Three Daughters of Eve

by Elif Shafak

  Sometimes when she thanked him for the small things in life, she sensed, in truth, she was thanking him for those larger things that were better left unexpressed. Yes, she was grateful to him, grateful to the Fate that had brought him to her. But, then again, she knew gratitude was not love.

  Listen to me, Mouse, there are two kinds of men: the breakers and the fixers. We fall in love with the first, but we marry the second. She hated to think that life, her life, had vindicated Shirin’s theory.

  Her eyes brimming with affection, Peri smiled at her daughter. She was about to give Deniz a hug but something in the girl’s expression said Mum, please don’t, not in front of this group.

  ‘I love you,’ Peri said quietly.

  Deniz paused for a second. ‘Love you too. How’s your hand?’

  Peri turned over the bandage, dried blood on the edges. ‘It’s fine. It’ll be as good as new tomorrow.’

  ‘Just don’t do it again,’ whispered Deniz, as if she were the concerned mother and Peri the wayward daughter. Then cheerily she said to the guests, ‘Good night, everyone. Don’t smoke. Remember, it’s bad for you.’

  ‘Good night,’ came a chorus of voices.

  ‘Oh, youth!’ said the businessman’s wife as soon as the teenagers left the room. ‘How I wish I could rewind time. Sixty is the new forty? It’s all lies.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said the businessman to his wife. ‘I’m as young as a freshly minted coin. Watch out, I might divorce you and get myself a younger model.’

  The journalist gave a false cough. ‘It’s an Eastern phenomenon, though, I mean, early ageing. Look at Westerners. All wrinkles and grey hair, still touristing abroad. It’s embarrassing to see American oldies mobbing our Hagia Sophia and hopping over the stones at Ephesus. What do they call themselves – grey panthers? I’ve yet to see a seventy-year-old Middle Easterner travelling the world. Turks, Arabs, Iranians, Pakistanis … We have big ideas about the world – but we never see it!’

  The architect who had displayed his nationalistic sensitivities throughout the evening glowered at him.

  The businessman’s wife, suddenly busy texting on her mobile phone, lifted her head, her face glowing. ‘Good news, everyone! The psychic is ten minutes away, I just got his message.’

  ‘Lovely,’ said the PR woman as she leaned back in her chair. ‘We’ve so much to ask him. The kids have left, our drinks are refreshed – now we can start talking naughty. I’d love to dig out a few secrets tonight.’

  So saying, the woman winked at Peri. A gesture she left unreturned.

  The Colourful Stranger

  Oxford, 2001

  Having never had a job before, Peri was baffled as to where to begin looking for one. Yet she was bent on finding some kind of employment, despite the demands of her timetable, not to mention her student visa, which only allowed her a limited number of hours of work a week. So she went straight to her exuberant friend who had an opinion on everything – even on matters she knew nothing about.

  ‘You must have a CV,’ Shirin opined, ‘that shows your work experience.’

  ‘But I have none.’

  ‘Duh, make it up! Who is going to check whether you waitressed at some pizzeria in Istanbul?’

  ‘You want me to lie?’

  Shirin rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, the power of semantics! Sounds awful when you put it that way. Use your imagination, is all I’m saying. It’s a bit like applying makeup to your biography. Don’t tell me you’re against makeup!’

  For a fleeting moment the two women stood staring at each other’s faces: one, painted; one, free of all cosmetics. It was Shirin who broke the silence. ‘I think I’d better give you a hand.’

  Early next morning Peri found an envelope pushed under her door. Apparently, Shirin had already prepared a CV for her.

  A minute later, Peri was at her friend’s door, knocking. The second she heard a faint mumble coming from inside, she dashed in, waving a sheet of paper. ‘What is this? I haven’t done any of these things!’

  From Shirin, still in bed with her head buried under a pillow, came a muffled, ‘Urgh. I knew it, kindness never pays off.’

  ‘I appreciate your help,’ said Peri. ‘But this says I was a bartender in a trendy underground bar in Istanbul until it burned down. An arson attack! And that I worked in the library of Ottoman manuscripts, specializing in palace jesters and eunuchs! Oh, one more: that in the summers I took care of an octopus at a private aquarium!’

  Shirin, sitting up in salmon-pink satin pyjamas, pushed up the blindfold from her eyes and giggled. ‘I might have got carried away with that last bit.’

  ‘Only with the last bit? How do you think this nonsense is going to help me to find a part-time job?’

  ‘It won’t. But it’ll make you a foreign curiosity. Trust me, educated Brits get a thrill out of multiculturalism. Not too much, though, just enough. People like you and me are allowed to be a bit … eccentric. It makes us fun to be around. So you might as well play it up, take advantage of it. If foreigners aren’t going to bring excitement – and good food – who wants them in England!’

  Peri was silent.

  ‘Listen, what do you think the average Brit knows about your country? They assume everyone over there is either swimming with dolphins and eating calamari or wearing burqas and chanting Islamist slogans.’

  Peri blinked as a surfeit of images filled her head.

  ‘What I’m saying is they either have a sunny impression – sandy beaches and Eastern hospitality, that kind of shit. Or a gloomy one – Islamic fundamentalists, police brutality and Midnight Express. When they want to be nice to you, they throw in the first; when they want to challenge you, it’s the second. Even the most educated are not immune to clichés.’ Shirin stood up to wash her face in the sink by the wall. ‘Like it or not, sister, what you hear from my mouth is the cold hard truth. You must stand up against stereotypes.’

  ‘And this is the way to do that, through falsification?’ Peri asked, glancing at the CV in her hand.

  ‘That’s one fucking way,’ said Shirin, running her fingers through her hair, droplets of water clinging to her chin.

  Guiltily motivated, Peri took to the streets with her CV. At first, she searched for signs posted in shop windows that said, ‘Help Needed’. There were none. Mustering her courage she entered a cake shop and spoke with the manager. She was politely rejected. Next she tried her luck at the pub she had been to with her parents. Same outcome. The third place she called on was her favourite bookshop – Two Kinds of Intelligence. The owners were not surprised to hear Peri’s inquiry. Students were always stopping in looking for a part-time job.

  ‘Have you worked anywhere before, dear?’ said the husband.

  Peri hesitated. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t. But you know I love books.’

  The wife smiled. ‘This is your lucky day! We’ve been looking for someone to help us out over the next few weeks. We can’t promise to keep you on after that. Maybe every now and again when things get busy. What do you think?’

  ‘Sounds perfect!’ Peri said, hardly believing what she’d just heard.

  As she was leaving the shop, she spotted, there on a shelf, the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám – her father’s beloved poet. With an introduction by the translator Edward FitzGerald and filled with illustrations, the beautiful old edition was irresistible. Luckily, they offered her a nice discount.

  Outside, it started to drizzle. Thin, lukewarm drops that brightened her mood. She smiled, put her CV inside the book and checked her watch. Still an hour before her next tutorial. It occurred to her she had enough time to go and find Azur, to get the syllabus for his seminar on God. From all that Shirin had said about him – not to mention her own mixed feelings as she had watched him on the panel – she slightly dreaded meeting him in person.

  Still thinking of the professor, she opened at random the book of poems, which were Khayyám’s breath and soul:

  Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspi
re

  To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire

  She read the lines carefully, slowly. Was there an omen here of things to come? If so, what could it be? Had her father seen her searching for a sign in the words of a poet who had lived almost a thousand years before, he would not be pleased.

  But Peri did not think she defied her father’s golden rule by consulting Khayyám. ‘That’s why I love poetry so,’ she murmured to herself. ‘I can touch, see, hear, smell and taste poems. All my senses are at work, trust me, Baba!’

  It was time, therefore, that she finally came face to face with the professor.

  Part Three

  * * *

  The Siskin

  Oxford, 2001

  Not knowing where to find Professor Azur, Peri hazarded a guess that she would be able to track him down at the Divinity School. If he taught God, surely that was where he should be.

  Grand and modest, this medieval building was the oldest structure in Oxford built for lecturing and teaching. From a distance, with its compound arches, carved wooden doors and flying buttresses, it resembled less the feat of architecture that it was than a delicate watercolour by a dreamy artist. A drowsy expectation hung in the air, as though the ancient stones, having tired of decades of tranquillity, were awaiting something – or so it seemed to Peri as she approached it on that particular day.

  Something drew her inside, something soaring and spiritual in the sublime lines of the fifteenth-century vaulted ceiling. No one stopped her going in, and there seemed no one in the long room illuminated by Perpendicular-style windows – except for a student sitting cross-legged on the floor, immersed in a book. At Peri’s footsteps he glanced up. Under the light slanting through a high window, his features were blurred for a second, and then became visible – the narrow forehead, the ginger hair, the freckled cheeks. It was the attendant who had stopped Peri at the entrance to the God Debate; the attendant who had taken a swipe at Professor Azur in front of everyone. She remembered his name – only because it was the same as the ancient Turkish city of Troy.

  ‘Hello,’ Peri said cautiously.

  ‘Hi there.’ The smile on his face was one of recognition.

  ‘You were at the museum the other day. Do you work there?’ Peri asked.

  ‘Nope, only volunteering. I’m a lowly undergraduate – just like you.’

  Peri half expected him to reprimand her for sneaking into the debate, but either he had not spotted her, or he simply preferred not to bring the subject up. Instead he chatted nonchalantly, asking her where she came from and what she studied. Now that he was stripped of any vestige of authority, he was approachable, even affable.

  ‘I’m looking for Professor Azur,’ said Peri, when the conversation hit a lull. ‘Do you know where his office might be?’

  Troy’s face remained motionless for a moment. His voice, when he spoke again, sounded hollow, like a balloon that had fizzled out. ‘You won’t find him here. These are university offices nowadays. Why are you looking for him anyway?’

  Not expecting to be questioned, Peri’s voice faltered. ‘Uhm … I’m interested in his seminar.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you are planning to take “God”?’

  ‘Why not?’ Peri asked. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Everything,’ Troy said. ‘The guy’s a wolf in professor’s clothing!’

  ‘You don’t like him?’

  ‘He kicked me out of his class. I’m suing him, by the way. Going to take him down in court.’

  ‘Wow, didn’t know students could do that,’ said Peri. ‘I mean … Sorry to hear you had a problem.’

  ‘Problem?’ Troy echoed the word with disdain. ‘Azur is the devil himself. Mephistopheles. Do you know who that is?’

  ‘Sure, from Faust.’

  Troy looked pleasantly surprised that a Turkish girl would know about Faust. ‘Look, you seem nice, but you’re a foreigner, you won’t be able to tell just how insane this man is. You have to listen to me. Stay away from Azur!’

  ‘Well, thanks for the warning,’ Peri said, whatever sympathy that had formed between them ebbing away. ‘But I’ll decide for myself.’

  Troy shrugged. ‘Okay, it’s your choice. He has rooms at his college. The entrance is on Merton Street. In the front quad, find the third staircase on the left. At the open entrance you’ll see a list of names painted white on black.’

  Peri thanked him, though deep within she thought it was rather odd that he was so eager to guide her towards a man he regarded as the devil.

  Professor Azur’s college was down an ancient cobbled lane just off the High Street that you entered through a honey-toned Gothic arch and a stone courtyard.

  Peri easily found the staircase. Chalked on either side of the outside wall were the results of the latest college boat race, surmounted with a pair of crossed oars. Inside the porch she read the names inserted in slats on a board: Prof. T. J. Patterson. G. L. Spencer. Prof. M. Litzinger … and Prof. A. Z. Azur, on the first floor. She made her way down the dark, narrow, flagstoned corridor. There, on the right, was an entrance, its lintel angled with the weight of antiquity; the door slightly ajar, a sheet of paper pinned to it.

  Professor A. Z. AZUR

  Available: Tuesdays 10 a.m.–12 p.m./Fridays 2–4 p.m.

  Theory: You have a question, visit during office hours

  Counter-theory: You have an urgent question outside office hours, drop in & see what happens

  Choose carefully whether it is theory or counter-theory that applies to your case

  Since it was neither a Tuesday nor a Friday, Peri knew she should leave and come back another time. Yet she was emboldened by the ambiguity in the note. She knocked on the door – an empty gesture since, given the silence reigning inside, she sensed there was no one to answer. She tapped again, just to be sure. From the depths of the room, she heard a sound too dulcet to be human, evocative, perhaps, of a beetle trilling for a mate or a butterfly breaking free from its chrysalis. Peri listened intently, her body taut. Once again, the silence was absolute.

  A rush of curiosity came over her, that gnawing hunger for things out of reach. In a flash, she decided that she would peek inside and then leave as quietly as she had come. She pushed the door open, ever so gently. It creaked.

  Nothing had prepared Peri for the sight that awaited her. Under a saffron light spilling through the tall half-open sash window that looked on to an exquisite English garden, were towers of books, handwritten notes, manuscripts and engravings. The walls were lined with bookcases, packed floor to ceiling. Criss-crossing the room, between facing shelves, various colourful strings – like the laundry lines of Istanbul’s impoverished neighbourhoods – were stretched, on which notes and maps had been hung with pegs. Across from the door stood a claw-footed, cherry-coloured, antique desk, every inch covered with more books. Red slips of paper poked out from between their pages, like miniature tongues sticking out in mock surprise. The armchair, the sofa and the coffee table, even the handwoven scarlet rug, were covered with volumes and volumes. If ever there was a shrine dedicated to the printed word, this was it.

  But it was neither the abundance of books nor the disarray in the room that had stopped Peri in her tracks. There was a bird, a siskin with yellow-green feathers and a forked tail, trapped inside. It must have flown in through the window and was flapping around, searching frantically for the freedom it must have just lost. Peri took a few tentative steps and held her breath. Cupping her hands, she tried to catch the delicate creature as gingerly as she could, but the bird, terrified by her presence, was now in a crazed state. In circles of panic, it darted from one corner to the other and at times came tantalizingly close to the open window, yet failed to discover the way out.

  Moving deftly, Peri put the copy of the Rubáiyát down on top of a pile of books and tried to push the old, heavy window up further. But the sash must have been jammed from above, for it could not be forced any wider. She wiggled it with all her strength. The bi
rd, scared witless by the noise, darted by her and threw itself against the glass, beyond which, so close yet so distant, was the infinite sky. Trembling from the impact, it landed on a shelf close enough for Peri to be able to see its bead-like eyes, gleaming with terror. She looked towards the dainty creature with compassion, its distress in the alien surroundings all too familiar to her.

  Peri searched around for a tool that might help her to release the window sash. As her eyes scanned left and right, she detected a smell she could not quite identify. Mingling with the musty scent of books was the sweet-sour fragrance of decaying grapefruits in a bamboo bowl, their pastel brightness in contrast with the earthy hues dominating the room. Beyond that there was another scent. It didn’t take her long to discern the source. There, on a ledge, an incense stick burned in a bronze holder in which a finger of ash had formed.

  She found a metal letter-opener, its sharp end perfect for unscrewing the clasps that she could see were holding the window. Once she unfastened the frame on each end, she gave one last push. The window slid upwards halfway, more easily than she had thought. Now all she needed to do was to direct the bird towards what had become a bigger possibility for escape. Taking her sweater off, she began to wave it in the air.

  ‘Is this a new dance or something?’ a voice inquired from behind.

  Peri was so startled that she let out a gasp. When she turned around, she saw Professor Azur standing in the doorway, one arm resting on the doorframe, watching her, his lips twisted in amusement. Up close his long brown hair had golden overtones, like gilded threads woven into a dark tapestry. He was not wearing glasses today.

  ‘Oh, oh, I’m terribly sorry,’ she blurted out, taking a step towards him and immediately taking a step back. ‘I really didn’t mean to barge in without permission.’