by Elif Shafak
Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi rose from the bed without uttering a word. He took a mirror. He looked into his eyes.
Without uttering a word, Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi broke the mirror.
As day broke, he helped his wife gather her things. The young woman got up and left without a sound or a gesture of farewell. The outer door closed gently.
And it always remained closed. From that day onward Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi didn’t set foot out of the house. He didn’t want to see anyone, he sent back all invitations, he didn’t open the door for his worried friends. His six elder sisters were miserable with grief. They worked to get him remarried for fear that his condition would worsen. Each matrimonial candidate they found was more beautiful and more talkative than the last. But to no avail. Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi didn’t want anyone.
Finally, one day, his paternal aunt knocked on his door. She’d aged a great deal. When she came in, half of her strength was left hanging on the doorknob.
‘I didn’t know, son,’ she said quietly. ‘If I’d known, would it have turned out this way? When you were born your face was a drop of wax, I thought that whatever I drew before it hardened would be for the better. I made you a face, even if it’s rigid. But the eyes… Time was so short…after all it was about to harden. In my panic it was the best I could do. That’s why your eyes are such narrow slits. I drew your eyes, but I didn’t have the presence of mind to open them. A curtain of wax remained over your eyes. I didn’t know, son. Forgive me. Otherwise I’ll die with my last wish unfulfilled.’
Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi looked at his aunt’s wrinkled hands. These hands were the creators of his face, the architects of his destiny. He could have kissed those hands and touched his forehead to them. He could have folded these hands into his own hands. But he didn’t.
His aunt left. As she left, the remaining half of her strength was caught on the doorknob. On the evening of the same day, news spread of the old woman’s death. Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi didn’t go the funeral. He didn’t pay his last respects to his face’s creator.
He didn’t bear anyone any ill-will. It was just that…he didn’t care; he didn’t care about anything. Indeed he felt as if he could do anything. Since he could do anything, it was better to do nothing. One by one he spat out those who knocked on his door to help. He caused his sisters to weep bitterly, and his enemies to feel inner delight. He threw himself into an ocean of smoke, he swam as far from the shore into this ocean of smoke as he could. As he swam he saw that ‘a long distance’ itself was an illusion, a mirage, wherever you moved, the vanishing point remained the same.
‘Is there any activity in this world that’s worth the effort?’ he used to say as he drew in the smoke. He would shrug his shoulders indifferently. ‘If there is, I’ll do it, and my enthusiasm will pass. I need enthusiasm that will never pass.’
‘Is there an adventure in this world that’s worth living?’ he used to ask as his head spun round and round. He would shrug his shoulders indifferently. ‘If there is, let me live it, but the story will end. I need stories that never end.’
He made his decision: It was going to end.
He was melting day by day. In order for the wax to be consumed more quickly, he stubbornly subjected it to heat. He would sit on top of the stove, and would surround himself with candles; he would seize his torch and run to every fire that broke out in the city; he would pass out in bakeries and wake up in furnace-rooms; with raki burning at the back of his throat, he would deliver eulogies to the furnace boys; by day he would sun himself for hours, and at night he would sleep with high-carat whores. He wanted to melt as soon as possible, to free himself from this rigidity that confined his heart and to become liquid again. Since he’d come to this useless structure they called the world as a drop of wax, he’d leave it as a drop of wax. He might not have finished all he’d started, but he’d finish in the state he’d started. Later…later perhaps he’d harden and set again, but this time in a completely different guise. What did it matter if they didn’t like that one either? He’d flow again. In any event, time was endless, and space was limitless. Why should he stay squeezed into this envelope?
The weather grew cold. Winter arrived.
The weather grew warm. The snows melted.
But he still hadn’t melted completely.
He hadn’t the strength left to curse wax, to swear at wax, to reproach wax. Since his wedding night, since his will had been broken, he was like a shaman’s cloak of forty patches and a single thread in the reflections of the broken pieces of mirror. He shredded the sealed story with his name, and scattered the pieces through time and space. And with all his melting, these pieces somehow didn’t melt.
He passed through bad times. But he lived. And much later, on a brightly coloured morning, he went out into the streets again. Not as before though, there was something altered about him when he went out into the street. It wasn’t as it had always been, there was something different about the way he looked at his surroundings. His pupils were pin-cushions. They were covered with holes made by evil eyes and evil words pinched into their halo. Water leaked from some of these holes. This was how he wept.
It had been so long since he’d walked that he could neither keep his legs from trembling at each step nor determine where he was going. It was as if every direction was the same, as if every passageway led to the same dead end, and every street looked exactly like the other. It was as if he’d left this world; it was aware neither of how long Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi had been absent nor of the crisis he’d passed through.
A man was coming towards him: young and elegant and swaggering. He planted himself in front of the man like a thief blocking the way to the fountain.
‘Where are you coming from like this?’
‘From home,’ said the young man, looking over his shoulder as if someone was coming after him from his house. Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi approached the young man with curiosity. His nose detected a sour smell.
‘I drank raki in order to suppress the smell of cloves in my mouth. I may have exceeded my measure,’ explained the young man. ‘I splashed on lots of perfume but I still can’t get rid of this unpleasant smell. My mother puts black cumin in my pockets, and makes me chew cloves before I leave the house. I smell of black cumin and cloves all day. Food is tasteless, streets are narrow, days are short. I smell like those dilapidated wooden houses.’
‘So how would you like to smell?’ Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi shouted after the young man, who was walking away as he spoke.
‘You know those fancy stone houses that each have a different name engraved on them. I want to smell like they do. Cool and self-assured.’
He must have said more, but his voice was no longer audible. At one point, Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi took advantage of the wind blowing from his direction, and shouted again.
‘All right, where can houses like this be found?’
He waited, but the wind didn’t bring an answer from the young man. Suddenly, just as he was about to turn and leave, a whisper reached his ear.
‘In Pera! To Pera! Pera!’
That was when Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi understood the state of the men of his country. Had they changed during his withdrawal into solitude, or had they been this way for a long time, and it was he who was late to see it? He understood that he would no longer be able to watch anything in the same way he used to. The wind had no intention of blowing backwards; it was clear that it had changed direction. There were new things happening; it was the new and the European that was in demand. It was clear that the fancy stone houses didn’t let in the roasting, suffocating sun; neither the tastelessness of food, the narrowness of streets nor the shortness of days. The fancy stone houses were refreshing after the dilapidated wooden houses that were faded and falling apart from neglect. Even if the one he was addressing didn’t know his language, the fancy stone houses loved
to talk about themselves; the wooden houses liked to listen to the conversations of those who lived in them, and therefore didn’t talk much. The one found the substance of life in solitude, whereas the other found it in the company of others. The stone houses were built to be seen from without, no matter who was living in them, and they were built in a form that could be looked at. Whereas the wooden houses were built to hide those living in them from outer gazes, and enclosed them within their calmness. The stone houses could refresh broken or as yet unformed families; whereas the wooden houses drew the water of their life from the roots of the densely branched family tree. For this reason, while the talkative stone houses still remained sedate, the abandoned wooden houses never recovered.
The stone houses were built to be seen and shown: indeed that’s why their facades were always plastered by the glances of passers-by. The wooden houses were built not to be seen or shown; indeed their facades are worn out by the gazes of strangers.
Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi didn’t care that this was only one man among many. How many more men would he have to meet in order to have met enough men? How many books did one have to read in order to be wise, how many lands did one have to see in order to be a traveller, how many defeats did one have to suffer in order to become discouraged? How much was too much and how much was too little? This was the second example he had seen. And since he’d broken the mirror, two was enough for Keramet Efendi. Indeed, he found Two to be the most extraordinary of numbers.
For the first time since, on his wedding night, he’d broken the mirror that had shown him his eyes, he’d found a reason to live. Wherever a person hurts, that’s where his heart beats. Now, Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi’s heart was beating in his eyes, and he wanted to occupy himself with something that was worth doing; not just something that would become easier with time, but something he would never be able to do to his own satisfaction. Now it seemed he was on the point of finding this. He also wished for an adventure that was worth living, one from which he could distil stories, one whose entirety he couldn’t see even when he saw its entirety, an adventure that might never end. Who knew, perhaps when he started on this project he might also find this.
He had found what he was going to do.
Since the cause of his strangeness was his eyes, from now on he would address only the eyes. Whatever he had lost because of his eyes, he would gain as much and more from the eyes of others. Now the pain of the loneliness that his eyes had caused him would be relieved by drawing thousands of people around him. The life that his eyes had made distasteful would become sweet. The eyes that had seen what no one else could see would cause every raised glass to be filled with an elixir distilled from the contagious blindness of the people. For this reason, he would first ascertain the condition of his country, so he could gather those who believed in the situation as if he was picking mushrooms.
Since the minds of Ottoman men were on appearances, he would offer a thousand men a unique world of spectacle. And since the answer to the question he had asked was Pera, then that’s where he would do whatever he was going to do.
After collecting quite a few ideas, he spent a long, long time thinking them over and then finally made his decision. He would erect an enormous tent. A tent the like of which would be remembered not just for days or for years, but for centuries. A tent that, like a snake swallowing its tail, would begin where it ended.
The colour of the tent would be the colour of cherries.
In the cherry-coloured tent he would present a world of spectacles to thousands of men. Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi, who was born to a woman who paid the ultimate price in order to have a little son, who was raised by his six older sisters and crossed the border that separates the two sexes; who for a long time had found himself observing how each of his elder sisters managed her own husband, and thought that there was no coincidence how these methods of management resembled each other, and that there were rules that all women knew but never mentioned, and understanding that he had been brought up according to the same rules, and having lost his mind on the morning of his wedding night and having since birth possessed extraordinary intelligence, clearly had little trouble envisioning this world of spectacles he would present to the eyes of men.
These many men who would only grudgingly greet each other in the street or show mercy to each other in a fight had all come to the cherry-coloured tent after the evening call to prayer for the same reason: La Belle Annabelle. The most beautiful, the only beautiful jinn of the poisonous yew forest, the shimmering elixir of life, La Belle Annabelle.
In order to understand what La Belle Annabelle was seeking in Pera, in a cherry-coloured tent that had been pitched on top of a hill, while the Ottoman Empire was Westernising with the panic of a boy who’d stolen an apple from a neighbour’s garden and hadn’t the courage to look back, it’s necessary to go back some way. Back past all of the glazed secrets. It’s necessary to travel in time and space. Not that far back: earlier in the same century. Not that far away either; in the lands of France. Because it is earlier in the same century, in France, that the story of the most beautiful, the only beautiful jinn of the poisonous yew forest, the shimmering elixir of life, La Belle Annabelle, begins.
(But to tell the truth it is possible to skip this part altogether. It’s possible not to write it; or not to read it. You can jump ahead to the next one without tarrying here, the next number, that is. In any event they may not even have lived it. No matter how beautiful she was, she might not have become a spectacle, and had the right not to be seen, and keep herself distant from curious eyes. Indeed she wouldn’t have been so beautiful if she hadn’t been seen.)
France — 1868
In a nut-wood, oriental four-poster bed, in a room with a ceiling as high as the sky and a floor as soft as dove wings, life itself was screaming with pain. The sheets were covered in sweat, and in faeces and blood. It was as if there were two stubborn, invisible packhorses in the room. And the huge bed, turned into a carriage, was pulled in two opposite directions by these stubborn packhorses. One of the animals was pulling hard on the rope in order to extract what was in it. It was foaming at the mouth. As it pulled, the babies in the womb were sliding out gently. As it bit the rope and pulled in the opposite direction, the second horse refused to allow the first to defeat it. As it pulled, the babies in the womb were sliding back, retreating from the exit. Both horses’ nostrils were flared and pupils enlarged from the effort. Now everybody and everything was focused on their struggle. As the horses struggled against each other, not only did the bed and the high-ceilinged room shake, but also every other part of the magnificent mansion shook; the babies in the womb were thrown this way and that, and outside a frightful storm was raising clouds of dust. In this tumult, the only living thing that remained still was the woman who was giving birth.
Her name was Madeleine. Or, as everyone addressed her, Madame de Marelle.
Madame de Marelle was not pulling either end of the rope, and indeed was doing nothing at all to assist in the birth. She was as indifferent and as motionless as possible. She didn’t make a sound. If she could have spoken, she would have asked God for a heavy snowfall. She would ask God to freeze the pain in her body, the feverish commotion around her, the struggle of the horses, the lives trying to break free from her life, and this sinful mansion, forever. Life itself should freeze, so that centuries later she could serve as an example, before which people would fall to their knees, of the sin of being unable to give birth. And when life freezes, the rope will freeze and break exactly into two perfectly equal parts. Then there would be nothing to suffer. Because nothing would be left.
She could not speak. She was wet with sweat. She gazed at the sky-high ceiling. A field of blond sunflowers was painted on the ceiling; a tiny little, cream-complexioned angel was wandering among the sunflowers. While the woman stared at the angel’s wings, everybody in the room was overwhelmed by what bad luck it was that the woman had not yelled, or s
creamed, or moved. Even as the pain abraded her blood vessels, not even a moan passed Madame de Marelle’s lips. Her lips… The girls assisting the midwife were frightened to learn how her lips had come to be this way.
Madame de Marelle’s lips were torn to shreds. The flesh of a mouse torn apart by the claws of a predatory bird would not have been as badly shredded as these lips.
‘Give me your lips,’ the young man had said.
The river was two steps ahead, the water was two steps ahead. It was only two steps to the thunderous flowing, drizzling, bubbling, to the flowering on the water bank, to being bait for the fish. ‘Give me your lips,’ he said, this time in a harder voice. The woman’s lips were dry. The skin would tear to pieces and bleed, but the woman was still resisting with her last effort. The skin was on the edge. The woman was on the edge. She wanted to withdraw but she couldn’t walk. A humming was rising from within her. She did not love herself at all; her heart was being torn like a scaly yew trunk. Her passion emerged from under the bark. Because she knew it was as poisonous as yew leaves, she did not touch it. The poison was flowing in, because it could not find a way to leak out. Then her feelings were numbed. She surrendered herself to this numbness that was flowing through her. The warmer and the more silent the surrender, the colder and more aggressive the flow of the river. And they were only two steps from the river.
As soon as she saw the young man she knew that God wanted to test her. It was all just like the sermons she’d heard. The flesh had to be fresh and attractive; its taste had to be acrid. It was wet. Liquids were disgusting. But humans are so weak; while trying to dry the soul, they have to endure the bodily fluids. Then, the devil was the winner. Here was the devil before her again, disguised as a breathtakingly handsome young man. For Madame de Marelle, the moment she saw him was the moment her troubles began. From that moment on, nothing was as it had been before. Whenever she was alone, she thought of the young man. She hated sleeping because when she slept she embraced sin; she didn’t sleep a wink, and welcomed the dawn with swollen and weary eyes. By day she looked at the young man even as she tried not to; even as she struggled to stay away from him, she cursed each moment without him. Her resistance broke so easily. Ultimately, she realised as soon as she saw the young man that she could not pass the test.
