Part 7 (1/2)
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”And now they want me to go to the States. Just like that, out of the blue,” I continue. ”You know what? Maybe you and I should take up arms, organize an underground resistance and topple them. They'd be so freaked out.”
”I am a pacifist. I don't take up arms,” says Dame Dervish. ”'Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.' That's what Gandhi teaches.”
”With all due respect, let's not forget that Mr. Gandhi had not met Milady Ambitious Chekhovian,” I say.
”'Nevertheless, an elephant cannot swallow a hedgehog.'”
”Was that Gandhi again?”
”That was a slogan from the Prague Spring,” says Dame Dervish. ”In 1968. If you can say that against the Soviet tanks, you can say it against any finger-woman you want.”
She never ceases to surprise me, this Sufi of mine.
”Look around you, Elif. What do you see?” asks Dame Dervish. Pedestrians hurrying up and down the street, commuters standing still in public buses that are full to the brim, peddlers selling replica designer bags, street children cleaning the winds.h.i.+elds of the luxurious cars that stop at red lights, billboards advertising fast money and glitzy lifestyles, a city of endless contradictions . . . That is what I see when I look around in Istanbul.
”All right, now look at yourself,” says Dame Dervish. ”What do you see?”
A woman who is split inside, half East, half West. A woman who loves the world of imagination more than the real world; who, year after year, has been worn down by useless paradoxes, wrong relations.h.i.+ps, mistaken loves; who is still not over the hurt of growing up without a father; who breaks hearts and has her heart broken; who cares too much about what other people think; who is afraid that G.o.d may not really care for her and who can be happy or complete only when writing a novel. In short, ”a personality under construction” is what I see when I look at myself. But my tongue won't cooperate in making this confession.
At my uneasy silence, Dame Dervish says, ”You have to accept the universe as an open book that is waiting for its reader. One must read each day page by page.”
Her voice sounds so calm and soothing, I feel embarra.s.sed about my outburst a minute ago. ”Then, tell me, how am I supposed to read this very day?”
”There is a voyage knocking at your door,” says Dame Dervish, as if she were holding an invisible cup in her hand and telling my fortune from the configuration of the coffee grounds at the bottom. ”If you don't leave Istanbul, these three finger-women will not let you be. From morning till night, they will pick at you.”
”Tell me about it,” I say, exhaling loudly.
”I think one of these days you should sign a peace treaty with all of us,” says Dame Dervish. ”The reason why the finger-women are quarreling so much among themselves is because you are quarreling with us. You think some of us are more worthy than others. While in truth, we are all reflections of you. All of us make up a whole.”
”You want me to make no distinction between you and Milady Ambitious Chekhovian? But you two are completely different!”
”We don't have to be identical. She and I share the same essence. If only you could understand this. Until you realize that every voice inside you is part of the same circle, you will feel fragmented. Unite us all in One.”
”You are talking about my embracing them, but those rascals instigated a coup d'etat while I was asleep, for G.o.d's sake. It is only a pacifist who trusts a despot. It's never the other way around!”
Dame Dervish gives me a nod, her smile as warm as a caress. ”May be.”
I look at her, awaiting an explanation. That is when she tells me this story.
”Once upon a time, there was a dervish who spoke little. One day his horse ran away. When they heard the news, all the neighbors came to see him. 'That is terrible,' they remarked. The dervish said, 'May be.'
”The next day, they found the horse with a gorgeous stallion next to it. Everyone congratulated the dervish and said this was wonderful news. Again, he said only, 'May be.'
”A week later, while trying to ride the stallion, the dervish's son fell off and broke his leg. The neighbors came to say how sorry they were. 'How awful,' they exclaimed in unison. The dervish replied, 'May be.'
”The next day, some state officials came to the village to draft young men to the war zone. All the boys had to go, except the dervish's son, who lay in bed with a broken leg.”
”You see what I mean?” asks Dame Dervish.
”I guess so,” I answer.
”I want you to see the fellows.h.i.+p in Ma.s.sachusetts not as something imposed on you but as an opportunity. Turkey or the United States, it isn't important, really. What matters is the journey within. You won't be traveling to America, you will be traveling within yourself. Think of it that way.”
There is a confident serenity about her, which I like. She might well be right. I have to learn to live peacefully, fully, every day with the voices inside me. I'm tired of constantly being at war with them.
With a sudden urge and zest, I flag down a pa.s.sing taxi. ”Come on, then, let's go,” I say as I open the door to the cab.
”Where to?”
”To the train station,” I announce, beaming.
”Did you decide to go to America by train?” Dame Dervish asks as she chuckles to herself.
I shake my head. ”I just want to go and smell the trains. . . .”
I just want to spend some time at the station-inhale its strange, pungent aroma, the odor of people rus.h.i.+ng in all directions, the heavy tang of the dest.i.tute with their dreams of affluence, the refres.h.i.+ng hint of new destinations. Whenever I feel the need to contemplate a mystery or observe the world, whenever the nomad in me wakes up, I go there.
Airports are too sterile, clean and controlled when compared with train stations, where the heart of the underprivileged still pulsates.
Haydarpasha Station is an old, majestic building with too many memories. And like many old, majestic buildings, it, too, has its own djinn and fairies. They perch on the high windows and watch the pa.s.sengers below. They watch couples split, lovers meet, families unite, friends break up. . . . They gaze at the thousand and one predicaments of the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, and still find us puzzling.
If you ever go there and walk right into the middle of the station, if you then stand still amid the hullabaloo with eyes firmly closed, listen, you can hear them whispering, the djinn and fairies of the station . . . uttering strange words like poetry, in a language long forgotten. . . .
Perhaps, like the Greek poet Konstantinos Kavafis, they, too, are saying, New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas.
The city will follow you . . .
You will roam the same streets.
Women Who Change Their Names I was eighteen years old when I decided to change my name. By and large, I was happy with my first name, Elif, which is a fairly common girl's name in Turkey, meaning tall and lithe, like the first letter of the Ottoman alphabet, aleph. The word is encountered in Arabic, Persian, Hebrew and Turkish, although to my knowledge, it is only in the latter that it is used as a female name. That same year, I had read Borges's ”The Aleph” and I was familiar with his description of the word as a virtually untraceable point in s.p.a.ce that contained all points. Not bad, I thought. Striding along with all the vanity of my youth, I did enjoy being likened to a letter, though I would have much preferred the entire alphabet.
It was a different story, however, with my surname. It upset me that as women, we were expected to take first the family names of our fathers, then our husbands. Having grown up without seeing my father, I couldn't understand, for the life of me, why I should carry his name. Since I was also determined to never get married and take my husband's name, I concluded that the rule of surnames simply didn't apply to me.
I had been pondering this paradox for a while when a prestigious literary magazine in Turkey selected for publication a short story I had written. The editor, an intellectual in his midforties, gave me a call to congratulate and welcome me into the literary fold, which he said was ”no different from a jungle with wild egos.” As he was about to hang up, he told me to let them know if there were any last-minute changes I would like to make before the magazine went to press.
”Yes,” I said urgently. ”My last name. I am changing it.”
”Are you getting married? Congratulations!”
”No. Not like that,” I interjected. ”I have decided to rename myself.”
He chuckled, the way people tend to do when they don't know what to say. Then he said, very slowly and loudly, as if talking to a child with a hearing impairment, ”O-kay, and how do you want us to write your name?”
”I don't know yet,” I confessed. ”It's a lifetime decision. I'll have to think about it.”