wear make-up, nail polish, jewelry, or tight clothes, “make eye contact with men,” “laugh in public” (271), get any education
