The police never could figure out quite what Mahmod’s business was, or if he
worked at all, but Ari owned a supermarket on the Wandsworth Road in south
London, rental properties, a banking business moving money between Kurdistan
and the UK, and almost certainly a sideline, arranging visas and falsifying
details for immigration. Ari and Mahmod certainly knew how to play the
system.
Mahmod had five girls and one boy. His only son, Bahman, had accumulated a
minor criminal history in the 10 years since the family arrived in the UK as
asylum seekers. Bahman’s nickname among those who knew him outside the
family was Tony Montana, as in the Al Pacino character in the gangster movie
Scarface. But despite his misdeeds, Mitcham’s answer to Tony Montana had not
apparently brought shame into Mahmod’s home – a modest semidetached house on
Morden Road, with gnomes on the flat roof over the front door. No, as his
nephew Azad told me, it was the girls who were the problem: people looked at
Mahmod’s family and said they produced whores. Mahmod could not control his
daughters. Though he had tried. Before coming to the UK he had arranged for
his daughters to be circumcised – a shocking, traumatic ritual carried out
by the girls’ grandmother, with their heads wedged in her lap while two
other female relatives helped pin them down.
Bekhal, Mahmod’s third daughter, who was about 10 at the time, had
accidentally found the clitoridectomy kit beforehand – a sharp knife, a
bottle of alcohol and some cotton wool – not knowing what it was for until
she peered in through the window and saw what was going on, and ran away,
only to be dragged back to take her turn. Her grandmother had cataracts and
couldn’t see properly. Bekhal recalled a cut nerve and torrents of blood. It
was supposed to dampen their sexual pleasure, apparently, but if that was
the case, it had not been a complete success. Bekhal, two years older than
Banaz, had been the first daughter to make life hard for Mahmod. She was
lucky not to be dead too. Now 23, she would remain in police protection for
many years – to save her from harm at the hands of her own family.
As she described it, life had not been much fun back in Kurdish Iraq. As a
girl – indeed as a woman – all you were supposed to do was cook, clean and
shut up, and she had no idea there was anything more on offer until she
arrived with the family in the UK in her early teens.
Bekhal and her sisters were not allowed out like “normal” children, even back
in Iraq, so did not learn much about the ways of the world except what
filtered through from the family. Bekhal heard stories of honour killings –
a boy and girl shot in the head in the park after they were caught sneaking
out to spend time together; a girl who vanished after being discovered
passing notes under the door to a boyfriend.
As Bekhal well knew, Kurdish society was patriarchal and based on the
repression of women. The rise of Islam had only made matters worse – nobody
was in any doubt that a stricter Islamic faith had contributed to an
increase in the incidence of honour killing. Though, of course, honour
killing was not just confined to Muslim communities. It happened among Sikhs
and Hindus too, and it had also featured in Italian law for 60 years, until
1981, during which time killing to restore family honour was a recognised
mitigation for murder. We can at least take comfort from the fact that such
brutality is mercifully rare. And the vast majority of Muslim, Sikh and
Hindu people, not just in Britain but abroad, are against honour killings.
Many are involved in active campaigns to prevent them, or amend the laws
that excuse them.
Mahmod’s daughters went to a local school in Mitcham, where they soon felt the
tug of outside influences. Bekhal had friends from all races, as reflected
by the new world she lived in. Her family disapproved, especially of black
people, who some of them referred to as cockroaches.
Bekhal had a rebellious spirit, and would not be stopped. This led to violent
scenes at home with her father, when she experimented with her hair or wore
snakeskin jeans that her dad tried to grab at: where do you think you’re
going, some prostitutes’ club? The shape of your body is showing. You’re a
bitch, a whore. Some days she would wear a headscarf leaving the house and
take it off around the corner. She would also be followed by young men in
the wider family, who would report back to her father on her wrongdoings.
Bekhal pushed her parents to the limits and soaked up the punishment.
Later, once they’d moved to London, Bekhal was with her female cousin Shno and
they met a local Asian boy called Ash. They walked with him a while before
sitting down between some parked cars to have a cigarette. Bekhal felt
something was wrong, sensed they were being watched, and sure enough, Shno’s
brother
Azad appeared on his bicycle. According to Bekhal, Azad dropped the bike, took
off his helmet and started hitting the boy in the head, swearing at him,
what the f*** do you think you’re doing with my sister? What the f*** are
you whores doing here with him? He was spitting in the Asian boy’s face.
When I met Azad, who came to see me to explain how his uncles Ari and Mahmod
had been unfairly convicted, Azad told me he had not hit the boy, the story
was exaggerated. That Asian boy, said Azad, was a foolish drug-addict thug
with a serious attitude problem and all Azad did was tell him to piss off.
He couldn’t understand why Shno and Bekhal were hanging around with him. The
incident had serious consequences for Bekhal, who went home to face a family
meeting in her bedroom – the four brothers, her own father, Mahmod, among
them, were all there sitting on the bed or chairs while Bekhal was made to
sit on the floor with her mother, Behya, next to her. Behya had to look down
at the floor and not speak unless she was spoken to, as this was the
tradition in the family.
Ari was in charge of the meeting. Bekhal would not be cowed, and told Ari she
could tell him a thing or two about his own daughter with her piercings and
her boyfriends. Ari told her to shut up and reminded her she was the scum
here and how his own children were worth more than her. He tapped the
underside of his feet and said the police were beneath him, meaning he felt
no fear from authority. “If your father had listened to me, you would be
ashes by now.”
