The Gaze_ Elif Shafak

Page 1 I was dreaming about a flying balloon. I couldn’t make out the color, but because the sky was charcoal-grey, and the clouds were snow-white, and the sun was bright-yellow, it was definitely a colour other than charcoal-grey, snow-white or bright-yellow. The flying balloon in my dream existed for as long as I could see it, but ceased to exist the moment I couldn’t. The flying balloon rose rhythmically, the snow-white clouds floated coyly by, the charcoal-grey sky darkened little by little, and just as the bright-yellow sun was setting silently and without echo, a violent wind blew up. All at once, we were shaken by the violence of the sudden wind. Lime, tar and clay; sticks and twigs, bugs and dusty earth rained down on us. I had to close both my eyes so that the storm wouldn’t take away what I saw. As I shut them, when my eyelashes touched, a noise like the sound of boiling oil coming into contact with water was heard. Air was escaping from the balloon; it was spraying emptiness into the emptiness for each moment it was out of sight. Anxiously, I opened my eyes. I was too late. It didn’t exist after all. I existed. I was awake. B-C was sitting on the edge of the bed, with his eyebrows raised, looking at me angrily. ‘Enough already. I’ve been shaking you for some time now, but I couldn’t wake you. You were sleeping so deeply.’ Without giving me a chance to answer, he roughly pulled the blanket off me. With the blanket gone, my body resembled a rowboat that had been stranded, rolled up in its nets, in a sea from which the water had been drained away. I was deprived of the warm darkness of water. I emerged fearfully into the daylight, but not fast enough for B-C. While I slept, I was able to move my limbs this way and that, taking pleasure in the fact that I was hidden from view by the blanket, and now I was trying nervously to compose them. B-C’s insistent call was pulling them to him like a magnet. ‘Everything is being shaken loose outside, all hell is breaking loose, and her ladyship is still snoring away. Come on, get up. Get up and watch the commotion.’ The terrace door was wide open, and the wind was gently wafting in. As the curtains were being blown here and there with a terrifying effect peculiar to the curtains in haunted houses in films, the sky was visible through the gap between them. A starless, cloudless, moonless night; a pitch-black filter had been placed over our eyes in order that they might not be dazzled. I stood well away from the window. I saw what I saw with B-C’s eyes. Well away from the window.

page 2 What I saw with B-C’s eyes was this: At the foot of the hilly street…in her fifties…meaty…pale-faced…docile…a woman…a housewife…her night-gown is flannel…her slippers have pompoms…thrown out in the street…under the street light…watching the flies… swarming around the light…blocking the light…everything lost…at this time of night…her eyes fixed…on the wings of the flies… In her fifties…with fifty tosses of the ball…aching…ready to celebrate her suffering…complaining every step of the way…ready to do a belly dance…married and with a family…mother of three children…breasts like desiccated lemons…her womb dried up early… yet she wouldn’t have loved her blood…she would never have imagined…the fact that she had been missed…but accepted quickly…though she was always that way…always sociable…and quiet as a mouse…no one would have made… spinach pastry like she did…she could fit nine dumplings onto a spoon…would have rolled them as thin as a pencil…her grape-leaf dolma…her writing was like pearls…when she was in school, that is…everything was fine in those days… like warm milk…life slipped easily down her throat…warming her inside as it did…in those days…everyone around her a propeller…at her orders…her rough husband-to-be…him above all…how he ran after her… ‘the rough one doesn’t even talk much’…after all these years…without feeling the least bit of shame… without considering his age…you get up and go…such a lovely nest…wife like a rose…the children along with her…sacrifice it all…and for whom…the girl could be his daughter’s age…she was a real coquette…when she got tired of him…when she spent his money…out…she would get rid of him…grit your teeth…the male part in any event…later on he’ll come to his senses…endure for the sake of your children…besides you weren’t the only one…we’ve all been down that road…it’s not as if your late father didn’t make his share of mistakes…I didn’t say a word all this time…do your duty…cherry sherbet…of course it will pass…it’s a passing phase…like everything…this too will pass…of course he’ll come back he’ll get on his knees and ask forgiveness…who else but you can make…your spinach pastry…and who can fit…nine dumplings ontoa spoon…as if that slut even knew the way to the kitchen…she has other skills… her kind of womanhood is like the flame of a match…it extinguishes as soon as she gets out of bed…in that case you…your womanhood was legendary…too…

page 3 Flannel night-gown…slippers with pom-poms…even if she’s peevish sometimes…she’s forever sweet…like warm milk…as it moves down her throat…softly losing itself…in the moment…a rancid taste…perhaps the milk is spoiled…she spat it out anxiously…that disgusting stickiness…it was the cream on top of the milk…it turned her stomach. One of the pom-poms…is very loose…like dead skin torn from the lip…it attempted to leave…its own flesh…the bird’s home…the place where it belongs…it dangles…it’s clear it will come off…it’s clear it won’t last…but what about the other one…the pom-pom that’s still sound…is it really sound… or is it just pretending to be sound…is it mimicking something it isn’t…a truth to be understood…the pom-pom must be pulled forcefully…but if it comes off anyway…even in its sound state…openly…the best thing to do…not to try to do the impossible…but that’s curiosity for you…she wants to know…and see… whatever her eyes can see…she takes off her slipper…the one with the sound pom-pom…the flies are far away…like vultures after carrion…like a black cloud devouring the light’s flesh…everything is exactly the same…but the woman knows very well…which one she will choose. ‘Whore fly! Whore! Whore fly!’ The woman’s voice cuts through the air. Well away from the window. This is what I saw through B-C’s eyes. Quite late at night, in one of the two sides of Istanbul, in a neighborhood 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, a woman, probably in her fifties, the mother of three children, was leaning against the lamp-post, shouting to the flies that she wanted her husband back. Dogs were howling, doors were opening, lights were burning, babies were crying, and the gossip of the next few days was being composed. The Neighbours had gathered on the balconies and at the windows; they’d spilled out into the street. Their eyes, shining brightly with the heat of the commotion, were as wide as saucers from surprise. There was enough material to feed the gossip mill of the neighborhood all winter. Everyone was eagerly taking in as much as they could. If I said everyone, I meant excluding the inhabitants of the house! The inhabitants of the house, among them children, sisters, nephews and in-laws, surprised at what had befallen them, ran out barefoot, in pajamas and night-gowns, with cream on their faces and rollers in their hair, and surrounded the woman, pinching and pulling and begging her, trying to get her inside. ‘Let’s go home so she can do whatever she wants, cry and shout as much as she wants, let’s get her inside so the neighbors won’t see her. It doesn’t matter if they hear her so long as they don’t see her.’