.اسکندر <> Iskender

Iskender is the story of a Kurdish family that emigrates from Turkey to London in the 1970’s.  But Elif Shafak begins her plot a little before that in the rural Turkish village where the mother, Pembe, and her twin sister Jamilla live.  A young man named Adem visits and falls in love with Jamilla, but is told she is promised to another man.  And so he marries Pembe.

From the beginning the union is doomed, but Adem and Pembe have three children nonetheless.  The eldest son is named Iskender, the middle daughter Esma and the youngest (another son), Yunus.   The children acclimate quickly to England.  Their parents less so.  Adem begins gambling and takes up with a woman – who seems to work as an escort in the gambling den he visits – and deserts his family.  Pembe begins a friendship with a man named Elias who she meets secretly in old movie theaters.  Esma and Yunus have their own stories.  It is Iskender, an arrogant young man who is drifting towards radicalization, who stabs and kills his mother on learning that she is seeing a man.  It is an honor killing.  When the book begins Iskender is in prison.