The Flea Palace Part 4

Whenever I fall asleep here, my legs spill over from the couch but this time I seem to have forgotten to take off my shoes to boot. My head had slipped from the pillow, my neck was sore. In the dent extending from the side of my mouth to my ear, I detected a bubbly, pasty spittle befitting a dog gone rabid or a baby regurgitating the food just consumed. My shirt had wrinkled up on me, the pain of lying down lopsided had hit my back and my mouth was parched. I had also thrown up on the corner of the rug. At least I had thought of taking off my trousers, but as 'Ethel the c.u.n.t' likes to articulate in yet another aphorism of hers: 'To be without pants while in socks and shoes can make a man only as attractive as a candied apple with the exposed parts all rotten...' or something like that. When viewed from this angle, perhaps I should consider myself lucky for waking up alone this morning, just like I had done for the last sixty-six days.

It is all because of this house. It has been two months and five days since I moved in here. I have come to realize that for all its abstractness and vastness the terms in which time is measurable are no more concrete and no less pet.i.te than mere driblets. I count up every day that has pa.s.sed, every drop of it. By now I should have fully settled down and established some sort of an order in this house. Yet not only have I failed to settle down, I live as if I might pack up and leave any moment. As if to make moving out easier, the flat is still not much different from the way it was the day I moved in, with boxes piled up on top of one another, some opened but most only roughly so: a perfunctory, transitory dwelling amidst parcels yet to be opened...the fleeting order as evaporative as room sprays...a 'Lego-home' constructed of parts and pieces to be dissembled at any moment... When single, one lives amidst 'belongings-in-a-house'; one's past, trajectory, personal worth all contained in possessions that bear symbolic value. Upon getting married, one starts to live in 'a-house-of-belongings', established more on a future than a past, more on expectations than memories; a house where it is doubtful how much one personally possesses. As for divorce, depending on whether one is the person leaving or the person staying behind, it is like camping out all over again, only this time one either stays behind in a 'house-with-belongings-gone' or departs, carrying 'belongings-without-a-house'.

My situation is both, because of this house and because of 'Ethel the c.u.n.t'. The day I had to move in here, no matter how hard I tried, I could not convince her to stay out of it and not mess things up by helping. When I had finally perched myself in the front seat of the truck belonging to the moving company that had agreed to transport the books, clothes and knick-knacks I had deliberately refused to let go from the tastefully decorated home of my marriage (as well as some cheap and simple furniture I had recently bought for the dingy apartment that would be the base for my post-marriage era); there right next to me was none other than Ethel. As if her presence was not alarming enough, she teamed up with the dim-witted driver, utterly stunning the man with the premium quality cigars she offered, preposterous questions she asked and the absurd topics of conversation she came up with which included making a list of the most difficult neighbourhoods in Istanbul to move in and out of. When we had finally reached Bonbon Palace, Ethel meddled with the porters, running around excitedly in that hard-to-believe skirt of hers, which was no bigger than the size of a beggar's handkerchief, on that huge, hideous a.s.s she so much enjoys exhibiting.

Shooting orders left and right, she instructed the porters where to put each box, how to arrange the book parcels and where to stack the common, slipshod packages of shelves of what was supposed to turn into a self-made library, which she herself had forced me to purchase from one of those huge stores in which families paid homage at the weekends. The porters were wise enough to know that it is the woman who has the last word in these matters and in their wisdom unashamedly ignored me, the real owner. All day long I do not remember them even once paying attention to what I said, except when the time came to pay them. It was only then that they favoured me over Ethel. Even when they accidentally banged the cardboard box packed with all kinds of gla.s.ses, cups, and goblets, the authority they addressed and the person they apologized to was not me, trying to mildly dismiss the incident, but Ethel who gave them h.e.l.l about the probable damage they might have caused.

All day long, I had to stand at a corner and be content with watching what was considered appropriate for me. My exclusion reached its peak during the installation of the 180 200 cms, golden bow, system-orthopedic king size bed one of the two hearty spoils I had wrested from my former house. When, after six tries, it had become only too evident that the bed would not fit the shapeless s.p.a.ce of a room that Ethel had decided to make into my bedroom, an argument broke out among them. Ethel wanted the bed to be put in sideways and would sacrifice the showy headboard, if necessary. As for the porters, they were all for locating the bed head-on, even though there would then be no s.p.a.ce left to move around. Meanwhile, no one asked my opinion and if someone had, I would not know what to say anyhow. When they finally agreed to put the bed in sideways, still leaving no room to move, I did not object. That bed was too big for me at any rate. Accordingly, I have not slept on it once since I moved here. I am pretty much consistent in sleeping on this narrow couch that torments my posture and tortures my back. In the past, during her lengthy Masnawi season, Ethel had once lectured me about how Rumi had to reckon with his body. Though not in such a mystical manner, in these last two months I too have probably shown little grat.i.tude to my frame. Still, like a desperate lover ever more attached to his oppressor or a despicable apprentice inured to scorn, I too cannot break away from this cruelly uncomfortable sofa. Before the end of the term, I should a.s.sign 'The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude' to the Thursday section.

The television opposite is, no doubt, the main reason for my preferring this couch. These days, having given up regular sleeping hours, I seek refuge in television and can only sleep with it turned on. Likewise last night, back home so late and high, I must have turned on the television. Now on the screen some madcap of a young girl with a short, multihued shirt with tropical birds, a crimson rosebud tattoo almost as big as a fist on her bare plump belly and orange-coloured hair tied-up in handfuls with phosph.o.r.escent green ribbons, chirps with a glee not many people are bestowed with this early in the morning. Though the girl does not move her body around that much and talks with simple hand gestures, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s keep wobbling in that way particular to women scurrying to catch a bus at the last minute. This is not to my taste though. I have always gone for contrasts; I like them either as small as the palm in a big frame, or huge in a pet.i.te body.

Ten days later, when Ethel came to inspect the house and saw everything was as she had left it, she kept her comments to herself. Nothing had changed by the third week. Still not even a single package had been unwrapped, not even a single shelf mounted. When she stopped by one month five days later, I wished she would keep silent once again. However, with a disagreeable smile on her face and whilst clicking her long, brightly polished fingernails together, she blurted out in that particular manner of hers intended to stress the importance of whatever she was going to say, 'Look, sugar-plum! It's none of my business but you'd better stop treating your new house like you've treated your ex-wife. You neglect your house a.s.suming it's all yours and will never go anywhere, but G.o.d forbid it too might be taken away from you, just like your wife was.' I did not respond. I have always hated long, polished fingernails.

Ethel uses her tongue the way a frog catches a fly. Whatever comes to her mind she blurts out and before the victim has even had a chance to get the message, catches with her harsh pink tongue the momentary bewilderment on the latter's face and then gulps it down with great pleasure, without even bothering to swallow. Although following the divorce I had barely hesitated in ending numerous friendships in my life, I do not know, and frankly do not want to know, why I am still friends with her. Not that I make any special efforts to see her, but I do not take any steps to stop seeing her either. The issue is not that I do not like her any longer, for I have never liked her more or less than I do now. If a bond has kept us together all this time, I do not think it is one of love, companionship or trust. Ethel and I are as compatible as each single wing of two different b.u.t.terflies positioned side by side under a collector's magnifying gla.s.s. We are very much alike in our incompleteness and yet it is two different halves, with utterly distinct designs and colours that we eventually pine for. As we waft along with the wind, we have been coming together, even sticking together, but never in such as way as to complete one another. If I don't see her for a month, I barely miss her and am sometimes hardly even aware of her absence; yet, when we meet after a month, I do not feel the slightest distress next to her or ever think about cutting short the time we spend together. Ethel is Ethel, just as some things simply are what they are. In spite of this, or maybe precisely because of this, I see her more frequently and share more things with her than with anyone else. That is how it has been for many years. This loose relationship of ours may persevere as such or brusquely unravel one day like the nail of a haemorrhaged finger. At times I wonder, if such a thing happens, which one of us will be the first to realize and how long after the fingernail has fallen?

As I was getting up from the couch, my foot got caught on the phone cable. The receiver emerged from under my pillow, as if I had tried to squeeze the life out of the phone last night. It is so annoying, all the data at hand indicates that I was not able to resist calling her last night before I pa.s.sed out.

n.o.body would object to the fact that it is dangerous for drunks to drive. Making phone-calls whilst drunk, however, could produce even more deadly results than driving whilst drunk, and yet there are no legal procedures for dealing with this particular danger. Drunk drivers. .h.i.t random targets, like an unfortunate tree that suddenly appears in front of them or an unrelated vehicle moving on its way...in these accidents there is neither purpose nor intent. Yet those who use the phone when drunk always go and hit the ones they love.

It is enough of a torment to realize that you've called your loved one when drunk, but it is even worse not to remember whether you called and, as you force yourself to remember, to try to convince yourself to the contrary. Since my divorce, this scene kept repeating itself at almost regular intervals but I had not yet called Ayshin on her new number. She probably does not even know that I managed to get this number. That is, of course, if we did not talk last night... I had to be certain. I pushed the redial b.u.t.ton. One, two, three...it was answered on the sixth ring. There she was herself! In the morning, her voice always sounded as if it had come from the bottom of a deep well. She likes to sleep. Highly unattractive upon waking up, she cannot possibly come to her senses before having her filtered coffee. No sugar, no milk. Her second 'h.e.l.looo' sounded even more furious than her first. I hung up.

I tried to collect my thoughts. In spite of everything, there was still some hope. The fact that I called her did not mean that we actually talked. Maybe the phone was not answered. If Ayshin had answered the phone last night and said a few good or bad things, I would have at least remembered bits and pieces of what had been said. As I did not recall a single word, probably nothing worth remembering had occurred, but there was no way I could find solace on the bosom of this slim chance. The most plausible explanation for Ayshin's not answering the phone last night was that she was not home at the time. At that time, outside... Outside, at that time...

On the bathroom floor lie two dead c.o.c.kroaches half a metre apart. This must be two of my accomplishments last night but I cannot, in the doubtful records of my memory, come across any explanation regarding this matter. I take my shirt off. It is suffused with a sharp smell: an unbearable smell jointly produced by the smells of the deep-fried turbot, lots of side dishes, the rak I drank and the premium quality cigars I smoked, all mixed up then totally dredged and made unrecognizable by my stomach acid. The washing machine is a divorce gift from Ethel. She has always been a practical woman, handy and generous. I throw my navy-blue linen pants into the machine as well. I have learned by now that for linens one uses the 40 temperature and the second short cycle, but even if I succeed in purifying myself from the unpleasant sediments of last night, it is amply evident that I will not be able to free myself from the disgusting garbage smell engulfing this apartment building. I am extremely regretful about acting so hastily during the divorce process in my search for a house. For the same amount of money I could have been living in a much more decent place if I had not, with the intent of getting away as soon as possible, attempted to land the first relatively cheap and adequately distant flat. I miss the comfort of my old house. The issue does not solely consist of my yearning for the lost comfort and the lost heaven from which I personally arranged my own downfall. The house actually belonged to Ayshin or, to put it more correctly, to Ayshin's family, but after a three and a half year long residency, I had thought the house was mine too until that unfortunate moment after gathering my underwear, books, lecture notes and razor blades when I went back for a last look to check if I had left anything behind. Such a puny little word: 'too!' Like a child enthusiastically expecting that what his brother has received will be given to him too:'Me too, me too!'Yet it seems that in marriage, just as in sibling relations, one side gets more than the other, while people's traces can be removed from the places they lived, or sometimes even thought they owned, as easily as the string off of a string bean. What I find hard to take, what thrusts pains into my stomach, is exactly the part about the string. It upsets me to think that now Ayshin has a great time by herself in the house that was once mine too. One should of course be always grateful, for there is worse than the worse imaginable: she could be having a great time not all alone...

I took stock in the bathroom, freezing at times or getting scalded at others under the shower that either heated up so much that it then suddenly turned icy, or turned cold and then became boiling hot, managing never to end up lukewarm. Even though it was unclear how I had found my way home last night imbibed, it was certain that I had called Ayshin with my drunken jellyfish-head. Okay, what then? If we had talked, a memory, a moment should have been left behind. A sentence... As I soaped my face, the headquarters of my brain sent the news that a sentence fitting the description of the sought suspect had been observed wandering around and been arrested: 'Don't you see that I will totally cease to care about you if you keep calling like this? Before we lose our respect for each other...' I did not see anything. Even though I tried to open my soapy eyes for a moment, I again shut them when they started stinging from the soap. No, the information proved to be groundless. This was not the sentence I was searching for. I remembered. I had not heard this one last night, but earlier, sometime before Ayshin had tried to change her phone number.

I stepped out when the manic depressive shower started to push my endurance. The pain in my stomach was unbearable. The kitchen was not too small, but became rather narrow after the installment, right in the middle, of an impressive burly refrigerator more or less the size of the cottages that low-income holiday-makers perch along sea sh.o.r.es and fill up with their families. Rather than insisting on taking from my old house this American bullock, designed to satiate the tribal appet.i.tes of consumer society's nuclear families with their hangar-like homes, I should have gone and bought myself one of those box-like, knee-high refrigerators used in either hotel rooms or flats in Tokyo. I probably would have done so if Ayshin had not objected by stating 'It's too big for you.' I had heard this remark twice in a row: firstly, for the king-size bed and secondly, for the refrigerator. It was only then, upon realizing that what was too big for me was not that big for Ayshin, had I been able to surmise that there was another man in her life and my place would be shortly filled up. So even though I did not cause any difficulties on any matter and was more compliant and docile than necessary so as to hurry along the divorce process, no one, Ethel included, could make out my uncompromising stubbornness concerning the bed and the refrigerator.

My loot might have been substantial but it was totally hollow. It looked pathetic empty like that. Large refrigerators are distant relatives of those old locomotives who gobble-up coal all along the way; they are, just like them, never full and as they get filled, constantly want to be filled some more. Forget sacks of coal, mine is bereft even of a shovel full of coal dust. On the top shelf there was a box of opened cream cheese coated with a thin layer of mould, inside the door are five cans of beer and half a large bottle of rak, in the vegetable container sat three tomatoes and wilted leaves of lettuce. That was all. Then, on the bottom shelf there was the mushroom pizza slice sent by that elderly woman neighbour. I had seen many who send puddings and the like, but had never before encountered one who made pizza and distributed it slice by slice. I was going to throw it away but forgot. Now, however, as the alcohol particles left over from the night slowly gnawed on the membrane of my stomach, I reached for the pizza slice with grat.i.tude. It took three minutes to heat it up in the microwave oven and approximately thirty seconds to get it down my stomach. It was a bit stale but so what: it was great considering the conditions! Having thus appeased my stomach, just a tad, I embarked on preparing my medicine. This included a pot of skimmed milk with two heaped spoonfuls of Turkish coffee, one spoonful of pine honey, a generous quant.i.ty of cinnamon and a little cognac. This is my miracle medicine for hangovers, its curing power proven through experience. It may not suit every const.i.tution. Actually every const.i.tution should, through trial and error, develop its own cure. That is how I found mine. That day I made the proportions more generous than usual, as I needed to sober up as soon as possible. It was Thursday and since the beginning of the term, every Thursday afternoon I have taught the course I love the most to the cla.s.s I love the most.

While waiting for the milk to boil, I looked through the brochures Ethel had thrust into my hand. Another private university was being founded in Istanbul. I had been aware of some of the details for a long time, like the long preparation process for example. What I did not know was that Ethel the c.u.n.t was involved as well; she was actually at the very centre of it all and told me more than I ever wanted to learn at dinner. Only two minutes after we had met, she introduced the topic with a 'plop' and talked of almost nothing else until the end of the night when, under the weary looks of the skinny Kurdish waiter who could barely keep his long black eyelashes open, we wobblingly departed from the restaurant that had no other customers left except us. She kept talking continuously about how this university was not a financial investment but a moral one; how she had not so wholeheartedly believed in a project for quite a long time; she personally knew the founders and that she herself was actually one of the eight investors behind the scenes; she had enjoyed life much more since she got involved in this and that she was sure when she looked back in her old age this would be the job she would be most proud of in her life; about how they would educate a group of youth much more conscious and knowledgeable than their generation within five years at the most; how the size of this group of youths would increase from year to year and how they would altogether affect the fate of our haggard country. As she kept speaking, I kept on drinking. If I had drunk less, or more slowly, the summary of the night would have been something like this: Ethel talked, I laughed; Ethel got angry, I burst out; Ethel shouted, we fought. So in order not to cause a scene, not to muddy the waters for no good reason, and not to spoil the night, Ethel talked and I drank.

What upset me was more the perpetrator of the words than their content. Of course, Ethel the c.u.n.t could go and talk about this bulls.h.i.t with anyone she wanted, anywhere she wished, but of all the people in her life, she should not have acted like this to me. Not that I take it personally. The issue is not personal, but rather 'linguistic.' At dinner yesterday, for whatever reason, Ethel either decided to break our tradition or simply forgot the language we have been speaking when alone for as long as I can remember.

'Language' is one of the most nonsensical words in a language. It is by definition something more than the sum of all words but in the end it, too, is a word. Should there be the need for a connection with another word, you could say that the word 'language' is like the word 'meal.'There is just as little sense in labelling everything a 'meal' which totally overlooks very different food mixtures with differences in taste, nutritional value and calories as there is in labelling as 'language' all the expressions that play totally different tunes, talk about different words at random and emerge in different styles. I should of course add that in making this observation, 'linguistic' differences such as the Chinese cuisine, Turkish cuisine, Spanish cuisine and so forth are not even taken into account. Otherwise, I would have to multiply all these with a global coefficient. In short, hundreds of 'languages' reign even within a single 'language'. Just as we do not all eat the same 'meal' in a restaurant we also do not and can not speak the same 'language' with everyone all the time, and just as meals have residues, languages have remnants. A garbage dump language comprises words we not only do not use everyday but are reluctant to even p.r.o.nounce, words we silently pa.s.s over, nonsensical words we keep to ourselves because they would not be proper, criticisms that come to the tip of our tongues but we lack the courage to voice, innuendos we slice into thin strips at the tip of our tongues to then gulp back, curses that blow up in our palate before we can take out the fuse and throw them away, expressions that are too loaded or jokes too light for our milieu. There might also be a remnant left over from the attention we pay, the tact we demonstrate and the care we take when we talk or write to others. We can call this a recyclable language of 'Solid Acc.u.mulated Waste (SAW)'; acc.u.mulated, if not in the bas.e.m.e.nt or the attic or under the pillow, then on the nasal pa.s.sage, in between the palate and under the tongue; a language which, once adequately acc.u.mulated, we fill into a bag, tie up and throw away to stop the smell and the stink.

I should say right out I never leave evidence of this language lying around and not only do I not use it in front of my students in cla.s.s, I do not like to hear it from them either. Yet just like a teenager secretly smoking in a secluded spot without his parents' knowledge, I too am occasionally thrilled to 'sa.s.s' as Ethel and I call it in this language as I open my cache in a dark and dingy corner, unbeknownst to my moral principles and conscience. It is exactly at this point that Ethel's presence acquires significance. For 'sa.s.sing', just like making love or quarrelling, requires that someone else be there with you at the same time. You might smoke alone but to speak in this kind of garbage-language you definitely need a companion.

For years, whenever left alone, Ethel and I would speak, or used to speak until yesterday, in SAWish. Whenever we got together, without stating that one needs to be serious to call the other silly, without making any claims to be just or equitable, we loved to recklessly and coa.r.s.ely belittle everything and shower this or that person with insults. Just like a bully brushing off an attack to then plunge into a fight by randomly pruning the noses and ears of his adversaries, we attacked social life with our cutting tongues and did our best to prune the maladies and blunders of whomever chanced to appear in front of us.

Who says you cannot make fun of other people's defects? With spears in our hands and waterproof goggles on our eyes, we would dive headfirst into the seven depths of the sea of flaws-faults-failures and bring each defect captured to land, with the intent of examining it at great length and tearing it to shreds. Sometimes, not content with this, with an appet.i.te befitting calamari-lovers we would lift our catch up in the air and hit him against this or that rock for hours on end. In the final instance, no one escaped our tongues but some received from our shower of generalizations more of their share than others. Peasants, the lumpen proletariat, advertisers and academics, housewives and lawyers...all were a target, albeit for different reasons. Yet the diameter of our net was rather wide, enough to easily contain all sorts of people. There was a place for everyone there.

We pitilessly and coa.r.s.ely belittled those we saw to be unsteady or those who attempted to look smart. We were irritated by those who cared about their appearance but totally drowned in derision those who dressed tastelessly as well; had no respect for the masculine heroes of the 'have-nots' but were beside ourselves with anger at the prima donnas of the 'haves'. We turned up our noses at those who feared death to then merrily trample on those who had no concern about death. We could not bear to read a poorly written article, story or novel but also slung mud left and right on those well written ones. We did not even take note of those who turned religious in the aftermath of a serious surgery or trauma but also carelessly cast aside the ones who remained at exactly the same level of belief either with or without religion, all through their lives. We did not forgive the decent ones because of their decency but also took the crookedness of the crooked and danced around with it. We threw on the ground and trampled on those guilelessly naive secularists who thought Christianity was less interventionist or Judaism less patriarchal than Islam; gleefully gnawed on those who were unaware of the variations within Islam but also bruised with cannon salvoes those who imagined themselves privileged for happening upon mystical movements; and tore to pieces those who, in the name of the trinity of 'Being, Becoming & Transcending Sainthood', sought alternative Indian, Chinese, Tibetan messiahs for themselves. We rammed into those breeders married with kids but laughed our hearts out at those who regarded not getting married a form of political resistance. We also covered in tar and paraded naked before us both those who perceived their heteros.e.xuality to be a socially given 'for once-and-always' yet craved to take at least a pet.i.te bite of the apple of sodomy, as well as those who regarded their h.o.m.os.e.xuality as entirely an individual choice to then sluggishly sit in the oases of isolation, closing themselves off to all. We did not like those we knew personally but also expended recklessly those we knew intimately.

We did not feel the need to express all of these att.i.tudes and beliefs at length and were content with using codes instead. With the meticulousness of the archivist, we one by one cla.s.sified and filed everyone and everything. We were deliberately, recklessly unjust, to everyone and everything. In any case, if you combed through the section covering the letter 'J' of the basic ill.u.s.trated dictionary of the SAW language, you would never come across either 'just' or 'jurisprudence', just as you would not be able to find under 'S', 'sacred or sacredness', or under 'E', 'exalted' or 'exaltedness'. As for injustice, the definition given in this dictionary is as follows: To do wrong to that which is wrong (example: to take the fur coat off of someone in a desert or to take the wine gla.s.s in front of a pious person) Indirect attribution that produces no harm (example: to spit at someone's photograph).

Whenever Ethel and I spoke SAWish, we committed injustice against this or that person in the second meaning of the word. We'd never sugar-coat our words when alone. Yet last night at dinner while Ethel the c.u.n.t talked about her grandiose goals in relation to this private university to be founded in Istanbul, it seemed as if she had checked our mutual language into the cloakroom at the entrance.

'Don't you realize? Your all-time dream is finally becoming a reality,' she exclaimed as she held her jasmine cigarette-holder tightly between her teeth. No more political appointments from above, or the usual sterility and similarity that budgetary restrictions produce in state universities. Instead they will gather the highest calibre faculty in Turkey, recruit the most brilliant minds s.n.a.t.c.hed away by the universities abroad, and bring to Istanbul lots of foreign experts from different corners of the world. 'Just think, we'll put a stopper on this chronic brain-drain, and within the first five years we will even reverse the current. Then Western minds will be at our service. We'll cure the inferiority complex of the nation,' she added with a giggle, as if she had made a witty, naughty remark.

Why she giggled like this was no mystery to me. I am actually used to Ethel's ascription of an erotic connotation to the word 'brain.' She was not much different back in our college years, harbouring a layered hatred of other women and a boundless pa.s.sion for intelligent men... Now that I think about it, the large number of male students outnumbering the females and the 'brains' surrounding her must have played a considerable role in her decision to major, though she never intended to practice, in such a difficult field like civil engineering. In those days at Ethel's house, there was the pick of dozens if calculated over the years perhaps more than a hundred of exceptionally intelligent male students from different departments. One could even argue that the c.u.n.t made a substantial contribution to Turkish education if one considers the fact that this place operated like a kind of soup kitchen where these male students could feed themselves, or a kind of club where the members could utilize the library as they wished. Even though we may, as regular customers of this alms house, have appeared at first glance to be rather different from each other, we were very much alike concerning one matter: the way in which we invested in our intelligence. In those days, no matter which department or cla.s.s they belonged to at Bosphorus University, all the male students who, in order to escape the complexes induced by the unjust distribution of life, successfully pushed their brains to the limits; would have definitely heard of Ethel's name and most probably touched her body. The overwhelming majority were those who had devoted themselves to read, study and research, having put their demands from life away into the deepfreeze of their expectations, not to be thawed out until the arrival of 'that big day.' Some of Ethel's aphorisms addressed this point: 'Just as the blind man perfects his other senses, so too the ugly male who goes unnoticed develops his brain.'

Among Ethel's favourites, in so far as they succeeded in developing their brains, were those male students who were either unable to establish relationships with women or were rejected by all the women they were interested in, subsequently giving up on love, practicing love and even making love. After those who were broke in terms of looks, came the chronically shy whose relationships with the fair s.e.x had soured for one reason or another and others... These others included: as.e.xuals who composed panegyrics, praises and poems to a life without contact; avant-garde marginals; overt or closet h.o.m.os.e.xuals; highly dignified critics; asocials who hated exams but whose greatest thrill in that period of their lives consisted of taking exams; those who came from the provinces and lost their way in Istanbul; those who could not leave their sh.e.l.ls let alone Istanbul; valedictorians who managed to get an education despite coming from the wrong families, as well as those 'hidden talents' getting an education in the wrong departments because of their families; the rare geniuses of the natural sciences; the pa.s.sionate orators of the social sciences...all the hopeless, unhappy, maladjusted, extremely intelligent young men who struggled to cope with society for various physical, financial, psychological or incomprehensible reasons were within Ethel's field of interest. If she had her way, she would not let any female brain enter her house...although somehow, sometimes, upon realizing that a male she cherished happened to have a girlfriend, she would not let on and invited them both. In spite of all this, for some reason, exempted from her notorious hatred for her s.e.x were a few girlfriends left over from private school. One among these frequently stopped by the temple-house. She was so attractive that a comparison with Ethel could not even be considered: with long shapely legs, flawless milky skin, pearly teeth and b.r.e.a.s.t.s kneaded in accordance with the laws of dialectic: vibrant within the context of her large body yet tiny enough to fit into the palm... Yet she had one flaw. Like all women who lose their naturalness as soon as they become conscious of the admiration they arouse in others, she too a.s.sumed a forced toughness and made the common mistake of thinking that keeping a guy waiting in purgatory, neither too much at a distance nor needlessly close, would render permanent the attention she received. Even when telling people her name she sounded as if she thought she was doing a favour: 'Ay-shin!'

Oddly enough the other men in the house fell in love not with this arrogant fairy but instead with the hideously ugly Ethel. Actually many among them obviously liked Ayshin, yet 'like' is a flimsy verb. As expressed by a contestant in a highly-contrived contest, while listing his hobbies: 'I like to read books, listen to music, take walks and also long-legged, tight-hipped Ayshin.'Yet when the name of Ethel, the ugliest one of all time, came up, they would go full throttle beyond the liking phase and, burning up with desire, fall in love headfirst: either with her or her house or both.

The temple-house belonged, not to Ethel's mother and father or any other Jewish family member, but to her personally. Whereas the band of students around her stayed at either their parents' insipid-looking homes, worn-out bachelor pads or in overcrowded dormitories where one could only be by oneself inside the wardrobes, the c.u.n.t was the owner of a villa in which she lived all by herself. Though this alone sufficed to make the situation rather surreal, in addition her house was a dream world and just as dreams flirt shamelessly with the art of exaggeration, Ethel too was susceptible to overkill. With its garden overlooking the Bosphorus (every square of which was totally covered up with jonquils and jasmines, that in warm winds released delicately sweet smells at night overflowing with the scent of pleasure); its small but cute pool in which Ethel floated lanterns of all colours at night; its high quality drinks, tasty food and furnishings each more interesting than the next; its vast collection of records and rich library; not forgetting the premium quality cigars constantly being pa.s.sed around; this place was almost like a miniature version of the world during the Tulip Period of the Ottoman Empire the excess of which the contemporary historians had attacked with clubs and defaced with extravagant praise.

However, if you ask my opinion, it was not only the wealth that stunned the guests who came here; not the ostentation or the luxury either. What was even more striking was the 'endlessness' of it all. The dwindling cigarette boxes were immediately replenished, the collection of records was so vast you could not count them all, the library did not lose its splendour even though the borrowed books were never returned, and in spite of our eating in h.o.a.rds, the kitchen cupboards never emptied out, the stock of delicatessen never diminished. We liked to joke among us that when the ground was broken for the villa, the venerated Saint Hizir happened to be one of the workers and had blessed this place: 'Let it multiply but never lessen, let it overflow but never spill.' Even the magical cave of the forty thieves, with its jars of gold, chests br.i.m.m.i.n.g with jewellery, bolts of satin and barrels of honey and b.u.t.ter could not rival Ethel's temple-house.

As much as the house was prosperous, so was our host generous. Ethel watched closely the things her cherished guests enjoyed. Her offers increased in accordance with how much she valued someone. For instance, was there someone among us who liked whisky? As soon as she learned about it, Ethel would fill up the drink chest with the highest quality whiskies. If another person liked puzzles, Ethel would order an acquaintance going abroad to bring puzzles each more challenging. Most of our time, however, we dedicated ourselves not to such games but to wearing ourselves out with various gatherings or 'get-togethers'. We would burrow ourselves in the comfortable sofas in the living room, eat, drink, smoke and 'sa.s.s' about this or that person, but mostly about each other. We would quickly free ourselves of our past, focus on who we were now, reveal our dreams and constantly debate with each other. Our host did not at all care about the content of our conversations. In fact, as individuals, I don't think she cared much about us at all. She liked the environment she provided for us...and she also liked fireworks. For each guest plunged into this place was like a firework speeding through the night's darkness. He would first glide with shaky, staggering steps and, when convinced he had risen high enough and adjusted to the environment, would burst with a magnificent bang and light the place up by scattering the colourful rays he had hitherto hidden. As we found our voices, became encouraged and burst out with explosions of our own, Ethel provided every comfort by constantly serving us. The genie in the lamp, the houris of heaven, even Peter Pan's fairy...none would have served their masters with as much devotion. Ultimately, sooner or later, all these guest-masters ended up falling in love with their host. Yet this also brought their downfall. Those who had the freedom to swim as they pleased in this vast sea, often moved so far away from land as to suddenly realize, upon looking back, that they had lost sight of the land. Ethel was no longer at their side; she had lost interest in them just when they had miserably fallen for her. The only drawback of being a guest at this house was the ease with which one overlooked the fact that both the guest status and also the visit were temporary. Hence each departing guest, just like the infinite replenishment of the materials of the temple-house, was quickly replaced with another. Saint Hizir's prayer for abundance was valid for Ethel's 'brains' as well: they constantly multiplied and never lessened.

As for me, I was the exception. From the beginning till the end, I was the only constant visitor of the temple-house; a type of honorary member. I was ambitious, more than was necessary according to some. My report card was filled with 'As' for a couple of solid reasons. For one thing, I was tall (three stars), then wide-shouldered (three stars). I will not be as modest as to say I was 'considered handsome' for I was always the most handsome in the places I frequented (four stars) and I was extremely impatient and 'difficult' (five stars). Unlike the others, I had choices. I certainly enjoyed being here but could have left at any moment. I could have gone and not returned. Ethel was too well aware of this. That is why I was so dear to her. The seed of discord in the middle of heaven. My presence enchanted Ethel and disquieted her guests. Little did I care. Being considered a threat by other males was old news to me. If I had cared about these types of looks, I would have done so much earlier: back when walking the distressed corridor of an eleven year old. With a plate filled with wedding cake in one hand and only underwear on my wiry body, I had almost collided by the kitchen door with my stepfather, I was so relaxed and hungry with the warmth of the wedding night. Until that moment, the poor man had always seen me as the older son of the woman he was going to marry, a boy who had problems but was in essence hungry for love and needy of compa.s.sion. I should not do him wrong, he wanted to be a father to me: a talented sonny bestowed by G.o.d to a childless, fifty year old man. Yet on the morning of his wedding night when we unexpectedly met in the hall, with my facial features inherited from my father, my half-nakedness that revealed I was about to leave childhood and my tremendous appet.i.te revealed by my filling up my plate (signalling also that I would be getting bigger very quickly), I must have seemed far from being the 'sonny' he envisioned. An apprehensive gleam flickered and faded in his pupils. The bad thing was that my mother also realized this, and did so without losing any time. It was as if she had found the remnants of that look when she swept the floors the following day. This did not bode well for anyone because my mother was one of those women who took the tensions that ricocheted among the men in her family, established fickle and knotty alliances and always turned them to her advantage until the last drop; one of those whom, without knowing his name, made Bismarck's soul rejoice... She turned her older son against her younger one, the younger one against her late husband, her late husband against her new husband and her new husband against her two sons...

Hence I was rather used to unvoiced maliciousness. I did not care about the looks of others. I was Ethel's favourite and Ayshin's lover. I was fond of hanging around the temple-house but that was all. I had other alternatives and more important things to do. As I said, I was ambitious, very ambitious. Not wasting a moment after graduation, I started the doctorate in England and finished it here in Istanbul, in a field that signified nothing to my family: political philosophy. Ayshin too had pa.s.sed, on her second try, the sociology a.s.sistantship examination. We looked good together. Ethel barely caught up with us. When she finally managed to graduate, she made brazen oaths about never entering through the gates of the university ever again and then burnt her diploma with a ceremony at a party she threw in her temple-house. Then, while Ayshin and I gradually built a decent life for ourselves, Ethel destroyed hers with startling speed. First she stopped living as a clan. Then she left that villa and moved into a penthouse that, when compared to its predecessor, was very s.p.a.cious and cute but was undistinguished. She no longer gathered everyone in her house, spent most of her time not by drawing attention in large crowds but instead by putting up with the whims of her lovers in crowds of two, and though she devoted all her money, love and energy to them, was still not loved the way she wanted. We heard that her congregation was not happy with her behavior, but Ethel was not happy with them either. She grumbled behind their backs at every opportunity even though she knew it would eventually reach their ears.

'Since you have read more books than I did and chose to become social scientists, could you please solve this little puzzle for me? If you observe a wide range of countries all around the world, from the most democratic to the most oppressive, you'll find in all of them quite a number of writers, painters and the like among the Jews. It's as if whatever the circ.u.mstances, they somehow find a way to develop their brains. With the exception of one country! In Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Europe, Russia...just keep on counting...in all these countries... Only in Turkey something went wrong with the Jews. For whatever reason, in Turkey they didn't feel the need to use their brains as much.'

'You're mistaken,' objected Ayshin frowning. 'Many of my friends are Jews.'

Ethel giggled ruthlessly. She never forgave such mistakes. I however was split in two. One part of me had relished the naivety Ayshin had displayed in defending Jews in front of her Jewish friend this must be the part of me in love with her. My other half had looked at Ayshin with the anger I felt toward those who tried to roll up the qualities they acquired thanks to their family trees, the exceptional family structures they were born into, the elite schools they attended and the things life had bestowed upon them which they then tried to pa.s.s as merits they themselves had developed this must be the part that made her fall in love with me.

Yet Ayshin must not have been aware of either Ethel's solid reaction or my bifurcated one, for she plunged into her a.s.sertion full force: 'They all entered good university departments. Many of them received very wonderful grants and they've now risen to quite good positions.'

'And I tell you this,' Ethel had said, clicking her fingernails again. 'You talk about occupation, I, talent. You mention career, I genius. Economists, academics, lawyers, surgeons...I beg you, please put these aside and move on. I'm talking about something else. Why don't the bohemian, bibulous poets or hedonists, the perverse or even better gory film producers and such emerge from among them? Why don't my people make music? And on those rare occasions that they do, why is that that they always sweetly sing the syrupy traditional songs of our Sephardim grandmothers and can't come up with something totally wicked, like a protest song?'

'My people' was the final stage: against Ayshin's insignificant defense, Ethel's regal attack. Whenever the location of a group is debated between someone belonging to that group and someone not, the patent right always comes smack onto the agenda: the end of the road, the dry well of all debates, the last curtain...when everyone withdraws to where they ultimately belong, the married to their family-homes, the peasants to their village-homes... At that point I lit a cigarette, having drawn both of them into my own vicinity, and sat back. It did not make a difference to me. Both of them were, at the same time, my women.

Men committing adultery find quality significant: they enjoy receiving from another woman love that is in essence different from what they receive from their wives. Yet women committing adultery find quant.i.ty significant: they enjoy receiving from another man love that is more than that which they receive from their husbands. Cheating on Ayshin with Ethel flattered my vanity. Those days, I very much enjoyed observing their differences. As to whether Ayshin cheated on me or not, I never attempted to find out.

'Okay, but these are so for a reason,' Ayshin had spoken up, by no means intending to give up. Then she had gotten down to business and commenced with a detailed explanation. Trying to employ objective expressions, she had talked about the shaky psychology of being a minority, the constant insecurity generated by the crisis of belonging and the domination nurtured not by concrete threats but by abstract tenets. She did so neither to be a smart aleck, nor to display her interest in talking big. She talked like that because this was the only language of debate she knew. Yet debating in an academic language is like going to bed with a woman who does not put a drop of drink into her mouth. You can rest a.s.sured that she will remain standing until the end of the night, never go overboard and never lose it. Yet you have to accept upfront that you would not be able to relax around her, let out wild yells, hit bottom, pa.s.s out in each others arms; in short, that you would not have any fun whatsoever.

'What you say is nice but totally useless,' Ethel had remarked, girding up the swords she had just sharpened. 'If gloomy writers, slovenly producers or socially undesirable painters had emerged from among the Jews in Turkey, do you know what explanation the generations succeeding us, say fifty or a hundred years later, would've given? Exactly the same ones you used just now. They would've said, "Yes, so and so was a great artist or thinker. What made him so great, what separated him from all the rest?" Then they would've started to count the reasons you gave: the psychology of being a minority, alienation from the language, insecurity, being unprotected and so on. Thus everything you now see as an obstacle would have become a cause for difference, for privilege even. This is how these things operate. If a lame man can't dance, we say, "Of course he can't dance, he's lame!" but if the same man is an expert dancer, then we say, "Of course he has to be better than others, for he's lame!" '

Ayshin had flinched, as if avoiding a pushy salesman, shaking to one side then the other both her head and hands. I knew that motion too well. It meant, 'Thanks, but I'm not buying that nonsense.' During our three and a half years of marriage, she would conclude almost all our arguments with the same gesture.

Flat Number 8: The Blue Mistress.

Shooting up the stairs, the Blue Mistress unlocked the door of Flat Number 8 panting. She was very late. As if it weren't annoying enough that the visit to the beauty parlour had taken so long, she had also spent too much time afterwards shopping. Once inside the flat, she emptied the contents of the shopping bags onto the kitchen counter. The food could wait, her appearance could not. She dashed into the bathroom. While brushing her teeth, she scrutinized the waves in her hair with discontent. This new style had seemed much nicer in the mirror down at the hairdresser than here in her bathroom. Being one of those women who sometimes envied curly hair and sometimes straight, but in each case only ever on others, her hair had all this time been oscillating, unable to lean in either direction. Now that chatterbox of a hairdresser had upset this delicate balance, making it far curlier and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g it far shorter than she had asked for. She stole another glance at the full-length mirror while taking her clothes off in the bedroom. Though her hips had somewhat widened lately, she was still fond of the way she looked. If only those cuts were not so visible... She applied a handful of foundation cream, the same colour as her skin, managing to conceal the scars once again.

The drawers opened one by one and she paused for a fleeting moment but did not have to ponder for long over which underwear to pick since it seemed to make no difference to the olive oil merchant. That had not been the case in the beginning. Back in those days, he wanted her to wear the naughtiest underwear possible, buying it personally as a 'present' to her. He always chose the same colour: a lucid, brilliant, infinite sky blue. The Blue Mistress liked this colour, she really did, except in panties or bras. When it came to the underwear in her gift packages, she felt uneasy about the incongruity between the docility of their colour and the licentiousness of the intention behind. A garter could be as desire-inducing a colour as cherry, as carnal as black or as deceptive as white; even violet in its flirtatiousness or pinkish in its hypocrisy...but it could not be a lucid, brilliant, infinite sky blue. Fusing that specific hue with those specific intentions was pretty much like diluting milk with water, or even worse, adding milk to rak. Not that it wasn't possible for a man to enjoy both, just as long as he refrained from drinking them simultaneously. Of lambs turning into wolves or wolves into lambs, she had seen plenty, but it was the ones trying to be both lamb and wolf at the same time who sp.a.w.ned the worst monstrosities while believing themselves to be innocuous in the meantime.

It was the half-lamb/half-wolf who had harmed her the most even more than those who liked to remind her of the unsurpa.s.sable border between women-to-marry and women-to-bed. Such men l.u.s.ted after what they vilified and vilified what they l.u.s.ted after. The Blue Mistress had once seen a hoodwinker on the street tricking the pa.s.sers-by with three tin cups on a cardboard box. As he changed the places of the cups, the bead hidden in one of them was displaced too. At the onset it was in the first cup: 'Be ashamed of your desires!' In a flash it moved into the second cup: 'Be ashamed of the woman you desire!' Then, in one move, there was the bead again, now under the third cup: 'Desire the woman who brings you shame!' That, in turn, meant that sooner or later these men would start to scorn the women they slept with.

In order not to repeat this vicious pattern, the olive oil merchant kept seasoning their affair with spices that would outweigh both the zest of desire and the tartness of shame. Always a prolific diary-keeper, the Blue Mistress had written down when she had first met him: 'If someone awakens in us a desire we'd rather not have, we try not to like that person. However, if that fails, we then seek something likeable in him, something good enough to make the desire for him less bothersome, more endurable.' It was akin to wearing a celestial glove, of lucid, brilliant, infinite sky blue, so as not to have to touch muck or mess while enjoying rummaging through the debris.

In the spice basket of the olive oil merchant there wasn't the slightest trace of l.u.s.t. All sorts of other things were present there but for some reason during the past few years he had always fished out the same spice: compa.s.sion. He felt compa.s.sion toward the Blue Mistress: she was not the type of girl to live a life like this. Then there were times when he felt compa.s.sion toward himself: he was not the type of man to live a life like this. Too often he talked about Kader as if she were a wicked wh.o.r.e. As for the Blue Mistress, she regarded this l.u.s.t covered with compa.s.sion like a dirtied, mud-covered slice of jellied bread lying on the ground. She had no appet.i.te for it. At times like this, she likened her position to her hair. On the one side was the wife of the olive oil merchant, smooth and even like straight hair, on the other was this wh.o.r.e called Kader, b.u.mpy and imbalanced like hair with permanent wave. Then there she was, in the middle of the two, swaying toward either end...semi-wife, semi-wh.o.r.e...both blue and a mistress...

She knew how heartbreaking it had been for her parents when she had left home for good but still could not help but suspect they had also been relieved deep down. They were both nice people but the nets they repet.i.tively threw into the sea of parenthood rarely turned up anything decent. Though never at ease with their love and hardly able to bear their attention, this ingrat.i.tude of hers was hard for even her to handle. She could have gotten a better education if she had so wanted, could have at least graduated from high school, but after that 'incident', she had felt barely any desire to return to school. Before she knew it, the scar on her face had drawn a hair-thin boundary, first between her and her peers, then between her and the age that she lived in. She had to leave that house. If given a choice, the only place she would like to go was, undoubtedly, the universe that her grandfather inhabited...a grandfather whom she loved dearly, lost too early...After losing her dede, tracing the jumbled footprints of people from all walks of life in Istanbul, she had tried to track down those that belonged to the dervishes.

Hard as it was she had managed to find them scattered here and there on the two sides of the city and gathered, like moths attracted to light, around their own dedes. She had joined them. For two years, she had partic.i.p.ated every week without fail in the sermons of three separate religious orders in Istanbul, seeking solace in the resemblance between the words she heard from their sermons and those she had heard back in her childhood from her own dede, but it had not worked. It wasn't that the words were not reminiscent of those of her grandfather's, for they were. Nor was it that the people who uttered them were not sincere, for they were. Still, for some reason it just did not sound the same. Little by little she came to realize that in these meetings it wasn't the talks that she was really interested in but the chants that followed. She would sit side by side with the other disciples while the dede talked, but rather than be all ears like the rest, she would withdraw behind a solid deafness. Only when the chant started would she reopen the sealed gates of her ears. How profoundly she loved that moment, that true and total desertion of the body, again and again, sealed in the infiniteness of repet.i.tion. It wasn't the words articulated there but instead the beat of the drums and the notes of the underlying melody that took her away. However, no matter how far she swerved she could never quite shake that old feeling of incompleteness. After a while she had started to feel like a hypocrite. Why had she insisted on being one with those she felt so apart from? Every chant attended left her yet another mile away from the other disciples. Just as she had been unsuccessful in reciprocating the love of her parents, neither had she found peace next to those who constantly preached peace.

'I don't know how to be satisfied with what I have,' she had solemnly confessed to herself, 'because I'm not able to show grat.i.tude.' Surprisingly, rather than causing offence this confession had relieved her. She had been suffering from the malady of those who, while still children, realized how extraordinarily beautiful their childhood is; the malady of those who started life with the bar set high... Thereafter, all the people she met were destined to remain in the shadow of her dede while even the most pleasing things in her life would embody a harrowing sense of absence. Such incompleteness, however, was utterly unbeknownst to others, and therein resided the problem: the absolute wholeness of good. Those who unreservedly believed in their own goodness and the superiority of their morality were doomed to failure far more than the bad for they were so smug in their completeness. There were no leaky roofs in the edifices of their personalities, no crumbling floorboards, neither a hole to be filled, nor a notch to be fixed. The Blue Mistress had found them incomplete in their gorged fullness but being unable to express this, she had gradually recoiled from the good, distancing herself step by step from their learned codes and credo of goodness. It was thus that she had started to suspect somewhere in her innermost soul she was inclined to depravity and immorality. Before long, she had entirely cut her ties with all three religious orders. Be that as it may, moving away from the believers had not once shaken up her beliefs. Faith for her was not living in accordance with the unchangeable rules of a commanding G.o.d or joining the ranks of a conscientious community, but rather a sunny, dulcet childhood memory. And as her childhood memories with her dede were the best moments of her life, she had steadfastly, doggedly remained a devout believer. Even when not as full of faith as she had been in her childhood, her faith had still retained a childish side.

Yet there was neither a house she wanted to return to and nor did she have enough money to continue on her way. It was during those days that she had started to get used to the attention of men as old as her father and managed to not remain indifferent to the attention she had got used to. These men who thought they had everything, discovered at one point the incompleteness embeded in their lives and thereafter became eagerly attracted to her as if she and only she could right that wrong. In any case, being a mistress was a good start in terms of getting away from the humdrum wholeness of the good. She was first blue, then a mistress, but there were also periods when she was thrown around in between the two. When the olive oil merchant rented Flat Number 8 of Bonbon Palace, she had finally stopped fluctuating between being blue and a mistress to become both. As soon as the man provided her with a house, his manner had drastically changed, becoming visibly coa.r.s.er. For he was that type. He was an LTCM of the SDEM section and the WCWL sub-section, and he naturally acted in accordance with that.

There lives on earth another type of creature whose world is as crowded as that of humans and that is at least as complex: bugs. They have succeeded in spreading everywhere and stay alive in spite of everything. They display a magnificent variation, even a particular type of bug can come in ten further varieties, sometimes even reaching thousands. It is a.s.sumed that the sum of all bug types is more than one million at present. In spite of this harrowing complexity, the scientific world does not stop cla.s.sifying them. It divides them into their upper categories, cla.s.ses, lower cla.s.ses; upper sections, sections and lower sections. A tree worm, for instance, belongs to the bug category, 'changeling sub-cla.s.s, sheath-winged upper-section, different-stomached section, plant-eater sub-section'. The overwhelming majority of the disappointments women experience in their relationships with men originate in their unwillingness to accept that, like bugs, humans too come in types and therefore the men they are with also belong to a type with only one difference: a bug cannot leave its type and make the transition into another type. A horsefly, for instance, cannot at any stage of its life turn into a praying mantis. It stays the same. However, Adam's sons and Eve's daughters can indeed accomplish this transformation. The trademark of a human is the faculty to deviate from what it was originally, to betray its own type. Accordingly, the table of modern human types is less complex but much more convoluted than that of the primitive bug. Nevertheless, making the transition between categories is not easy. After all, in order to preserve their stability and maintain their existence, not only do all types make, without exception, their members exactly like each other but they fix them in that guise as well. The olive oil merchant belonged to upper category of the men's type, 'Long Term Complainers about Marriage', was on the 'Can't Quite End Marriage' team and also in the 'Want Change Without Loss' subsection: a harmful type whichever way you looked at it.

'You are my betrothed,' he had said as they silently drunk at the rak table they had, on their first night in this house, set together. He liked to drink and often drank at night. He was not one of those who made do with a fistful of appetizers, half a mould of cheese and a slice of melon. Instead he always insisted on having a table filled to the brim. It couldn't be ready-made either, everything had to be prepared at home from scratch. Chicken with ground walnuts was his favourite dish. That night, whilst using a piece of bread to wipe off the last crumbs of chicken with ground walnuts from his plate, he had remarked: 'Our religion permits it as well. As long as you are fair enough, you can have up to four women.' The Blue Mistress had t.i.ttered, a bristly, edgy sn.i.g.g.e.r. He had grimaced. She had left the table: unlike the olive oil merchant, she did know the mentioned verse of the Qur'an in its entirety.

Choosing a gauzy green