Black Milk: ON WRITING, MOTHERHOOD, AND THE HAREM WITHIN

Where the Fairies Hang Out

An hour later, when the three women in uniform leave the room to pack their suitcases, I go to rescue their detainee. Feeling like some hero in a war movie, Saving Private Dame Dervish, I sneak toward the captive, careful not to make any noise. With the help of a pair of tweezers, I unlock her handcuffs. She rubs her wrists, giving me a tired smile.

"Thank you, dear," she murmurs.

Finished with Operation Freedom, we steal out of the house. I'm walking and she, having crawled into my bag, pokes her head out once in a while to have a look around. The minute we make it to the street, I begin to complain.

"I cannot believe they are doing this to me. Have they lost their minds? This time they've crossed the line."

Dame Dervish listens with raised eyebrows, saying nothing.

"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 windshields 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 relationships, 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 God 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 embarrassed 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 God'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 fellowship in Massachusetts 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 passing 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 rushing in all directions, the heavy tang of the destitute with their dreams of affluence, the refreshing 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 passengers 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 space 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."

There was an awkward silence at the end of the line, but then the editor gave another laugh. "Well, of course, go ahead and do it. What's the harm? You are a woman, there's no reason for you to take this too seriously. Even if you choose the most poetic surname for yourself, you'll end up with your husband's anyhow."

"Give me a day," I said. "I will find the surname I will have forever, whether I get married someday or not."

Every name is a magic formula. The letters dance together, each with their own spin and charm, each an unknown as much as the other, and together they concoct the mystery that a name holds. Like sorcerers in the dark, adding letter upon letter, ingredient after ingredient, the language unit by which we are known puts a spell on us. There are names that help us soar high in the sky; there are names that weigh on our shoulders and slyly pull us down.

Men live without ever feeling the need to change their family names. Their credentials are given to them at birth. Settled and stable. They inherit their surnames from their fathers and grandfathers, and pass it on to their children and grandchildren.

As for women, whether they know it or not, they are name nomads. Their surnames are here today, gone tomorrow. Throughout their lives, women fill out official forms in different ways, apply for new passports and design several signatures. They have one last name when they are young girls, and another upon marriage. They go back to their maiden names if they get divorced — though sometimes they retain their ex-husbands' family names for practical purposes, which doesn't necessarily make things easier — and adopt an altogether different one if they get remarried.

Men have one constant signature. Once they find the one that suits them, they can keep it till death without changing a single curve. As for women, they have at least one "old signature" and one "new signature," and sometimes they confuse them. Signature of the bachelor- ette, signature of the married woman, signature of the divorcee.

Women writers have also undergone a series of name-change operations. The late-nineteenth-century Ottoman novelist Fatma Aliye wrote her novels and novellas mostly in secret, as she did not want to upset her husband and family with her "independent ways." One day she stopped using her name and published her next work under the pseudonym "A Woman."

For that's what she was. A woman. Any woman. All women. Getting rid of her name was like casting off the heavy mooring that tied her to the mainland. Once she ceased to be Lady Fatma Aliye and became only "a woman," she was free to sail anywhere.

In the 1950s a romance novel called Young Girls appeared in Turkey, by a certain Vincent Ewing. The book quickly became a national best seller, finding good coverage in the media. Strangely, no one knew the writer. No journalist had managed to get any interviews from him. Only three things were known about the author: He was American, he was Christian, he was male. Turkish people read the book with that information in mind.

Years went by. One day it was announced that the author of Young Girls was, in fact, a young Muslim Turkish woman. Nihal Yeginobali was her name.

When asked why she had chosen to hide her identity, her answer was intriguing:

"I was a young girl myself when I wrote Young Girls. There was a considerable degree of eroticism in the novel that was considered inappropriate for a young woman such as myself. So I picked a male pseudonym. In those days there was more interest in translated novels. This is why we decided that the writer of my novel should be American. My publisher pretended it was translated from English."

Publishing a book under a specific male name, like "Vincent Ewing," or a generic appellation, like "A Woman," furnishes us with an armor to shield ourselves. We need the protection even more when we write about sexuality, femininity and the body. I don't know of any male writer who agonizes about upsetting his mother (or grandmother or great-aunts or neighbors or any distant relatives) should he write a novel that touches on eroticism and graphic sex. If there are, they must be few in number. Yet, worrying about the permission to tell the story — be it personal or familial — is particular to women writers all around the world. This is the unspoken pressure Margaret Atwood writes about in her riveting essay regarding her great-aunts. "The pressure is most strongly felt, by women, from within the family, and more so when the family is a strong unit," she says. From Turkey to Canada, from industrial to postindustrial society, women who take up writing traverse several invisible boundaries in marriage, family, class and society. Each crossing can be one more reason to modify a name and obscure its gender.

It is not for naught that another well-known writer, perhaps the greatest novelist of the Victorian period, chose a male pseudonym— determined, smart, persevering Mary Ann Evans, otherwise known as George Eliot. Britain in the 1800s did have its share of female writers— only, most of them wrote about romance, love and heartache: topics deemed suitable for womankind. As for George Eliot, she openly disliked all such books. She wanted to write on an equal footing with male novelists. She wanted to write "like a man," not "like a woman."

George Eliot's distaste for "women's literature" was so intense and unabashed that in 1856 she penned an article called "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists." She divided fiction written by women into four categories in accordance with their degree of silliness, and named them as the frothy, the prosy, the pious and the pedantic. I enjoy reading this extremely interesting piece not only to get a glimpse into the Western literary tradition but also to see how cruelly a woman writer can bad- mouth her own sex.

But Eliot was no stranger to standing out among other women. In a letter to Herbert Spencer, the biologist and philosopher, she boldly challenged conventional society and set herself apart from the members of her own sex: "I suppose no woman ever before wrote such a letter as this — but I am not ashamed of it, for I am conscious that in the light of reason and true refinement I am worthy of your respect and tenderness, whatever gross men or vulgar-minded women might think of me."

Similarly, the Brontё sisters, too, felt the need to remold their names. Selecting pseudonyms that retained their initials, Charlotte adopted Currer Bell while Anne took on the name Acton Bell and Emily became Ellis Bell. It was easier to evade prejudices against women when one had an androgynous name. The sisters played this mischievous game as long as they could, their only challenge being how to deceive the village postman when packages arrived. The dilemma was solved by making sure all correspondents sent their letters to a certain "Currer Bell in care of Miss Brontё."

Another female writer who chose a pseudonymous cross-dressing was the legendary George Sand, though one sometimes gets the impression that she might simply have wanted to get rid of the baggage of her long name: Amantine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin, Baroness Dudevant.

George Sand married Baron M. Casimir Dudevant in 1822. They had two children together. But before long the couple split apart. Sand welcomed her unattached state as liberation from social bonds. Being divorced, single and wealthy gave her the chance to be much more daring than other women, and take steps that they could not dream of.

Sand had also started wearing male clothing — a topic that the gossipers jumped upon with joy. As an aristocratic woman it was her civic duty to dress to the nines, paying great attention to her attire, speech and manners, but she did just the opposite by choosing comfortable and serviceable male outfits. Her fondness for pipe smoking was an even bigger scandal. In an era in which women were expected to be agreeable, sociable ladies and nothing more, she walked around in men's clothes with a pipe in her mouth and radical ideas in her head. Like a tall tree that attracts lightning, she drew attention and anger. In the end, her aristocratic title was taken away from her. But nobody could confiscate the name she had given herself. She was, and is today, George Sand.

As Ivan Turgenyev once said, she was "a kind hearted woman, and a brave man!"

Jane Austen fell in love once. She was someone who criticized women marrying for wealth, status or a sense of security, firmly believing that one could marry only for love. Yet, though she loved and was loved in return, due to class differences, the marriage was not allowed to happen. His name was Tom Lefroy — a young man who had nothing to his name but would one day become the chief justice of Ireland. In a letter dated January 1796 and addressed to her sister Cassandra, Austen confessed that Tom was the love of her life. But she quickly added, "When you receive this, it will be over. My tears flow at the melancholy idea." Heartbroken, she retreated to her corner, to her writing.

"I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and ill informed female who ever dared to be an authoress," she said. It was not true, of course, and she knew it. Austen was very knowledgeable on a wide range of subjects, having been admirably educated by her father — a clergyman — brothers, aunt and then through her own uninterrupted reading. She had a sharp tongue and a penchant for playfulness and sarcasm.

Years later, she was offered marriage again, this time by a respected man of great means. Though she was fond of her "solitary elegance," as she once called her singleness, she accepted the offer. Finally she was going to become a wife, start a family and manage her own home. With these thoughts and hopes, she went to bed early. When she woke up the next morning, the first thing she did was to send a note of apology to her suitor. She had decided not to marry.

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 Anai's 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 Anai's 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 liquid- soap 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 chuckles 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 Anai's 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.

"Anai's 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.

Waging a passionate war against bourgeois norms, she questioned the institutions of marriage and motherhood at great length. She said many women longed to rediscover themselves in their children — a "psychological need" she clearly did not share. She and Sartre were a committed but free couple — independent, self-reliant and sufficient for each other. Bourgeois marital life was full of lies, deceptions and unrealistic pledges of fidelity. Determined not to repeat the mistakes of their parents, they had made a pact: They would tell each other everything. They were both open to the idea of "experiencing contingent love affairs." Besides, she believed that maternity was incompatible with the life she had chosen as a writer and intellectual. She needed time, concentration and freedom to pursue her ideals.

In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir reiterates Hegel's famous dictum that the birth of children often goes hand in hand with the death of parents. Yet, despite her strong feelings on marriage and motherhood, de Beauvoir's writings bear traces of another truth underneath: that if Sartre had wanted to have children, in her desire to please him she could have become a mother. She adored him. To her the sun of a new society rose from the depths of his eyes. He was the only man she respected more than she desired — the man whose time, work and ideas she had had to share with hundreds of other people, some of whom were women far more beautiful and ambitious than she was. And yet she knew how special she was in his eyes. Since the day their paths intersected in 1929 when they were both students at the Ecole Normale Superieure, he had been many things to her — a comrade, a lover, a father, a son, a brother, a tutor, a best friend and an impossible dream.

One should not be fooled by the terms of endearment she uses in her letters to him: "my little man," or "my dear little being." He was a giant to her — a man she addressed with the formal vous all the time. If he had wanted to start a family, she would have probably gone ahead, even though she clearly thought that motherhood was not meant for the likes of her. Though she was hurt by Sartre's infidelities, she continued to defend the pact they had made. Simone de Beauvoir was a woman of impeccable analyses and unexpected conflicts.

If the broader society was not ready to address motherhood in a critical light, the intellectual circles — by definition progressive and open-minded — were just as unprepared, not to mention disproportionately male. There was a widespread silence in the world of books when it came to issues such as premenstrual syndrome, postpartum depression or menopause. Likewise, hardly anyone wrote about the Bermuda triangle of "ideal wife — diligent housekeeper — selfless mother" whereby so many women's creative talents disappeared into the vortex

In a milieu such as this de Beauvoir faced deeply rooted prejudices and cliches. She wrote and spoke fervently on how women were being "forced to choose" between the brain and the body.

She was equally critical of those women who had willingly internalized gender inequalities, seeing themselves as inferior to their male counterparts. "Even the lowliest of men sees himself a demi-God when faced with a woman," she remarked. Her mind was corrosive, her pen was sharp and her personality was highly contentious. Once she said she found it quite normal that many people among the middle class hated her. "If it were any other way, I would begin to doubt myself."

It wasn't only Western feminists who questioned the romanticized sacredness of motherhood. In the East, too, there were heated debates. The Japanese feminist movement opened up the term bosei—the natural motherly instinct — for discussion. They put forth the claim that maternal roles were more cultural than natural and biological.

Female writers in Japan brought new blood to these debates, questioning gender stereotypes through their fiction. In 1983 Yuko Tsushima published Child of Fortune, which features a remarkable female protagonist — a headstrong, nonconformist divorcee — torn between the realities of her heart and the ideal of womanhood taught by society. Although she doesn't necessarily consider herself a feminist writer, Tsushima has critically explored themes of gender and sexuality in her works. Perhaps she is spiritually connected with another Japanese author of the past century, Toshiko Tamura — one of the country's earliest, most outspoken female writers — whose royalties, after her sudden death in 1945, were used to establish a literary prize for women writers. In a story titled "A Woman Writer," Tamura describes a scene where an angry husband, himself a writer, reprimands his wife, who is struggling to write a passage. The husband believes women are not good writers. They are indecisive and insecure, wasting a hundred pages to write only ten. His words reiterate the belief that men write for more serious and sublime reasons, and are therefore earnest writers, whereas for women writing is merely a hobby.

There is a similarly influential woman writer in Turkish literature whose unique voice continues to echo today, long after her passing. In the antagonistic environment of the 1970s, when the country was divided between leftists and rightists, Sevgi Soysal questioned, in clever, flowing prose, patriarchal precedents on all sides.

She was the writer of women dangling on the threshold — between sanity and insanity, society and the individual, setting the table and walking away, endless self-sacrifice and impromptu selfishness. . She created female characters who straddled the divide between living for others and following their hearts. One of her unforgettable fictional characters is Tante Rosa:

Tante Rosa left a letter behind. She left three children, one of them still on the bottle, a recipe for roasted goose and apple pie, and instructions on how to clean the table cloth for the maid whom she had also taught the art of arranging shelves. She left a little garden with marigolds, a house with a wooden staircase, high ceilings, and a grandfather clock; a husband who went to church every Sunday morning, and crawled into her bed every Sunday afternoon; neighbors who had big, bright hats, snot-nosed children, their own husbands and roasted goose. . She left her left breast behind, the breast that covered her heart. And walked away.

Soysal's female characters are, for all intents and purposes, the exact opposite of the "ideal women" of Turkish society. Hers are women who make mistakes, stumble on their path and hurt their knees, and yet, each time, somehow manage to pull themselves together.

In another novel, she writes about a woman named Oya, who is deeply fragmented in her desires and obligations.

"I'll go to the sea. Any sea shore at all." The beautiful scenery along the shore road that begins in Alanya and curves its way up to the Aegean Sea flashes before her eyes. Blue. Wide. Sea. Rocks. Forest. And what of her husband? What of her house? What of her children?

And her other responsibilities? At the moment there is no blue, no freedom, no forest. There is only more duties creeping ever closer.

In my mind I organize a banquet in heaven. A long table with a snow- white tablecloth, elegant cutlery and silver candleholders. A huge glittering crystal chandelier hangs over the center of the table. There is roasted goose, rice with saffron and mouthwatering desserts on vast plates. Simone de Beauvoir sits in a high chair at one end of the table. Though she gives the impression of sulking, she is actually happy. On her right is Toshiko Tamura with her elegant eyeglasses, eating fried rice with chopsticks, putting thought into each grain. On her left is Sevgi Soysal, who doesn't have much of an appetite, but she, too, is in a good mood. Humming a slow tune, she takes a sip from her wineglass.

A French woman, a Japanese woman and a Turkish woman — three determined writers, three autonomous individuals, who lived worlds apart but spoke the same language — could they be dining together in heaven now? I'd like to think so.

In Search of the Mother Goddess

On the second day of September, I descend from a bus that has peter pan written in gaudy, capital letters on both sides. The name suits my mood. I, too, feel like "a boy who wouldn't grow up," and this place with its unfamiliar landscape and fickle weather could very well be Neverland. I drag a big, blue suitcase on wheels, and carry a cat box — except there is no cat inside, but four finger-women. Though they had raised no complaints during the eleven-hour flight from Istanbul, in the one-and-a-half-hour bus ride from Boston they have been constantly whining or puking.

As soon as I step down onto the sidewalk, the silence on the campus is like a slap on the face. My ears are so used to the constant chaos and crazy rhythm of Istanbul that I fear I may go deaf here. I see people, but nobody is shouting, yelling or whistling. Even the squirrels seem to tiptoe so as not to make noise. I find the stillness unsettling.

But the campus is lovely. It is vast and green as far as the eye can see. There are tall, thick trees everywhere, speaking in gnarled mystery. There are dozens of other languages being spoken here — the college being home to more than two thousand students from almost seventy countries. One out of every three students is a foreigner like me.

This impressive, cosmopolitan college is the outcome of one woman's vision. In 1837, an idealistic teacher named Mary Lyon began to advocate for the right of female students to be given the same level of education as male students. At a time when women did not yet have the right to vote, her views were quite radical. But Mary Lyon persevered, and after much struggle and several setbacks, she managed to collect the necessary funds to found the college. Since then, thousands have graduated from Mount Holyoke, and perhaps with each new graduate, Mary Lyon's spirit has been rejoicing.

Mount Holyoke and neighboring Smith College were nerve centers of the 1960s and 1970s American feminist movement. When I set foot here, the tradition is still visibly alive. In addition to feminists, postfeminists and half-and-half feminists (those who appreciate feminism but do not necessarily like feminists), there are also plenty of Wiccans in search of spiritual union with Mother Goddess, and quite a number of bisexual and lesbian activists.

All this — squirrels and lesbians — I write about in a column for a widely circulated Turkish newspaper known for its conservative readership. Understandably, the feedback to my columns is mixed. Overall, my readers in Turkey seem to be more surprised by the fact that nobody catches the squirrels and cooks them (not that we have a national squirrel dish; I don't know where they get this idea from) than by the sight of lesbian couples walking hand in hand. I take this as a progressive sign.

There is one poster that grabs my attention from day one — that of a female worker wearing blue overalls, a red and white bandana on her head and a shirt with one sleeve rolled up to reveal a tensed and muscled bicep like that of Popeye the Sailor Man. She adorns the walls around campus. "You can succeed, you can stand tall and be strong in this male-driven world" is the slogan everywhere.

On my second day, I discover the building that will become my favorite place during my entire stay: the gigantic, gaudy, gothic library. It's love at first sight. From handwritten books to modern literature, political philosophy to botanical science, I roam the aisles touching the books, smelling them.

But no one appreciates the library more than Miss Highbrowed Cynic. The second she spots the building, which resembles Rapunzel's castle from a distance, she jumps with joy and yells so loudly, she damages her vocal cords.

Fall goes by and the trees shed their first leaves, painting the entire campus in amber, red and brown. In the mornings, Little Miss Practical and I go jogging. One day on the way back we stop by the library.

We find Miss Highbrowed Cynic sitting on a shelf, hunched over an open book. Using a sharpened pencil as a pole, she vaults from one stack of books to the next. She also has a string ladder to climb to higher shelves. Every time she moves, the peace-sign earrings on her lobes and the bangles on her arms jingle. The black T-shirt she is wearing over her jeans has this message written across: "anti-war /ANTI-RACISM / ANTI-HATE."

"Hi, Sister," she says to me, and slightly frowns at Little Miss Practical. Since we have come to America the conflicts among the finger- women have surfaced again, their temporary coalition dissolving fast.

"What are you reading?" I ask.

"The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt," she says.

Little Miss Practical casts a confused glance over my shoulder. "Another fisherman's story?"

"A book by the French critic Julia Kristeva, who happens to be one of the leading thinkers of our times," says Miss Highbrowed Cynic.

"Smart cookie, huh?" asks Little Miss Practical.

"She sees the Oedipus complex as a key to understanding women," continues Miss Highbrowed Cynic, her tone not so much annoyed as haughty. "A young girl adores her mother, copying everything she does. But then she finds out that she does not have a penis, and feels flawed and incomplete, like a eunuch. To compensate for this deficiency, she attaches herself to her father. The mother who was loved and admired until then is now pushed aside, seen as a competitor. There are girls who from this stage onward develop a hatred for their mothers."

Little Miss Practical and I listen, without a word, without a breath.

"Women writers are affected by the Oedipus complex more than you may think. Did you know, for instance, why Sevgi Soysal became a novelist? She began to write at age eight because she was jealous of her father's affection for her mother. She saw her mother as a rival, and through her writing and imagination she wanted to win her father's favor."

"Oh, really?" I say.

"Oh, yes, she writes about this in her memoirs," Miss Highbrowed Cynic says, with her know-it-all attitude. "Every child wants to rejoin her mother's body. This is an impossible wish, of course. That 'oneness' is long gone, severed forever, but the child cannot help longing for it. The 'symbolic order' represented by the father awaits the individual who cannot rejoin his mother's body."

"Come again?" says Little Miss Practical.

Miss Highbrowed Cynic volleys on. "In order to survive in this order, we suppress our imagination, temper our desires and learn to be 'normalized.' No matter how hard we try, however, our imagination can never be stifled. In the most inopportune places and at the oddest times, it surfaces. The mother's semiotic rises up against the father's symbolic order."

"Such confusing things!" says Little Miss Practical. "What's the point of making life so complicated? These French thinkers are not practical in the least. No wonder French movies are so depressing."

Miss Highbrowed Cynic stares at the other finger-woman with an air of condescension but says nothing. Instead she turns to me. "Kristeva talks about three ways for a child to create her identity. First, to identify with the father and the symbolic. Second, to identify with the mother and the semiotic. Third, to find a shaky balance in between."

I pretend to follow what she is saying, but Miss Highbrowed Cynic doesn't fall for it: "Don't you get it? If you pursue the third option, you could use the father's symbolic order and the mother's semiotic in your work."

"Hmm. . Is there a writer who has ever done that?" I ask.

"Yes, Sis. Take a closer look at Virginia Woolf's The Waves. She was writing precisely in that precarious balance."

I don't object. It might or might not be true. Writing fiction is a tidal river with strong currents. While flowing with it, one doesn't think, "Let me now add a splash of symbolic order and a dash of the mother's semiotic." You don't chew on such things when developing a novel. You are too busy falling in love with your characters.

That is what Miss Highbrowed Cynic doesn't understand. Novelists write without thinking. It is afterward, when literary critics and scholars weigh writers' every sentence that theories are applied. And then when people read those theories, they get the impression that novelists were purposefully creating their stories in such a way — which is not true.

"There's something I don't get," Little Miss Practical says.

"Why am I not surprised?" scoffs Miss Highbrowed Cynic.

"You're so into the theory of motherhood. All this semiotic, symbolic, bucolic. . But when it comes to the practicalities, I am sure you'd fall flat on your face."

"My knowledge would guide me," says Miss Highbrowed Cynic.

"Whoa, come on, Sister, you couldn't even change a diaper. I may not know anything about your theories, but I can get the hang of motherhood faster than Speedy Gonzalez runs."

The shape of her eyebrows indicates that Miss Highbrowed Cynic doesn't appreciate the remark. I leave them quarreling, and walk out of the library.

I wander around the campus. Being rid of the finger-women — if only for a short while — lightens my heart and my mood. Like a walking sponge, I soak up every detail I see, every sound I hear, every smell I sniff, and store it all away inside me. That is what happens when you are a foreigner; you collect details as if they were seashells on a shore.

In the cafeteria, I get in line and end up standing in front of a lesbian couple. One of the women is short and has spiky, carroty hair. The other is quite tall and heavily pregnant. We move forward, pushing our trays along inch by inch. Just when we reach the dessert display, the short woman chirps up

"Ah, would you mind if we take that, since there is only one left?"

There on top of a glass shelf, where the woman is pointing, is one lone piece of raspberry cake. I move back.

"Of course, go ahead."

"Thank you, thank you! Shirley has been craving raspberries since this morning," says the woman, giving me a wink.

"Oh," I say. "You're expecting a baby, how wonderful."

"Yes," says Shirley as she pats her belly. "Six feet one, chess and amateur tennis champion, professional artist, IQ over 160, interested in Buddhism and Far Eastern philosophy—"

"Excuse me?"

"The father," she says. "We picked him out of thousands at the sperm bank. . He's going to be a very special baby."

There is something in all this meticulous advance planning that freaks me out. Perhaps it is not surprising that women would look for athletic, charismatic, wealthy and influential sperm donors. But as someone who has grown up without a father, I am thinking, what does that ultimately mean to a child who will never know his or her biological father? Besides, the things we lack in life — such as blue eyes, a muscular body or conversational eloquence — might help us to develop other qualities that are dormant inside. Many talents are born in the shadows, out of necessity. The search for perfect babies misses the surprising role of oddities, coincidences and absences in our personal development.

In the evening I return to my room. The place I am staying in is about 130 square feet. It has the tiniest kitchen counter and a shower so small you can wash only half of yourself at a time.

Before me, there was an Indian painter residing here — the walls still smell of her paints. And before her, a Zimbabwean sociologist. The room has seen dozens of women from all over the world. The Indian artist left behind paint stains and an intricately designed rolling pin. The Zimbabwean scholar left a scary mask on the wall, which casts a long and thin ebony shadow.

What will I leave to next year's fellow? "Before me, there was a Turkish author staying here," she will say. I can't find anything but words to hand down to her. Perhaps I can leave one of my favorite Turkish words, which also exists in English: kismet.

I lie down on my bed. The solitude that I so enjoyed only this afternoon now darkens my mood. What am I doing here so far away from Istanbul, from my loved ones, from the place where my novels are set, from my friends, my mother and my mother tongue? Am I throwing myself into unknown waters just to see if I can swim?

What if I can't?

I recall my mother telling me I was too good at being alone. "It is as if you don't need anyone," she had said. "But you should. Too much independence is not good. You should be dependent, even if a tiny little bit."

This, coming from someone who had refused to remarry at the expense of being "a woman without a male protector" in the eyes of the society, had surprised me. But now I find myself thinking of her advice in another light.

Women of my age have husbands, children and picnic baskets. They don't hop on Peter Pan buses and go roaming Neverland. You should do that in your early twenties, when you are fresh out of school and your "life" hasn't started yet. But you don't do it in your midthirties. There should have been some order and stability in my life by now. Women my age have scrambled eggs in the mornings with their families and social rituals they like repeating. I'm still being dragged around by the winds, like a kite whose string has snapped.

The members of the Choir of Discordant Voices seem pleased to be here, doing their own thing. Miss Highbrowed Cynic doesn't look like she's ever going to leave the library. When she has a spare moment she attends either a workshop or a conference. Little Miss Practical keeps taking computer classes — PowerPoint, Excel, Linux. The last time I saw Dame Dervish she was meditating in this place where nature is so beautiful. As for Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, she is always on the Internet writing, applying for this and that, finding things to do.

Everyone is in their own world. But where is Mama Rice Pudding?

I haven't seen her since the airplane. Maybe she didn't come to America. Maybe she couldn't get through passport control after all. Or maybe she got lost somewhere in New York. . Suddenly my heart aches. Can a person miss a side of her whom she doesn't even know? I do.

As I fall asleep, I think of Mama Rice Pudding. I wish I knew her better.

Normal on the Outside

Courtney Love once said: "I like to behave in an extremely normal, wholesome manner for the most part in my daily life — even if mentally I am consumed with sick visions of violence, terror, sex and death." Everything is normal, as long as we appear so on the outside. But what is normal? And who exactly is a normal woman? Which womanly attributes are natural? Which others are cultural? Are girls genetically predetermined to be maternal, nurturing and emotional, or do their families and societies mold them that way? Or else, are the natural and the cultural qualities so intricately interwoven that there is no telling which characteristics shape whom anymore?

Adjectives come in pairs. For every beautiful, somewhere there is an ugly. Perhaps, in preparation for the Great Flood, adjectives, like animals, boarded Noah's Ark in twos. That's why we always think in terms of dualism. If there is an established definition of what constitutes "ideal womanhood," it is thanks to a similarly entrenched definition of "ideal manhood." Both definitions, and the expectations that ensue from them, can be equally harrowing for real women and real men.

I grew up seeing two different types of womanhood. On the one hand was my mother — a well-educated, modern, Westernized, secular Turkish woman. Always rational. Always to the point. On the other hand was my maternal grandmother, who also took care of me and was less educated, more spiritual and definitely less rational. This was a woman who read coffee grounds to see the future and melted lead into mysterious shapes to fend off the evil eye. Many people came to see her, people with severe acne on their faces or warts on their hands. My grandmother would utter some words in Arabic, take a red apple and stab it with as many rose thorns as the number of warts she wanted to remove. Then she would draw a circle around each thorn with dark ink.

Some of the most vivid memories of my childhood are about red apples, rose thorns and dark circles. The truth is, of all the people who visited my grandmother for their skin conditions, I didn't see anyone walking away unhappy or unhealed. I asked her how she did this. Was it the power of praying? In response she said, "Yes, praying is effective, but also beware of the power of circles." From her I learned, among other things, one crucial lesson: If you want to destroy something, be it a blemish, acne or the human soul, all you need to do is to surround it with walls.

It will dry up.

There are many similarly "irrational" lessons from my life that I greatly cherish today. To a strictly logical person they might seem pure nonsense, even crazy. Society and culture teach us what exactly is normal and acceptable. My grandmother's cures were "commonplace" for many people in a middle-class neighborhood in Ankara in the early 1970s, although to someone in Vienna they might have looked pretty bizarre. But individuals also differ in their perceptions of normal and abnormal. My mother never believed in the superstitions my grandmother held dear. "Coffee is for drinking, not for reading," Mom said. As for me, I deeply suspected that there were sprinkles of magic in life and love, and that someone who looked like a handsome prince at first glance could easily turn into an ugly frog.

As every writer of fiction knows, when we are developing a story we do not need to be constrained by the limits of logic. Just the opposite, we can dive headfirst into that bottomless lake of irrationality. We can write about superstitions, magic and fairies. There is room for all in literature. This despite the fact that in our daily lives we conform to a different set of rules, moving in a solid and rational world.

For many centuries all around the globe, girls and women have been expected to conform to one set of attributes, while men and boys measure up to another. If and when the traits of an individual included elements from both sets, life became much more complicated. Even today, a woman who is thought to be "manly" can face a bulwark of reactions, as can a man who is deemed "womanly." The more conventional the society is, the less likely the two sets intersect — at least outwardly. But the exclusivist approach to gender relations is by no means specific to traditional societies. Though constantly changing, it is fundamentally universal. From ancient myths to modern graphic novels, from folklore to advertisements, this dualistic way of thinking has infiltrated many areas of our lives.

Oddly enough, women, too, are used to thinking of themselves in these terms. The relationships we build with one another, the talks we have among ourselves and the way we raise our own daughters are overshadowed by the dichotomy of gender patterns.

How much of my womanhood is biological, how much of it is socially learned? Of the will to become a mother, which part is innate, which part is imposed? Is it sheer coincidence that I have started contemplating motherhood in my midthirties? Is it because my biological clock is ticking? Or is it because the social chronometer, which continuously compels us women to measure ourselves against one another, is speeding ahead?

When everything is so culturally loaded, how am I going to know what is really natural and what is environmental?

Sitting on the Edge

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was born on July 24, 1900, in Alabama. She was a fearless, bouncy kid who received much love from her mother, perhaps at the risk of being fairly spoiled. As for her distant father, who was a formidable judge, she got far less affection and attention from him. Her childhood vacillated between these two emotional extremes. A vivid illustration of her personality lies in a small predicament she caused when she was just a child.

One morning the local police received a call that a child was walking across a rooftop. When the officers reached the address, they found little Zelda sitting on the roof waiting for them. After a lot of hassle, they managed to get her down. The truth behind the story was discovered a bit later. It was Zelda who had called the police. First she had made the phone call, then climbed onto the roof, crept right to the edge and sat down and waited to be rescued. This, more or less, remained the modus vivendi in her life. Even as a grown-up woman, she continued to go to the edge and then calmly watch the panic she had caused.

The essays and books written about Zelda Fitzgerald almost always revolve around three points:

1. She was the wife and greatest love of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

2. She was a gifted artist herself.

3. She had extensive therapy, suffered from depression and ended up dying in a mental institution.

Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald met toward the end of the Great War. Each had a different memory of their first encounter. The man found the woman attractive and smart, but he was disturbed by the way she constantly flirted with other men. His first impression of her was a mixed one.

The woman, on the other hand, found the man charismatic and talented with a dazzling mind. Zelda was the kind of woman who had to love a man's brain before she could fall for him.

They got married in April 1920, carried by the winds of mutual attraction and passion. When asked by a journalist what his greatest ambition in life was, Scott Fitzgerald said it was to write the best novel that ever was and to stay in love with his beloved wife forever. Yet from the very start, they saw each other as potential rivals. The fact that both had a tendency to take to the bottle at the sight of the slightest distress did not help their marriage. In time, their disagreements grew more violent and hurtful.

Alcohol, cigarettes, night life. . They were no strangers to life in the fast lane. But perhaps their greatest addiction was to their love. Zelda and Scott adored, fought and marred each other in a roller- coaster relationship. They were aware of each other's weaknesses and knew how to hurt. One moment they would scream war cries and the next they would jump into the car and drive dangerously fast on sharp- curved roads. They loved to challenge fate. Being a creative, famous, high-flying and self-destructive couple, they became the focus of the media. Unsurprisingly, not everything written about them was true. There was much gossip and speculation, and few reporters had the time or the will to separate the facts from the lies.

In the years that followed, Scott Fitzgerald became increasingly famous, swiftly climbing up the glass staircase of the literary pantheon. Strikingly, the characters he wrote about and the themes he tackled were often inspired by Zelda. Some of his characters spoke just like

Zelda. Did he "steal" ideas from his wife? Did he pilfer parts of her writing? From time to time Zelda would mockingly talk about how entries in the diaries she kept at home would end up in her husband's novels — sometimes entire paragraphs. In a review she wrote of The Beautiful and Damned for the New York Tribune, she made this insinuation public: "It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and also scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald — I believe that is how he spells his name — seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home."[8]

Perhaps every writer is a pickpocket of some sort, stealing inspiration from real life. Like magpies that can't resist making off with shiny objects, authors flap their wings across the boundless sky looking for themes to write about. And when they find one, they snatch it up. Whichever way we see it, the extent of the "literary patent" between Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald has not been fully resolved even today.

Fame and recognition brought little happiness for Scott Fitzgerald. Surrounded by women who admired him, critics who applauded him and reporters who saw in his every move juicy material to write about, he began drinking heavily. When not thinking about his next novel, he was shutting his mind off to the world; when not writing, he was imbibing, sometimes falling asleep in random places. Zelda was at least as unhappy as he was. They couldn't make each other happy, but they could not possibly let each other go their own separate ways. Like two kites whose strings had intertwined, they kept twisting and turning in each other's arms.

The friendship that grew between Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway during this time is something that bemuses literary historians. The two of them were inseparable for a while — two bohemian writers who would pass out together. It was the kind of friendship that did not sit well with Zelda. She found Hemingway too macho, his ego too inflated. She believed he wasn't a good companion for her husband. In time, the friendship fell apart.

Zelda's jealousy was legendary. In fit after fit of envy, she burned her clothes, destroyed her possessions and even damaged her surroundings. Once at a crowded, chic party, she took off the jewelry she was wearing and threw it into hot water in an attempt to make "jewel soup." She was often blinded by rage. Another night, after she noticed her husband paying lavish attention to the famous Isadora Duncan, she made a scene by throwing herself down a set of marble stairs. When they picked her up off the floor, she was covered in blood.

They had one daughter whom they both loved dearly — Scottie, who was born in October 1921 and was given to the care of a nanny. While she was still partly anesthetized, Zelda murmured, "I hope it is beautiful and a fool — a beautiful little fool." The same expression would be repeated in The Great Gatsby when Daisy talked about her own daughter. As always, life inspired fiction.

After Scottie, Zelda had three abortions. As much as she loved her daughter, she did not want to have another child, at least not so soon. The baby neither slowed down their lifestyle nor tempered their arguments. In the later stages of their marriage, Zelda always searched for something she could do that would be outside the realm of her husband's interests. For a while she tried taking ballet classes. Her husband scorned her interest, calling it a waste of time. In the end ballet couldn't make Zelda happy.[9]

That was when she started to feel jealous — not of another woman this time, but of her husband's writing. More and more often she tried to distract him during the hours he was working on his fiction. It was obvious to everyone but them that they could not stay in the same house any longer. Scott Fitzgerald wanted to keep his wife at home. He was worried that if she went out alone, she would flirt or even find a lover — just to get back at him, to relieve the pain in her heart.

Rumi likens the mind to a guesthouse. Every morning we have a new, unexpected visitor, sometimes in the form of joy, sometimes dressed up as sorrow. For Zelda Fitzgerald her guesthouse entertained all kinds of unpleasant guests: Mr. Anxiety, Miss Panic Attack, Mrs. Resentment, Sir Bitterness. .

Finally, in June 1930, after months that included a nervous breakdown, hallucinations and an attempted suicide, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and taken to a hospital. She spent the rest of her eighteen years under psychiatric care. There is a letter she wrote to Scott shortly afterward that says a lot about not only her psychology at the time but also her vivacious and tempestuous style: "No matter what happens, I still know in my heart that it is a Godless, dirty game: that love is bitter and all there is, and that the rest is for the emotional beggars of the earth. . "[10]

Nonetheless, staying at the clinic seemed somehow to have triggered her productivity. She wrote constantly during this period— diaries, stories, letters. Not only did she make beautiful paintings, but she also wrote a semiautobiographical novel, Save Me the Waltz. In utmost sincerity she wrote about the fun-loving, inventive, but also hardworking Southern belle she had been, and the inner transformation that came with marriage. She also elaborated on the two conflicting sides of her personality: one independent and carefree, the other in need of love and security.

As soon as she finished the novel Zelda sent it to Scott's publisher. Her husband had not seen it yet and when he found out, he was furious. At the time he was working on Tender Is the Night. As they had made use of similar material (the story of Zelda's mental illness and the years they had spent together in Paris and on the Riviera), the two books largely overlapped. A great fight ensued, with marital and artistic repercussions, at the end of which Zelda agreed to revise her manuscript. When the book came out it was not well received by literary critics, selling only a limited number of copies. Demoralized, Zelda did not publish another novel.

Her husband rented houses near the various clinics she resided in so that he could still be close to her while he was writing. They spent the following years seeing each other only on visiting days, between pills and doctors and treatments. He died in 1940 from a heart attack. Eight years later a fire erupted in a mental institution in Asheville, North Carolina. Among the patients who lost their lives in that fire was Zelda Fitzgerald.

Faulkner once said that a writer's obituary should be simple. "He wrote books, then he died." But what about a woman writer like Zelda Fitzgerald: She sat on the edge, danced herself to heartbreak, painted the world in stunning colors, raised a daughter, loved with great passion, wrote stories, then she died.

Scott and Zelda left a huge unanswered question behind: If they hadn't worn each other thin, would they have lived longer, and produced greater works? I don't know. Some days I feel like it would have made a big difference if they had made life easier on each other; then other days I suspect the effortlessness of daily life wouldn't have mattered at all. The outcome would have been the same.

Zelda Fitzgerald was not a "normal" woman who conformed to conventional gender roles. Neither modesty nor passivity was her cup of tea. But if she had been the opposite, if she had been capable of living a more settled and secure life, would she have written better books, more books? Would she have been remembered more highly today?

As I write this now I suspect the opposite is true. Maybe through their constant wars and ups and downs, and their daring to swerve miles away from a conventional marriage, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald were able to write, love and live to the best of their ability.

Brain Tree

The Center for Women's Studies at Mount Holyoke College is situated in a large, beige, three-story typical New England house, in which I occupy one room on the first floor that has a separate entrance. The second floor houses the offices of the faculty and other fellows as well. The walls and ceilings are so thin I can easily hear their conversations, and more than likely they can hear me shouting at my finger-women — explaining in part why I catch some of the faculty looking at me, at times, with concern.

Connecting my room with the center is a door that is so flimsy, the first time I cook cauliflower in my kitchen, the entire department stinks for days. The smell seeps through the cardboard like door into every nook and cranny. I try preparing other simple but less smelly recipes — always with the same outcome. In a place where everyone drinks organic, fair-trade, antioxidant herbal teas, even the aroma of my Turkish coffee is too much. And so, I abandon the kitchen altogether, and stick to fruit, crackers and water.

In the evenings, when everybody leaves the building, I remain. There is something creepy about being alone in such a big house that suddenly becomes so quiet and dark. At night, when I try to sleep, I find myself disconcerted.

But not tonight. This evening in my nutshell of a bathroom, in the faint glimmer coming through the open window, I watch snowflakes fall from the deep sky onto Mount Holyoke's campus. The blanket of snow makes the world seem like a different planet, and I sit here feeling calmer and more composed than I have been in months.

The bathroom may not be the most appropriate place to observe a landscape this romantic, but it is the only place in the entire building where I can have a cigarette — without the others, and, most important, the fire alarms detecting my smoke. The healthy-life-happy- minded feminists may forgive me for my cauliflower, but I don't think they will pardon me for my Marlboro Lights.

But necessity is the mother of invention. Shortly after I arrived here, I set up a mini ironing board in the bathroom as a desk and closed the lid of a storage bin, making it as comfortable as an armchair by tossing a cushion onto it. This is where I write my newspaper column and stories. I lock myself in here, and eat red apples for breakfast, lunch and dinner, smoking to my heart's content.

So on this snowy night, I am here again, looking out the window as I write, when a loud scream yanks me out of my reverie:

"Help! Help! There's a thief!"

I put the cigarette out, leave the bathroom and check the clock by the corner of the bed. It reads 3:08. I grab the African mask on the wall and dash forward without thinking about what I am doing. Not that I am made of hero material. If I am brave at this moment it is precisely because I don't have a clue what is going on. And there is no time to stop and be frightened.

"There is a thief on the roof! Help!"

Now I recognize the voice. It is Miss Highbrowed Cynic who is screaming. I find her perched on top of a vase like a wingless chickadee, hiding among Christmas flowers, her face as pale as a ghost.

"What is it? Why are you yelling?"

"I just got back from the library. I was walking alone in the dark and then I saw it! Her! Someone is walking on the roof!"

"Maybe it is one of the other finger-women."

"No, it can't be. All three of them are here, don't you see?"

I flick a glance over my shoulder. It is true. Having rushed out of bed, they are all lined up behind me — Dame Dervish in her long nightgown, Milady Ambitious Chekhovian in her dark green commando pajamas, Little Miss Practical in her comfortable sweatpants. Straining our ears, we listen to the strange sounds echoing from somewhere else in the house.

"Yo, let's call the police," says Little Miss Practical. The day we moved here she wrote down the numbers for police, fire and ambulance on a piece of paper and stuck it on the fridge.

"Wait, don't rush. Let me go and take a look," says Dame Dervish.

But Milady Ambitious Chekhovian doesn't approve. "No way, you are the last person to do this."

"And why is that?" Dame Dervish asks calmly.

"I know you. Whoever you see on the roof, you'll say, 'God must have sent us this thief for a reason,' and you'll end up inviting the thug for dinner! You are too soft-hearted for the job. It's best if I go."

She has a point, I admit. Milady Ambitious Chekhovian has always been the bravest of the Choir of Discordant Voices. But since she masterminded a coup d'etat, her audacity has tripled.

"All right, you go, then," I say.

Fully focused on her mission, she grabs a plastic fork as a weapon and goes off into the dark.

Milady Ambitious Chekhovian has no sooner disappeared than a commotion erupts on the roof, piercing the night's stillness. The squirrels inhabiting the trees around the center stick their heads out of their holes, trying to understand what is going on. A few of them jump down and vanish.

We hear Milady Ambitious Chekhovian's voice crack as she shouts at someone. The perceptible alarm in her tone is quickly replaced by anger and aversion. Whoever the other person is, she doesn't seem to quarrel, doesn't retort.

Ten minutes later Milady Ambitious Chekhovian comes back downstairs and attempts to stab a tangerine with her fork, fuming and furious. We all watch the fork break into two pieces.

"What is it? What happened?" I ask.

"See for yourself," she says. Then she turns toward the door, almost hissing. "Are you coming or not?"

Slowly, shyly, as if willing herself to disappear into the thick night, a finger-woman walks in. I recognize her immediately. It is Mama Rice Pudding.

"Hello there!" I pick her up and place her on my palm.

"You two know each other?" Milady Ambitious Chekhovian asks.

"Well, hmm. . We've. . m-met once," I stutter.

"Oh, yeah? When was that?" Miss Highbrowed Cynic asks, frowning. "And how come we don't know about it?"

Deciding that the best defense is a good offense, I snap: "In fact, I should be asking that question. In all this time, why didn't you ever tell me about Mama Rice Pudding?"

Milady Ambitious Chekhovian briefly considers the notion. "What do you think would have happened if we told you? What good would it have brought?"

"I have a right to know that I have a maternal side," I insist.

"Great, just what we needed," says Miss Highbrowed Cynic, grumbling to herself. "We crossed an entire ocean to get rid of this sticky miss. Alas, she found us here as well!"

Suddenly it dawns on me. Does my leaving Istanbul in such a hurry have anything to do with this?

"Wait a minute, hold on," I say. "Is this why you brought me all the way here to America?"

Miss Highbrowed Cynic and Milady Ambitious Chekhovian cast guilty looks at each other.

"Time for some real talk! Let the cat out of the bag!" says Little Miss Practical, shrugging nonchalantly.

"Okay, it might as well come out," says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian. She turns to me, her eyes blazing with fire. "I don't know if you recall, but sometime ago you were traveling on a steamboat and this plump woman with two sons sat beside you."

Of course I remember. I nod my head.

"Well, you might not have realized it, but you were profoundly moved by your encounter with that woman. She was young and pregnant with her third child. When you looked at her you lamented the opportunities you lost. You almost wanted to be her. If I hadn't acted at once and made you write "The Manifesto of a Single Girl," God forbid, you were going to get trapped in your dreams of motherhood."

"So I wrote that manifesto because of you?"

"Yes, of course," says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, as she paces up and down. "I thought that would be the end of the story. But when Mama Rice Pudding noticed you were curiously watching pregnant women and mothers with their babies, she decided it was high time for her to come out of hiding and introduce herself. We tried to reason with her, and then we threatened her. But she didn't budge. She was going to upset the status quo, so we performed a military takeover. We forced you to leave Istanbul, but apparently Miss Nuisance followed us here!"

"But, if she is a member of the Choir of Discordant Voices, she should have an equal say in all matters," I venture.

"Thanks, but no thanks. We can't let that happen," Miss Highbrowed Cynic says, rubbing her temples as if on the verge of a migraine.

"We are not a democracy, okay? We were always a monarchy, and now we are a tight military regime," roars Milady Ambitious Chekhovian. A spark flickers in her eye as she turns to her chum. "Let's have an emergency meeting."

As the chairpersons of the High Military Council's executive committee, Milady Ambitious Chekhovian and Miss Highbrowed Cynic move to a corner, whispering in fierce tones. After what seems like an eternity, they walk back, their footsteps echoing their determination, their faces grim.

"Follow us outside," says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian.

"Where on earth are we going at this hour?"

"Move!" she scolds me, and then calls out to the others: "All of you! On the double!" At three-thirty in the morning, under the watchful gaze of the braver squirrels, we march in single file in the snow. Our teeth chattering, our fingertips numb, we pass by the library and the dormitories.

"How serene the universe seems tonight," mumbles Dame Dervish as she takes a deep breath.

How she's able to find something positive to say even under the most stressful circumstances is a mystery to me. I pick her up and put her inside my sweater so she doesn't catch a cold. We move along in this fashion until we arrive under a massive tree.

"What is this?" I ask.

Miss Highbrowed Cynic delivers the answer: "I discovered this tree when we first arrived here. On sunny days, it's a perfect place to read. I would have much preferred to show it to you in the daylight, but I need to do it now. Pay attention to the tree trunk. What does it look like?"

Oddly enough, a mammoth balloon like lump bulges out of the tree's thick trunk. It looks like a giant shriveled-up prune or a huge wrinkled walnut with ridges. Or else—

Miss Highbrowed Cynic gives me a sidelong glance. "Tell me, what does that mass resemble from afar?"

"Well, I don't know. . It's almost like. . like a brain. . " I say.

"Bingo! It is a Brain Tree," says Miss Highbrowed Cynic.

"So tonight we have all gathered under the Brain Tree," Milady Ambitious Chekhovian says, launching into a speech. She has climbed onto a branch, where she pouts like a dictator assessing his people's intelligence before starting to lecture them.

"This is a historic moment," she bellows. "The time is ripe to make a choice once and for all." She points an accusing finger at Mama Rice Pudding. "Do you want to be like her? A forlorn housewife? Or would you rather live your life like a majestic arboreal brain?"

I can't take my eyes from the tree. In the velvety dark of the night, surrounded by all this snow, the tree looks fearsome and impressive.

"Please don't listen to them," whispers Mama Rice Pudding as she clings to my legs. Tears have formed in her eyes. So fragile she is. So little I know about her. I've seen her only twice while the others have been with me for years.

"We can make a great team, you and I," says Mama Rice Pudding.

"I'm sorry," I say.

A strong wind blows in fitful gusts, swirling the flakes. I feel like I'm on the set of Doctor Zhivago. This is not Russia and there isn't the slightest possibility of a Bolshevik revolution on this campus, but there are still profound emotional changes under way.

Finally, I muster the courage to answer. "If I have to make a choice, I'll certainly choose the Brain Tree."

"But you made me a promise!" Mama Rice Pudding bursts forth.

"I'm sorry," I say again, unable to meet her eyes.

Milady Ambitious Chekhovian jumps down from her branch and Miss Highbrowed Cynic grins at her, shouting, "Give me five!"

Partners in crime. They do such a complicated high five, with their arms and fingers passing through each other's, that we all watch with awe.

When the show is over Dame Dervish sighs heavily, Little Miss Practical takes off her glasses and cleans them nervously, Mama Rice Pudding cries silently.

"Now you have to repeat after me," says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian. "I've traveled wide, I've traveled far—"

I do. On the snow-covered Mount Holyoke campus, under that breathtaking Brain Tree, I swear these words to myself:

"I've traveled wide, I've traveled far, and I've placed writing at the center of my life. At last I've reached a decision between Body and Brain. From now on I want to be only, and only, Brain. No longer will the Body hold sway over me. I have no want for womanhood, housework, wife work, maternal instincts or giving birth. I want to be a writer, and that is all I want to pursue."

In this moment, one of the many things I realize is that this is a turning point in my life, a sharp one. While I veer fast, I don't know what awaits me around the corner.

"May the Body rot and may the Brain glow. May the ink flow through my pen like oceans to nourish the novels that shall grow within."

I repeat this oath three times. When it is over, I feel numb inside, almost anesthetized. Perhaps it is because of the cold. Perhaps the gravity of what I have just uttered has started to sink in.

A Mystery Called Brain

Before two weeks have passed my body starts to show signs of change. First my hair, then the skin on my face and hands, dries out. I lose weight. My stomach flattens. Then, one day, I realize I have stopped menstruating. I don't get my flow the next month, or the one after that. At first I don't pay any attention to it — in fact, I am even relieved to be rid of womanhood. Wouldn't it be liberating to free myself of femininity and sexuality, and become a walking brain? I feel like a crazy scientist who is experimenting with all kinds of unknown substances in his murky laboratory — except I am experimenting on myself. Not that I seem to be turning into a green, giant, humanoid monster. But I am transforming into an antisocial, asexual, introverted novelist, who, perhaps, is no less scary than the Incredible Hulk.

In late May, I am perusing the magazines in the waiting room of the Women's Health Center while waiting for the kind, lanky gynecologist who has done all sorts of hormonal tests on me. Finally, the nurse calls me in.

"Here is an interesting case," says the doctor as I walk into his office. "Feeling any better?"

"The same," I say.

"Well, well, let's see what we have here. . " says the doctor, inspecting the test results from behind his glasses. "Your hormone levels have come back fine, and so have the thyroid tests."

"You are normal," says the nurse next to him, as if she could not quite believe this.

"But, then, why don't I menstruate anymore?"

"Under these circumstances there is only one answer," the doctor responds. "Your brain has given your body the command not to."

"Is that possible?" I ask incredulously.

"Oh, yes, it is very possible," announces the doctor, squinting slightly, as if he were trying to peer into my soul. "You have to discuss this with your brain. I would, but I don't know its language."

"It'll take us some time to learn Turkish," says the nurse with a wink.

They chuckle in perfect synchronization — in the way that only people who have worked closely together for many years can manage. I, in the meantime, wait silently, unsure what to say.

"Could you tell me what you do for a living?" asks the doctor.

"I am a writer."

"Ah, I see," he says with brightened interest. "What kind of books do you write?"

This is a question I'd rather avoid. I don't know exactly how to categorize my books, and I am not sure I even want to. In fact, this happens to be a thorny question for almost any writer who doesn't produce within established genres, such as "romance" or "crime." Fortunately, the doctor is less interested in my answer than in an idea that has just occurred to him.

"Think of your brain as a riveting, suspenseful detective novel," he says.

"Okay," I say.

Then he lowers his voice as if revealing a terrible secret. "Your brain has kidnapped your body. . "

"Really?"

"Yeah. Now all you need to do is to tell it to stop. You can do this, believe me."

"I am sorry, I lost the thread here. Is my brain a detective novel or the detective himself or the villain?"

He leans back, and heaves a deep, deep sigh. That's when I realize, as nice a person as he is, the doctor is not good with metaphors. He tried to clarify things with a figure of speech, and ended up only complicating them more.

I don't go looking for other doctors. Neither do I tell anyone about the strange diagnosis I have received. But I visit the Brain Tree regularly, searching for stoic serenity it cannot grant me. Caressing the sturdy, old roots that rise out of the ground, observing the leaves on its infinite branches, I renew my vow and watch my womanhood perish day by day.

Every morning I go to the library with Miss Highbrowed Cynic. We are as thick as thieves now. Everything progresses the way she and Milady Ambitious Chekhovian had planned. I'm always reading, always researching. Many a night I stay until the wee hours, hunched over books in an area flanked by two collections: English political philosophy and Russian literature. Whenever my eyelids droop, I take a nap on the brown leather couch that is situated between the two long rows of bookcases.

In my spare time I go to panels, which are plentiful in a place such as this: "The Plight of Women in the Third World," "Feminism and Hip-Hop Culture," "Female Characters in Walt Disney: Does Mickey Mouse Oppress Minnie?" and so on. I attend all of them.

In the evenings, I sit in front of the computer and write down notes and compose journal entries far into the night. I don't socialize anymore, I don't go to parties and I avoid brown-bag lunches, as strong as the urge is sometimes. I don't allow anything outside of writing and books to enter my life.

Mama Rice Pudding watches me from a distance with eyes that cannot hide their hurt. Whenever I try to communicate with her, she turns her head and stares into space, sitting as still as a marble statue. Some nights, in bed, I hear her crying.

One day a major Turkish newspaper does an interview with me about my life in America. I speak to the journalist on the phone for about forty minutes. As we are about to hang up he asks me about marriage and motherhood.

I tell him that I am miles away from both right now. It is a huge responsibility to bring children into this world, I say. But when I am old enough, that is, after many more novels, I could see myself becoming a foster mom or perhaps raising someone else's children, helping their education and so forth.

That weekend when the interview comes out, its title is as catchy as it can be: "I am Raring to Become a Stepmom!"

Next to the revelation, there is a picture of me taken in Istanbul standing in front of the Topkapi Palace. I am dressed head to toe in black, my hair a cuckoo's nest due to a strong wind, my face etched with a grave expression. When my image is juxtaposed with the words, I look like a black spider about to jump on any divorced man with kids.

I decide not to give any more interviews for a while.

Approximately at the same time, as if a muse has fallen from the sky onto my head, I begin to write a new novel. It is called The Saint of Incipient Insanities. The story has sorrow cloaked in humor and humor cloaked in sorrow. It is about a group of foreigners in America coming from very different cultural backgrounds and struggling, not always successfully, with an ongoing sense of estrangement. I write about "insiders" and "outsiders," about belonging and not belonging, feeling like a tree that is turned upside down and has its roots up in the air.