Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood, and the Harem Within

  I often wonder what happened that night. What surreal place did Jane Austen visit in her dreams that made her change her mind? Did she have nightmares? Did she imagine herself scrubbing the staircase of a hundred-floor paper house with a bucket full of ink, watching every stair crumble as she cleaned and cleaned? What was it that made her decide against walking down the aisle?

  Of all the American women writers of earlier generations, there is one that holds a special place in my heart: Carson McCullers. Perhaps it is because I came upon her work at a time when I was discovering the world and myself. Her words had a shattering effect on me. It was my last year of high school when I read The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, drawn more to the title of the book than the name of the author. The year before I was very popular at school, if only for a few weeks, having newly arrived in Ankara from Madrid, where I had spent my teenage years. The kids in my new class had been thrilled to learn that I could speak Spanish and had even been to a bullfight. But the introvert in me had not taken long to show up and the sympathetic curiosity in the eyes of my classmates had been gradually replaced first by an absolute indifference, then a judgmental distance. Girls thought I was unsociable, boys thought I was bizarre, teachers thought I was aloof, and I trusted no one but books. That is when I met Carson McCullers.

  I was a Turkish girl who had never been to America and yet the stories of lonely people in the American South moved me deeply. But there was more to it than that. Twenty pages into the book, I was dying to know the person who could write like this.

  She was born Lula Carson Smith. By shortening her name to Carson she was not only trying to be noticeable but also standing on an ambiguous ground where it was hard for her readers to guess her gender. She was someone who did not easily blend with her peers and could be, at times, quite unfriendly. Instead of dressing up in stockings and shoes with high heels and slender skirts, as was the fashion in the 1930s, she preferred to walk around in high socks and tennis shoes, happy to startle her classmates. Despite her indifference to the established codes of beauty, I find it interesting that when she met the love of her life, Reeves McCullers, the first thing that struck her were his looks. “There was the shock, the shock of pure beauty, when I first saw him.” Though their relationship was beset with doubts and difficulties—they divorced at one point and then remarried—they remained inseparable for nearly twenty years—until the day he died.

  So it is that world literary history is full of women who have changed their minds, their destinies and, yes, their names.

  The next morning I gave the editor a call.

  “Hi, Elif. . . . It is nice to hear from you,” he said briskly, but then paused. “Or did you change your name already? Shall I call you by a different name?”

  “Actually, that’s the reason why I called,” I said. “I found my name. And I want you to use this new one when you print my story.”

  “O-kay,” he said, once again, very slowly and loudly. By now I had figured out that was how he spoke when he couldn’t see where the conversation was heading. “How does it feel to shed your old name?”

  “That part is easy,” I said. “The difficult part is to find a new one.”

  “Hm . . . umm,” he said in sympathy.

  “I have been researching the lives of writers, perusing words in dictionaries, reading literary anecdotes, looking for an unusual name. I mean, not as unusual as David Bowie’s child Zowie; or Frank Zappa, of course, who named one of his children Moon Unit. But perhaps it is a bit easier when you are trying to name a newborn baby with endless potentials and unknowns than to name your old, familiar, limited self.”

  “David Bowie has a child named Zowie Bowie?” he asked.

  “Yup,” I said.

  “All right, go on, please.”

  “Well, I once had a boyfriend who wanted everyone to call him ‘A Glass Half Full’ because he said that was his philosophy in life. He even wrote the name on his exam papers, getting funny reactions from the professors. But then he graduated and went into the military. When he came back, he didn’t want anything to do with A Glass Half Full. He had gone back to his old name, Kaya—the Rock.”

  “O-kay,” the editor said.

  “Anyhow, I decided I didn’t have to go that far. Actually, I didn’t have to go anywhere. Better to look at what I have with me here and now,” I said. “Instead of carrying my father’s surname, I decided to adopt my mother’s first name as my last name.”

  “I’m not sure I am following,” he said.

  “Dawn,” I explained. “Shafak is my mother’s first name. I will make it my surname from this day on.”

  A month later when the magazine was published, I saw my new name for the first time in print. It didn’t feel strange. It didn’t feel wrong. It felt just right, as if in a world of endless shadows and echoes, my name and I had finally found each other.

  The Fugitive Passenger

  On the first day of September 2002, the Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to New York takes off with me on it. The plane is jam-packed with undergraduate and graduate students, businessmen and businesswomen, trained professionals, journalists, academics, tourists and a newlywed couple on honeymoon. . . . Besides Turks and Americans, there are Indians, Russians, Bulgarians, Arabs and Japanese who have come from connecting flights. This will be my first visit to America. I think about Anaïs Nin arriving in the United States in 1914 with her brother’s violin case in one hand and a yet-to-be-filled diary in the other. I am smiling at the curious little girl in my mind’s eye when I notice something and stop.

  A young, lanky man two rows in front of me is grinning sheepishly at me. He thinks I was smiling at him. There is no way I can explain it was for Anaïs Nin. In order to cause no more misunderstandings, I slide down in my seat and hide my face behind a book: In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays.

  Shortly after the food service, I walk down the corridor to go to the toilet. Out of the corner of my eye, I check to see what the other passengers are reading, craning my head left and right to decipher the titles of the books they are holding. I notice some Westerners reading books on Turkey or Istanbul (including a novel of mine), which intrigues me, because most tourists read about a foreign country before they go to see it, but very few continue reading after they have seen it.

  There are two vacant restrooms. As soon as I open the door of the first one and step inside, I freeze on the spot. There, next to the liquidsoap dispenser beside the sink, stands a finger-woman. I’m just about to say “excuse me” and leave when she calls out.

  “No, please, stay. . . . I want to talk to you.”

  I look at the stranger quizzically. She kind of resembles the others in the Choir of Discordant Voices. She is no taller than them, but probably weighs more. She has a kind, round, freckled face, a pointy chin, hair the color of Turkish coffee and eyes so blue they suck you in. She’s wearing no makeup except for eyeliner and perhaps some mascara on her long lashes, it’s hard to tell. She seems to be in her early or mid-thirties, and I am sure I’ve never seen her before.

  “Who are you?”

  “Don’t you recognize me?” she says again, sounding slightly offended.

  I scan her from head to toe. She is wearing an aquamarine dress that reaches her knees, red shoes without heels, a belt of the same color, beige nylon stockings. Her wavy hair is held back in a ponytail by a modest hair band. The chubbiness of her cheeks is due to her extra pounds, but she seems to be at peace with her body. She doesn’t have the tense air that the calorie-counting Little Miss Practical radiates.

  “I’m one of your inner voices,” she says finally.

  “Really? I’ve never seen you before. Did you just arrive?”

  “Actually, I’ve been with you since you were a little girl playing with dollhouses,” she says.

  Confused and clueless, I ask her name.

  “They call me Mama Rice Pudding.”

  I break into a laugh, but when I see her scowl I swallow my chuck
les and put on a serious face.

  “I see you find my name amusing,” she says coldly.

  “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  At my guilty pause she smiles. “What strikes me is that you don’t find the names of the others amusing at all,” she says. “You don’t laugh at Milady Ambitious Chekhovian or Miss Highbrowed Cynic, do you?”

  She’s right. I have nothing to say.

  “My name is what it is because I happen to be a motherly, loving person,” she continues, flipping her hands upward to make a point.

  “Really?” I say, under my breath.

  “Yes, I relish hanging bamboo wind chimes on the porch, growing begonias in cute little pots, pickling vegetables in the summer, making pink grapefruit marmalade. . . . You know, keeping the home fires burning. I know how to get ink stains off carpets, what to do when you spill olive oil on your best skirt, how to clean a rusted teapot and other important tricks. I bake pastries and desserts. Just this month one of my recipes has been featured in a cooking video, and they named it Mama’s Heavenly Rice Pudding.”

  For almost a minute I don’t say anything. I am sure there must be a mistake and I consider how to kindly break the news to her. There is no way a finger-woman like her can be one of my inner voices. I lack the skill to crack eggs for an omelet or the patience to boil water for tea. I hate house chores and other domestic duties, and avoid them as much and as best as I can. My friends don’t need to know about this, but I could live in a room without cleaning it for days and weeks, and if the going gets rough, I’d prefer to redecorate the room than to have to clean it. And if the entire house gets too dirty, I’d rather move into a new one than have to vacuum, scrub and polish it thoroughly. My take on this is that of a hotel client, easygoing and laid-back: I like to sleep in my bed knowing that I’ll not have to wash and iron the sheets the next day.

  Mama Rice Pudding purses her lips and pouts as if she can read my thoughts. “You never let me speak, not once! You stored me away in the depot of your personality, and then forgot all about me. All these years, I’ve been waiting for you to accept and love me as I am.”

  That is when a bigger wave of guilt begins tugging at the edges of my mind. I feel like an old-fashioned conservative parent who has renounced his son for being gay and pretends he doesn’t even exist. Is that what I have done to the maternal side of me?

  “How about the other finger-women?” I ask. “Do they know about you?”

  “Of course they do,” replies Mama Rice Pudding. “But they prefer not to tell you about me and the other chick.”

  “What do you mean by ‘the other chick’?”

  But she ignores my question. “Like many young women I, too, want to get married, wear a wedding dress, have a diamond ring, raise children and cruise the sales aisles of supermarkets. But you pushed away all my desires and looked down on them with such force that I couldn’t even mention them. I was silenced, suppressed and denied.”

  I think of Anaïs Nin again—a vigorous woman who once said, “Ordinary life does not interest me”; who believed that a critical writer such as herself could never make a housewife. She had an unruly side, a mostly disordered lifestyle and more than one lover by her side. “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage,” she would say.

  “What are you thinking about?” Mama Rice Pudding asks.

  “Anaïs Nin . . .” I murmur, not expecting her to recognize the name.

  But she does. “Those edgy avant-garde writers!” she says, spitting the words out. “You know what your problem is? You read too much, that’s your problem.”

  “Wait a minute, what kind of criticism is that?”

  But she raves on about the terrible effects of books on my soul, getting more and more carried away. “You convinced yourself that you couldn’t be a normal woman. Why do you frown upon the ordinary?”

  Seeing that this conversation is taking on political overtones, I try to navigate my way through it as delicately as I can. “Hmm . . . Miss Highbrowed Cynic always says whatever calamity has befallen humanity is because of ordinary people. She quotes the bright Jewish woman philosopher Hannah Arendt, who has shown us that fascism has thrived and grown due not to the bad people with wicked aims but, in fact, to the ordinary people with good intentions.”

  “Oh my God,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Do you see what you are doing to yourself? Here I am talking about marriage and motherhood and muffins, and you respond by alluding to Hitler and the Nazis.”

  Baffled, I gape at her without so much as a blink.

  “Forget about all the other finger-women,” she continues. “They’ve been eating away at you for years. Don’t belittle the beauty of the ordinary, of seeking simple pleasures. You and I can have so much fun together.”

  “Really? Like what?”

  She beams. “We can go to the farmers’ market every weekend, buy organic zucchini. We can wait in front of stores at dawn with thermoses in our hands, and dash inside the second the doors open and start grabbing sale items before anyone else. We can decorate our home from top to bottom with scented candles and flowers of matching colors. Trust me, you’ll love it. Have you ever set a beautiful dinner table? Do you know how gratifying it is when your family and friends commend your culinary skills?”

  Before I find the chance to give her an obvious answer, we hear a sudden noise at the door. I open it slightly and peek out.

  To my surprise, there is a line in front of the restroom. And at the very front stands Milady Ambitious Chekhovian in her dark green general’s uniform. Tapping her military boots and fidgeting nervously, she appears to be in mighty need of going to the toilet.

  A shadow of panic crosses Mama Rice Pudding’s face. “Oh, no! Not that monster!”

  “What do you want me to do?” I ask.

  “Please don’t tell them I am here. They’ll tear me to shreds, those witches!”

  She is right. Milady Ambitious Chekhovian with her doggedness, Miss Highbrowed Cynic with her pessimism, Little Miss Practical with her intolerance of anything that takes longer than ten minutes to prepare, would tear Mama Rice Pudding apart. I need to protect her from her sisters.

  “Don’t worry, you are safe with me. I won’t whisper a word.”

  Smiling warmly she reaches for my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. Her fingers are not manicured and well groomed like Little Miss Practical’s; they aren’t decked with rings like Milady Ambitious Chekhovian’s or chewed up like Miss Highbrowed Cynic’s. They are rough from hard work, pink and plump. I am bewildered by the affection I feel for her. If she is my motherly side, isn’t it weird that I feel the need to mother her?

  “Wait a minute, how are you going to get into America?” I ask. “Do you have a visa?”

  “I don’t need a visa,” she says. “They don’t even search finger-women like me at airports.”

  I can see why. It’d be hard to find a terrorist streak in her.

  “I’m not worried about the external world,” she says. “You just keep that coven of finger-women away from me and I’ll be just fine.”

  “Okay.”

  “Please promise me that you will not let them ever crush me again.”

  As I ponder how to skirt this demand and how to get her out of this restroom without the other Thumbelinas seeing her, the plane experiences turbulence. The pilot announces that everyone must return to their seats and fasten their seat belts.

  A few seconds later, I open the door. The line has dispersed and I can see that Milady Ambitious Chekhovian is already in her seat.

  “The coast is clear now,” I say to Mama Rice Pudding. “You can go out.”

  “I will,” she says with a new edge to her voice. “But you haven’t given me your promise yet.”

  It is one of those moments when I know I should be totally honest and tell the truth, but for the sake of courtesy or out of pure cowardice, I simply can’t. Instead, I tell her what she wants to hear, even though I know deep
down inside that I can’t keep that promise.

  “I swear I will not let the other finger-women silence you.”

  A huge smile lights up her face. “Thanks. I know I can trust you.”

  “By the way, who is this other chick you were talking about?” I hear myself asking.

  “You will meet her when the time is ripe.”

  “But why is she hiding?”

  “She is not hiding. None of us is. It’s you who doesn’t acknowledge our presence. For years, you’ve given all your attention to Little Miss Practical, Miss Highbrowed Cynic, Milady Ambitious Chekhovian and Dame Dervish.”

  “I understand,” I say, although I am not sure I do.

  “Okay, we need to go now.”

  “Well, it was really nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” she says, blushing. “I guess I will see you around.”

  Still smiling, she slips out the door. I stay in the restroom a few more seconds, slightly shaking—not knowing whether it’s due to the turbulence or to the confusion in my mind.

  It dawns upon me that I don’t know myself very well. Throughout my adult life, I’ve favored certain voices inside me at the expense of others. How many inner voices are there that I have yet to meet?

  I go back to my seat.

  Until the plane touches down in New York, this is all I think about.

  A Festive Banquet

  Simone de Beauvoir, even more than fifty years after her death, remains a diva in the history of the feminist movement. At her funeral in 1956, thousands of mourners heard an unforgettable phrase: “Women, you owe her everything”—a phrase that says a lot about her charisma and legendary heritage. You may not agree with everything she said, you may not even like her personality, but you cannot turn a blind eye to her work or intellectual legacy.

  “One is not born a woman, but becomes one,” she stated famously. For centuries girls were taught that their most important roles in life were sexuality, childbearing and motherhood. Armed with the small task of ensuring the continuation of the human race, young women were rarely, if ever, encouraged to pursue their studies and make more of their talents. In the France of the 1940s, motherhood was almost a religious duty, unquestionable and sacrosanct. Simone de Beauvoir knew what she was talking about, being raised by a staunch Catholic mother.