by Elif Shafak
Selma stared at her daughter, half expecting this question. ‘That’d be good, actually. Allah listens to children’s prayers.’
Peri nodded, as a dutiful daughter should. Save for a few invocations learned by rote at school, she had never performed the Salah, given her wish to side with her father in all matters related to faith. Mensur, unlike his wife, kept his prayers succinct and non-ceremonial. He rarely used the word ‘Allah’, preferring the more secular-sounding ‘Tanri’. Now Peri was ready to do things her mother’s way. She would do anything to save her father’s life, even betray him.
Inside the lavatory they performed their ablutions – rinsing their mouths, washing their faces, hands, feet. The water was chilly but Peri did not complain, regarding the ritual as a preamble to a conversation with God. There were no prayer rooms in this wing of the hospital and they used a corner of the waiting room instead – the TV still on, the red-sequined-dressed woman still determined to win.
Having no prayer rugs, they spread their cardigans on the floor. Whatever her mother did, Peri imitated, like an echo. Thus, as Selma crossed her hands over her chest, so did Peri. Selma bent down, stood up and then prostrated herself, her forehead touching the ground; so did Peri. There was, however, one vital difference. Her mother’s lips were constantly moving, whereas Peri’s were still. It occurred to her that this might not sit well with God. A silent prayer was tantamount to an envelope with nothing inside. Since no one, not even the Creator, would care to receive such an envelope, she figured out she would have to say something. And this, after some deliberation, was what the child uttered:
Dear Allah,
Mother says You watch me all the time, which is nice, thank You; it’s also a bit spooky because sometimes I want to be alone. Mother says You hear everything – even when I talk to myself. Even the thoughts inside my head. You also watch all that happens. Can You see the baby in the mist? No one notices it but me, though I am sure You do too.
Anyway, I was thinking, our eyes are small and it takes us about a second to blink. Now, Your eyes must be huge, so it must take You at least an hour to shut Your eyelids, and maybe in that time You can’t gaze at my father.
When I get cross at someone, Dad tells me, ‘You are not a little child, you can forgive.’ If You are angry with my father, please forgive him and make him well again. He is a good man. From now on, please can You blink every time my father sins?
I promise I’ll start praying again. I’ll pray every night for the rest of my life.
Amin
Peri, perched on her cardigan, saw her mother turn her head right and left, and rub her hands over her face, thus ending the prayer, all of which she imitated, sealing her confidential letter.
The next morning Mensur was propped up in bed with pillows, teasing his visitors, and a few days later he was out of hospital with a fat bill and a battery-operated pacemaker in his heart. He was advised to give up drinking and to stay away from stress – as if stress were an obnoxious relative one could simply stop inviting to dinner. In any case, Mensur would not listen. Having danced a tango with Azrael, the angel of death, he claimed he had nothing to be afraid of any more.
This, too, would penetrate Peri’s dreams, the ghostly sight of her father dancing a disjointed jig with a skeleton – that turned out to be his own.
The Poem
Istanbul, 2016
Inside the bathroom of the seaside mansion Peri stood still, staring at herself in the ornate mirror. The semblance of composure she had maintained with her daughter had now vanished, replaced by disquiet. The loneliness of the fish in their tank made her think of the figures in cartoons, hopelessly marooned on a desert island, yet never thinking of escape. Could she swim away? Daily habits were altered, personalities reformed, allegiances renounced, friendships broken, even addictions spurned, but the hardest thing to change in this life was one’s attachment to a place.
A ripple of laughter arose from the other side of the door. The businessman was telling a joke, his voice soaring above the din. Peri missed the punchline, which, by the sound of the reaction, was crude, salacious.
‘Oh, you men!’ a female voice was heard, half reprimanding, half teasing.
Peri pursed her lips. She had never been one of those women who could say for all to hear, and certainly not in such a flirtatious tone, ‘Oh, you men!’
Whether men or women, it was always people with rough journeys in their pasts, uncertainty in their eyes and invisible wounds in their souls that intrigued her. Generous with her time and loyal to the bone, she befriended these select few with an unflagging commitment and love. But with everyone else, who constituted pretty much the majority, her interest quickly morphed into boredom. And when bored all she wanted was to escape – to free herself from that person, from that conversation, from that moment. She had a hunch that tonight, boredom would be her consort at the bourgeois dinner, and to counterbalance it she promised herself to find little games to play, amusements for her eyes only.
Hurriedly, she splashed water on her face. Had her lipstick not been crushed and her eyeshadow palette lost in the alley, she would have liked to retouch her makeup. Giving her hair a quick comb with her fingers, she checked herself in the mirror one more time. The face looking back at her was pale, restless – as if a troubled spirit had passed through her unawares. She opened the door. To her surprise, her daughter was waiting outside.
‘Dad was wondering where you were.’
‘I needed to wash up a bit.’ Peri paused. ‘What did you tell him?’
Peri saw in Deniz’s eyes a twinkle of affection before indifference took over. ‘Nothing,’ she said.
‘Thank you, my love. Let’s go back.’
‘Wait, you forgot this,’ said Deniz, holding out something in her hand.
Peri didn’t need to take a closer look to know it was the Polaroid. She had searched for it everywhere in that airless alley. But Deniz must have spotted it first and slipped it into her pocket. Now her daughter demanded, ‘How come I’ve never seen this before?’
There were four figures in the snapshot. The professor and his students. Happy and hopeful and ready to change the world, and joyously unaware of what tomorrow held for them. Peri remembered the day the photo was taken. The worst winter in Oxford in decades. She remembered it all – bone-chilling mornings, frozen pipes, heaped snow banks, and the intoxicating elixir of falling in love coursing through her body. She had never felt more alive.
‘Who are these people, Mum?’
Keeping calm – too calm – Peri said, ‘It’s an old picture.’
‘Is that why you carry it in your wallet? Next to your children’s photos?’ said Deniz, her voice laden with disbelief and curiosity. ‘So who are they?’
Peri pointed to one of the girls. She wore a magenta headscarf wrapped neatly in a turban style and her hazel eyes were outlined with thick kohl that curled all the way up to her eyebrows. ‘That’s Mona. An Egyptian-American student.’
Intent and silent, Deniz studied the girl.
‘The other girl is Shirin,’ Peri said. Her gaze landed on a striking figure with voluminous black hair, full makeup and high-heeled leather boots. ‘Her family was from Iran, but they had moved around so much she didn’t feel like she belonged anywhere.’
‘How did you meet them?’
It was a moment before Peri answered. ‘University friends. We shared the same house, were in the same college. We took the same seminar, but not all of us at the same time.’
‘What was the seminar about?’
Peri smiled a faint smile, the memory etched in every line of her expression. ‘It was about … God.’
‘Wow,’ Deniz said, her usual response to things she had no interest in. She tapped a finger on the tall man standing in the middle. His brown-blond hair was unruly and long enough to curl; his eyes seemed to glow from under a flat cap; his chin was strong and well defined; his expression tranquil, though not altogether peaceful.
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�Who is he?’
A frisson of discomfort passed across Peri’s features, so subtle as to be almost unnoticeable. ‘He was our professor.’
‘Really? He looks like a rebellious student.’
‘He was a rebellious professor.’
‘Is there such a thing?’ asked Deniz. ‘What was his name?’
‘We called him Azur.’
‘That’s a weird name. Where is this place anyway?’
‘England … Oxford.’
‘What? How come you never told me you went to Oxford?’ Deniz uttered the last word with an exaggerated lilt.
Peri hesitated, unsure what to say. Why she had never shared it with anyone, including her children, she had an idea, but this was neither the time nor the place to reveal it. ‘Only for a while,’ she said, her voice tailing off. ‘I didn’t finish.’
‘How did you get in?’
She sounded impressed, but Peri also detected a note of envy tinged with resentment in her remark. Her daughter had started stressing about university exams, though they were still several years away. The education system, geared to make young minds ever more competitive, might have been fine for students like Peri, but for free spirits like Deniz it was unmitigated misery.
‘You might not believe it, but I had top grades all the way through school. Father always wanted me to get the best education … in Europe. He helped me with the application, and I met the requirements.’
‘Grandpa?’ asked Deniz, finding it hard to reconcile the image of the doddering old man in her mind with this forceful agent of change.
Peri smiled. ‘Yes, he was proud of me.’
‘Grandma wasn’t?’ Deniz asked, detecting a conflict.
‘She was worried that I’d get lost in a foreign country. It was the first time I was leaving home. Not easy for a mother.’ Peri drew her breath, surprised at her own statement, surprised that she empathized with her mother.
Deniz gave this some thought. ‘When was all this?’
‘Around 9/11, if that means anything to you.’
‘I know what 9/11 is,’ Deniz said. Her face lightened with a fresh realization as she said, ‘So this was before you met Dad. You drop out of Oxford, return to Istanbul, get married, give up on your education, have three kids in a row and become a housewife. How original, bravo!’
‘I wasn’t trying to be original,’ Peri said.
Ignoring the remark, Deniz chewed her bottom lip. ‘Why did you leave?’
That was the one question Peri was not prepared to answer. The truth was too painful. ‘It was too hard for me: the classes, the exams …’
Wordlessly, Deniz gave her mother a sidelong glance, her incredulity apparent. For the first time it crossed her mind that the woman who had given birth to her, the woman she had seen every day of her life and expected to cater to her every need and whim, might have been a different person before she and her brothers were born. It was an uncomfortable thought. To this day her mother had been a terra cognita where Deniz knew each blissful valley, each placid lake and each wintry mountain. She didn’t like the possibility that there might be parts of that continent still unmapped.
‘May I have the photo now?’ Peri asked.
‘Wait a second.’
Her eyelashes catching the light from the ceiling lamp, Deniz brought the Polaroid closer to her face and squinted, almost cross-eyed, as though expecting to discover a secret code in it somewhere. On impulse, she turned over the photo and saw the inscription on the back in the stilted handwriting of someone making an effort to be neat: From Shirin to Peri with sisterhood / Remember, Mouse, ‘I can no longer call myself a man, a woman, an angel or even a pure soul.’
‘Who is Mouse?’ Deniz said with a chuckle.
‘That’s what Shirin used to call me.’
‘That’d be the last nickname I’d call you!’
‘Well, I guess I changed,’ Peri said. ‘Come on, we must go.’
Deniz still looked quizzical. ‘What does this “no longer a man, a woman, an angel …” mean? What kind of nonsense is this?’
‘Just a poem … Sweetheart, give the photo back to me.’
From the drawing room erupted the sound of clapping and cheering. Someone was being teased or dared to do something. Curious, Deniz, after the briefest hesitation, returned the photo to her mother and headed back into the party.
Alone in the corridor, Peri held the Polaroid tight, and was surprised to feel the warmth it radiated, as if it were alive. How strange it was, when you came to think of it, that while moments withered, hearts stiffened, bodies aged, promises perished, and even the strongest convictions faded, a photograph, a two-dimensional representation of reality and a lie, remained unchanged, forever faithful.
She tucked the Polaroid away in her wallet, careful not to look at any of the faces in the shot, resistant to the gaze of the past, resistant to the judgement of a younger Peri about the woman she had become. She straightened her back, ready to meet the other guests, many of whom were, in truth, no more than strangers, and walked slowly back to the party.
The Covenant
Istanbul, 1990s
In secondary school Peri went through seasons of faith, seasons of doubt. Unknown to her father she had remained loyal to the oath she had made to God. Every night before she went to sleep, in words carefully chosen, ever so passionately, she prayed. She tried hard. If she sacrificed her disbelief on the altar of love and became as pious as all those preachers proselytizing under Istanbul skies, Allah would be more pleased with her family and less stern with her father, she hoped. An irrational covenant, for sure, but wasn’t every covenant with the Almighty bound to be so?
The problem with praying, however, was that it had to be pure, monophonic. One consistent voice from beginning to end. But when she talked to God, her mind fragmented into a plethora of speakers, some listening, some making witty remarks, others expressing objections. Even worse, unwanted images flooded her mind – of death, darkness, violence, genocide but especially sex. She closed her eyes, opened her eyes, struggling to erase the naked bodies writhing in her imagination. Mortified by her inability to control her brain and worried that these thoughts tainted her prayers, she would start over and over, rushing to finish before impure ideas took hold once again. Readying for prayer was like shoving into a cupboard all the junk and clutter, before God came to visit the house of her mind. While she wanted to look her best, she remained acutely conscious of what she’d concealed from His gaze.
If, instead of praying alone at home, she prayed amidst a congregation, she might quell the voices consuming her, she thought. With a few like-minded friends, she fell into the habit of visiting local mosques. She treasured the plentiful light from the high, arched windows, the chandeliers, the calligraphy, the architecture of Sinan. It troubled her, however, that the women’s sections were either tucked away at the back or lodged upstairs behind curtains, always secluded, separate, small.
In one neighbourhood a middle-aged man followed them into the mosque, and afterwards into the courtyard.
‘Girls should pray at home,’ he said, his eyes travelling over the contours of their breasts.
‘This is Allah’s House, it’s for everyone,’ said Peri.
He took a step towards her, thrusting out his chest. His body was a reminder, a warning, a frontier. ‘This mosque is not big enough. Even men have to spill out on to the pavement. There’s no room here for schoolgirls.’
‘So mosques belong to men?’ Peri said.
He laughed, as if surprised that she could have thought it was any other way. Peri was disappointed that the imam, who had overheard the conversation in passing, said nothing to defend them.
Another time, in Üsküdar, upstairs in the women’s section, she opened the curtains so that they could see the beauty of the mosque while they were praying. Instantly, an older woman, dressed head to toe in black, pulled the curtains closed, murmuring angrily under her breath. It wasn’t only men who wanted women to be o
ut of sight. Some women, too, were of the same mind.
Yes, she had tried. But there was always a gap between her and the ways of the religion printed on her pink ID card. Whose idea was it to have a religion box on ID cards anyway? Who decided whether a newborn baby was Muslim or Christian or Jewish? Certainly not the baby itself.
Had Peri been allowed to fill in the religion box herself, she would probably have written: ‘Undecided’. That would be more truthful. If her mother was going to end up in heaven and her father in hell, her abode should be the purgatory somewhere in between.
She refrained from talking about these issues with the pious, because once they noticed her vacillating between doubt and faith, they insisted on trying to win her over. The few atheists she had met were not so different. Whether in the name of God or science, there was no satisfaction for the ego quite like the satisfaction of converting someone to your side. But being proselytized was the last thing Peri wanted. Did these people not understand that she did not want to reach a decision about their code of belief? All she wanted was to be on the move. If she came down on one side or the other, she feared she would turn into someone else and it would be the end of her.
She wrote in her God-diary: I’m perpetually in limbo. Maybe I want too many things at once and nothing passionately enough.
The day Peri graduated from school at the top of her year, she and her father prepared breakfast together. Dicing tomatoes, chopping parsley, whisking eggs, they made a menemen so spicy that every bite would burn a hole in their tongues. They worked side by side, their actions coordinated, effortless. Peri watched her father slice an onion, noticing with relief that the tremor in his hands seemed to have calmed down. But he sweated profusely, a thin film of perspiration covering his forehead. She knew that if he were alone in the kitchen he would have already poured himself a glass.
Afterwards, Mensur drove his daughter to an educational agency that helped Turkish students to apply to schools abroad. They had visited the stuffy, dimly lit office several times in the past months, queuing alongside hopeful teenagers, unable to take their eyes off the beaming faces filling the brochures of Western universities. From their shiny pages popped up a wild diversity – a seeming United Nations – of students, all without exception looking happy.
