I wrote these short stories to raise awareness about honour killings. The UN estimates up to 5,000 occur each year and many go unreported.

2008 D&AD Copywriting Finalist | 2008 AWARD Copywriting Finalist

Knife

I never took for granted the life the Ahmeds gave me.  The day they took me into their London home, I instantly felt warm and safe.  My favourite memories were of Saturday afternoons when the women of the family gathered together to gossip and cook.  Sonja and I started in the kitchen at the crack of dawn and by mid-morning, the three girls, Farah, Adiva and Nadja would saunter from their bedrooms to join us. Together we would chat about our week's work while preparing an enormous feast for the family.  It was as much a day of therapy as it was of productivity, as by late afternoon we were all up to date on each other's business and the house was filled with the mouth-watering aroma of roast lamb, lentil soup and baking aubergines.

On these Saturdays, Omar stayed out of the kitchen.  He knew better than to get in the way of women's business.  But more importantly, he and Uncle Naveed had business of their own.  After breakfast they would head to their rented garage in Greenwich to spend the day working on their cars, but they would always be home for dinner at six o'clock sharp because that was the rule and Omar was nothing if it were not for his rules. Indeed, Omar ran a tight ship and whilst he was mostly authoritative and staunch, he was complex at the same time.

As a husband, Omar remained distant and aloof, but as a father, I knew he was softer.  Underneath that hard exterior there was a man full of compassion and sincerity.  It would not be wrong to say that he loved his girls more than life itself, and it was no secret he was fiercely protective of them.

As for me, however, I was nothing to Omar.  He hardly gave me any attention; rarely a glance, and in fact, not once over all the years even a "hello". But I understood.  It was clear we had nothing in common, except of course our place of abode, within which we managed to stay out of each other's way with hardly any effort at all.  In fact, our paths never crossed until one day in December, four years ago, which I will never forget.

That Saturday afternoon, we were all in the kitchen enjoying its warmth while outside the first sprinklings of snow danced in the air.  The girls were bickering over who left the butter to burn and Sonja and I were chopping vegetables for the lamb roast.  Suddenly Omar and Uncle Naveed stormed into the kitchen in a rage.  They marched straight up to Nadja, the youngest and in my opinion, the prettiest of the girls.  Nadja looked up at her father, terrified.

"Nadja!" Omar yelled into her face.  "Did you forget the rules? I know what you've been doing."  His fist shook just centimetres from his daughter's nose.  "The neighbours tell me you have been seeing a boy. Sneaking out in the middle of the night. You are only sixteen years old, Nadja." Omar lowered his voice.  "People have been talking. They think you are a whore."  He began to tremble. "Do you know how this makes our family look?"

Omar's face reddened to the shade of a beetroot.  He grabbed Nadja's neck and shook her violently sending Sonja into a screaming fit.  Omar slapped his wife hard across the face before turning back to Nadja. "You have ruined our family name. What am I going to do?" he screamed.

Suddenly, Omar stopped and closed his eyes, and everybody froze with fear.  When he came to, he stared into his daughter's eyes and took in a long deep breath.  He turned around and that's when he saw me by the kitchen sink.  I was terrified for what was about to happen.  Omar made me do something, something I will never forget.

He made me kill Nadja.  I cut her throat wide open so her blood poured freely covering the kitchen floor like a red carpet.  Omar said it was the price that she had to pay for dishonouring the family name.

I will never forget what I did that day. But what could I have said? What could I have done?  I am only a rusty old kitchen knife."

Thousands of honour killings go unreported every year. If you know something please speak out. Because if you don't, who will?

www.stophonourkillings.com