The Gaze

by Elif Shafak

  I took perhaps more than a hundred photographs. More than a hundred times I looked through the viewfinder, and tried to see him in different states, to see what his days and his nights were like, and how he was when he couldn’t sleep or when he’d just woken. I watched how as he enthusiastically explained something, it came alive in his eyes, and as it came alive in his eyes, he explained it with enthusiasm, sometimes like this and sometimes like that, his unquenchable curiosity, his lack of restraint, his absent-mindedness, his ill-temper. Finally, when the film in his bag was finished, he grasped my wrist.

  ‘Aren’t you hungry? I’m very hungry.’

  Then I came to my senses. Who knew how many hours we’d been wandering around and I not only hadn’t I eaten anything but the thought of food hadn’t even crossed my mind. I smiled shyly.

  When we entered the restaurant, B-C preceded me and held the door open. As if we didn’t look strange enough together, I didn’t see the sense in doing amusing things that would attract attention. I passed through the door feeling shy and embarrassed. The moment we were inside, I saw the first bus-boy to notice us nudge the bus-boy next to him. It had begun. Just as I’d guessed it would. One by one every head in the place turned towards us, and conversations stopped, and people started whispering. All I wanted was to sit down at the nearest table, as soon as possible. But B-C didn’t like any of the tables, and continued strolling about, knowing that everyone was watching us. By the time he chose a table, I’d long since turned bright red and broken into a sweat.

  While B-C drank one beer after another with amazing speed, I ate my fried mussels as slowly and as daintily as possible. I felt too shy to raise my head and look around. I couldn’t make the effort to look into the waiter’s face, or to make eye contact with anyone.

  ‘Why do you have such a strange name?’ I said finally when I’d calmed down a bit and was able to speak.

  ‘It’s not my real name, of course. When I was small, the children used to call me ‘itty bitty’. Later I used to say my name was ‘bee-tee’. You know, I really thought this was a real name. Then I decided to make this name that had stuck to me a little different. Instead of ‘bee-tee’ I said ‘B-C’. I know it’s strange, but…I’m so accustomed to it, I wouldn’t even turn around if someone called me by my real name. I like B-C. They’re also the second and third letters of the alphabet. They look good side-by-side. As if I’m Two and Three. I’m searching for One. The preceding number was lacking something, it wasn’t completed, and it’s as if that’s why I am the way I am…I’m in the process of creating myself. What happened? Why are you so surprised? Does this seem like nonsense to you?’

  For a moment I couldn’t speak or breathe. It was as if something clicked within me, but I couldn’t tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing. Suddenly, unable to explain even to myself why I’d become so irritable, I snapped, ‘Yes, I think it’s complete nonsense.’

  ‘You could be right! But don’t take numbers lightly. Don’t forget that numbers have jinns. Numbers jinns have torches on their waists, and brooms in their hands, and each one is as small as a flea, their tongues are twisted, and their eyes spin…’While he was saying these strange things, he was playing his fingers like puppets and twisting the shape of his face. I watched him in amazement. Despite the fact that it was always moving, there was a stillness and calm about his face. He suddenly stopped talking and looked around as if he were bored. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and print these photographs.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Home! The Hayalifener Apartments.’

  sarik sandali (turban boat): Whenever Sultan Selim Ill went out to wander along the shores of the Bosphorus, the populace would stop working and go out into the streets. At the very back, the boat that was following the six boats that carried the honour guard, was the ‘turban boat’. The official in charge of this boat would carry aloft the Sultan’s turban, which was studded with priceless jewels. When the boat was passing close to the shore, this official would wave the turban back and forth.

  It wasn’t done in order for the people to see the Sultan’s turban, but to remind them that they were being watched. The sultanate was an eye that saw everything.

  At first I liked the name of the Hayalifener Apartments, and when I saw the building I liked it for itself. The building was on one of the two sides of Istanbul, in a neighbourhood where morally upright families and freethinking single people frequently lived side-by-side, at the top of a steep hill that was difficult to ascend and descend. His flat was on the top floor, and there wasn’t a useable elevator. B-C, in front, skipped up the steps; I followed, wheezing. To climb these stairs after that long, steep hill, the pain from the chafing of my legs was growing stronger with each step. I was in agony, and my chest was tight. At least B-C didn’t say anything about my condition, or ask depressing questions. Instead of asking questions he didn’t stop explaining; he talked away without waiting for approval. Perhaps I was more attracted to the way he spoke than to what he was saying. As he talked, I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

  ‘Whenever I’m curious about a person, I cut them out of the frame in which they belong and put them into a background that’s least like them. To do this gives me a lot of ideas about people. Let’s say a woman is walking towards me. Young, and a bit flighty. I’ll take her out of the place where she belongs and put her in a time and place that would be strangest to her, into a frame that’s as far as possible from her own, and then I watch. Or let’s say a man is walking towards me. Young, and a bit slack. I’ll try to find a frame that’s least like him. When I put him in this frame he’ll look completely different to me. In the picture that belongs to him, he’s either strong or weak, either handsome or ugly, either unique or ordinary. But in a picture that doesn’t belong to him, he tends to lose his role. And then when you look, you see that he’s really not so strong, or not so weak. Neither that ugly nor that handsome. You should try it. Put people in the photograph in which they’re least likely to fit, and then take a look at them.’

  I looked at him lovingly.

  ‘What about me, then? What’s the picture into which I’m least likely to fit?’

  He looked at me lovingly.

  ‘Most probably above the clouds. For someone as fat as you the sky has to be the most unlikely place.’

  I nodded my head. I had fallen in love.

  Şems: When Mevlana came out of Pembefirusan’s han, Şems planted himself in front of him and said, ‘Hey, appraiser of the world, look at me!’

  From that moment on I didn’t part from him. B-C was a land I somehow couldn’t reach because I had delayed so much. It was as if, after years of being stuck, of believing that in this state I couldn’t love anyone and no one could love me, a door had opened in front of me at a completely unexpected moment and from a completely unexpected direction. Once over the threshold, we tumbled together into a world of passion. I could have cut my dwarf lover a giant’s shadow without hesitation; with him I could go anywhere and return from anywhere without thinking of what lay beyond.

  Nevertheless, I had to think, we had to think. Because we didn’t suit each other. That is, I wasn’t one of those women who, because they are so short, still look like little round balls despite all their weight…It wasn’t just my girth, but because I was also taller than normal, when I stood next to B-C both my height and my weight made for a terrifying contrast. When we were side-by-side we looked so out of place that we couldn’t even bring up the subject of not going out together. If we went around holding hands and smiling at each other in the streets like other lovers, everyone who saw us would die laughing. As my eighty centimetre lover tried to match his pace to my hundred and thirty-two kilo body, people would point us out to each other and watch us. Without feeling it necessary to suppress the mocking smiles on their lips, they would wonder whether or not we made love. They would find us so amusing they wouldn’t be able to take their eyes off us. They wouldn’t be able to stop talking about the cont
rast between the fat lady and the dwarf for days.

  B-C and I had both been the objects of people’s stares for a long time. But now that we had come together, if we even held hands we wouldn’t just be objects of curiosity, we would also be the source of a great deal of amusement. We were strange enough separately, but together we were not only strange but comic. We weren’t pleasing to the eye.

  For this reason, there was nothing like the Hayalifener Apartments. Here life was private; safe from abusive stares. Of course the neighbour-ladies’ eyes were always on us, but once we were inside there was nothing to worry about. I was comfortable here, I was at ease. I wasn’t thinking about returning to the house where I lived with my family. I do know how much my family loved me, and I didn’t want to mix their love with pity. I was tired of them being distressed about me. For years my mother and father had been struggling to behave as if we were a happy family and that nothing had gone wrong, but I was tired of seeing the pain in their eyes that they would never speak of. Leaving their house was going to be good for me.

  So I gathered my things together and moved to the Hayalifener Apartments. I felt that here I could be free both of the body that enclosed me and of the kinds of looks that made me uncomfortable. Indeed it happened from time to time that I didn’t even think about how I looked. I who for years had looked at myself and the world around me through the lenses of my body was now momentarily able to take these glasses off. On top of that, as I gained the ability to see through my body and into myself, I discovered new aspects of myself. When B-C looked at me with love, I was able to see myself and the world around me with completely new eyes. Most of the time, I did my utmost to see through his eyes, and to understand what he saw and how he saw it. I saw neither intimacy nor rejection in his eyes. Life was liveable, I was loveable when I looked into B-C’s eyes.

  sisko (fatty): She was so fat that wherever she went, people would stop whatever they were doing and stare at her. The way people looked at her made her so uncomfortable that she would eat even more and become even fatter. (Research fatty’s childhood.)

  But now, having read the Dictionary of Gazes, everything looked different again to my eyes. Now I understood that at first I had been the source of this detestable dictionary, its substance, and that later I had become one item among many. That windy day we’d met on the ferry, B-C had gone out with his camera to find something interesting to look at, and had encountered me. In those days he’d probably become bored with whatever he’d been doing and was looking for something new to occupy himself with but didn’t quite know what he wanted to do. He went out looking. Then he met me. He found in me the inspiration for a new project; or more accurately, he found it in the way our relationship was kept hidden from the sight of others. Once he’d started working on the Dictionary of Gazes, I stopped being the inspiration and became material; my dreams, my memories and my anxieties. When he’d finished observing me and found what he was looking for, I might have been the most interesting item in the Dictionary of Gazes. I was the fatty whose childhood he was going to research.

  B-C says that it’s only in miracles that sweet water and salt water don’t mix, and he doesn’t like miracles. What he wanted was to take bits and pieces of my stories and other people’s stories and mix them all together. When he’d done this, there’d be only a single thread holding it all together: himself!

  But what attracted him most were the unseen sides of people. B-C is always interested in the unseen, and wanted to make the invisible visible. Just like the prince’s wife in the story, who wanted to know what was behind the fortieth door. The most important thing was to pry open the lock. Once he’d opened the door and seen what was inside, there remained no reason to delay there. Anything forbidden or hidden in the world…anything suppressed or very respected…in short anything that was kept out of sight was within B-C’s area of interest. For this reason, whenever he looked at a person he was trying to find their hidden parts; he took great pleasure in discovering their memories, their secrets, the things that were most private to them. Once he’d completed his discoveries he’d got what he wanted, and he’d start looking elsewhere for new discoveries.

  As long as there were things about me he didn’t know, I remained unprocessed material for the Dictionary of Gazes. That meant he would stay with me until he’d discovered what was left to be discovered. Later…just as he never took another look at material he’d already used, he would soon tire of me. He’d set off in search of new material, something new to occupy himself, and who knows, perhaps even a new life.

  taht-i revan (palanquin): Every Friday morning, the Sultan’s only daughter would arrange a palanquin and leave the palace and go to a bathhouse on the other side of the city. Before she appeared at the palace gates, guards with sharp swords would have cleared all of the streets along the route. People would flee to their houses, lock their doors, cover their windows and shut their eyes tight; they would wait in box-rooms, pantries and secluded corners until the Sultan’s daughter had passed in her palanquin. No one had the courage to look outside because anyone who saw the Sultan’s daughter even accidentally would have their heads cut off at once.

  One Friday morning, the city’s most capable thief, who was wandering across the rooftops with a curiosity-stone he had taken from an Indian merchant the day before, appeared at the end of the street along which the Sultan’s daughter was passing in her palanquin. His curiosity got the better of him, and he opened his eyelids slightly.

  Before the executioner cut off his head, the thief turned to the people who had gathered in the square and shouted; ‘Your fear of seeing the Sultan’s daughter’s beauty is misplaced. The palanquin is empty! If it hadn’t been empty, why would he have tried to hide it from us?’

  Because at that moment everyone was so absorbed in watching the execution, no one heard the thief’s last words.

  I couldn’t digest the fact that in his eyes, I’d been material for the Dictionary of Gazes from the start. All this time I thought we’d been living a love that was resistant to the gazes of outside, and that, in spite of everything, flowered in privacy. I have to confess, I thought our relationship was based on a mutual desire the like of which would be difficult to find. Perhaps with B-C I drank all of the passion I hadn’t lived in my life in a single gulp. In that case everything was very simple. Just like him, I have an issue with eyes; with seeing and being seen. I was just as much on display as he was. And all that we had long-suspected separately, about what this chronic disease resembled, revealed itself layer-by-layer when we came together. This is what had attracted B-C. That was all.

  So after putting all the pieces together, I knew why he was with me. That is, if there was any love involved in this, I knew the reason for it. And what we call love is condemned to dry out the moment there’s a reason for it.

  tedbil gezmek (to go out in disguise): The Sultan used to wander in disguise through the winding streets of the city of cities. Sometimes he would give out rewards, but most of the time he gave out punishments. In order for these rewards and punishments to be given out immediately, the Sultan’s disguised bodyguards walked in file behind him.

  Mustafa III, who went out in disguise regularly, used to like to dress as a dervish. He used to wander over every inch of the city; a dervish on the outside and a Sultan on the inside.

  One day Feyzullah, who’d come to Istanbul after losing the governorship of Çorum, recognised the disguised Sultan. He told him what a difficult position he was in and asked for help. He didn’t get any response. Another time Feyzullah met the Sultan in the middle of the market in Üsküdar and once again recognised him. This time he couldn’t hold himself back, and shouted; ‘Either give me my bread or have me killed!’

  Mustapha III looked at Feyzullah carefully. The eyes of the Sultan inside the dervish could be dangerous; indeed very dangerous. He made his decision right then and there. He didn’t give him his bread.

  This is why I was looking into B-C’s eyes with pai
n. When he’d come home and learned that I’d read the Dictionary of Gazes, he hadn’t at first been able to discern what had distressed me, but as the minutes passed he began to understand the reasons for the change in me. And now that he’d once again wrapped his face in an inexpressive blankness, devoid of all emotion, I couldn’t make out what he was thinking. His eyes had once again fled behind frosted glass or a curtain of wax; I couldn’t guess what he was feeling. I don’t know how long we sat across from each other without speaking or moving. But his silence was such an unaccustomed thing for me that it hurt my ears. Then he stood up slowly. He came to my side and held my wrist.

  ‘If you want, let’s go out in disguise tonight,’ he said.

  ‘All right, let’s go out,’ I said, unable to control the trembling of my voice.

  televizyon (television): It is unsettling to imagine that the television at home, which we watch all the time, could watch us for even a moment.

  There was nothing to argue about. And we didn’t argue. I started looking for the suitcase I’d brought when I came. I couldn’t remember where we’d put it away. But B-C’s voice stopped me. ‘You stay,’ he said. ‘You know, I was going to leave anyway.’

  There was nothing to talk about. And we didn’t talk. I didn’t turn my head. I didn’t look in his direction. I didn’t have the heart to watch his departure.

  temasa (contemplation): Watching for the enjoyment of looking.

  sahne-i temasa: stage.

  Love is a corset. In order to understand the value of this you have to be exceedingly fat. It can quickly wrap up and control the fat that’s been gathering layer by layer over the years, spreading out in its stickiness, heaping up in a gelatinous mass. Then you can stand outside your own work and watch the power. Love is a merchant of dreams. Worn-out and cast-off dreams will pick themselves up, clean and shine themselves, deck themselves out, and in their new state laugh at their owners. Love makes a person more beautiful. It plays fearlessly with appearances, that is, with qualities, that is, with mirrors. It makes peace between the taking of offence and mirrors, it increases the lonely with mirrors.