by Elif Shafak
‘Mouse, are you there?’ Shirin asked.
Peri could not answer. Not a word. Slowly, as silent as the fog creeping in from the Bosphorus, she hung up.
The Glass of Sherry
Oxford, 2002
The President’s Lodgings occupied an entire side of a fifteenth-century front quadrangle. Azur strode up to the polished black front door and rang the bell. A few seconds later a senior scout appeared and ushered him into the expansive entrance hall.
‘This way, Professor, please,’ the man said, as he led Azur up an Elizabethan oak staircase, through a panelled long gallery to the President’s study.
Inside, the President busied himself organizing his papers – top-priority in the ivory tray, important-but-less-urgent in the brown tray, and all the rest in the yellow one – as he always did when faced with an appointment he would rather not have. It was going to be a difficult talk and he needed to order his thoughts. In the meantime, he turned to tidying his desk. The sticky notes, the stapler, the mother-of-pearl letter opener with the silver handle … He put the pencils – each sharpened to perfection – in a cylindrical leather box. It was a gift from his daughter.
A sharp knock on the door jolted him out of his reverie. ‘Do come in.’
Azur entered, sporting a velvet jacket, richly coloured, just the right tint of purple. Underneath, he wore a turtleneck of a lighter shade. His hair, as always, was a studied mess.
‘Good morning, Leo. It’s been a while.’
‘Azur, how wonderful to see you,’ said the President, his voice polite and affectionate but strained. ‘A while indeed. I was thinking of tea; would you care to join me – or, what time is it … a glass of sherry, perhaps?’
Azur had never adopted the late-morning sherry habit among dons, but this morning he thought that he, or the President, might need a drink. ‘Sure, why not.’
In a few seconds, an even older scout appeared – his countenance chiselled to stony reticence, his back hunched by years of service. Like the portraits on the walls, the Gothic oak chairs by the window, one could hardly imagine a time when he wasn’t a part of the college.
For a while the two men watched the scout, an arm locked behind his back and his hand trembling, pour the sherry with an agonizing slowness. Silver decanter, crystal glasses, salted almonds.
‘Read your recent interview in The Times, good stuff,’ said the President when they were alone again.
‘Thanks, Leo.’
An awkward silence ensued.
‘You know how much I admire you,’ said the President. ‘We’re fortunate to have you as a fellow. And I was very fond of Anissa.’
‘Thank you, but you haven’t invited me here to talk about my late wife,’ said Azur. ‘I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re upset. What is it, tell me.’
The President took out his sticky notepads. Earlier he had colour-coordinated them – the oranges, the greens, the pinks. Without glancing up at Azur, he muttered, ‘There are complaints about you.’
Azur examined the President – his hair greying at the temples, his creased forehead, the nervous twitch of his mouth; every inch the former Treasury mandarin he once was. He said, ‘You don’t need to mince words with me.’
‘No, of course not. Wouldn’t dream of it. Each time you were under attack, and God knows there have been a few occasions … either because of your views or your teaching style … I mean, you are popular, but not with everyone, surely you must know that … I’ve supported you, all this time.’
‘I know,’ Azur said calmly.
The President built a tiny tower with the sticky notepads. ‘I stood by your side because I believed in your intellectual integrity. I respected your commitment to knowledge and objectivity.’ A sigh. ‘Why, pray, have you upset so many?’
Undergrads in tears, spoken and written charges about Azur and his teaching techniques, accusing him of pushing his students too far, exposing their weaknesses, humiliating them in front of their friends, being ostentatiously controversial and offensive. ‘Offensive,’ said the President out loud.
‘They need to learn not to be offended,’ said Azur. ‘This is not a nursery. It’s a university. Time to grow up. They can’t be pampered and coddled forever. Our students must learn how to deal with things. Stuff happens.’
‘Yes, but that’s not exactly in your job description.’
‘I believe it is.’
‘Your job is to teach them philosophy.’
‘Precisely!’
‘Philosophy as in textbooks.’
‘Philosophy as in life.’
Another sigh. ‘They can’t go around feeling offended and pushed to the limit. Too many students complain.’ The President knocked down the tower of sticky pads. ‘But there’s something else … important.’
‘What is it?’
‘A female student.’
The words hung in the air, refusing to dissolve.
‘They’re saying you’re having affairs with some of the students,’ said the President.
‘It’s nobody’s business, is it? So long as I’m not taking advantage of anyone … or I’m not being taken advantage of.’
The President shook his head. ‘The morality of that position is debatable.’
‘Is this about Shirin? She’s not my student, you must know. Not any more.’
‘Uhm … No, that’s not her name.’
Azur gave a quizzical frown. ‘Who are you talking about?’
‘A Turkish student. She’s in your class.’ The President lifted his tired eyes. ‘She tried to commit suicide last night.’
Azur paled. ‘Peri? My God! Is she all right?’
‘Yes, fine … youth,’ said the President. ‘Paracetamol overdose. She has a resilient liver.’
‘I can’t believe it.’ Azur slouched in his seat, his face drained of all its vigour.
‘The story is that you had an affair with her and you … abandoned her.’
Azur inhaled sharply as if he had been punched. ‘She said that?’
‘Well, not exactly. The girl is in no state to talk right now,’ the President said. ‘It’s that boy who sued you, Troy … He’s threatened to talk to the press. He seemed quite agitated. I have his written statement here.’
‘May I see it?’
‘I’m afraid not. It needs to go to the Ethics Committee.’
‘I can assure you nothing happened between me and Peri. All you need to do is ask her; I’m confident she’ll tell you the truth.’
‘Look, you’re a very fine teacher but, first and foremost, a fellow of this college. We can’t let the college’s good name be compromised. Surely you must know you’ve made many enemies over the years.’ The President took a sip of sherry. ‘You can imagine the media … they’ll feast on this story, they’re carnivores.’
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘Well … you may like to consider taking a brief hiatus. Stop teaching for a while. Let this die down and the committee finish their investigation. Once this girl testifies it will be fine. Until then we need to close down this … thing.’
Azur stared at him, searching. Then he stood up. ‘Leo, you’ve known me for a long time, I have never behaved unethically.’
The President also rose to his feet. ‘Listen –’
‘Troy’s testimony is flawed, I can assure you. What did Anaïs Nin say? We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.’
‘For goodness’ sake, Anaïs Nin is the last person you should be quoting under the circumstances.’
‘I’ll wait for Peri to tell the truth,’ said Azur. He shook his head. ‘Poor girl, what did she do to herself?’
Then he was gone. As a fellow of the college, they surely could not get rid of him if he didn’t want to go. Yet, while even now he didn’t really care what others thought of him, deep within he knew that he had become an embarrassment to the faculty. His head was thumping as if something long trapped within was trying to break its way out.
With swift, swinging strides, he marched out of the building and into the rain, which had been falling unceasingly all morning.
The Sound of God’s Absence
Oxford, 2002
When Peri came to her senses in a room inside the John Radcliffe Hospital, she could not tell immediately where she was. The colours were too bright, aggressive – the whites of the bedsheets too immaculate, the blues of the bedcovers too cheerful. The grey of the sky outside the window reminded her of the lumps of lead her mother melted against the evil eye. She heard murmurs inside her head, futile prayers. Uneasy, she tried to close her eyes again, wishing the sound away, but the patient beside her – a woman of sixty or so – seemed eager to talk.
‘Good heavens, girl, you’re awake! I thought you’d sleep forever.’
Speaking with a breezy abandon, the woman said she had been married for forty years and hospitalized so many times she knew the entire staff by name. Her voice filled the room like a swelling balloon, raising the pressure inside Peri’s ears.
‘What about you, girl? A first timer or a repeater?’
Peri cleared her throat as an awful chemical taste rose in her mouth. She searched for her voice and shook her head, unable to talk. Shrinking into the sheets, she turned her face towards the window. Fragments of the day before began to flock into her mind. What had she done?
A tear ran down her cheek as her father came to mind and she recalled his words: You are my clever daughter. Only you among my children can do this. Education will save you and you will save our broken family. Youth like you will rescue this country from its backwardness. The dream child sent to Oxford to bring pride to the Nalbantoğlus had brought humiliation and failure instead. Without realizing it, Peri began to sob so hard and so loudly that the other patient, fearing for her state of mind, pressed the emergency button and called the nurse. In a few minutes, Peri was given a peach-coloured liquid, which smelled horrible but strangely had no flavour. She buried her head into her pillow, her eyelids weighed down by exhaustion.
In her state of semi-delirium the only face that she kept seeing was that of the baby in the mist. Where was he now when she needed him? Did he have an existence and a will outside of her or was he simply a trick of a mind riddled with guilt?
The next morning Peri met her psychiatrist for the first time. A young doctor with a kind, generous smile. You are not alone, he said. They would work as a team. He would give her the tools with which she could build a new Peri; she would be the architect of her soul. The author of herself. He had the habit of pausing too often and ending every statement with the same question, ‘How does that sound?’ The treatment would not make self-destructive thoughts disappear, he explained, but rather teach her how to cope with them in case they returned. He made suicidal tendencies sound like the weather, like a spell of heavy rain. You could not avoid it, but if you knew how to stay dry, you would be less affected by it.
‘There’s one more thing,’ he said. ‘When you’re ready, no pressure, you might be asked a question or two about a certain professor. We understand there are accusations of bullying students, including you, in front of everyone. The university is investigating the claims – for your own benefit and for the benefit of other students. Whenever you’re ready, no rush. How does that sound?’
Peri felt a chill down her spine. So they thought it was Azur who had triggered her suicide attempt. Astounded though she was to hear this, still she said nothing.
The Dawn Redwood
Oxford, 2002
The morning she was expected to appear before the committee, Peri sat alone in the Botanic Garden, just off Magdalen Bridge. Each time she came here she felt as if she were strolling in a favourite childhood place, at ease with her surroundings. A sixty-foot dawn redwood – how she loved the name! – towered above the bench where she was seated. The tree, previously known only from fossils, had been found growing in a remote Chinese valley. She relished that magical story of botanical discovery.
The sun on her back, she pulled her legs towards herself, her knees up against her chin, finding a strange calm amidst rare plants and trees. In her hand she held a coffee cup, which she pressed against her cheek, the warmth as comforting as the touch of a lover.
The voice of Shirin rang in her ears. Why do you always make yourself so fucking miserable, Mouse? Why the sad, worn face? You seem like a ninety-year-old swallowed you whole. When will you learn to have a bit of fun?
Azur, however, said the best way to approach ‘the question of God’ was neither through religiosity nor scepticism but through solitude. There was a reason why all those ascetics and hermits had withdrawn into the desert to fulfil their spiritual quest. In the company of others, one was more likely to commune with the devil than with God, Azur argued. A joke, of course – though with Azur you never knew.
Yes, she would go to testify on his behalf. She owed him that. He had contributed to her misery, for sure – an unrequited love was the last thing she needed in life – but he could not be held responsible for her suicide attempt. Besides, she was thankful to him. He had opened up another dimension in her consciousness that, unknown to her, had been lying inert. He expected, no, he demanded his students see their cultural and personal prejudices and, ultimately, to cast them off. He was an extraordinary teacher, a scholar of integrity. He had managed to shake her, motivate her, challenge her. She had worked harder in his seminar than in any other class. He had shown her the poetry in wisdom and the wisdom in poetry. In his seminars all were welcome and treated equally, regardless of their backgrounds or their views. If there was anything Azur held sacred, surely it was knowledge.
She adored the way the last rays of sun tinted his hair gold and the way his eyes sparkled when his mind flew as he spoke about a favourite book or a beloved philosopher. She adored his love of teaching, which at times felt even stronger than his will. So many tutors taught the syllabus, year in year out, while he improvised in every class. In his universe there were no routines, only risks worth taking. She remembered him quoting Chesterton: Life looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.
But then, as infatuated as she was with him, she abhorred his air of superiority, his bloated pride, the hubris that infused his whole being. He dismissed the worries of others, indoctrinating students with his own perspective, exercising a form of power over them, often at the expense of hurting their feelings.
She imagined his hand running through Shirin’s hair and down her neck … it was more than she could bear. The thought of the two of them together – talking, laughing, making love. These were the scenes that played non-stop in her mind when her head hit the pillow at night. How close Azur had been to Shirin, while he had remained aloof and inaccessible to her. Only when he had learned about the otherworldly episodes she had with the baby in the mist did he pay more attention to her. For him she had been yet another scientific experiment, another source of curiosity. He had quickly lost interest in her, like a spoiled child with a new toy. She loathed the avarice he conflated with a spirit of inquiry, the vanity he hid behind academic research. She could not tell which upset her more: that he had been secretly sleeping with Shirin or that he had refused to love her in the same way. He had burst into her life and left destruction in its wake. Yes, she would testify against him.
Shirin and Mona had been deeply shocked when they heard about Peri’s suicide attempt. As soon as they were allowed to visit, they had come, bringing nothing but their concern, etched on their faces. They were bent on finding out why she had done it – a question Peri didn’t know how to answer. Shirin had also begged her to give evidence in Azur’s defence. She had asked her to save her darling professor. Was it because Shirin trusted her and saw her as a dear friend, Peri wondered; or did she simply think that she – Mouse – was easy to manipulate?
Be objective, she told herself. Separate your feelings from facts, that at least you owe t
o Azur. Make sure you aren’t driven by emotion. He taught you how to do that. Regarding his affair with Shirin, well, they were two consenting adults, neither exploiting the other. As for Troy’s motives in seeking to bring him down, were they entirely selfless?
On a bench in the Botanic Garden, each question piercing her mind led to a more complicated one. The psychiatrist had told her it was best to put off making serious decisions until she was feeling better, stronger. But how could she do that under the circumstances? Peri felt lost; the thin rope mooring her snapped and she drifted in unknown waters, not sure which way to swim. Soon she would appear before the committee members. What would she tell them? What kind of things might they ask her in return? Her feelings swirled in circles, with such speed that she was not sure she could put them into words, least of all in front of strangers and in a language other than her own.
She checked her watch. Her heart pounding so hard it could have burst through her chest, she stood up and began to walk towards the building where Professor Azur’s reputation would be on trial.
Swathed in the tranquillity of his college rooms, Azur sat at his desk, staring out of the window. He tried not to let his mind dwell on the outcome of the committee meeting. It weighed heavily on his conscience that people who loved him might get hurt at the end. He knew Shirin would be grilled with questions about their affair. She would try to disguise the truth to protect him. Fruitless, he reasoned, since he had already decided to tell everything straight out. He had nothing to hide. He had done nothing wrong.
Troy, too, would be summoned. He would unload the pack of lies he called truth. He had never liked that boy. Sneaky. Good thing he had kicked him out of the class. Over the years he had heard many stories of students and professors clashing over political definitions, historical views and so on. For his part, he had rarely been bothered by differences of opinion. Every year one received a few difficult cases, students who wanted to show how clever, how special, how far-above-their-peers they were. And that was fine. It was Troy’s attitude in the classroom that had put him off. Bossing other students about, ridiculing anyone he didn’t agree with, calling people names, following them after hours and bullying them with his opinions on God. At first he had thought Troy’s presence would provoke everyone into thinking more clearly, but it had quickly become clear that most students felt intimidated by him. So he had thrown him out of the class, leaving the boy excluded, hostile, dangerously vindictive.
