by Elif Shafak
Since that day, the bright side of the moon has avoided wells. When unanswerable questions come to mind, she powders herself with the silver powder compact that she is never without. She always wanted to be unique, peerless and unrivalled. She could not stand a female who shone more than she did, if one day she should meet someone like this, there is nothing she wouldn’t do to get rid of her.
Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi didn’t tell this story without reason. Because he knew well that women were each other’s enemies above all. Whenever women came together in the same place, they’d first start examining each other from head to toe, trying to discover each other’s troubles, then move on to asking after each other’s health. As the conversation deepened, wherever there was a rip or a stain, a dark room or a garbage heap, they’d discover them one by one and file them away secretly. Their friendships were like sleeping cats, keeping one eye on each other, and pricking up their ears at the slightest sound. The mortar that held their friendships together became diluted by suspicion covered with egg white. Even the soundest of friendships was shaken by the first pang of apprehension. However, the silver comb was useless without a silver mirror. As Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi knew, the women became uglier in each other’s reflections. This is why they were not to turn their backs on each other, but had to arrive side-by-side, arm in arm. Climbing up the hill together, they had to be as crowded as a cherry tree as they entered the westward-facing door.
Some of the women were accustomed to being together. Most of them enjoyed socialising, or wished to appear as if they did. They’d climb the hill laughing and joking. They’d start up the hill together in a crowd, and the same crowd would arrive at the entrance to the tent. And some, knowing well that in the end they would all have to come together, preferred to climb all by themselves until the last step. Most of them were reserved by nature, or wished to appear as if they were. The fountain on the hill was a turning point for them. When they arrived at the fountain, they had no choice but to come together. The fountain put on airs; it sprayed out water with enthusiasm. The women wet their mouths, foreheads and necks with the ice-cold water. Those who had come that far by themselves would come together in small groups, and would enter into complaisant and unavoidable friendships as they continued on their way. The rest of the way up the hill would be spent getting to know each other. From then on they couldn’t be separated from each other; from then on strangers became friends, and friends became travelling companions. With each step they became more cheerful and open. As they walked arm-in-arm some of them even began to lose their fear. For Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi’s orders were strict; even if she was fear itself, no female should be excluded from the crowd of women entering the tent. For this reason, after the evening call to prayer, carrying swollen bundles and with their fussing children beside them, they crossed the threshold of the westward-facing door of the cherry-coloured tent pushing one another and grasping their long woollen coats.
Most went on foot. Because those who insisted on going by carriage could be the victims of mysterious accidents. Sometimes nothing went wrong; even if the horses were sweating profusely, they went straight up the hill and succeeded in making it to the top. Sometimes the carriages would overturn for no reason. Sometimes they would slip on the ice, sending the passengers rolling back down at great speed. When these incidents were spoken of, it was with much exaggeration, and the addition of a sprinkling of mystery. When this was the case, the women who were accustomed to detecting the warning of a disaster usually caused by carelessness, preferred to leave their carriages at the foot of the hill and climb on foot, for there was no need to anger the saints buried on the hill. From time to time, there were also some groups who arrived on litters. These, pale complexioned women from elite families, would climb the hill with dignified expressions on the shoulders of their strong powerful servants. But as is the way of the world, these too overturned from time to time.
Those who turned and looked back when they reached the top of the hill could see the sea. The sea was blue, bluer than blue; it was hostage to its own clear stillness. Once in a while some women got a crazy idea. The sea was a breast, gently swollen, aching, calling softly from afar for a mouth for its milk. Now…without regret for the past or concern for the future; as if…just by relaxing, opening their mouths and closing their eyes, it would be possible to be filled with time by sucking deeply on the present moment. In any event, their responsibilities were ready and waiting to be wrapped up. The loose string would quickly be re-wound. Children would take care of their mothers, mothers-in-law would take care of their daughters-in-law, and friends would take care of each other; those who were still captivated by the sea would be reminded that they had to reach the cherry-coloured tent before it grew dark. It worked. Once those who were lost in empty dreams were reminded of who they were, they would come on their own. In any event, as Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi often said: if the ship of womanhood were to sink, it would not be from a slow leak in the cargo hold of womanly duty motherly responsibility, but from a resounding and heavy rain of cannon balls of dreams. Women were susceptible to the lure of dreams.
Even though in time this area came to be called a swamp, no one who had ever smelled the heady fragrance of the fig and lemon trees, or seen their delicate purple buds would want to believe it. Here, sparrows would chirp merrily, peacocks would strut around showing off, and nightingales would compose melodies to roses of unsurpassed beauty. For all of the women, if the area surrounding the cherry-coloured tent was a part of heaven, then that steep hill was the bridge which the righteous will pass over and from which the unrighteous will fall on the Day Of Judgement. But no one bothered their heads much about this question. It wasn’t the outside of the tent that was important, it was the inside. And if anyone knew the truth of the matter, it would be Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi.
Here, it was possible to meet women of every temperament and nature. Matchmakers eagerly cast their eyes about for marriageable girls, irritable old women who constantly moved their lips as they cursed everything, cunning and foul-mouthed cloth peddlers looking for customers to corner, widows wrapped from head to toe in grief, cheap sluts who had aged before their time, greying whores who looked older than they were, fresh young girls whose pink complexions showed that they’d spent the whole day at the baths, professional midwives who knew at a glance what cure was needed for anyone’s troubles, swan-necked dancing girls who never danced, never even smiled without hearing the sound of money, poor Jewish women from the miserable shacks of Balat, Gypsy women who carried their babies on their backs and their secrets in their bosoms, spoiled, pink-skinned Circassion girls, Arab women with mascara and jet-black hair, brides-to-be who tied silk handkerchiefs to the branches of the trees around the tent, rich Armenian women with palanquins inlaid with mother-of-pearl, Persian women who smelled of hot spices, French governesses who taught etiquette to the children of elite families, multi-talented concubines who were raised to be given as gifts to the palace, pregnant women with swollen bellies, Italian actresses who couldn’t share with their troupes, deeply religious grandmothers who were forcibly dragged here by their grandchildren and the grumbling of their daughters-in-law, ladies who were the toast of Pera society, house-proud Greeks from Tatavla, Russian women of slight and graceful build and languorous looks, successful English dance teachers, usurer’s wives who had new clothes made each time their husbands made a killing, self-sacrificing nurses from the hospitals of Beyoglu and so many others…young, old, children, everyone imaginable was here.
There was one only reason these varied women, who did not mention each other in their prayers and who did not let each other exist in their dreams, struggled up the hill to meet at the westward-facing gate of the cherry-coloured tent: in order to see the ugliest of the ugly, that wretched, plagued creature, the Sable-Girl!
Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi was responsible for all of it. Indeed no one but him would ever have thought
of all these things. Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi was a clever and agile man. His strangeness was apparent from birth.
Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi came to this realm in the following manner:
His mother, whose life would not have been fulfilled if she had died before giving birth to a son, and who had poured the blood of sacrificial victims onto the earth in the hope of this good fortune, who had even sought the help of a sorceress in order not to leave any spell untried, who had given birth to six girls one after another, and after so many miscarriages, finally, having learned this in a dream one night from a hairless, beardless dervish, tied locks of her hair to the thin branches of the blackberry trees in the garden and arranged candles in concentric circles, and her husband, who she’d pleaded with, shaking with embarrassment at having to undress in the innermost circle, not saying it was not because of the cold but because ‘the neighbours will see and we’ll never live it down,’ was made to believe her, and not change his mind. Towards dawn that night she became pregnant with Memiş. After nine months and ten days of not lifting a finger about the house, on a violently windy autumn evening, the poor woman gave birth to Memiş with a stillness and patience that amazed the midwife.
Although in truth the name was not given to her in the dervish dream, she was absolutely certain that Memiş was the most appropriate name for such a generous-hearted person. Living up to his name, Memiş wouldn’t even hurt a fly. Indeed, as a baby Memiş didn’t even utter a sound of complaint to his mother. Unlike his elder sisters, throughout the pregnancy he did not cause his mother to drown from her tears, to cook unmentionable foods, or to have awful nightmares. Even stranger was the fact that the birth was painless. He wasn’t born but rather slid out; he didn’t slide out but virtually flowed out. He flowed from one shell to another without panic or hope. As if all he wanted was to establish himself here without bothering anyone, he slid himself into the midwife’s hands without causing any trouble or inconvenience. After six girls in a row, the first boy child!
The poor woman was so certain that this time her child would be a boy, she didn’t even feel the need to ask the child’s sex when it was born. Burying her head in the pillow, she drew in the dense smell of the room. The room had a smell that she wasn’t used to: it smelled as if, somewhere nearby, they were using the smoke from different kinds of tree barks in order to get rid of termites. ‘Strange thing,’ she thought to herself. She had to tell them that there were no termites in that room. ‘When I wake,’ she said to herself, ‘When I wake I’ll tell them.’ After a last smile of delight, she closed her eyes and never opened them again.
Because the midwife couldn’t take her eyes off the baby, it was some time before she noticed that the mother had left them. There was something unsettling about this tiny, tiny boy, but she couldn’t quite understand what it was. Thank God, there was nothing wrong with his body; he did not start to cry, but it was possible to take care of that with a little slap. There was something else about this baby; some…thing…else…a little later one of the neighbour women came in and handed the midwife a bowl full of the blood of a ram that had been sacrificed. Just as the midwife was about to dip her finger into the blood and dab his forehead, she started to chuckle. Finally she realised the cause of her uneasiness: it was the baby’s face.
The baby Memiş’s face was virtually transparent. His mouth-nose-eyebrows-eyes were both complete and incomplete. His mouth-nose-eyebrows-eyes hadn’t come in person, but had sent their shadows instead. The midwife’s anxiety transmitted itself to the others in the room, and now everyone leaned over and carefully examined the face of this baby who didn’t cry or move and who seemed to greet the world with an indifferent smile. All of those who were examining this face that had just come into existence found nothing extraordinary about its features, but at the same time couldn’t take their eyes off of these extraordinary features. As if every feature of this baby’s face had been scattered randomly, but there was still a hidden order in this randomness. Because of the state it was in, they couldn’t quite understand what the face resembled, or decide whether it was ugly or beautiful. The blessed baby’s face confused them so much that, except for the midwife who didn’t like the gloominess one bit and stood up all of a sudden, no one could leave the cradle’s side.
Confronted with the boy in the cradle and the dead woman in the bed, the midwife asked God for strength and said to herself: ‘There’s surely a miracle here!’ In this way, Keramet was added to the baby Memiş’s name.
If it were up to the midwife, there wouldn’t have been reason to delve into the matter too much. Indeed if there was a miracle involved, there was no point in worrying to such a degree. But the baby’s aunt was a bold and fearless woman; very intelligent, and stalwart too. That day she sensed immediately that things were going wrong, but because she didn’t want to go out of her room unless the house was deserted, she sat in her room for hours, reading the Koran and waiting for a sign. Then, when at last things became quiet, she took the baby into her lap, and looked it over carefully. She agreed with the others about baby Keramet Memiş having flowed out rather than being born. But the way he flowed didn’t quite resemble the flowing of nocturnal rivers vengefully scooping out their beds, or of wild waterfalls cascading loudly, or of endless seas agitating sadly, shabby, heavy rains pouring down indifferently or of melting snow in the first warmth of the beginning of spring. It would be more accurate to say that he dripped rather than flowed.
Moreover, there was a difference between dripping and dripping. Water drips too, and blood; oil drips, and time; and tears also drip, for instance. But each one drips differently. Some of them could become steam and dry themselves with the desire to rise into the sky, some of them stayed in the place they’d landed, some of them could come to the top of whatever hollow they had been put into and show off, some of them could depart from their eternity and arrive at endlessness; some of them could leave behind deposits of anguish on the paths they’d travelled. When it came to the baby Keramet Memiş, his dripping didn’t resemble any of these. He looked as if he would stay where he had dripped, in the state in which he had dripped; that is, he was more like a drop of wax rather than of water or blood, oil or time, or even tear drops.
For a long time, the aunt smelled this baby that still didn’t cry, or move, but simply remained where he was, and how he was. And when she determined that the smell wafting from the baby was definitely that of wax, she became frightened. Because a drop of wax stays where it flows and hardens where it stays as soon as it is far from the source of heat. Because the wax cannot become liquid unless it can return to the bosom of heat from which it came. But the warm womb that had brought the baby Keramet Memiş into the world had long since begun to grow cold. Soon, as the source of light that was his mother’s body became as cold as ice, the liquid would solidify and then become rigid. And once something had hardened, it was impossible for it to take shape. So the baby’s face needed to be shaped. It was as if a curtain of wax, half transparent and half mysterious, had been pulled between the baby Keramet Memiş’s face and humanity. At that moment the poor woman realised that she had to pull herself together and do something.
Since this strange baby had dripped into this world instead of being born, from moment to moment he was hardening just like a drop of wax where he fell and in the state in which he fell; and since he was completely deprived of the source of heat that would warm and soothe him, and by soothing melt him, if she didn’t intervene at that moment, the baby’s face would freeze in its transparent immobility. If she hadn’t appreciated this and taken it into hand quickly, Keramet Memiş wouldn’t have had a face for the rest of his life.
Immediately, the aunt took a piece of hazelnut shell and burned it in the fire. Later, she began to shape the baby’s face even as it began to harden. With the black of the hazelnut shell, she drew the eyes and mouth, the eyebrows and eyelashes, the chin and forehead and the cheeks and temples. When it came time for the eyes, the
dead woman in the bed was about to freeze and the wax-drop baby was just on the point of hardening completely. From that moment on, it very definitely wouldn’t take shape, or come to life. Indeed time was so short that, with her hands tangled up by panic, she could only draw two thin slits for eyes. There was no more time for the eyes.
That day, the baby was not only left with the face his aunt drew with the hazelnut shell, he was also left with a name: ‘Mumî!’
After that they showed Keramet Mumî Memiş to his father. The poor man was so very delighted that he finally had a son after all these years he swore to feed all the poor of seven neighbourhoods and to bring anyone who hadn’t been washed since birth to the baths for a good cleaning, But before he had finished saying this, a lump formed in his throat. He sensed some kind of misfortune. With the terror of a sparrow whose wing has been caught by a cat, he ran with his heart in his throat to the room where his wife slept. He couldn’t find the courage to open his eyes. Feeling his way in the darkness, he found the now completely ice cold body. He buried his nose in his wife’s hair, which as always smelled of walnuts and cinnamon and the north-west wind. But it was as if another smell had been added to these. As if…the smell of wax was hanging in the air.
He laid the baby Keramet Mumî Memiş next to his mother. As he left the room he didn’t even turn and look once; either at the mother nor at the baby. In his mind he had buried the two of them together, side-by-side. As the door closed, he murmured something, perhaps a farewell.
‘If only!’ he said, ‘If only she’d lived, if only she’d given birth to a girl again.’
So that’s how Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş came into this world. The rest was left to time. Later on, when his form had grown, Efendi was also added to these famous names.
