The Gaze

by Elif Shafak

  I laid the same trap for my cuticles that had been used by the huge bath attendant I’d seen when I was a child. I called them with kisses and they stuck their little heads out to see where the sound was coming from. Then I bit each one of them off with my teeth. The taste was unpleasant, but it wasn’t about taste. Sometimes it hurt; and sometimes the area around my cuticles bled. Sometimes I completely forgot that they existed; and sometimes I bit them off so regularly that I had to wait a long time for new ones to emerge. Being fat doesn’t just make me irritable, it also makes me anxious.

  Whenever I went to see B-C at the studio, I became so anxious that I didn’t have any cuticles left. I just couldn’t understand. How could a person display himself; and why? B-C would leave my questions unanswered. On top of that he would say, ‘That’s the way it is, out of stubbornness.’ That’s how what is? What is stubbornness? Perhaps I didn’t want to understand.

  zaman (time): When the cruel bullies of the neighbourhood cut off the black cat’s tail, she licked her two new-born kittens clean and then abandoned them. One of the kittens was taken by the people on the top floor, and the other was taken by the people on the bottom floor. The one taken by the people on the top floor was robust, and grew quickly; the one on the bottom floor grew, but very slowly. Both cats were eating the same food.

  Time passed differently on the top floor and the bottom floor. The people on the bottom floor kept their clocks by the people on the top floor, but they were always late. When they saw the cats, the inhabitants of the house began to believe that they could see time. On the top floor time was sleek and fat, and on the bottom floor time was weak and puny.

  Years passed in this manner. The cats grew older. The cat on the top floor soon became ungainly, the cat on the bottom floor aged slowly. Now time was proceeding backwards.

  The studio belonged to an artist who was approaching sixty and who spent all of his time and money making himself look more interesting. Except for Sundays, there were different groups of students who came at different hours and on different days. And every evening there was a different model.

  Monday was B-C’s day. Every Monday evening B-C, wearing a purple velvet cape that I don’t know where he found, would climb onto a stage about five hands high, sit on his stool, and commence not moving. While B-C posed, the students would draw his pose onto their canvasses. He got a ten minute break. Afterwards, B-C would climb on to the little stage one more time, sit on his stool, and throw off the purple velvet cape that I don’t know where he found. He’d be left completely naked. His whole body was exposed.

  I would have fallen through the floor in embarrassment.

  His stance on top of the stool was so precarious; it looked as if he could fall down at any moment. I think that by doing this he made the students’ work more difficult. Because it forced them to make ephemeral drawings rather than those that might last. His stance was not as lasting as a deeply rooted tree, or as a tick fastened with all its might to its victim, nor a fairytale that’s refreshed as it’s told. On the contrary, his stance was as aimless as water from a spring that could emerge from any fissure, as wayward as a pole star that wandered from one sky to another each night, as indifferent as moths who don’t know the secrets of the dreams of the corners where they flutter. It was as if, even though he was here at that moment, he could get up and leave at any moment. For this reason, the students were gripped by an unnecessary panic, and missed details in order to finish their drawings as soon as possible.

  But I think it was the strangeness of his eyes rather than the ephemeral nature of his stance that made the students’ work difficult. Sometimes, though not always, B-C’s eyes were reduced to two short, thin lines, and it was as if…as if they were closing. At times like these his eyes didn’t express anything, and you couldn’t put a finger on what he felt. I noticed something. When B-C’s eyes were closed, none of the students’ drawings resembled any of the others.

  I don’t think B-C was aware of this, because he didn’t see the drawings, or the students. He just looked around with an aimless stare; from here to somewhere else, and from there to the next place. At the same time, the owner was constantly burning heavy incense in the small studio with small windows. When I came home, I stank of oil paint and incense.

  Despite these things, I can’t keep myself from dropping by once in a while. Every time I go to the studio, I go off into the corner and watch him and the watching. The owner of the studio watches the students with furrowed eyebrows, the students watch B-C with meaningful smiles, and B-C looks aimlessly into the distance. As the studio owner looks at the students, and the students look at B-C, and B-C looks into the distance, I hate this studio more and more. But B-C used to tell me that I should do the same thing. Since I was already fat enough to attract the attention of anyone who saw me, and since I was already being watched, then I should go and display myself out of spite. While even the thought of standing there naked and motionless in front of their eyes was enough to freeze my blood, B-C would insist on repeating, ‘That’s how it is, out of stubbornness.’

  On top of this, the owner of the studio was always insisting that I model: ‘Of course, you won’t have to use the stool. We’ll arrange a sofa for you.’

  zarf (envelope): He worked at the post-office for years. For years he licked and sealed the envelopes that elegant ladies didn’t want to touch and hurried gentlemen didn’t deign to close. He believed that envelopes were essential not because of the addresses they bore but because they concealed what had been written. What made a letter a letter was the fact of its being closed, of being hidden from eyes. On the day he committed suicide he left behind an envelope with its flap open. He put his eyes into it. ‘He went with his eyes open,’ cried those who loved him. They licked the envelope and sealed it in order that he might rest in peace.

  ‘Don’t move!’ said the man again. Though there was no need for him to say this. I wasn’t moving.

  This kind of thing happens to me all the time. Even if I tend to do the right thing in the right place, when I look, everything I touch comes off in my hands; my feet have resisted me, insisting ‘I won’t come with you, I won’t carry you’; my ankles are angrily swollen, my thighs are chapped; my belly has folded itself into layers; I’ve blown my top; my blood-pressure has jumped; my ears are not listening to what I say; my mouth couldn’t hold its tongue again; my back is covered in sweat; my legs, seeing their own bulging veins, have given themselves a diagnosis of gangrene and then turned purple in their distress; my skin has discovered new food allergies and is swelling all over; my eyes are watering for no reason…before I know it I’m all over the place. I’d bend over and pick up my pieces one by one, but what I’ve lost is always more than I’ve gathered. No matter how careful I am, I always leave something behind. Something is always left half-done, unfinished, incomplete.

  My dreams are made of sticks and stones. One flick is enough for them to be level with the floor. ‘An earthquake’ I’d explain to those around me, ‘a terrible earthquake.’ It helped them to believe that the ground must have shaken. Otherwise the reason for this terrifying shaking was nothing other than my huge body. Indeed that’s why all of these things always happened to me. It’s all because of my huge body that all my life I’ve tried to walk as if I’m in a crystal shop, in the best of circumstances knocking over a few shelves and smashing their contents to bits.

  zayiçe (astrology): Looking at the state of the sky in order to see fortunes on earth is called astrology. Astrology is the name given to the charts useful for seeing where the lively stars will be at any given time.

  It was clear that the man had good intentions, but also that he was old and inept. As he was struggling I was looking at the top floor of the Hayalifener Apartments. B-C was above, and I was below.

  I’m down below because the thread that’s been caught has neither beginning nor end; it grew longer when it was pulled, like a story that wore out the listener with its endlessness. I’m down belo
w because I can’t fit through doors when one wing is closed. I was stuck; if only I could take off my sweater and save my body. But I can’t move because of the man. At one point I considered ringing the bell to call B-C for help. But who wants their lover to see them caught in the front door by the thread of her sweater?

  Indeed, I still wasn’t used to B-C’s presence. B-C wasn’t the problem; I just couldn’t believe I had a lover. Sure, when you’re as fat as I am you resign yourself to certain things. That is, the rule that ‘A jug of foresight has fewer calories than a sip of disaster’ applied here. In short, rather than nursing unrealistic fantasies and suffering later, I had decided from the start that no one would ever want me or love me. But since B-C had suddenly appeared in my life, the rules I’d lived by no longer seemed important. When I was with him waves washed against my entire length; the advice I gave myself was a sharp stone that could slice the calmness of this sweet water into rings. I didn’t listen to it either. My life was like a bulky clock that had been left for broken in a corner, and had suddenly started ticking again for no reason. And I was setting the clock. It was struggling like crazy to make up for having been left behind for so long. It was constantly ‘ticktockticktockticktocking’. As always, B-C spoke ill of time; he used to say that ‘ “tick-tock” is the tactic of time.’

  I didn’t understand his problem with time. In fact sometimes I didn’t know what he was talking about. He talked a lot, and liked to say the strangest things. But I didn’t complain. I loved it when he was like that.

  zehir (poison): A substance that causes death without showing itself.

  When at last he succeeded in freeing the thread, the old man’s eyes shone with pride. He cleared his throat in order to accept the words of thanks and praise he was expecting. He must have loved heroes. He had spent his life searching for young women who had been attacked in dark streets, little children who had been trapped in burning buildings, palace dwellers whose family keepsakes in the form of pearl brooches had been stolen by pickpockets, ship-owners’ sons who had been kidnapped for ransom. And he’d found them; but he’d never put any of these opportunities for heroism to use. Time had been unjust to him; it had not presented new opportunities to make up for those he’d missed. He’d always been one step behind, going home after everything was over, filled with regret when he realised what he should have done. He grew old needing to face the same incident again, but time refused to repeat it.

  When I entered the Hayalifener Apartments holding the well-stretched thread from my sweater, the old man looked after me with anxious eyes. Who was I to have behaved so coarsely? During the twenty minutes he’d struggled to help me, he’d only looked at my eyes, my sweater and the stretched thread. In his mind, he’d given me a form to his own liking, and saw himself helping a young woman. Now, looking at me from behind, he finally perceived the whole of me, and saw me as he hadn’t seen me before. He was amazed at how I was able to become so fat. ‘It must be hereditary!’ He was curious about where I was going. Should he stay and see which flat I went into?

  On that question it was enough for him to ask his wife. Since the first day, all of the women in the Hayalifener Apartments knew I was going to B-C’s flat.

  Zeliha: ‘The great vizier’s wife was burning with passion for a slave,’ laughed the ladies. Zeliha didn’t understand that she was expected to punish her eyes for seeing beauty. She was curious about how these ladies, instigators of disaster and experts in gossip, saw this world.

  Finally one day she invited the ladies to her house to show them what she liked and didn’t like. She gave them fruit and knives. Later she presented Joseph to her guests. The ladies couldn’t take their eyes off Joseph, and until they left the room they weren’t aware that they were slicing their own fingers instead of the fruit.

  Zeliha was calm and sedate as she gathered the plates; ‘Look,’ she said, ‘at what my eyes have drawn to me.’

  Again I was out of breath when I reached the top floor. Again, my wheezing wouldn’t stop. There was no elevator in the building. I wouldn’t ride it if there was one. It was better for me to take the stairs. If you’re as fat as I am and the elevator breaks while you’re in it, it’s definitely you who has broken it. Once, the elevator I took got stuck between the second and third floor: half an hour later they took me out of there, and my rescue was the source of much amusement. Even today I can still see the meaningful looks they exchanged.

  But it’s still better to be stuck in an elevator alone than to get into an elevator with other people. Crowded together in that narrow space, even the politest people look at me from the corners of their eyes, and then at the sign that tells the maximum weight the elevator can carry. They try to guess roughly how much I weigh, and secretly start adding up. Sometimes this secret tension leads to witty remarks from those who are brazen enough to be crowned: ‘Lord, I hope the cable doesn’t snap!’

  It’s all so meaningless and exaggerated! Of course I’m not fat enough to put the elevator in danger. But my appearance becomes more important than anything. Those who end up next to me in a narrow elevator begin thinking with their eyes rather than with common sense.

  All of this belongs in the past.

  There’s no elevator in the Hayalifener Apartments.

  zenne: A man who plays women’s parts in the theatre.

  With the key in my hand, I stood in front of the door waiting for my wheezing to subside. I didn’t want B-C to hear me coming. Because I wanted to see what he did when I wasn’t there, or to intrude on his solitude. For some time now, he’s been sitting in front of the computer working when I come home. With an overflowing ashtray next to him, a desk lamp worn out from its own light, the smell of coffee impregnating the room, hazelnut-wafer crumbs everywhere, rows of letters on the computer screen, pages filled with spidery notes…As if it had all been arranged to show that he’d been there for hours, and that all he’d done during my absence was to work. I became suspicious.

  As I was trying to turn the key silently, the door opened from inside. B-C met me with a smile.

  ‘Welcome! Eh, what did we do today?’

  zevahir: Outer appearance.

  Every evening we told each other what we’d done outside that day. Because we couldn’t be together outside. If we took even one step outside the Hayalifener Apartments, our love dissolved. Not only did we not walk together outside, but if we met by chance we would greet each other from a distance. We were not to be seen next to each other. Perhaps I was more particular about this than B-C was. I didn’t want anyone to see us together. Outside was forbidden for ‘us.’ It was only ‘I’ after the point where our secrecy ended. So that was why when we met at home in the evening we related to each other what we’d done separately as if we’d done it together.

  I told him about how we’d gone shopping together that day. I told him about the supermarket.

  zirh (armour): A person is more quickly defeated and more easily killed on the battlefield if he doesn’t conceal what is within from the outer gaze.

  The supermarket is the only place outside where I’m not judged for my fatness. I knew all of the supermarkets in the area; and all of the supermarkets in the area knew me. The security guards at the door would greet me smiling as if we were best friends. Whenever I passed in front of the people who sliced the cheese and the salami, they’d always offer me a taste of some new cheese or salami; the man on duty at the fish counter didn’t wear the same sour expression when he cleaned my fish as he did when he cleaned other people’s fish; the people in the bakery department always offered me baklava and pastries, and expected me to buy several kinds of bread; in the produce department they rushed to bring out unopened crates so I could be the first to choose the best and freshest fruits and vegetables; the girls at the cash registers were delighted to make conversation with me. At supermarkets I felt I was being given special treatment. I could fill my cart completely, and in spite of this come back to the same supermarket the next day and be seen b
uying an enormous amount again, and continue to do this every day, and still not be regarded strangely. I had the right to do comfortably a lot of things that others saw as disagreeable. I could taste as much cheese and as many olives as I wished; I could open and eat packets of biscuits, wafers and crisps; I could drink the cold drinks in the refrigerators. Sometimes I finished what I’d opened right there and then. At the exit, I’d throw the empty packets and bottles into the bin next to the cashier, and they’d smile understandingly and take the money without having to ask for it. I hadn’t done anything shameful. Indeed, I could even have been considered well-behaved. My obesity and gluttony were valid. And in the supermarket their validity was accepted.

  In time I noticed that children were tolerated in the same way as fat people like me. They were exempt from certain restrictions, they also received preferential treatment that was begrudged adults. They too opened packets before they reached the cashier, and their snacking in front of everyone was met with understanding. And while they were doing this they could be considered well-behaved. In any event these children, just like all fat people, were thought not to have any will-power.

  zitlik (contradiction): They asked the eye: ‘What does it please you most to see?’ ‘Contradiction,’ it said, ‘Show me contradiction.’ They showed him the forbidden love between Aphrodite, goddess of creation, and Ares, god of destruction.