by Elif Shafak
The poor girl listened carefully to what her mother said. Then she lost herself in her dreams. Whenever she started to entertain a dream, her embroidery fell from her hands, and the needle with it.
‘Knife!’
B-C, excited, extended his knife. The orange coloured family passed down the dark street quickly. I hadn’t known beforehand which one I would choose. They were shaking. Each one was shaking differently. I chose the wildly trembling mother.
The woman didn’t stop begging us to let them go. But when they saw the knife, their fear silenced them. This evening I’m not just hardened and cold-blooded, I’m a practised and experienced thief. I went calmly about my work. I stripped off the orange peels the woman was wearing, without injuring her at all. After I’d taken off her outer orange peels, she stood before us wearing only a light-coloured, dainty lace inner orange peel.
Then I dragged the man into the middle and asked him to look at his wife. Squinting his eyes stupidly he looked first at the orange peels on the ground, and then at me. Finally his eyes caught sight of his wife, though in fact looking and seeing happen at the same time, but because the brain is slower than the eyes it’s necessary to wait a little. If it had been a stranger in front of him everything would have been easier. It’s easier to see strangers than it is to see those we know. But a little while later, the man knew what he saw. He saw his wife’s irredeemable nose, her sagging double chin, her flaccid breasts, her spreading fat, her varicose veins, hair that should have been dyed long ago, the crows-feet between her eyebrows. ‘How the years,’ he murmured, ‘wear a person out. How beautiful she was when she was young. Has it been easy? All these years she’s been sacrificing herself for us.’
The sediments of mercy darkened the night.
‘Dagger!’
B-C had overcome his excitement and brandished the dagger calmly. Meanwhile, the woman had started sobbing pitifully. I’d stripped off the inner peels, without injuring her at all. The man had to become accustomed; he looked at once. He saw that his wife’s lips had shrunk from pursing them at everything, that her mouth was turned down from constantly nagging, that her eyes were wrinkled from regarding everything with malice, that her expression had darkened from seeking other’s faults, that her evil heart had drained her body of life, that even though she said malicious things about the beauty parlours she continued determinedly to spend time and money shaping her body, that as her unhappiness grew she tried to get more control over her children and wouldn’t let them out of her sight for a moment, and secretly went into their rooms to sniff their clothes and read their diaries, and that for years she had been watching him in the same secret ways. And he didn’t like what he saw. With a sour expression, he took a few steps back. At this point the woman had covered her face with her hands, but the man wasn’t looking any more.
It was much easier to strip the man of his orange peels. His rough outer orange peels were an amazing optical illusion. When I cut away the thick outer orange peels, a tiny little body appeared. All of the water in his body had melted away. There was no water left to melt, and his body was getting smaller every day. But because of his outer peels, nothing was apparent from outside. His inner, second layer of peels had become separated thread by thread and had taken on a spongy appearance. What we touched broke off in our hands. Meanwhile, before we could say anything, the woman approached the man and looked at him. Years ago she’d married the man with the certainty that he was the right choice for the future, the father of her two daughters, but now with his outer orange peels gone she looked at her diminishing husband appraisingly. ‘What a shame,’ she whispered to herself. ‘How he’s collapsed. Was it easy? He worked himself to the bone all these years. All for us.’
The sediments of mercy darkened the night.
‘Dagger!’
B-C brandished his dagger in a threatening manner. When the second layer of orange peel was gone, the woman looked again. She looked and saw. She saw that he deferred to anyone stronger than him, or even to anyone of his own strength, that he fills his wallet and his stomach through trickery, that he spends money on pretty boys, his favourite game to play with them is be-the-other-hit-yourself, he dresses the boys in his own clothes while he dresses as a woman, then derives great pleasure from having the boys abuse and humiliate him, then he wants the boys to beat him but constantly cautions them that these beatings must leave no marks, how amazing it is that he’s been playing these secret nocturnal games all these years without them leaving any trace on him, that when the beating starts going too far and the blows become harder he takes off his garters and beats the boy hard enough to make him bleed all over, that whatever dirty business he enters, he emerges smelling like roses, that if anyone were to learn his secrets, he would be compromised, that he had risen to his position by compromising and stepping on others. And she didn’t like what she saw.
jaluzi (Venetian blind): Inner curtains that are jealous of outside eyes.
B-C was really enjoying himself. He wanted to bring forward the girls who had been watching their mother and father with anxiety, though I was tired and bored. After a short argument he was convinced that we should return to the Hayalifener Apartments. But he insisted that we burn the orange peels before we left. I didn’t say anything. With B-C’s beret in my hand, I withdrew to a dark corner to watch.
B-C was circling the burning orange peels, which gave off a wonderful smell. It was as if his excitement was rolling down a steep hill, gaining speed and strength as it rolled. He was banging on what looked like the lid of a garbage bin, though without a handle, and was making enough noise to wake the dead. He dropped the lid and held the knife in one hand and the dagger in the other, lifting them both into the air. He moaned as if he was wounded, and trembled like an epileptic. I held my breath, and watched him. I’d never seen him like this before. I watched in amazement as the light of the flames played in his hair, and his lips curled, and his burning eyes refused to witness the world. B-C was a witch who had lost not only the recipe for poison but also the recipe for the antidote as the wind ruffled the pages of the book of spells; who turned into a fly and infuriated the ox from around whose neck the world was hanging; who poisoned all of the cisterns of the city with his anger; who cursed the goddess just before the moon turned full but would not allow anyone else to do so.
Each member of the orange-coloured family watched him, their eyes wide as saucers with surprise. Their pupils were dilating moment by moment from their delight in the knowledge that they would soon be set free from the struggle with the darkness of the pain of the moment; and also…and also a barely visible stain…a stain as small and unimportant as a flea that had bitten, a tick that had attached itself, a caterpillar that had chewed, a leech that had sucked, a moth that had eaten, a worm that had emerged from an apple remained in the pupils of each member of the orange-coloured family.
Janus: Janus, the ancient Roman God, had two faces, one that looked forward and one that looked behind. Because of this, he could see both the future and the past.
Tonight, pruning his bright yellow hallucinations with the sharp edge of his heart, hopping and jumping on the flames, making the most of being someone else on a night of disguise, B-C extinguished with his own sweat the fire he had lit with his own hands. When he left the orange-coloured family in the cul-de-sac, he was still holding the smoke deep within himself. Later, we walked arm-in-arm through the side streets; we walked calmly, without saying a single word. At one point I looked, and saw that he had filled his pockets with orange peels. ‘Why did you do it?’ I asked.
‘Since we’d disguised ourselves as thieves, we had to steal something from them,’ he answered. ‘How much do you think these orange peels are worth?’
Kalipso (Calypso): The goddess whose name derives from the ancient Greek verb ‘kalyptein’, which means ‘to hide’.
I smelled of oranges. As if everything smelled of oranges. The first thing I had to do when I got back to the Hayalifener Apartments was
to throw myself in the bath. This time I’d spent so long in my corset that my body was rebelling. It was an effort to move or to speak. I felt worse from moment to moment. I asked B-C for help as loudly as I could, but he didn’t hear me. He’d long since started working on the computer. From the way he was writing, he had to have found new material for the Dictionary of Gazes.
kedi (cat): Cat’s eyes can see what people cannot see.
My body was waiting for me in the bathroom. I stepped in front of the mirror and took off my disguise. The corset was causing me a lot of pain. I unfastened the straps and opened the clasps one by one. The fat that had been confined all night should have started spreading out as soon as I opened the corset, but I didn’t feel any difference. Something strange was going on. I took the corset off completely. There was another corset underneath.
I didn’t remember having put on another corset like this. I hurried to unfasten it. There was yet another corset underneath it. I was struck with terror. Each time I unfastened a corset, there was another one underneath it. And each corset resembled a grapefruit peel. Just like the orange-coloured family, I was stripping off peel after peel. But at least their bodies appeared after two layers of peels; whereas I seemed to be made up only of peels. I wept as I stripped them off in front of the mirror. As I stripped off layer after layer, mounds of grapefruit peels were accumulating around me.
Finally, after stripping off I don’t know how many layers of peels, I was left with something that resembled a fish skeleton. It was so frightful that I didn’t have the courage to look at myself in the mirror. I turned my head. It was then that I realised I was standing in front of a restaurant again. But this wasn’t like the fish restaurant of earlier; nor was it chic. In the wide display window, rows and rows of chickens were turning on spits. A little behind them there were kid goats, and behind these there were lambs, and at the very back huge cows were turning. All of the animals were turning with the same slowness. Suddenly, I saw my usual body among the meat. It was enormous. It was sticky and glutinous. It was as pitiful as vanilla ice-cream melting under the sun. Wearing an apron, and with a fork in its hand, it was testing each of the cooking animals. At one point it turned and winked. ‘Our evening meal,’ it said when it came to a large animal that, from its hump, was apparently a camel. ‘I’m on a diet,’ I said in a low voice. ‘Of course, of course,’ said my body. ‘I forget so quickly. You’re on a diet.’
Later, looking deeply into my eyes, it tore off one of the camel’s legs and started eating it ravenously.
I heard B-C’s voice from afar. It was coming closer. I opened my eyes a little. I’d fallen asleep again, and again at an inappropriate time. He was perched on the edge of the armchair I was sitting in, looking at me. Right behind him were the peels of the grapefruit I’d eaten as soon as I’d come home. I didn’t want to see any peels. I tried to say something but B-C brought his finger to his lips.
‘Quiet, don’t speak,’ he whispered. He was smiling. ‘It’s not a good idea to leave you home alone. How many kilos of grapefruit did you eat?’
I smiled bashfully.
‘I don’t know what you dreamed tonight, but from the look of you it was a nightmare. It’s passed now. Don’t tell anyone what you saw, keep it to yourself.’
I looked at him with surprise. As if he wasn’t the same person who was always pestering me to tell him my dreams. But I was very pleased that he didn’t ask any questions, that he preferred calmly and quietly stroking my hair to talking.
kem göz (evil eye): In a frilly white dress that went down to the ground, the young girl was smiling. She passed an old woman with whiskers on her chin who was selling pigeon feed. The old woman said, ‘You’ve become like a swan, my dear.’ The young girl felt a strange shiver, but still thanked the old woman.
The steps of the square where the pigeons gathered were covered with moss. She slipped on the last step and landed face-down in a puddle of mud. Passers-by rushed to pick her up, and wiped the blood from her cut lip; but they couldn’t clean the white, frilly dress.
‘That woman did this,’ shouted the young girl. She was standing right behind the old woman with the whiskers on her chin. ‘Nonsense,’ she whispered. ‘Everyone knows that white is soon soiled.’ Then she emptied bowl of pigeon feed over the young girl.
The pigeons descended on the feed in a black cloud.
I didn’t say anything to B-C, but my dream had left me irritable. I didn’t want to see fruit with peels, whether it was grapefruit or oranges, for at least a few days. Of course, I knew that my body was the problem; this is all. Of course, I knew that the problem was my body; and also that I shouldn’t be so obsessed about it. But when you’re as fat as I am, your body becomes magnified in your mind. As if…as if what you live within, the air you breathe, becomes a place, a place to which you belong. And a person can’t easily leave behind a place to which she belongs.
In any event it was I who had been making touching speeches to the children at the nursery about the inner person being more important than the outer person. I told them that their appearance was of no importance at all. They sat and listened very calmly; without making a sound or any comic gestures. They weren’t all that interested in what I had to say. They kept turning around to look out the window. That morning we’d all sprayed the classroom windows with fake snow; we’d made snowmen with carrot noses, shrub brooms and coal eyes. It was nice. Their minds were still on the windows.
Only one of them, a likeable, freckled, curly-haired boy, didn’t take his eyes off me for a moment and listened carefully to what I said as he was picking his nose. I knew this little boy’s family. He had a very young, curly-haired mother. The woman had told the story herself. They’d been married five years, and after the son was born they wanted to have daughters. They did; but the little girl was lame from birth. The woman couldn’t hold back her tears when her mother-in-law likened the girl to a three-legged goat. But there was hope, that’s what the doctors had said. Because the girl was still very small they couldn’t operate. The doctors said that later on, when she was older, there was a chance they could operate. The mother and father did everything they could not to let the little girl understand the situation. They also cautioned the boy constantly. He would have been beaten if he’d done anything to throw the girl’s handicap in her face. But there was no need to warn the boy. The woman said that the boy was closed within himself but always behaved lovingly towards his sister. Until now there had been no problem because the little girl never left the house, and no one outside the family ever saw her. But now she was a little older, and she wanted to go outside, she would see herself through the eyes of others…
While I was standing in front of the snow-sprayed windows, talking about how people’s appearances were not important, the freckled, loveable, curly-haired boy looked deep into my eyes and picked his nose. At another time this would have made me angry, and I don’t know why but I preferred to pretend I didn’t see. Then it was time for lunch. The children sat at the round table and ate their köfte and potatoes, but because I was on a diet I didn’t touch my plate. I just drank milk. One glass of milk. When I turned my head I saw that the freckled, loveable, curly-haired boy was watching me from a distance. With a faint smile he brought his finger to his nose, but instead of picking his nose as usual, he began to pretend to comb his upper lip with his finger. Without taking his eyes off me, he repeated this gesture until he was sure I understood what he wanted to say.
The milk I’d been drinking had left a moustache on my lip. This is what he’d been trying to tell me. Immediately I wiped the moustache off. When I turned my head again, the freckled, loveable curly-haired boy wasn’t watching me any more.
To tell the truth, the nursery made me nervous. I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, and I couldn’t breathe easily until I was back at the Hayalifener Apartments. I liked being at home.
kesif (discovery): Hundreds of voyages of discovery were launched on the dark waters
out of the desire to be the first to see as yet unseen lands. But in time there were no undiscovered lands left in the world.
At home I’m comfortable, more comfortable than I ever am outside. I loved the newspapers, books and pictures that accumulated day by day, the hundreds of photographs that are scattered willy-nilly throughout this heaven; that no piece of furniture has a fixed or obligatory place; the ability to hide from outside eyes, the privacy, the intimacy. I was comfortable with the confusion created by the daily accumulation of material for B-C’s Dictionary of Gazes.
I liked the Hayalifener Apartments. If only there weren’t such frequent electricity cuts…
kimlik (identity): Knock knock knock. ‘Who’s there?’ asked the person inside. ‘It’s me,’ answered the person outside. ‘I don’t know anyone called Me,’ said the person inside. ‘How could that be?’ asked the person outside. ‘How could you forget Me? Take one look and you’ll remember.’
The face of the person inside clouded. ‘Leave here at once,’ she whispered in a trembling voice. ‘My husband will be coming home soon. I belong to him now.’
Me took one last look at the brightly painted house with the frilly curtains and smoke drifting from the chimney. He’d slept on the mosque porch that night. Towards morning the congregation arrived for prayers. Me thought silently of Us. He had to see her one more time.
Judging from the frequency with which the Hayalifener Apartments were left in darkness, the electric company must have had a grudge against us. Whenever the electricity was cut we would go to the windows and, without rancour, look at the showy lights of the lashless-eyed houses all along the hill. There was nothing that the building supervisor, for whom this was a matter of pride, had not done, no one he hadn’t tried to persuade or flatter, no hand he had left unkissed, but in the end nothing changed. ‘A simple bureaucratic error, a typical case of negligence,’ they said. ‘Every problem has a past. Don’t you have any respect for the past?’ The building supervisor was bedridden because of his distress. He took pride in his past.
