by Elif Shafak
Whenever I put on B-C’s glasses, I went to the mirror to look at myself. There would be nothing different about me; my face was always the same face, my body the same body. I was carrying the illness I knew myself to be carrying; my obesity was like an amulet that had mistakenly been sewn to my skin when my form was being put together. Though in the past, quite a long time ago that is, there was a period, a phase of my childhood, when I wasn’t at all fat. But this wasn’t important right now. It didn’t help my present obesity one bit whether or not I remembered that I’d once been a thin child. The past is gone forever. But B-C didn’t think this way.
gözbebesi (pupil): Round in humans and generally an upright ellipse in animals, it changes size according to the amount of light that reaches the iris. Darkness and distance dilate the pupils; light and nearness make them contract. That is, this indecisive circle gets smaller if there is light and larger if there is no light. Because it gets smaller when it looks at something close, that which is close is light, and is in the light. That which is far is in darkness. Anyway, no one wants to see darkness up close.
Being in love makes the pupils dilate; this means that the beloved is always far away. The pupils dilate in order to ease the pain caused by this distance.
‘The past, the present, the future…we line them all up and draw a straight line. That’s why we believe that the past is gone and the future hasn’t arrived yet. And worst of all, we’re obliged to walk through time along this straight line we’ve already drawn. But perhaps he’s so drunk he can’t see as far as the end of his nose,’ said B-C, waving the scissors he was holding at the television.
He’d started again. He loved to talk about time. This was his favourite subject. While I just wanted to watch television calmly and quietly. I was watching a film with a large bowl of popcorn on my lap; it was one of those haunted house films. B-C, on the floor, on the carpet, was lost in a mass of daily newspapers and weekly magazines; he was drinking wine and cutting out pictures, articles and advertisements.
He was gathering material for the Dictionary of Gazes.
‘If only time never came to its senses. If somehow it wouldn’t succeed in walking a straight line. If it would only lurch, behave nonsensically, fall to pieces. And we would watch, and, condemning its actions, would never have to refer to it again.’
Whenever he started talking excitedly like this, he would wave his hands about wildly. As if every word he uttered was lacking something, and he would try to express what was missing with his hands that were too big for a dwarf.
‘Yes, if only time wouldn’t come to its senses. If it would make lots of mistakes…if it couldn’t succeed at any plan it had made beforehand…if it always realised its mistakes afterwards…when it was too late. If it couldn’t match its own speed. If it gave up and went backwards, in completely the opposite direction. First spending the future penny by penny. And then find its consolation in novelty. Then it would be the past’s turn. For the old that somehow couldn’t be made old. If it would vomit its selfishness, all of its knowledge. If the past’s order was turned upside down. If there was no order left at all…’
This was one of those moments when he didn’t stop talking. I think he didn’t really know what he was talking about, and just wanted to hear the sound of his own voice. In trying to make time drunk, he’d become drunk himself.
‘So what if it comes to its senses?’ I said, throwing a handful of popcorn into my mouth.
The film wasn’t that important. B-C’s enthusiasm was a match for my passion. I was prepared to ask any question at all just in order to see his enthusiasm. In fact perhaps I don’t listen to what he says, but rather watch how he tells it. I loved the way that, when he spoke, he was as excited as if he was solving the terrifying mystery of a cursed tombstone.
‘If it comes to its senses it will remember. What use will it be to remember? None. Remembering won’t be of any damned use except to cause pain.’
I shut up. At moments like this I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, and I couldn’t bring him back from wherever he’d gone. ‘Say whatever you have to say now or hold your peace forever,’ a voice deep within me would say. I would speak up right away in order not to miss the ‘now’. I would speak up, but still be unsure of what to say. I knew there was definitely something I had to say, but I couldn’t find what it was. Because I had remained quiet ‘now’, B-C would hold me to the part about holding my peace forever. He’d been talking nonstop. My fingers were blistered by his flaming lips. At times like this it went so far that it defied understanding; his thin little eyes turned into mysteries, and he never showed what he was feeling.
‘When you remember, you become frightened of solitude. Those people who remain in stagnant relationships from fear of loneliness, who give birth to children in order to refresh stale love, those are the people with the strongest memories.’
He was sitting in his rocking chair again, holding his purple-fringed blanket tightly, rocking back and forth and talking at the top of his voice. It seemed as if he’d already forgotten how the irritable next-door neighbour had come to complain about the noise we made and had threatened to make a complaint to our landlord. As soon as the women entered her house and carefully examined how messy it was, she couldn’t keep herself from making a comment to me. I didn’t want to have to see her again tonight. But B-C was having a talking fit again. And at times like this he somehow couldn’t moderate his voice. And anyone who heard his voice would have thought it came from an enormous man. He jumped down, came to my side, and took hold of my wrist.
‘The past doesn’t pass and go away. It doesn’t go anywhere. The past always flows into today. That’s why being able to forget forgetting is important,’ he said.
‘To forget is to clean the eyes. It definitely has to be done every spring. If we don’t forget we can’t live! If we don’t forget we can’t cause anything to live!’
‘I prefer to make my eyes an archive,’ I said shrugging my shoulders. He let go of my wrist and pulled back. Was there a mocking smile on his lips, or did it just seem so to me?
‘Is it you who’s saying this?’
Why wouldn’t I say this? What was wrong with my saying this? Instead of answering me, he went back to his rocking chair and squeezed his purple-fringed blanket. This sudden silence distressed me. When I’m distressed I become hungry.
I thought about getting up to pop more corn. I’d forgotten I was on a diet!
gözcü (watchman): One of the greedy jewellers in the Grand Bazaar had a door built into the back of his shop, believing it would lead to eternal life. He intended to slip away through this secret exit when the Angel of Death came for him. For this reason, he needed a watchman to sit in front of his shop to let him know when the Angel of Death appeared at the edge of the market. But no matter how much he offered to pay, no one wanted the job.
The Angel of Death became bored. He took the form of a poor miller and planted himself in front of the jeweller. In exchange for bags and bags of gold, he accepted the job of sitting in front of the shop to inform the jeweller as soon as he saw the Angel of Death. This game went on for some time. The Angel of Death wanted both to take the jeweller’s life and to keep his word as a watchman. He’d got himself into a bind.
Finally one day, he thought of a trick that would solve the problem. He placed a full-length mirror on the back door, facing the front door. Then he stood at the front door and told the jeweller that the Angel of Death was coming. The jeweller, with an agility that wouldn’t be expected of someone his age, seized the handle of the back door. When he opened the door he thought would lead to immortality, he saw the watchman at the front door in the mirror. He was astounded but quickly realised his mistake. (Who else could accept to be death’s messenger except death’s watchman?)
I was becoming increasingly anxious. I was anxious because I thought that everything B-C did and said had to do with the Dictionary of Gazes. Since he didn’t show me what he’d written, the Di
ctionary of Gazes was an enigma to me. And with every passing day this enigma distanced him further from me. I also suspected that all of those strange things were taken from the Dictionary of Gazes. As if his contact with me and with life itself was through the vehicle of, and by leave of, the Dictionary of Gazes. I didn’t like this.
On top of this, he’d started seeing everyone and everything as material. He said that stories resembled water, and that only in miracles did sweet water and salt water flow together without mixing. He asserted that because the Dictionary of Gazes was not a miracle, it could mix completely with everyone and everything. With a stick in his hand, he was constantly stirring up stories; putting the end at the beginning and the beginning in the middle. He cut up films, dreams, newspaper cuttings, encyclopaedia articles, put the pieces together, and used them as material for the Dictionary of Gazes.
I was anxious because once he used material, he never looked at it again.
gözlük (glasses): Glass placed in frames in order to see better or to see at all.
The next day when I got back from the nursery B-C wasn’t at home. Lately he often went out without leaving word. On days like these, one of the neighbour-ladies would always open her door, either to put out the trash or to give me some food; and when they opened their doors they would always let me know when and how B-C had left. But not even the neighbour-ladies knew where he had gone or what he was doing.
I ate my supper alone. When I say supper, it was only grapefruit. I’m punishing myself today because yesterday I forgot I was on a diet. All day I’ve eaten nothing but grapefruit. As I piled up the grapefruit peels, I carefully examined my belly. I have to confess, I didn’t have one belly, I had three bellies. And not one of them had melted even the smallest bit.
halüsinasyon (hallucination): For thousands of years, people had been drinking infusions of mushrooms in order to see what they hadn’t seen. Later, they became frightened of what they could see.
I suppose if I wasn’t as fat as I am, I’d be able to keep better track of the weight I’ve lost. When something small becomes smaller it’s noticeable right away, but when something large become smaller the loss remains invisible. Just as I used to in the old days, I suffer pangs of hunger all day. Since I couldn’t fill my stomach, I suppose my eyes tried to fill themselves by watching all of the cooking programmes on television, and reading food articles in magazines, and gazing at bountiful displays in restaurant windows and at high calorie products in the supermarket, learning recipes from skilful cooks wherever I went, and since I was talking about food all day, when I finally did eat something it somehow didn’t fill me. Then I could put away at least thirty grapefruit in one sitting. The pile of grapefruit peels became as high as a mountain. It made me irritable to see them. Dieting made me an irritable person.
Eating that many grapefruits one after the other made me feel quite heavy. I curled up on the sofa. Not long afterwards, I heard the door open. B-C had come home. But I was so sleepy I couldn’t get up. My eyes were closing. I fell asleep looking at the mound of grapefruit peels.
harem asasi (chief palace eunuch): In the Ottoman harem, as well as, in their time, in the palaces of Assyria, Persia, Rome, Byzantium, Abbysinia and the Mameluks, well-known figures served as chief eunuch. After becoming eunuchs, the gravest sin they could commit was seeing.
‘Come on,’ I said to B-C as soon as he came in. He looked tired.
‘Come on what?’
‘Let’s go out tonight. It’s been a long time since we’ve gone out in disguise. We haven’t seen the mood of the people. Come on, let’s go see.’
hay (fantasy, dream): The boy used to climb up into the apple tree and lose himself in his dreams. He wouldn’t come down from the tree all day; sometimes he stayed in the tree through the night and into the morning. In the end, the elders of the family, unable to bear the situation, decided to cut down the tree. The boy crawled into the hollow where the apple tree had been and dreamed he was an apple tree. Every year he produced crisp, juicy apples. The elders of the family wept as they spooned up the stewed apples.
This time we changed our appearance more quickly. Two hours later the two of us were unrecognisable. This evening I was a hardened, cold-blooded thief. B-C was my sidekick, an unemployed, shiftless adolescent who had gone to work for his elder brother. Just like the first sprouting of a moustache, he had no idea which way he was going. From the sparse hair on his face he looked like a chick that had had difficulty breaking out of its egg. B-C was confused. This evening he was an impatient, over-sensitive, ill-tempered and penniless young man. I wanted to take him into my arms, carry him on my back, spin him around, but mostly I wanted to throw him into the air. I wanted him to laugh and enjoy himself in the firmament, to ask why the sun oppressed sunflowers, to stroke the moon’s face, to memorise the locations of the stars, and for him to know, as he fell like a lump of metal, that I might not catch him. Perhaps I’d gone and left, out of boredom, or forgetfulness, or perhaps for no reason at all. I wanted him to fall with the malevolent thrill of ‘perhaps’. Not wafting down like a leaf, but with the speed of lead.
He’d put a dirty, wrinkled beret on his head. He’d put gel on his hair, and his earlobes, pink from the cold, stuck out from under his beret. He pattered after me with his hands in his pockets. His right kneecap was protruding through a hole in his greasy trousers. His face was dirty and small enough not to show the misgivings he was feeling, but the pursing of his sore-covered lips gave away his fear.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ I said. ‘You’ll be fine, little one.’
hayalbilim (the study of fantasy): The favourite theme of writers on the study of fantasy is seeing strangers. A stranger who comes from outside the present time and place. Sometimes he doesn’t come, and one has to go to him. In any event, a journey is necessary.
The restaurant was very bright. It was a big place bathed in blond light. The light shone superficially and amply in order to provoke the stubbornness of those who flowed deeply and methodically; it jumped enthusiastically from the silverware arranged according to size to the rows and rows of customers, from food that was pleasing to the eye to conversation that was pleasing to the ear, from the salmon-coloured ribbons on the table-cloths to the black bow-ties on the waiters, from the pastel-toned paintings to the shrill tones of the seasonal salads, from the overwhelming smell of perfume to the heavy smell of anise. The light shone like a filled sail in this glittering seaside fish restaurant that defied the night.
I was the one who chose this place. This evening B-C was quiet and obedient. We thrust each other forward and looked in through the glass wall that separated the restaurant from the street. For a time it didn’t seem as if anyone noticed us; that is, until an almond-eyed woman eating across from a well-dressed middle-aged man raised her wine glass and made eye contact with B-C. Then, some things began to change on the other side of the glass wall. From where we stood we could see that the mouthful the woman had been chewing daintily somehow wouldn’t go down her throat. She was right to be uneasy. It must have been unpleasant to eat with us watching. We wondered what she would do. A little later, the almond-eyed woman, with a dejected expression, nodded her head forward; and found herself looking at the eye of the dead fish on her plate. Perhaps she too was thinking about what she would do. When she lifted her head again, she’d gone pale, and her eyes were lifeless. First the well-dressed middle-aged man and then the head-waiter became aware of the situation. After telling them to get rid of us, she didn’t take another look; neither at us nor at the fish on her plate. That evening, in that bright restaurant, for reasons I didn’t know, I felt a closeness to the almond-eyed woman who had informed on us.
Hümay: The green-headed Hümay bird who was well-known for avoiding the eyes of the earth and of men was so devoted to the firmament that she would lay her eggs in the air. From time to time Hümay would come within forty cubits of the earth, and let its shadow fall on a person. Whoever Hümay’s shadow fell upon would
never be defeated in life.
The head-waiter was inclined to settle the matter quietly, but the well-dressed middle-aged man wanted to kick up a fuss. Thanks to him, the whole restaurant was soon aware of our presence. Before long, two enormous men had come up to us and told us not to press our noses to the glass and watch the restaurant. When we objected, we were quickly sent on our way.
But since we were in disguise that evening, we had to return to the place where we mustn’t be seen.
Unseen, we lay in ambush in a cul-de-sac from which we could watch. Because the diminishing halo of light from the restaurant ended not far away, we remained in darkness. B-C was constantly repeating it. These overgrown men had taken him by his wispy moustache like a dead rat and had sent him flying. Now, his narrow eyes burning with anger, he watched the restaurant intently. With his nose, he watched the smells of food and drink that wafted on the breeze; with his fist he watched what his fingertips hadn’t been able to touch. He watched with his grinding teeth.
‘All right, they’ll do!’ exclaimed B-C, seeing a couple who had left the restaurant and were waiting for their car to be brought. Both husband and wife were wearing a sour apple-green. I ignored him. We continued waiting. Before long, a family wrapped from head to toe in orange emerged from the restaurant. A mother, a father, and two grown-up girls.
B-C and I emerged silently from our hiding place.
isne delisi (eye of the needle): In a neighbourhood where silence was as valuable as gold, a woman and her daughter sat in front of the window embroidering the daughter’s trousseau. ‘Your dreams have to be small enough to pass through the eye of a needle,’ said the woman to her daughter. ‘If you see that a dream is too large to pass through a needle, forget it. Dreams that don’t pass through the eye of a needle are empty dreams. They won’t bring anything but disappointment.’
