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

Sweet Love

There is a short, round Mexican cleaning lady, Rosario, who every morning at seven o'clock vacuums the northwest section of the library where I usually work all night. I can still dip into Spanish, albeit clumsily. Rosario loves hearing my funny pronunciation and correcting my mistakes. She also teaches me new words every day, blushing and giggling as I repeat them, because some of them are pretty lewd.

When I fall asleep on the leather couch only a few feet away from the John Stuart Mill collection, it is Rosario who wakes me up. She brings me coffee that is so heavy and black my heart pounds for about three minutes after I take a sip. Yet I never tell her to make it a bit weaker. I guess I like her.

"Why are you working so hard?" she asks me one day, pointing to my laptop and a stack of books.

"You work hard, too," I say, pointing to her vacuum cleaner and duster.

She nods. She knows I am right. Then she takes out her necklace and shows it to me. There are four rings on her silver pendant. When I ask her what they mean, she says, smiling from ear to ear, "One ring for each child."

She is a mother of four. That's why she works so hard. She wants them to have a better life than the one she has had.

"How about your husband?" I ask. "Tu marido?"

"Marido. . puff," she says, as if she is talking about gunpowder.

I cannot figure out whether he has died or run away with someone else or never was. Oblivious to my confusion, Rosario smiles again and elbows me. "Children are a blessing," she says.

"I am happy for you."

She pats my shoulder with a touch so genuine and friendly, I drink two more cups of coffee with her, my heart racing.

"You are a good girl," she says to me.

"Some of me are," I say, thinking of my finger-women.

She finds that hilarious and laughs so hard she almost loses her balance. When she manages to get hold of herself, she says, "When you finish your book you don't need to send it to a publisher. There is an easier way."

"Really?" I ask, inching closer to her.

"Yup," she says, nodding. "Send it to Oprah. If she puts her stamp on your book you won't have to work so hard anymore."

"In America they stamp books?" I ask.

"Si, claro mujer!" She rolls her eyes as if to add, "You don't know how crazy these Americans can get."

I thank her for the advice. Then I go back to my novel and she goes back to her work, walking her slow gait, dragging her vacuum cleaner and rolling a bucket of detergents and soaps beside her. She disappears among the aisles of hardcover books. Puff!

In the summer I visit Istanbul for a short while. I am here to pick up a few bits and pieces from my old apartment, to see my friends and my mother, to do some book readings and signings in the city and to seal a contract with my Turkish publisher for The Saint of Incipient Insanities, which I have just finished. Then in ten days, I will return to the States.

However, life is a naughty child who sneaks up from behind us while we draw our plans, making funny faces at us.

On my first evening back in Istanbul friends invite me to have a drink in Yakup, a well-known tavern that journalists, painters and writers have long frequented. Jet-lagged and slightly grumpy, I nevertheless agree to meet them.

When I enter the place, the sound of laughter and chattering greets me, along with a thick cloud of smoke. Either there is a chimney inside the tavern or everyone is puffing on at least two Havana cigars at the same time. It is quite a change of scenery after my sterile life at Mount Holyoke.

I walk up to my friends' table, where I know everyone — except a young man with dark, wavy hair and a dimpled smile sitting at the end. He introduces himself as Eyup. It doesn't occur to me that it happens to be the name of the prophet Job, of whom I have said not just a few critical things in the past. Once again in my life, the angels are pointing their milky-white fingers at me, giggling among themselves. Again, I am failing to foresee the irony.

I watch him throughout the evening, cautiously at first, then with growing curiosity. The more I listen to him the more I am convinced that he is the embodiment of everything I have excluded and pushed away from my life. Pure patience, pure balance, pure rationality, pure calmness, pure harmony. He is a natural-born fisherman.

I don't even think I like him. I simply and swiftly fall head over heels in love with him. But I am determined not to let anyone at the table, especially him, see that. In order to hide my feelings, I swing to the other extreme, constantly challenging him and frowning at his every comment.

Hours later, as always happens in Istanbul when a group of women and men consume more than a carafe of wine and twice as much of raki, people start to talk about matters of the heart. Someone suggests that we take turns quoting the best maxims about love that we know.

One of my girlfriends volunteers to go first: "This one is from Shakespeare," she says with a touch of pride. "'Love all, trust a few.'"

The quote is well received. Everyone toasts.

"This one is from Albert Einstein," says someone else. "'Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.'"

We toast again.

His eyes sparkling, Eyup joins the game after a few rounds. "This one is from Mark Twain," he says. "'When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.'" Everyone applauds. I frown. But I join the toast all the same.

Ten minutes later everyone at the table is looking at me, waiting for me to utter my quote. By now I have drunk more than my usual, and my head is swirling. I put my glass on the table with a kind of borrowed confidence and a bit more forcefully than I intended. I wag my finger in the air and say:

"'Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up.' How stupid!"

For one stunned moment nobody says a word. A few people cough as if they have something stuck in their throats and some others force a polite smile, but no one toasts.

"This one is from Neil Gaiman," I say, by way of explanation.

Again silence.

"The Sandman. . Stardust. . The Graveyard Book. ." I add quickly. "You know, Neil Gaiman."

I lean back against the chair, take a deep breath and finish the quote: " 'You build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life.'. . How stupid!"

Everyone is looking at me with something akin to scorn on their faces. I have spoiled the fun and changed the mood from one of drunken merriment to somber seriousness. We can always go back to buoyant love quotes but it won't be the same. Everyone at the table seems slightly confused and annoyed — except one person who regards me with an infinitely warm smile and winks at me like we share a secret.

Madame Onion

In my dream, I am walking in an opulent, vast garden. There are all sorts of flowers, plants and birds around, but I know I am not here for them. I keep walking, with a cane in my hand, until I reach a humongous tree. Its trunk is made of crystal, and leafy silver branches spring from its sides like Christmas ornaments. There are squirrels nibbling walnuts inside every hole in the tree. One of the holes resembles a cavernous mouth.

"You look so beautiful," I say, pleasantly surprised. "I thought it was winter. How did you manage to keep all your leaves?"

"Winter is over now," says the Brain Tree. "You can leave me be."

"But I took an oath, remember? I said my body should shrivel up so that my brain could blossom. If I don't keep my promise, God will be angry."

"No, He won't," says the Brain Tree. "You don't know Him."

"Do you? Have you seen Him?" I ask. "What does He look like?"

But the tree ignores my questions and says, "Everything expires. So has your oath. Even I am about to perish in a little while."

As if in response to his last words, the winds pick up speed and pound with invisible fists on the Brain Tree. That is when I realize that its branches are made of the thinnest glass. In front of my eyes, they shatter into hundreds of minuscule pieces.

"It doesn't hurt, don't worry!" the Brain Tree yells over the noise.

Trying not to cut myself on the shattered glass covering the ground, I walk and cry, although I know I am not sad. I just can't help it. In this state I walk away from the Brain Tree.

When I turn back to look at it one more time, I am surprised to see that the mammoth tree has shrunk to the size of a bonsai.

This is the dream I have the first night I spend with Eyup.

Once the Brain Tree releases me, my body and I start mending fences. Again, I feel a speedy change commencing within — this time in the opposite direction. My skin becomes softer, my hair shinier. Now that I am in love, I decide to treat my body as best as I can. I begin frequenting The Body Shop, purchasing creams, powders and lotions I have never used before.

Then one afternoon, just as I am placing the products I've bought on a shelf in Eyup's bathroom, I notice something moving there. Aware of my stare, she quickly hides behind a jar of facial cream. In shock, I move the jar aside.

Approximately six inches in height, twenty ounces in weight, it is a finger-woman — though she resembles none of the others. Her honey-blond hair is loose and hangs down to her waist in waves. She has penciled a mole above her mouth and painted her lips such a bright red that it reminds me of a Chinese lantern on fire. Her arms are encased in skin-tight black gloves that reach up to her elbows. She is wearing solitaire rings of various colors over her gloved fingers and has squeezed into a crimson stretchy evening dress. Her breasts are popping out of the décolletage neckline, and her right leg — all the way to her hip — is exposed by a long slit in her dress. On her feet are pointy red stilettos with heels so high I wonder how she manages to walk in them.

Without sparing me so much as a glance, she picks up a cigarette holder. With practiced ennui, she attaches a cigarette to its tip. Then, fluttering her mascara-drenched lashes, she turns to me.

"Do you have a light, darling?" she asks.

My blood freezes. Who is this woman?

"No, I don't," I say, determined to keep communication with her to a minimum.

"That's okay, darling," she says. "Thanks anyway."

Opening her handbag, which looks like a tiny mother-of-pearl pillbox, she takes out a lighter and proceeds to light her cigarette. Then, pursing her lips, she starts to make perfect smoke rings and sends them, one after another, my way.

With my mouth agape, I watch this strange creature.

"You don't recognize me, right?" she says in a half-velvety, half- naughty voice, like Rita Hayworth in Gilda. "Of course, that is very normal. When did you ever recognize me?"

She leans forward, exposing the deep cleavage of her breasts. I avert my gaze, feeling uneasy. Has this woman no shame?

"But, darling, I am not a stranger. I am you. I'm a member of the Choir of Discordant Voices. You expressed the wish to make peace with your body and I gladly took that as an invitation. So here I am."

"But who exactly are you?" It is all I can come up with.

"My name is Blue Belle Bovary."

"That sounds so—" I say, looking for a word that won't offend her.

"Poetic?" she offers.

"Well, yeah. It alliterates, sort of," I say.

"Thank you, darling," she says with a wink. "My name is a tribute to Emma Bovary, the woman who did everything in her power to escape the banality and monotony of provincial life."

"Right. . but as you may know, she is also a rather problematic character. I mean, if you consider cheating on your husband, telling endless lies and dying in agony by swallowing arsenic a problem."

"Don't worry," she says. "Better to live with passion than to die of boredom."

She opens her bag again, takes out a compact and deftly powders the tip of her nose. Then she throws a piercing glance in my direction. "I like wearing sensual perfumes, silk clothing, sexy underwear and satin nightgowns. Enchante, darling."

I can feel my face grow hot. "Could you please stop calling me 'darling'?" I say, my voice quivering. "I don't and could never have an inner voice like you. There must be a mistake."

"Oh dear, you are doing that again! You want to cast me back down into the dark abyss of negligence," she says after taking a drag from her cigarette. "I scare the hell out of you, don't I?"

"Why would I be scared of you?" I ask.

"Otherwise why do you always pose like you do in photos? In every interview you give, you appear guarded and serious. Your face scrunched, your gaze dreamy and distant. The contemplative-writer pose. Ugh!"

"Hey, wait a minute," I say.

Yet even as I try to object, I remember an adept analysis once made by Erica Jong. She said it was not that hard today for women writers to finish or publish their works. The real difficulty for us was to be taken seriously. Jong believed that the biased attitude toward female writers became even more visible in literary reviews. "I have never seen a review of a woman writer in which her sex was not mentioned in some way." I knew this to be true. In Turkey, a female writer can publish as many books as she wants, and yet it always requires a long struggle and much more work for a woman to be taken seriously by the conventional literary establishment.

"Why not wear fire-red lipstick, flowery dresses, and show a bit of skin? Would your writing career decline? Would you be less a woman of letters? You're terrified of being a Body-Woman. Tell me, why are you so afraid of me, darling?"

Words desert me.

"Unlike you, I am a great fan of everything bodily and sensual. I adore the sweet pleasures bestowed on us mere mortals. After all, I am a Scorpio. Hedonism is my motto in life. I enjoy my womanhood," she raves on. "But because of those boorish Thumbelinas, I have been censored, silenced, suppressed!"

A wave of the purest panic rolls over me. I break into a sweat.

"Of course you're sweating," she says, as she cocks her head to one side. "You always dress up like Madame Onion, layer upon layer of clothing. If you wore something light and skimpy, you'd feel so much better."

Could she be right, I wonder. Maybe I did somehow turn myself into Madame Onion. A woman who refuses to draw attention to her Body because she wants to be respected for her Brain, who dresses up in layers when she goes out in public. I always hide myself behind clothes, using them like armor. And whenever I pose for an interview, I make sure I don't smile too much, in order to not be taken lightly in a male-dominated environment. I try to look damn serious, and, often, older than I am.

"Now, those novels of yours. ." mutters Blue Belle Bovary as she smoothes on a papaya hand cream — like an odalisque in an Orientalist painting.

"What's with my novels?"

"Oh, nothing, it's just that sometimes I get the impression that you female writers can't write about sexuality as freely as male writers do. Your sex scenes are always short, almost nonexistent. You know how, in the old movies, when a couple was about to make love, the camera would drift off to the side? Well, that is precisely how you women write about sexuality. Your pens drift off the page when you run into a sex scene!"

"That's so not true," I protest. "There are plenty of women writers who write lavishly about eroticism and sexuality!"

"Yes, darling, but I'm not talking about romantic or erotic novels," she says. "Just because I said I like satin and desire doesn't mean I'm ignorant. Obviously I'm aware that most of the writers in these genres are women. But that is hardly the topic. I'm not talking about those kinds of books."

Standing up, she flicks her hair with a quick toss of her head. "I'm talking about highbrow literature here. No offense, darling, but the number of women novelists who can write bluntly about sexuality is slim to none."

"There must be a way," I say, still not fully convinced.

"Oh, there is," she says with an impish smile. "Female novelists can write freely about sex only under three conditions."

"Which are?"

"The first condition is lesbianism. If the woman writer is lesbian and open about it, what does she have to fear? Lesbian writers tend to be better at writing about the body than your lot."

While Blue Belle Bovary continues with her monologue, I find myself growing increasingly captive to her silky voice and exaggerated gestures. It is too late to wonder where this conversation is going. Instead I ask, "And why do you think that is?"

"Probably because since they are already stigmatized, they can speak about sensitive subjects without fear of stigma. This makes them more interesting and sincere."

Of this I know a good example. The American writer Rita Mae Brown's groundbreaking novel Rubyfruit Jungle came out in the 1970s and challenged the mainstream society's approach to not only sex and sexuality but also lesbianism. Another example is Tipping the Velvet by the British novelist Sarah Waters, who calls her books "lesbo historical romps."

"The second condition, darling, is age. When you are an 'old woman writer' in the eyes of society, you are free to write about sex as much as you want. Old women are thought to be above nature. They can talk about sexuality to their heart's content and it will be called wisdom."

Alexandra Kollontai comes to mind — Russian revolutionary, social theorist, writer. Though she wrote passionately all her life, criticizing bourgeois moral values, celebrating love and sexuality as positive forces in life, in her older age she expressed herself even more unreservedly about such topics. Kollontai defended the economic, social and sexual emancipation of women — views that did not make her popular among the ruling elite. She developed her theory on non- possessive love and sexuality in her novel Red Love and a controversial essay titled "Make Way for the Winged Eros," which was bitterly criticized by the leading figures of the Communist regime.

In a charmingly honest and compelling essay for The New York Times, Barbara Kingsolver says she used to write the shortest sex scenes ever— mostly by means of a space break. However, after two children and reaching the age forty, she dared to write an "unchaste novel," breaking free.

"And the third condition?" I ask.

"Or else, you have to be reckless — ready to be the talk of the town, to be grain for the gossip mills. You have to be brazen enough so as not to care what people will think of you when they read your passages on sex."

I think of what Erica Jong did in Fear of Flying. Once she said to a journalist that she had accepted fear as an inseparable part of life, especially the fear of change. But this acknowledgment had not held her back: "I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: Turn back."

Blue Belle Bovary pauses in case I have anything to add, and when she sees that I don't, she goes on, just as fervently.

"As for you, I am sorry to say you don't fulfill any of these conditions. Seriously, darling, you are in some kind of a fix. You never write openly about the body. Of course, I am the one who bears the brunt. My entire existence is censored!"

She could have a point. But there is something she doesn't recognize. It's not only me or us female writers who as a matter of self- protection shy away from the depiction of graphic sexuality in our books. The same goes for female academics, female reporters, female politicians and those women who tread into the business world. We all are a little desexualized, a little defeminized. We can't carry our bodies comfortably in a society that is so bent against women. In order to be a "brain" in the public realm, we control our "bodies."

I remember Halide Edip Adivar — Ottoman Turkish feminist, political activist and novelist, the diva of Turkish literature. Though she passionately believed in gender equality and worked to improve women's lives, Adivar often reiterated the good-woman/bad-woman dichotomy in her novels and desexualized the former. Her female characters were intelligent, strong-willed and so modest they did not undress even in front of their husbands. Rabia — the leading protagonist in her novel The Clown and His Daughter—changed into her nightgown inside the closet, and then came to bed where her husband awaited her.

In traditional Muslim society, where Rabia serves as an ideal woman, women can meet our bodies only inside closets or behind closed doors. The same impulse is reflected in our storytelling. More often than we care to admit, we women writers, especially those of us from non-Western backgrounds, are uncomfortable about writing on sexuality.

Could I ever be like Blue Belle Bovary? Could I wear ostentatious lipstick, teeny-tiny skirts and low-cut necklines like she does? Could I flip my hair as if I were in a shampoo commercial? Probably not. Two steps forward, and one of my heels would surely get stuck in a crack and break. I would never make it.

"Have you ever tried being sexy, darling?" she asks, as if she has read my thoughts.

It is a provocative question, when you come to think of it.

That same evening I ask Eyup to meet me for dinner at an elegant fish restaurant by the Bosphorus. I have never been there before, but it was highly recommended by a friend who called the place "as chic as Kate Moss."

Eyup goes there at seven p.m. and starts to wait for me. Actually, I, too, am at the restaurant, except I am hiding in the bathroom, trying to muster the courage to walk out.

How did I end up here, in hiding? I went to a hairdresser this afternoon and had my hair dyed, my nails manicured and my eyebrows plucked. It was fun for the first ten minutes, but then I got so bored I could have run out with a towel on my head and my hands dripping soapy water. There are very few things to read at a salon, only hairstyle magazines that contain hundreds of photos but roughly only twenty words.

Yet I made it. And here I am, my hair nicely shaped, my face shining under layers of makeup, and though I did not dare to wear the crimson dress Blue Belle Bovary was wearing, I managed to get into a tight, long gown — black, of course — with a feather boa.

Thirty-five minutes later I walk out of the ladies' room, not because I am ready but because there is an increasing number of women coming in and going out of the restroom, all of whom stop and eye me with a curiosity they don't bother to hide. So I leave my shelter and, trying not to trip on the hem of my dress or break my four-inch heels, ask the waiter to take me to the table where Eyup is waiting patiently, having eaten three rolls of bread and half of the butter.

Under the inquiring eyes of the customers, the waiter and I cross the restaurant from one end to the other, he marching steadily, me hobbling behind, totally out of sync but with the same unnaturally serious expression carved on our faces.

Eyup looks up and sees me coming. His eyes pop open, his jaw slightly drops as if he has just witnessed wizardry.

"I warn you, my self-confidence is pretty low now, so please don't say anything bad," I say as soon as I sit.

"I wasn't going to—" he says, suppressing a smile.

I feel the need to explain a little bit. "I am trying to resolve my internal conflicts, you know. I need to bury the hatchet and sign a cease-fire with my body."

He bites his bottom lip but can't help it, a chuckle escapes. "Is that why you are dressed up like this?"

That is when it occurs to me to look at the other customers more carefully. Though it is an elegant restaurant to be sure, posh and pricey, it is clear to me and everyone else that I am overdressed. I look like a wannabe actress who lost her way on the red carpet.

"Maybe I should ask for a shawl or—" I mumble, desperately needing something to hide my cleavage, and these silly feathers. I eye the tablecloth — but it wouldn't do. It's much too thick, too white.

"Don't worry," Eyup says. "Just sit back. Take a deep breath. I hear the butter isn't bad."

That's what I do. I forget all my internal struggles, those I know well and those I am yet to see, and enjoy the moment. It is the best butter I have ever tasted.

In Praise of Selfishness

Ayn Rand is one of those rare female writers who has dedicated readers all over the globe, whose fame is of the lasting kind. In addition to being a novelist, she was also an essayist, a playwright, a screenwriter and a philosopher. Since the 1940s numerous developments have contributed to the proliferation of her philosophy worldwide, the recent financial crisis being one of them. She is among the most loved and most hated writers in the literary world.

Born in 1905 in St. Petersburg to a Russian Jewish couple, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum was a smart, gifted child. She had little interest in the world of her girlfriends and female relatives, preferring reading books to playing with dolls or worrying about her looks. In 1926, after graduating from the University of Petrograd with a degree in history, she moved to the United States with little money in her pocket and an urgent need to reinvent herself. She never returned to her country and never saw her family again. As if cutting a ravel of yarn, she thrust aside the past in no uncertain terms. Shortly after, she renamed herself, taking her surname from the typewriter she used— Remington Rand. "Ayn Rand" was the name she gave herself, the name with which she was reborn in the New World.

Rand was a passionate anticommunist, but, then, she was passionate about all her views. She married an actor named Charles Francis O'Connor and wrote many low-budget Hollywood screenplays. Though her first semiautobiographical novel, We the Living, had attracted considerable attention, her real breakthrough came in 1943 with her best-selling novel The Fountainhead, which took her seven years to write. Her magnum opus was Atlas Shrugged, a science-fiction romance and a novel of ideas. It was here that she introduced what she saw as a new moral philosophy — the morality of rational self-interest.

Not a great fan of Kant, she called him "the most evil man in mankind's history." Her response to those who accused her of caricaturizing the fountainhead of Western philosophy was even harsher: "I didn't caricature Kant. Nobody can do that. He did it himself."

In time her name became synonymous with individualism, capitalism and rationalism. Firmly believing that a person had to choose his values by using his reason, she defended the individual's rights against the community and the state, and opposed all sorts of governmental interference (hence her popularity today among those who oppose bank bailouts).

"No man can use his brain to think for another," Ayn Rand was fond of saying. "All functions of the body and spirit are private. Therefore they cannot be shared or transferred." Strikingly, she regarded "reason" not only as the basis for our individual choices but also as the foundation of love between opposite sexes. Even physical attraction, for her, was the working of the brain. Love, sex and desire might seem to be selfish if left untamed by society, but despite that, or perhaps precisely because of it, they rendered the human individual an object worthy of attraction and appreciation. As it was maintained in The Fountainhead, "To say 'I love you,' one must know first how to say the 'I.'"

Her views on female sexuality could be regarded as problematic, to say the least. On the one hand, she was one of the few female novelists who could write about carnal desires and sexual fetishism without self- censure. On the other hand, her tone was visibly discriminatory at times, and the "beautiful woman" in her works was often "blond, fair- skinned and long-legged" — the type of woman she was not and could never be. In almost all the sex scenes throughout her novels, there is a recurrent pattern: The woman first resists, the man insists, sometimes to the point of using physical force, and finally the woman surrenders.

Never a compliant personality, Ayn Rand loved to scandalize feminists with her views on women, especially her comments on how a female should admire her male. Ironically, such was not the pattern in her own marriage.

Increasingly over the years, Rand's husband, Frank O'Connor, was overshadowed by his wife's fame. Not an exceptionally talented actor or one who was popular with producers, he was often unemployed. From the moment they got married, the fact that she was the more famous and successful of the two was a burden on him. As if making fun of his predicament, he would often introduce himself as "Mr. Ayn Rand."

In 1951, the year after they moved to New York, Ayn Rand met a nineteen-year-old psychology student named Nathaniel Branden. He appreciated, admired and, perhaps, feared her. Such was his adoration that he founded an institution to spread her ideas far and wide. What started as an intellectual attraction soon turned physical. It was a kind of magnetic pull that intensified between a middle-aged, celebrated and intelligent woman and a young, ambitious and emotional man. Without hiding the situation from her husband, Rand gradually built a love triangle, situating herself right at the center. Atlas Shrugged was dedicated to both Branden and O'Connor.

Though it was a complicated scheme that made no one happy, it lasted fourteen years. When Ayn Rand turned sixty-one, Nathaniel left her for a young model. The famous writer who perceived even a sexual relationship fundamentally as an "intellectual exchange," could not possibly come to grips with her long-term lover's choice of "body" over "mind."

She never forgave him. Perhaps his renouncement of her philosophy hurt her more than the physical abandonment. In a bitter article in The Objectivist, she announced to everyone that they were on separate paths. They never saw each other again.

Ayn Rand was one of those female writers who chose, from the very start, not to have children. Just as children did not play a part in her life, they did not factor into her novels either.[11] She was criticized for not writing about children and not even trying to understand them, but there is nothing in her notes to make us think that she paid this any heed. The only children she ever wanted to have were her books.

She was a writer with scintillating ideas and a woman of spectacular contradictions — as is her legacy. It is no coincidence that even after her death, both those who admired her and those who disliked her have dug in their heels. Though she defended capitalism ardently, in her personal life she preferred to have relationships that bordered on totalitarianism. In theory she was on the side of individual freedom and critical thinking. But in reality, she absolutely hated being criticized; she cast out and held in contempt anyone who did not agree with her. She expected obedience and loyalty from her inner circle. Despite the fact that she was a headstrong woman, and that her novels were full of independent female characters, she argued that a woman had to surrender herself to her man. The fact that she did no such thing in her private life was a different matter.

Always a fighter, when she got cancer she didn't want anyone to know about it. She saw even her illness as a mistake that needed to be corrected. And she did "correct it," managing to beat the cancer. For her it was another victory of the brain over the body. A confirmation of her viewpoint.

But in 1982, she suddenly and unexpectedly died of a heart attack.

Today, literature enthusiasts from all around the world post their views on the Internet by asking questions such as "What kind of a psycho would I turn out to be if Ayn Rand had been my mother?" or "What would my life be like if I were married to Ayn Rand?"

Maybe they are right. Ayn Rand hadn't been born to be a mother or a wife. If she had been a mother she would very likely have been a dominant one, seeing each of her children as a different scientific experiment. But perhaps we are all badly mistaken. She may have found motherhood to be a "wonderfully intense intellectual excitement" — the way she described school and classes as a young girl in her diary. I am curious to know what she would have done when her child turned into a rebellious teenager.

It is equally plausible that early on she realized that in the mother- child relationship, the child always wins. Perhaps that was the real reason why she didn't want children. Ayn Rand liked to win.

Giving birth to books was enough for her.

When the Grand Bazaar Smiles

Exactly a year later we are sitting in a cafe at the Grand Bazaar, Eyup and I.

The finger-women are nowhere to be seen and I suspect each is shopping in a separate store. After Mount Holyoke I was a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I taught courses in women's studies, and slowly I started writing my new novel, The Bastard of Istanbul.

Now it is summer again. I am back in the city. We are sitting here, my love and I, between silver bracelets, smoke pipes, carpets and brass lamps that remind me of Aladdin's. A rumpus is going on around us. Young men pushing carts loaded with merchandise, old men playing backgammon, merchants haggling in every language known to humankind, tourists struggling to keep pushy sellers at bay, apprentices carrying tea glasses on silver trays, cats meowing in front of restaurants, children feeding the cats when their parents are not looking — everyone is in their own world.

Suddenly, Eyup holds my hand and asks, his voice raised over the din in the background, "Honey, I was just wondering. Are you still against marriage?"

"I certainly am," I say with conviction, but then add, "theoretically."

"And what exactly does theoretically mean?" he asks sweetly.

"It means, generally speaking. As an abstract idea. As a philosophical model—" I try to explain.

"In plain language, please?" he says, swirling the spoon in his tea glass.

"I mean, I am against human beings getting married, at least most of them, because they really shouldn't, but that said—"

"That said?" he repeats.

"I am not against me marrying you, for instance."

Eyup laughs — his laughter like a sword being pulled out of a silken sheath before the final thrust.

"I think you just made the most roundabout marriage proposal that a man has ever received from a woman," he says. "Did I?"

He nods mischievously. "You can take it back, of course."

"But I don't," I say, because that is how I feel. "I am asking you to marry me."

The Grand Bazaar doubles up laughing at my endless contradictions, jingling its wind chimes, clinking its teaspoons and tinkling its bells. With a record such as mine, who am I to judge Ayn Rand's inconsistencies?

Eyup's eyes grow large and sympathetic. "It is a joke."

"But I am damn serious," I say and wait, hardly breathing.

His eyes rake my eyes for a long moment, as if searching for something, and then his face brightens, like the sun reflecting on a silver dome.

"And I gladly accept," he says. "I do."

Oscar Wilde once said, "Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious." But if there is anyone who is tired here, most probably it is I. I've grown tired of my own biases. I've grown tired of failing to see the beauty in small things, of being against marriage and domestic life, of wearing myself thin, of carrying around suitcases from city to city and country to country.

But will I stop commuting when I tie the knot?

In English the word matrimony comes from the Latin word for "mother." The Turkish word for it, evlilik, is connected with "setting up a house." Laying down roots is a prerequisite for marriage.

"You know I have a problem staying in one place," I say guiltily.

"I noticed," Eyup says.

"Is this not a problem for you?" I ask, afraid to hear the answer.

"Honey, I stopped expecting anything normal from you the day you quoted Neil Gaiman as your motto on love," he says.

"I see."

He bows his head and adds in a softer tone, "We will do the best we can. You will be the nomad, I will be the settler. You will bring me magic fruits from lands afar, I will grow oranges for you in the backyard. We will find a balance."

I turn my head. Genuine kindness always makes my eyes tear, which I can hide, I think, but it is a different story with my nose, which reddens instantly. Eyup hands me a napkin and asks, "And since you are the worldwide traveler, tell me, where on earth would you like to say 'I do'?"

"Somewhere where brides are not expected to wear white," is my answer.

Using his teaspoon as a baton to emphasize his point, Eyup says, "That leaves us with three options: a nunnery, preferably medieval; a bar frequented by a gang of rockers on motorbikes; or the set for a movie on Johnny Cash. These are the places where you can wear a black bridal gown without anyone finding it odd."

I briefly consider each option, and then ask, "How about Berlin?"

"What about Berlin?"

"I have been offered a fellowship by the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. If I accept, I will be there for a while next year."

"Hmm, makes sense to me," he says, suddenly serious. "We will be like East and West Berlin, remarkably different and previously independent but now surprisingly united."

Little Women Big Hearts

One of my favorite fictional female characters as a young girl was Jo in Little Women. Jo the writer. Jo the dreamer. Jo the romantic, adventuresome, idealist and independent sister. When her sister Amy burned her manuscript — her only copy — in an act of pure revenge, I was horrified. It took me a long time to forgive Amy — even though Jo herself wasn't that innocent; after all, she had not invited Amy to a play and almost drowned her while ice-skating. At any rate, the story of the four March sisters during the American Civil War was so unlike my life as the child of a Turkish single mother, and yet many things were familiar — absent father, struggling with financial ups and downs, nonconformity to gender roles. . That was the power of Louisa May Alcott's words, to create a universal saga shared by millions everywhere. It takes no little magic to "zoom" a story written in the late nineteenth century to readers across the globe more than a hundred years later.

A woman ahead of her time, a writer who held Goethe dear, Louisa May Alcott, too, favored Jo and was a bit like her: full of energy, ideas and motivation. The stories told in Little Women were highly reminiscent of her familial life as the second of four sisters. She keenly observed the people she met, absorbed the dialogues she heard and then incorporated them all in her stories. Always planning new books, living the plots in her head and scribbling whenever the inspiration struck, she was determined to earn her own money from writing.

"I never had a study," she once said. "Any paper and pen will do, and an old atlas on my knee is all I want."

When Little Women was published it brought its author fame and success beyond her modest expectations. Alcott wrote intensely, sometimes forgetting to eat or sleep. That her readers and critics wanted to see a sequel to the story must have both motivated and limited her. She had originally planned that Jo would not get married, earning her bread by the sweat of her own brow, but her publisher was of a different mind. Under constant pressure from him and others, a male character was introduced into Jo's life: Professor Bhaer. And the reader knew Jo was torn between two impulses — her sense of responsibility toward her family and her desire to nurture her individuality and freedom. "I'll try and be what he loves to call me, 'a little woman,' and not be rough and wild, but do my duty here instead of wanting to be somewhere else. . " Struggling with her family's expectations of her, Jo eventually chose marriage and domestic life instead of a career in writing — a drastic decision Alcott herself would have never made.

Alcott regarded the matrimonial institution with suspicion. It was clear to her that women who wanted to stand on their feet would have a hard time adapting to conjugal life. "Liberty is a better husband than love to many of us," she said, insinuating that sometimes the only way for a woman writer to find freedom was to remain a spinster.

Her sister May — a creative, prolific painter who had chosen to live abroad — was happily married. She seemed like a woman who had achieved it all — a successful career and a good marriage. Louisa Alcott compared her loneliness with her sister's fulfillment, saying, "she always had the cream of things and deserved it." Unfortunately, May died shortly after giving birth to a baby girl. Her last wish was to send the baby — named Louisa May after her aunt and nicknamed Lulu — to her Aunt Louisa to be raised by her.

So it was that Louisa Alcott, who never married, found herself raising the daughter of her sister. She gave her full love to this child and even wrote short stories for her, thus creating what later was to be named "Lulu's Library."

There is a wonderful passage in the second volume of the Little Women series, which was titled Good Wives, where Alcott describes Jo's, and I believe her own, urge to write fiction. I think it is one of the best descriptions ever written about the creative process and I can't help but smile each time I read it: "She did not think herself a genius by any means, but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh."[12]

Always a hardworking writer and a Chekhovian by nature, she said, "I don't want to live if I can't be of use." That's how she died, when she couldn't write anymore due to old age, in Boston in 1888.

Mary Ann Evans, born on November 22, 1819, was a shy, introspective and emotional child who loved to read and study. The story of her life is one of transformation — a journey that turned her into the restless, headstrong and outspoken writer known to everyone as George Eliot. When she was thirty-two years old, she fell in love with the philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes. He was a married man, but his was an "open marriage" — even by today's standards. His wife, Agnes, had an affair with another man, and when she bore his child, Lewes was happy to claim the baby as his own. Though the couple remained legally married, they had ceased to see each other as husband and wife. Mary Ann and George lived together. She adopted his sons as her own. It wasn't unheard-of in Victorian society for people to have relations outside of wedlock, but their openness about their love was simply scandalous.

At a time when women writers were few, she not only wrote fiction to her heart's content but also became the assistant editor of the Westminster Review. She called herself Marian Evans for a while, molding her name, seeing how it felt to have a masculine moniker. In her attempt to distance herself from the female novelists who produced romances, she decided that she needed a male pen name. To honor her love for Lewes, she adopted his name, George, and then picked out Eliot because it fit well with the first name.

In 1856 Lewes sent a story titled "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton" to his publisher, claiming that it was written by a "clerical friend." The publisher wrote back saying he would publish the story and congratulating this new writer for being "worthy of the honors of print and pay." Thus began a new stage in Eliot's literary career. She wanted to remain incognito as long as she could, enjoying the advantages of being anonymous, and thereby unreachable. Her nom de plume enabled her to transcend Victorian gender roles, and carve for herself a greater zone of existence.

One evening at a party, Lewes read aloud a spellbinding story by Eliot and asked his guests to guess what kind of a person the author was. All of them came to the conclusion that the story was written by a man — a Cambridge man, well educated, a clergyman married with children. (Similar reactions were received when Eliot's stories were sent to other writers. Only Charles Dickens thought the author had to be a woman. Only he got it right.)

I love to imagine this scene: in a high-ceilinged apartment, a dozen or so guests sitting comfortably on cushioned sofas and armchairs, sipping their drinks, eyeing one another furtively as they listen to a story by an unknown author, their eyes rapt in the flames in the fireplace, their minds miles away as they try to guess the gender of the writer, and fail.

In her popular masterpiece Middlemarch, which Virginia Woolf famously described as "one of the only English novels written for grown-up people," Eliot created an impressive character named Dorothea. She is intelligent, passionate, generous and ambitious — in all probability a representation of the author herself. It is a constant disappointment to feminist scholars that neither Dorothea nor Eliot's other female characters ever achieved the sort of success or freedom that she enjoyed. But does a woman writer need to create fictional role models to inspire her female readers? Like all good storytellers, Eliot found pleasure in combining challenge and compassion. "If art does not enlarge men's sympathies it does nothing morally," she wrote. Contrary to the common belief, she wasn't someone who despised all things deemed to be womanly. Though she had masculine features, a cherished male pen name, a certain bias toward women writers and chutzpah that was, at the time, deemed fit for a man, she also enjoyed her femininity to the fullest. It was this unusual blend that mesmerized those who met her in person.

After the death of Lewes, she married a man twenty years herjunior with whom she shared common intellectual ground. Like Zelda Fitzgerald she fell in love with brains first; like Ayn Rand she could be imposing in her private affairs. She died shortly afterward in 1880, at the age of sixty-one. She was buried in Highgate Cemetery in an area reserved for religious dissenters — even in death, not quite fitting in.

Louisa May Alcott and George Eliot, two contemporary women writers with a common passion for storytelling, one of them regarded as the voice of feminine writing, and the other known as a defeminized author — both equally unconventional in their ways. They remind me, across centuries and cultures, that there are other paths for a woman than conventional marriage and motherhood. Perhaps marriage is less a legal arrangement or social institution than a book awaiting interpretation. Every reader brings his or her own gaze to the text, and ends up reading the story differently.

One Blue, One Pink

Two years after saying "I do" in Berlin, I'm shaking like a leaf on the bathroom floor in Istanbul. The tiles on the walls are painted emerald and streaked with dark green ivies that suit your mood perfectly when you feel like a leaf.

I had spent the last year and a half teaching at the University of Arizona as a full-time tenure-track professor in Near Eastern studies. Moving from chilly Ann Arbor to sunny Tucson required a radical change in my wardrobe, which, thank God, consisted of two suitcases. During this entire time I had been commuting like crazy between Tucson and Istanbul, and now here I am, sitting with my back to the bathtub, taking deep breaths to calm my thumping heart.

In my hand there is a tiny object. It feels odd to attribute so much importance to an object this small and plastic, but that is how it is. On the back of the box it came in it reads: "If two lines appear on the screen it shows pregnancy. One single blue line indicates lack of it."

But at the moment I avoid looking at the screen, focusing instead on every other trivial detail, such as the date of expiration and the place of manufacture. It is made in China. That is why it cost me one-third of the price of the other home pregnancy test kits at the drugstore. I wonder how reliable it is. Doesn't it say in the newspapers that Chinese toys can cause allergies? How about Chinese test kits, could they give false positives?

More curious about the reliability of the product in my hand than my own physical condition, my gaze slides down to the small white screen. Relief. Oh, good. There is only one line. Blue. I wasn't ready for the second line. I can go now. But there is a nagging suspicion at the back of my mind, and something tells me not to hurry, not so soon. Then, just as I feared, taking its sweet time, the pink line appears.

Why doesn't the pink line come first and then the blue one? Or why don't they appear simultaneously? There would be less anticipation that way and far less apprehension. Have the Chinese manufacturers designed it this way to make it more exciting for women?

It takes me a few minutes to stop quarreling with the Chinese manufacturers and acknowledge my situation. Slowly but surely my mind recognizes what my heart has already accepted: I am pregnant.

Now what? I need to talk with someone but whom? The first thought that pops into my head is to consult with the finger-women. Yet I quickly abandon the idea. I can't tell them anything yet. Especially not Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, who, I fear, will tear the walls down. Nor Miss Highbrowed Cynic, I definitely can't tell her either. Even talking to Dame Dervish sounds like a lame idea. She will not give me advice to solve this predicament; instead she'll want me to figure it out on my own. But I am far too panicked for that.

Who can I speak to if I can't speak to them?

That's when I recall Mama Rice Pudding. She is the only one among the Thumbelinas who knows anything about babies and pregnancies. But where is she now? How is she doing? I haven't spoken to her since that night under the Brain Tree. I need to see her urgently. But will she talk to me? I'm sure she is still quite upset and will not respond if I send her an invitation. I guess I should go and find her.

Once again, I take a flickering candle and descend into the labyrinth of my soul. Again, I find it very confusing down here, where there are no road signs, no traffic lights. I don't know where Mama Rice Pudding lives and can't imagine what her house looks like.

After an hour of toiling I find her house. It is made out of a milk carton, complete with lace curtains and pots filled with tulips, carnations and hyacinths on its window ledge. I press the doorbell. It chirps a merry tune of singing birds.

"What do you want?" she asks when she opens the door and sees me.

She is wearing a rose-patterned dress and has her hair done up with multihued clips. She seems to have gained a bit more weight. On her feet are fuchsia-colored slippers with pompoms. She wears a red and white polka-dotted kitchen apron that has "Super Cook" written across the top. A divine smell wafts from inside the house. Something sweet and fruity.

"I want to apologize for breaking your heart," I say meekly. "I don't know how to make it up to you, and I fear that now it might be too late. It is just that there is something urgent we need to talk about. May I come inside?"

"Sorry," she says frostily. "I'm kind of in a rush and don't have time for you."

She looks over her shoulder toward her kitchen counter, as if she were about to slam the door in my face. Perhaps she is.

"I have food on the stove," she says. "I'm making beef kebab with artichokes. It is a special recipe that requires maximum attention. I'm also preparing strawberry marmalade. If it boils for too long the sugar will crystallize. I need to go back to my work."

"Wait, please."

Words get clogged in my throat, but I manage to utter an intelligible sentence: "Look, I don't know what to do and I'm scared. I need someone to talk to, but the other finger-women won't understand. Only you can help me."

"And why is that?" she asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Because I am pregnant."

The door springs wide open, a shriek of delight pierces the air and out runs Mama Rice Pudding, her face blossoming with life, her arms open wide. She jumps up and down with joy. I have never seen anyone receive news with so much glee, and for a second, I fear she has lost her mind.

"Congratulations!" she yells, staring at me wide-eyed, like a child at a circus.

"Listen to me, please. My mind is so confused I don't know what to do or how to feel. I guess I wasn't prepared for this, you know."

"Great! Fabulous! Oh, bless you!" she yells again. "Come on in, let me give you some food. You need to eat more now."

During the next hour I do nothing but gobble. Though she cannot convince me to eat meat, she makes me devour a generous slice of raspberry cheesecake, and then pushes into my mouth homemade pastries and spoonful’s of marmalade. When she is fully convinced that I cannot possibly eat another morsel she leans back, suddenly serious.

"Well, well. So this is the way of things," she says. "So you want my help?"

I don't like the change in her voice, but I nod all the same.

"All right, I will help you. But there is one condition."

"Which is?"

"There will be a change in the political regime. We are no longer living under martial law, is that understood? We are done with the coup d'etat."

"Sure, of course," I say like a good sheep. "I have always wanted the Choir of Discordant Voices to move toward a full-fledged democracy. This will be the beginning of a new era."

"About that. ." she says, suddenly having a coughing fit.

"Did something get stuck in your throat?"

Mama Rice Pudding gathers herself upright. "I need to make something very clear," she says. "I am not advocating democracy here. Actually, I want to go back to a monarchy again, except this time I will be the queen."

She must be joking. I'm about to scoff but something in her eyes stops me midway.

"Was there democracy when I was being oppressed?" she asks. "Why should I condone a democratic state now that I'm in charge? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Time to hoot my toot!"

Suddenly I find her irritating, almost scary.

"Go and make me a golden crown," she says. "Those two crazies of yours are no longer in power. I'll have them rot in Alcatraz!"

"There is an Alcatraz inside me?" I ask.

"No, but I will build one," she roars. "Finally the tables have turned! Je suis I'etat![13]"

On my way back, I stop by Miss Highbrowed Cynic's house and break the news to her. She listens without a word, her face as pale as a white sheet. Together we go to Milady Ambitious Chekhovian's apartment and warn her about the upcoming takeover.

"You can't just get rid of us just like that," says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, the strength in her voice missing.

"You can't do this to us," repeats Miss Highbrowed Cynic like a nervous parrot.

"There is nothing I can do," I remark. " This pregnancy has changed everything. As of this moment the coup is over."

First there was an oligarchy, then it was a coup d'etat, inside me.

Now a monarchy has come to the Land of Me.