The Gaze (12 page)
Outside is the land of appearances. The children at the nursery were competing with one another to remind me how fat I was. When I got home my hair smelled of the letters f-a-t-t-y the way someone’s hair smells in the evening when they’ve been around people puffing on cigarettes all day. Indeed the first thing I did when I got home was to wash my hair. The letters would wash off me and swirl away down the drain. But no matter how much I shampooed my hair, some of them wouldn’t come out. They’d stick to me like burs. Then, B-C would come help me: he’d pick out the f’s, the a’s, the t’s, the y’s.
So one day I decided to dye my hair. It was clear I couldn’t get rid of the letters f-a-t-t-y. But with the right hair colour I could make them invisible; like a sweater that doesn’t show stains.
ask
(love): A widow was in the arms of her lover. ‘This thing called love should be forbidden,’ she muttered to herself, ‘and what is forbidden should be kept out of sight.’
However, the young man wanted everyone to see him make love to the widow. He had to prove to others that he was growing up. For this reason he always kept the window open. But no one ever passed down that street.
Then one day as the young man was wandering around the house, he managed to open a door that was always kept locked, and that he’d never once touched before. ‘My God!’ he shouted. ‘Is that why you’ve locked everyone into this room? Did you do this so no one would see us?’ As he stood waiting for an answer, the widow locked the door on the callow young man and left.
The widow met a caterpillar on the road. ‘Will you be my secret love?’ she asked him. ‘Why keep it a secret?’ asked the caterpillar. ‘If someone’s in love with me I want everyone to see her love. Then I’ll be thought less ugly.’ For a while, the widow watched the caterpillar gnaw on the leaves. Then she locked the whole wide world on the ugly caterpillar.
She came across the cosmos and asked it the same question. The aged cosmos answered, ‘If someone’s in love with me I want everyone to see her love. Then I’ll be thought younger.’ The widow shrugged her shoulders. In any event she had a bunch of keys in her pocket. She locked the aged cosmos in on itself.
In order to continue on her way she had to step off and fall into the void. As she fell she took a new key out of her pocket, but there was no lock in sight. ‘Are you an idiot? What would a lock be doing drifting through the void? There’s nothing here but nothingness,’ grumbled the void. The widow looked at the void with great admiration. ‘In that case, please let me stay with you. You’re the one I’ve been seeking.’
‘That’s completely out of the question,’ said the void. ‘If you stay with me, you’ll fill my void, and then I’ll no longer exist.’
‘Go on back now,’ said the void in a sweet voice, as if wishing to ask forgiveness for having been rude. ‘Go back and open all the doors. Let them out. You need them.’
The widow did as the void asked, and opened all the doors she’d locked. When they saw that their captivity had come to an end the prisoners rushed out pushing and shoving; as they ran around dazed by their freedom, some of them were injured. The widow was surprised and angry. ‘As if things were any better now?’ she was heard to have said. She locked herself in her house in order not to have to witness any more of this tumult. And after this she forbade herself love.
The colour catalogue they thrust into my hands at the hairdresser’s was wonderful. There were curls of all colours, but I was more enchanted by the names than by the colours. For instance the caption for a copper-coloured curl was ‘Farewell to the Train at Sunset’, for a loud reddish tone ‘Also Known as Seduction’, for an ash-coloured curl, ‘What the Fireplace Knows’, for a yellow curl, ‘Natural Blond’, for a dark, chestnut-coloured curl, ‘Roasting Chestnuts in the Evening’. I stroked the curls again and again with my index finger. If it were up to me, I’d give each of the coloured curls names that had to do with food. Since I was little, colours have always evoked food for me. As I thought, I looked carefully at my index finger. My cuticles were torn and chewed away, and in horror I hid my finger so no one would see it.
After hesitating for some time, I decided on a curl with silver glitter in it. It was called ‘Coal-cellar Black.’
‘It will suit you very well,’ said the hairdresser. ‘It will make your face look thinner.’
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t return his smiles. I looked at him in the wide mirror in front of where I was sitting. He grew uncomfortable and avoided my eyes. I hate those who think fat people are stupid.
ay
(moon): For centuries people, thinking that the moon was close to them, gave it a human face. (Note: research the moon’s faces!)
When I came back I found B-C striding around the house in an irritable mood. He noticed what I’d done to my hair right away. He said a few nice things, but it was clear his mind was elsewhere. I’d never seen him this troubled before.
‘If it keeps going like this it will take forever to finish this dictionary,’ he said while I was in the kitchen preparing a snack.
‘Excuse me, but it’s only been a few days since you started. I don’t even really understand what you’re doing yet.’
‘Come on!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Let’s not shut ourselves up at home tonight. Let’s go out.’
He must have been out of his mind.
ay çiçesi
(sunflower): When the sunflower fell in love with the sun, the other plants all broke out laughing, ‘The sun never leaves his throne in the heavens even for a moment. He’s powerful and inaccessible,’ they said in unison. The sunflower said nothing. It planted its passionate eyes on the sun, and looked and looked and looked.
For a long time the sun noticed nothing, then finally one day he sensed the sunflower looking at him. At first he thought it was just a passing fancy, but in time he understood he was mistaken. The sunflower was so stubborn that wherever the sun moved his throne, she simply turned her head in that direction without being daunted or losing hope.
Then one afternoon, fed up with this surveillance, the sun roasted the sunflower with his bright yellow rage. While smoke was still rising from the sunflower, people rushed to see what had happened. ‘Wonderful!’ said one of them, ‘Now we can enjoy cracking this love between our teeth.’
That night, watching a sad love story on television, they cracked their sunflower seeds between their teeth.
‘We’re going out? We’re not avoiding other people’s eyes any more? Tell me, what’s changed?’
‘I’ve found a solution for our situation,’ he said lowering his voice, and squinting his dark chocolate eyes with childish delight. He remained silent for a few minutes just to fan my curiosity, then added smiling: ‘Tonight you and I are going out in disguise.’
ay tutulmasi
(eclipse of the moon): Sometimes the moon in the sky manages to hide from the gaze of people on earth. As soon as no one can see, she freshens her powder.
As he’s getting ready, he continues to explain. To go out in disguise is to change your appearance. All of the Sultans used this method to see in person what their empires really looked like. Now we were going to follow this royal tradition, and change our appearance. If we don’t look like ourselves, we’ll be able to go out together.
‘Fine, but even if we’re disguised won’t someone recognise us?’ Someone would, of course, why wouldn’t they? I wasn’t at all reassured.
ayn-al-yakin:Ayn-al-yakin
, which is understood as seeing God with the eye of spirit, is the second of three levels.
He shaved carefully. When I wiped the foam off his skin, it smelled like peaches. His peach fuzz quivering in the wind of his agitation gave me goose bumps. He undressed behind the screen. When he came out he was wearing one of my bras. As I was trying to figure out what he had stuffed it with, my eyes fell onto his hips. He passed coquettishly in front of me. I watched with alarm. It struck me with terror to see the man I love display an attitude I’d never seen him display before, and behave in a way that seemed not to acknowledge the past, to make a lie of the present, and to exclude me. How could he internalise his new appearance so quickly? As if his personality changed with his appearance.
I became restless. My heart sank at the thought of leaving the Hayalifener Apartments with B-C. No matter what we wore, how much could we hide from the eyes of others, and for how long? We didn’t please anyone’s eyes. Even if we were in disguise, and even at night, we didn’t suit each other.
I was afraid to go outside. I didn’t like the outside.
ayna
(mirror): The odalisques in the harem couldn’t get their fill of looking at their unsurpassed beauty in the mirrors that had been brought from Venice. Their greatest desire was for the Sultan to see what the mirror showed.
He stood in front of me in a filmy, floral dress that swept the floor, and was wearing mascara as black as olive paste, false eyelashes, butterfly glasses, eye-shadow the colour of blackberries and sprinkled with glitter, with bronze foundation and powdered rouge on his face; his lips were smeared with cherry-coloured lipstick and lined with pencil; he wore a wig the colour of boiled corn, fish-net stockings, and shoes that made him much taller, with mind-boggling heels that from a distance looked like two toy towers. There were large hoop earrings on his ears, a coral necklace on his neck, jangling bracelets on his wrists, giant rings on his fingers, a pea-green, snake-skin bag on one shoulder, and a sad, furry animal tail draped over the other.
How and when did he turn into this? When I touched his body to try to sense its secret, he fluttered his false eyelashes flirtatiously. He was in a completely different state of mind, and if I didn’t take myself in hand quickly, it was clear he was going to go out in disguise without me.
Babil Kulesi
(Tower of Babel): People were so curious about God that they decided to build a tower that would pierce the heavens. The construction proceeded quickly. All of the workers worked in harmony and with mutual understanding. But just as they were struggling to reach the limits of the seventh level of the heavens, God gave each workman a different language. The construction stopped because no one could understand each other.
Because God didn’t want to be seen.
I scurried to get ready
basilisk
: The basilisk is a poisonous animal, and its poison is fatal. The basilisk was a nightmare for travellers who set their sails for unknown lands. These travellers carried all kinds of protective objects to evade its poisonous looks. But the most intelligent of them felt no need for anything but a mirror.
What else in the world could stop a basilisk except its own appearance?
It took hours. With B-C pulling the corset strings from one side, and me from the other, we succeeded in squeezing in my fat layer by layer. I was covered in sweat. My fat was used to wobbling about freely, and didn’t know how to respond to this unexpected pressure. Some of it was weeping with abandon, some of it was swearing heavily, and some of it was begging pitifully for mercy. Some of it, seeking a hole or a rip through which to escape, soon had to accept defeat. The corset squeezed me so tightly it was a miracle I could even move. I was pressed in on all four sides. I was girded in to the north, south, east and west; there was no place for my fat to escape.
The rest of the preparations didn’t take long. Indeed after such struggle, I had neither strength nor patience left. I sprinkled lots of hair all over myself. My hands, chest and legs were covered with hair. I combed back my coal-black hair and gathered it under my cap. My moustache wasn’t so thick, but it would pass. Besides, there was no need for a beard. I’d become a coarse young man. I raised my eyebrows to tell B-C to walk in front of me. As I locked the door, he was giggling on the stairs.
He was right. No one would recognise us like this.
bayküs
(owl):The aunts and uncles used to feed the canaries. They used to love the doves, fly the pigeons, chase away the crows, and make the parrots talk. But the child used to love owls. ‘That’s an unlucky bird. Don’t utter its name, don’t call it to your roof,’ the aunts and uncles would say. The owl is an unlucky bird because it sees at night, because it sees the night.
That night we kept the main avenue in sight while we walked through the back streets. With every step, smells of food drifted to me. My nose was constantly following the traces of each smell in this confusion where the most wonderful smells and the most dreadful smells were so mixed together that nothing smelled as it should. The corset was squeezing me, and B-C was pulling me along. Finally, after passing I don’t know how many stuffed-mussel stands, I decided I couldn’t stand it any more. Before long the stuffed-mussel boy’s shoulders were shaking with laughter as he removed the empty shells two by two. ‘Enjoy yourself, brother!’
Meanwhile, B-C was getting out of control. He wanted to stop and knock back a few beers at every bar we passed, otherwise he’d make a fuss. The more he drank, the more he lost control, and the more he lost control the more he drank. When he started trying to pinch the cheeks of the thuggish bouncers outside the bars, it was the last straw. I tried to drag him along by the arm. My brain was throbbing with irritation. As I grew irritable I became more hungry. While I was thinking about where I could eat some
gözleme
, B-C was muttering something to the effect that, ‘I’m a free woman, I can do what I wish.’ Holding his arm roughly, I tried to drag him to the
gözleme
stand at the end of the street. At that moment, very nearby, a newly rolled
gözleme
was sizzling on the dome-shaped griddle, absorbing the butter, and was just on the point of turning crisp, while I was writhing with hunger because of some stupid argument. I had to hurry. But before I’d taken two steps, a shout from behind made me turn around.
‘Leave the lady alone, man.’
‘Did you say something?’ I blustered to the round-faced man who was walking up to me.
‘I said lady, so what? Or isn’t she a lady?’