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

Pregnancy Journal

Today Mama Rice Pudding has ascended to the throne. She walks around with a crown on her head, and in her hand she carries a scepter no larger than a matchstick. To look taller, she has taken to wearing high heels. When she needs to go from one place to another, I carry her on a palanquin. The timid, rosy-cheeked woman I met on the plane has vanished. In her place is a tyrant.

Her Majesty the Queen's first act has been to create a new constitution. The first clause reads: "Motherhood is Holy and Honorable, and it should be treated as such." Unquestionable, untouchable, unchangeable.

As of now, even the tiniest criticism against marriage or motherhood will be punished by law. Simone de Beauvoir's books have been seized and burned in a huge bonfire. Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Anai's Nin, Zelda Fitzgerald and Sevgi Soysal are strictly banned. I am not allowed to read any one of them during my pregnancy.

There is only one book Mama Rice Pudding allows me to keep nearby.

"Read Little Women. It will remind you of the importance of familial ties and thus prepare you for motherhood," she says.

"But I read that a long time ago," I complain.

"Just go over it again, then."

I understand that for Mama Rice Pudding there is no difference between reading a book and knitting a sweater. Just as you can knit the same pattern over and over, make the same recipe for years on end, you can also be content with a few books on your bookshelf and "go over them" again and again.

This week I have learned that "morning sickness" need not be in the mornings. It can happen anytime.

"Mama Rice Pudding, I feel tired and sleepy all the time — as if I've been carrying a sack of stones," I say. "How will I bear it?"

She hits her scepter on the ground with a thud so loud that the earth trembles under my feet.

"You will bear it just like our mothers and grandmothers and great- grandmothers did. What of the peasant woman who gives birth in the fields after a hard day of work? She cuts the umbilical cord with any available instrument and without a single complaint goes back to hoeing the crop."

Do I look like a heroic peasant woman? I can't even tell barley from buckwheat, but I dare not remind her of this.

"Be grateful that you haven't come to this world as an elephant," says Mama the Queen. "If you were a female elephant you would be pregnant for twenty-two months! Thank your lucky stars!"

Sad for not being a peasant woman but happy for not being an elephant: That is the sum of my mood this week.

I am not interested in food, only in snacks. And since most snacks are stuffed with calories, I am afraid I will end up like the plump woman on the steamboat.

In order to snack more healthily I do some shopping: low-fat biscuits, low-fat pretzels, low-fat milk, low-fat yogurt, low-fat cheese — and unsalted rice crackers. When I get home, Mama Rice Pudding jumps off her throne and inspects my grocery bag.

"What is this?"

"Nothing, just a few things to nibble on," I say.

She catapults my bag out the window.

"For shame! You should be embarrassed! No salt, no sugar, low fat, no fat. What is this? Are we running a weight-loss clinic here? Is that Blue Belle Bovary messing with your head? Don't you dare listen to that hussy!"

Befuddled and hurt, I consider how best — or whether — to answer her.

"Your only priority is to eat what is good for the child," she concludes. "So what if your figure changes from size eight to size twenty, who cares?"

My cheeks burn with guilt. Could she be right? Have I put my looks ahead of the health of my child? Her Majesty the Queen teaches me a deep human truth — that motherhood has a pen name: guilt.

Just to be rid of this guilt, I go and eat a huge box of hazelnut cookies. And I don't even like hazelnuts.

On TV Christiane Amanpour interviews AIDS orphans in Africa. The CNN crew has ducked into an adobe hut, placed their cameras on strewn straw. The landscape is harsh, unforgiving. With a napkin in my hand, I watch and cry.

These days, all sorts of things bring me to tears. There is a pair of shoes — faded blue Converse sneakers — that dangles from the electric pole around the corner, and every time I pass by them I feel a sense of sorrow well up inside of me. I wonder who they belonged to. How did they end up there? Rain or shine, they are always there — by themselves, so vulnerable, so alone.

It isn't only the sneakers. Boys bullying one another at the playground, two stray cats fighting over a slice of meat in the garbage, the skinny Kurdish street vendor who sells chestnut kebabs with worms, the neighbor lady who beats her carpet out the window and showers the passersby with dust, the melting icebergs in Antarctica, the polluting of the atmosphere, the quagmire in Palestine, a piece of crushed bread on the ground. Everything, and anything, is so distressing. The world crumbles in my fingers like sandstone in the wind and my days are painted with melancholy.

On the evening news they show a dog — a terrier puppy with brown ears and a white body. It has a huge, dazzling bow around its neck. Its owner is a retired chemistry teacher. As the lady chemist plays the piano, the puppy sits at her heels and begins to howl along.

I watch the scene and my eyes fill with tears.

"Why are you crying again?" asks Eyup, his famous patience wearing slightly thin.

"Poor puppy," I say, sobbing.

"What is poor about that puppy? He is probably better fed than thousands of children who go to bed hungry every night."

"Thousands of children go to bed hungry every night," I repeat, on the verge of tears.

"Oh, God, I should never have opened my mouth," Eyup says softly.

He doesn't understand me. How can I make him see that I feel bad for the puppy? I feel bad for all terriers with dazzling bows around their necks. Our lust for baubles of fame, our inability to cope with mortality, our expulsion from the Garden of Eden — my lungs fill with the heaviness of being a mere human. I can't breathe.

Mama Rice Pudding hands me a box of CDs. "Take these and listen to each of them at least three times," she commands.

I glance at the box and mumble, "But I don't really like opera."

"They aren't for you, they are for the baby," she says as she starts the CD player and turns it up full blast. A second later Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers pours into the room and out into the entire neighborhood.

The rug beater across the street pops her head out of her window and looks left and right trying to figure out where the deep male voice is coming from. Suddenly her face comes apart in terrible recognition that the music is coming from our apartment. Squinting her dark, piercing eyes, she peers through our window into my shivering soul.

"Could you please turn the volume down?" I implore Her Majesty.

"Why? The baby is getting her first taste of culture — and learning French. Do you know that babies can hear sounds while in the womb?"

She puts on another CD. We hear the sound of rain hammering a tin roof, followed by the bleating of goats and the tinkling of bells in the distance.

Aghast, I ask, "What is that?"

"The peaceful sounds of Mother Nature," says Mama Rice Pudding. "It is recorded specially for pregnant women. It has a soothing effect on them. A perfect nondrug sleep aid."

"I'm not having any problems falling asleep; actually I'm sleeping a lot," I say, trying to reason, trying to stay calm.

I don't know about the baby, but these sounds are starting to piss me off. "Birds chirping in an Australian rain forest seem like the perfect sleepless aid if you ask me."

"What do you want to listen to, then?" she asks.

"Punk, postpunk, industrial metal. This is the kind of music I always listened to while writing my novels. I could use a dose of Pearl Jam, Chumbawamba, Bad Religion—"

"No way," she says, scrunching up her face. "Forget all that vulgar noise. You are not making a novel. You are making a baby."

So the entire week, Kuzguncuk — one of Istanbul's most peaceful, oldest districts — reverberates with the sounds of cows mooing, ducks quacking, owls hooting and French arias.

I don't cry as often anymore, but now everything smells strange. Like a hunting dog that's been released into the woods, with my nostrils flaring I spend the day trailing scents: a pinch of ginger in a huge pot of vegetable soup, the whiff of seaweed even when I am miles away from the shore, the odor of pickle juice on a store counter five blocks away. I walk around like Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Patrick Suskind's Perfume.

Of all the scents there is one that makes my stomach turn and has me running in the opposite direction: coconut.

Who would have ever guessed that Istanbul smells of coconuts! It's like the city was built on a tropical island. Coconuts and their cloying aroma are ubiquitous: the sachets that dangle from the rearview mirrors in cabs, the liquid soaps used in public restrooms, the little white flakes that adorn the tops of bakery cakes, the heavy-scented candles decorating coffee shops and restaurants and the promotional cookies supermarkets give out to customers. When did Turkish people become so fond of coconut?

Istanbul is one large coconut cut in half. The Asian side is one half, the European side the other. I can't find anywhere to hide.

We've found out the sex of the baby. It's going to be a girl.

I am happy. Eyup is happy. Mama Rice Pudding is thrilled.

"It is much easier to dress baby girls, and far more fun, too," she says, her eyes brimming.

Female babies are dressed in pale pink, dark pink and fuchsia, while male babies are dressed in dark blue, brown and aquamarine. For little girls you get Barbie dolls and tea sets; for boys, Kalashnikovs and trucks. I wonder if I can raise my daughter differently.

"What is the use of worrying your head over such useless things?" Mama Rice Pudding says when I share my thoughts with her. "Even if you dress your daughter in the color of sapphires or emeralds, the minute she starts school she will embrace pink anyway. She will want to dress up the way her friends and all her favorite characters do. Barbie has a pink house, Dora the Explorer has pink shorts, and Hello Kitty is actually Hello Pink! Why are you trying to swim against the current?"

That same night in my dream I am swimming in a river as pink as cotton candy. I never see colors in my dreams, at least not to my recollection. I find it exciting to have a Technicolor dream, even if it is in pink.

I secretly go to see Miss Highbrowed Cynic. There she is, as always, in a city as bustling with ideas as New York, behind an ornamented iron door, her walls still covered with posters of Che Guevara and Marlon Brando. She is wearing another one of her fringy hippie dresses. A necklace with large blue and purple beads hangs around her neck.

"Your necklace is pretty," I say.

"Do you like it? It was made by the villagers living on the outskirts of Machu Picchu. I bought it to support the locals against the juggernaut of global capitalism."

I can't help but smile. I've missed Miss Highbrowed Cynic — the only finger-woman I know who can go from talking about a simple necklace to analyzing corporate globalization in one breath.

"So, how's the pregnancy going?" she asks.

"Good, I saw the baby in an ultrasound. It's a wonderful feeling."

"Hmm," says Miss Highbrowed Cynic.

"But I feel a little empty inside. I'm always sleeping, crying, eating or smelling coconuts." My voice quivers slightly. "The truth is, I long for the depth of our conversations."

Miss Highbrowed Cynic looks down at her feet as if they are culpable for the situation.

"You and I used to talk about novels, movies, exhibitions and political philosophy. You would bitch about everything, chuck dirt at everyone, criticize cultural hegemony. . I've been disconnected from books. Except for Little Women, that is."

Miss Highbrowed Cynic lights a cigarette, but seeing my face, she puts it out immediately. She remembers I have quit smoking. "Did you really miss me?" she asks. "And how!"

"I missed you, too. We would read together for hours and gossip about other writers. It was fun. We don't get to do that anymore."

She weighs something in her head and then suddenly gives me a wink. "Come, let's read Sevgi Soysal."

"But I can't. She's on the forbidden-authors list," I say uncertainly. Miss Highbrowed Cynic flushes scarlet with rage. "You've got to be kidding," she bellows. "That mama-woman doesn't know her limits. No one can ban a book." I agree.

Opening a random page, Miss Highbrowed Cynic reads, and I listen to the lullaby of her voice.

Tante Rosa believed that the day would come where an apple would be an apple, that a father would be a father, that a war would be a war, that the truth would be the truth, that a lie would be a lie, that love would be love, that to be fed up would be to be fed up, that rebelling would be rebelling, that silence would be silence, that an injustice would be an injustice, that order would be order and that a marriage would be a marriage.

I don't know how Her Majesty the Queen found out that I had visited Miss Highbrowed Cynic, but she did. Contrary to my fear, she doesn't throw a fit.

" So you missed reading books," she says with a sigh, as if the thought has tired her. Then she pulls out a box from inside her coat. "What is this?" I ask.

"I bought you a present," she answers. "I thought you might enjoy this."

When I open the package a book falls out: My Baby and Me. Apparently it has been read first by Mama Rice Pudding. Some sentences are underlined, some chapters are starred: "Preparing the Baby's Room," "Fabulous Mashed Food Recipes." I thank her and put it down. I'll read it sometime.

My lack of enthusiasm doesn't escape Mama Rice Pudding.

"All right," she concedes. "I might have overreacted when I banned your books and burned all the paper and pens in the house."

I remain silent.

"You are someone who is used to expressing herself through writing. So I have a suggestion for you. Why don't you write to your baby?"

Smiling, I nod. That is the best advice I've ever gotten from Her Highness.

Dear Baby (Since I don't know your name yet, I hope you don't mind me referring to you like this.),

This is the first letter I am writing you. I once read that some traditional tribes sustain the belief that babies got to pick their parents. I had laughed at the idea, but now it seems plausible. I imagine you sitting in the sky with angels, skimming through a huge, leather-bound catalog that contains photographs of potential mothers. Under each photograph there is a short description. The angels turn the pages with utmost patience. You look at all the candidates with a buyer's eye.

"Not this one," you say. "No, not this one either—" Doctors, engineers, housewives and businesswomen pass before your eyes. Even though there are many highly eligible candidates, women who do their jobs well and are very accomplished, you ignore them.

Just then the angel turns another page and my picture pops up. It is not a very good photo of me, my hair is a mess — again — and my

makeup is slapdash. I'm wearing my onion-clothes. Under my picture is a description: Head pickled, chaotic personality, prone to moments of irrationality, has yet to find herself, is actively searching for answers. Loves telling stories. Writer. Columnist. Litterateur.

Pointing your tiny little finger at my face you remark, "This one could be fun. Let me take a closer look at her."

I don't know why you ended up picking me out of all the potential mothers in the universe. Maybe you are a crazy kind of girl. You find the idea of a perfect mother boring. Or you already know me better than I know myself. Maybe you see the potential in me. Maybe you want to help me overcome my shortcomings. You can be my guide, my best teacher.

Like I said, I don't know why you chose me, but I want you to know that I am honored. I hope I will never make you regret your decision and say, "Of all the moms in the universe, why did I pick this one!"

Your loving mom who looks forward to your arrival,

Elif

Mama Rice Pudding insists that I go to prenatal yoga. She says I have to learn breathing techniques.

"I can breathe very well, don't worry," I say.

But she is persistent. She wants the birth to be as natural and wholesome as the ones she thinks our great-great-grandmothers had in the past. I don't point out that our ancestors were hardly poring over yoga sutras before going into labor.

There are ten women in the yoga course. Nine of them have their bellies against their noses. Either they are close to the end of their term or this course makes you puff up like a hot-air balloon. Maybe in her attempt to teach us breathing techniques the instructor is filling us up with heated air.

The only woman in the room who isn't pregnant is our instructor: an athletic and joyful Brazilian with long, curly brunette hair. Her pearly-white smile greets me as she introduces me to the group.

"Let us welcome Elif and her baby into our circle of love," she says and closes her eyes, already drifting away.

"Hello," I say to the group, but their eyes, too, are shut.

"First we shall cleanse our chakras. We shall fortify our personal energies. Then we will practice the Pranayama breathing techniques. We will feel the rise from the Sushumna toward our head and then unite with Sahashara."

Having no idea what we are supposed to do but copying the others all the same, I sit cross-legged on the floor, close my eyes and try to concentrate on this new language.

"Now let us feel the aura that wraps our bodies like a warm glove," says the teacher. "Can you feel how delicate it is, almost silken?"

To my amazement, I can feel something, a new presence, except it doesn't quite gently cloak my body but rather harshly pokes at my shoulder.

"Let's all say 'nice to see you' to this soft energy of ours," continues the teacher.

"Nice to see you," I mumble.

"Same here," comes an immediate response that jolts me.

The voice is strangely familiar. Suspicious, I open one eye to find Milady Ambitious Chekhovian standing on my left shoulder, staring at me.

"What are you doing here?" I whisper fiercely.

"Oh, nothing. We haven't talked for a long time and I was curious as to what you were doing with your life."

"Well, here I am."

"You must have quite a bit of time on your hands to be bothering with this nonsense," she says. "The last time I left you, you were writing novels. And now look at you."

I don't know what to say to that and wait for her next sentence.

"Come on, you should be writing fiction right now. Stories, ideas, plots, the world of imagination. . They are all waiting for you. What are you doing here opening chakras, mumbling Indian words you can't even pronounce? Oh, I wish you had listened to me when I asked you to get your tubes tied."

Meanwhile, the teacher says zealously: "Yoga means 'to unite' in the Sanskrit language. Our aim is to ensure the unity of the body, the mind and the soul."

Milady Ambitious Chekhovian snorts. "How about the unity of the finger-women? We are suffering under the worst monarchy."

"Oh, please, give me a break," I say. "Your military regime was even worse."

"And now we are going to enter the realm within, where we will meditate on our heartbeat," says the teacher, "and become One with the universe."

"I'm leaving," says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian. "You stay and become One with whomever you want for 250 lira a session."

Oblivious to my attempts to say something, she jumps on the window ledge, gives a commander's salute and leaves. I close my eyes and sit still but it's no use. I can't give myself over to the class anymore. Perhaps Milady Ambitious Chekhovian is right. Let alone uniting with the universe, I cannot even unite with the Thumbelinas inside.

I go out shopping with Mama Rice Pudding and spend hours in maternity stores. I never knew there was an entire fashion industry for babies, with hip and trendy clothes lines. They're so cute and so expensive, especially when you realize that every designer item will be worn for only about a few weeks, not to mention constantly puked, drooled and peed on.

I wonder how many of these baby products we really need. Plastic ducks that quack in the tub, tummy warmers made of organic merino wool, eco-friendly bathrobes for the summer, eco-friendly bathrobes for the winter, special chimes to attach to strollers, nontoxic brushes to clean the ducks in the tub, dinosaur-shaped door stoppers to keep the doors from slamming shut, glow-in-the-dark stickers in the shapes of planets and stars for the ceiling of the nursery—

All this endless bric-a-brac attracts Mama Rice Pudding like a magnet. She runs from one store to another with my credit card in her hand, determined to spend every cent I have on pink, cutesy baby things. She's so lost in the hysteria of shopping I want to run away from her. But where to? Can a pregnant woman steer clear of her maternal side?

This week I learn what a huge topic a baby's intelligence is for an impending mother. Your Highness is obsessed with the matter. Omega-3 pills, fish oil capsules and some type of liquid that emits the vilest smell. . She has been pushing all of these into my mouth with the belief that if I consume enough of them, the baby will be born with a high IQ.

"Caviar is the best," she says. "If a pregnant woman eats two spoonful’s of black caviar every day, chances are the baby will be born a genius."

"According to your theory the people around the Caspian Sea must be fricking brilliant," I say.

She waves off my sarcasm as if shooing a nagging fly. "You just do what I say," she orders.

I don't understand the obsession with IQ. And it is not only Mama Rice Pudding. In the doctors' waiting rooms, on TV programs, in blogs and Web sites, in the newspapers, everywhere and all the time, pregnant women are looking for ways to increase their babies' intelligence score.

"Let's assume for a moment that this IQ-caviar theory is true," I venture.

"All right," Mama Rice Pudding says.

"Let's say that Turkish mothers have created this 'super intelligent baby.' What then? The child is born, and when he is old enough to walk and talk it is clear that he is super gifted. Good at music, painting, sculpture, art or mathematics. He loves to read, too, devouring the classics at the age of five."

"What are you trying to say?" Mama Rice Pudding asks suspiciously.

"My point is, what will happen to these fish-egg babies in an environment that does not reward individual differences and unusual talents? What kind of irony is it to desire a clever baby, but not be able to acknowledge a creative child?"

Mama Rice Pudding bangs her scepter furiously.

"Enough! I know where all of this whining and bellyaching is coming from," she says. "You've been talking to Miss Highbrowed Cynic, haven't you? You are meeting with her behind my back, aren't you?"

Blushing up to my ears, I stop and say no more.

It's true. I have been continuing my visits with Miss Highbrowed Cynic on the sly. We draw the curtains, lock the doors and talk about books — just like we used to do in the good old days. Like proper intellectuals we grumble and grouse about everyone else, holding our heads high, feeling like the brightest bulbs in the crystal chandelier of society. I double over with laughter when Miss Highbrowed Cynic throws a bed sheet over her shoulders and takes up a green bean for a scepter; she does a fantastic imitation.

One day, out of the blue, she says, "Did you ever wonder why mothers use the pronoun we when addressing their kids?"

"What do you mean?"

"Check it out. They have this funny way of talking. 'Did we get dirty?' they say. 'Did we get thirsty?' 'Did we pee in our pants?'"

I crane my neck forward and listen carefully.

"If the child falls down, the mother starts, 'Oh, honey, did we fall down? Nothing happened, it doesn't hurt!' How does she know if it hurts or not? It isn't she who fell down, it's the kid!"

"Yeah, you're right," I say.

"The child has a separate body from his mother's, and as such, he is a different ontological being. Many mothers simply cannot accept this."

"That is so true," I say agreeably.

Suddenly her tone mellows. "Just be yourself," she says. "Don't let Mama Rice Pudding turn you into one of those snow globe moms."

"What is a snow globe mom?"

"You know, those half-hysterical ones who speak to their kids in a high-pitched-toy-frog voice even when they are no longer babies? Who want to breast-feed until the child goes off to college? They've lost their minds with motherhood. They live in a vacuum. Their universe is a snow globe. Colorful and cute inside, no doubt, but overprotective and airless. Don't you become one of—" She leaves the sentence hanging.

"Who? Me? Never!" I say self-assuredly.

"There is a thin line between motherhood and fascism," she declares.

"Trust me," I say. "I won't ever force food into my child's mouth. If she doesn't want to eat, she won't eat. I'll give her plenty of space and freedom from the start. You'll see what a democratic mom I will be."

"Good," exclaims Miss Highbrowed Cynic. "That's my big Self."

This week I learned that a pregnant woman's body belongs not to her but to all women.

The other day when I was grocery shopping, an old lady I had never seen before came over and checked my shopping cart.

"Oh, you are buying eggplants," she said with a look of sympathetic horror on her face.

"Yeah," I said cautiously.

"But there is nicotine in them," she said, and turned to the apprentice, as if he were responsible for this terrible mistake. "How can you give her eggplants? Take them back."

The grocer's apprentice nodded, accepting the lady's authority. Without consulting me, he took the eggplants out of my cart. "Give her broccoli instead," said the old lady. Again the apprentice did as he was told.

"And some spinach. It is very healthy. Oh, don't forget pepper. Whatever you cook, always put green pepper in it."

Into my cart went a package of spinach and half a pound of green peppers.

"Are you done with my shopping? May I go now?" I asked. They both grinned at me.

It is the same when I go to the neighborhood pool. All the women feel the need to say something, anything, to help me through another day of gestation.

"Be careful. The floor is quite slippery," says one. "Better stay in the shade," cautions another woman. "Make sure you don't dive belly first," says the one next to her. "Don't swallow chlorine," adds someone else. On the street, in the bus, on the boat, in cafes and restaurants, complete strangers give me advice. If one of them happens to be eating something, she immediately offers half her food to me.

No matter how many times I say "no, thank you," they insist until I give in. So I walk around munching on other people's sandwiches and cakes. It doesn't matter that I've never met these women or that I'll never see them again. Where there is pregnancy there is no formality. Where there is no formality there is no privacy.

A wave of tranquility has come over me. Currents of air gently stir the haze of clouds near the horizon and the tulips of Istanbul sway in full bloom, purple, red and yellow. Suddenly the world is an exquisite place and life is heavenly. I am smiling so much that the muscles around my mouth have slackened.

As I pass by the electric pole today I realize the Converse trainers are no longer there. Someone must have taken them down. How great is that! How lovely the weather, how kind the people, how blue the sky. What a wonderful world!

"It is called happiness hormone," says Mama Rice Pudding. "It is released when a woman nears the time of birth."

For the first time in my life it dawns upon me how much power hormones have on us. I have always thought of myself as one thinking, choosing and creating individual. But how much of our lives and relationships, behaviors and choices, are guided by hormones? If they are capable of boosting up one's morale, can they also do the opposite, propel one deep into gloom? But life is too beautiful to contemplate such unsettling matters, and I simply don't.

Panic! The time has come and I am terrified. Her Majesty the Queen is doing everything she can to calm me down, but it is no use. There's only one finger-woman who can help me right now. I need to speak to her.

My belly at my chin, careful not to slip, I descend the stairway to the basement of my soul. There, in a city as spiritual as Mount Athos, beyond a wooden door, I find Dame Dervish, sitting cross-legged on a grape leaf. On her feet are cerulean sandals, around her neck a silver Hu.

"Dame Dervish, may we talk?"

"Of course," she says. "Words are gifts from one human to another."

"Okay, do you remember the time I felt grateful for not being an elephant? Now I wish I were one."

Seeing the expression on her face, I decide to follow a different tack. "I'm not ready for this birth; I don't know what to do. Nine months is too short."

"First, calm down," she says tenderly.

"But what am I going to do?"

"Nothing," she says.

"Nothing?"

"You are so used to doing something all the time, not to have to do anything terrifies you. But it is, in fact, calming to do nothing. Don't worry, your body knows what to do, as do the baby and the universe. All you have to do is just surrender."

Surrender is not a great word with me, so I bite my lip and sigh.

"Do you know that the Sufis believe the world is a mother's womb?" she asks. "We are all babies in a womb. When the time comes we have to leave the world. We know this but we don't want to leave. We fear that when we die we will cease to exist. But death is actually a birth. If we could only understand this we wouldn't be scared of anything."

Imagining the world as one big womb and the billions of us human beings, of all races and religions, waiting to be born into another life has a calming effect on my nerves.

"Dame Dervish," I say. "How I've missed you."

"I've missed you as well," she says. "Now go and surrender. The rest will come of its own accord."

Two days later, early in the morning, I wake Eyup up and we calmly head to the hospital. All of the breathing practices, prenatal yoga, black caviar, broccoli salads and even Little Women lose their significance as I surrender.

Books and Babies

Likening children to books is not a common metaphor in the world of literature, but likening books to children surely is. Jane Austen considered her novels as her children and spoke of her heroines as "my Emma," "my Fanny" or "my Elinor." When George Eliot talked about her books, she referred to them as her children. Likewise, Virginia Woolf's diaries teem with references to writing as a maternal experience. While examples abound, I find it intriguing that it is always female writers who employ this metaphor. I have never heard of a male writer regarding his novels as his children.

As widely held as the metaphor might appear, there is one crucial difference between babies and books that should not go unnoticed. Human babies are quite exceptional in the amount and intensity of care that they require immediately after being born. Helpless and toothless, the infant is fully dependent on his or her mother for a long time.

Books, however, aren't like that. They can stand on their own feet starting from birth — that is, from their publication date — and they can instantly swim, just like newborn sea turtles: excitedly, doggedly, unsteadily — from the warm sands of publishing houses toward the vast, blue waters of readers. Or perhaps novels resemble baby ducklings. As soon as they open their eyes to the world, they take whomever they see first to be their mothers. Instead of the authors, "the mothers" may be their editors, their translators or, yes, their loving readers. If indeed that is the case, once the books are born, their authors do not really need to keep an eye on them or discuss them; just like books do not need to give interviews, pose for photographers or tour around. It is we writers and poets who crave the recognition and the praise. Otherwise, books are in no need of being nursed by their authors.

One woman writer who jeered at the egos and ambitions looming in the world of art and culture was the legendary Dorothy Parker. Five feet tall and slight, her physical presence may not have been overwhelming, but the words that poured forth from her pen still astonish and amuse readers today. In her capacity as the "most renowned lady wit in America," the sharp-tongued critic for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker wrote about a wide range of topics without hiding her claws. She was the most taciturn member of the famous Algonquin Round Table and yet she remains the most renowned of them all.

Having a special knack for loving the wrong kind of men, ever- impossible men, she suffered from several unhappy affairs, depressions, miscarriages and an abortion. But perhaps none of her relationships left a deeper mark on her life than her on-again, off-again marriage to the actor and playwright Alan Campbell. Like two planets orbiting around the same path but never really meeting, they tired each other out endlessly — until the day in 1963 when Campbell committed suicide. Parker herself survived several suicide attempts throughout the years — each episode, perhaps, worsening her addiction to alcohol.

As a fierce advocate of gender equality and civil rights, Parker was critical of the dominant social roles of her era. In her poems, short stories and essays, she questioned all sorts of clichés and taboos. One of her earlier poems summarizes her take on life.

If I abstain from fun and such,

I'll probably amount to much;

But I shall stay the way I am,

Because I do not give a damn

Her close friendships with Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman have been a favorite topic among literary historians. Years later, when asked if there was ever any competition between the two women writers, Hellman replied, "Never." Theirs was a dependent relationship, of which she claimed, "I think between men and women there should be dependency, even between friends. . Independent natures aren't worried about dependency." In the paranoia of the early 1950s, it didn't take long for them to make their way onto the famous Hollywood blacklist. Not that they cared much. They were creative and self- destructive; they were members of a generation that drank, quarreled, argued and laughed abundantly; and they died either too early or too depressed.

Parker was not a great fan of romantic love, domestic life or motherhood. When she spotted a mother who fussed over her child in public, she didn't waste any opportunity to pass judgment on the scene. To her, motherhood seemed like some kind of entrapment and perpetual unhappiness. Her mind was corrosive, her mood volatile, her sarcasm legendary and her dark eyes brimful of mischief — almost up until the moment that she died of a heart attack at the age of seventy- three, alone in a hotel room.

If ever there was a voice in the world of literature throbbing with rage, compassion, justice and love — all at the same time, all with the same vigor — it was Audre Lorde's. She was a soul with many talents and multiple roles: poet, writer, black, woman, lesbian, activist, cancer survivor, educator and mother of two children. Early on she had changed her name from Audrey to Audre not only because she liked the symmetry with her last name but also because she simply could. She loved re-creating herself again and again, remolding her heart and her destiny, like two pieces of soft dough. In a ceremony held before her death she was given yet another name, Gamba Adisa—"Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Lucid."

At times, she was her own mother, and at times, her own daughter. She saw herself as a link in an endless chain, as part of a "continuum of women." Bridging differences across the boundaries, challenging racism, sexism and homophobia, Lorde encouraged what she saw as "the transformation of silence into language." Through words we understood ourselves and each other, and brought out the inner wisdom that existed in each and every one of us. Connecting was one of the things she did best — writer and reader, white and black, sister and sister. "I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I discover you in myself."[14]

In her autobiographical novel, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Lorde took a closer look at her childhood in Harlem and her coming- of-age as a black lesbian feminist. She said she had always wanted to be both man and woman, adding into her personality the strongest and richest qualities of both her mother and her father. Her writing was suffused with the belief that the synthesis between seeming opposites was perhaps what made us ourselves. In every woman there were masculine traits and in every man, the feminine. As such, treating the two sexes as if they were mutually exclusive was a big deception and a step away from understanding humanness in all its complexity and fullness.

Strikingly, motherhood is redefined in Lorde's work and glorified without being sanctified. It is divine but there is nothing sacred about it. Lorde believed that there was a black mother in all of us, whether we were mothers or not. Men, too, had this quality inside, although quite often they chose not to deal with it. Lorde's metaphor of the black mother was the voice of intuition, creativity and unbridled passion. "The white fathers told us 'I think, therefore I am,' and the Black mother within each of us — the poet — whispers in our dream, 'I feel, therefore I can be free.'"

Lorde did not reject rationality or empiricism outright, but wanted to make it clear, once and for all, how limiting each was in grasping the world. Too much analytical thinking and worship of abstract theory did not sit well with her. Her connection with language and her hand on the pulse of the universe was unashamedly sensual. She regarded selfhood — and, therefore, womanhood and motherhood— as essentially multilayered. Thus she refused to be pigeonholed into any single and static category. She was always many things at once, and after her death, she remains so.

If Audre Lorde were alive today and we had met, she would probably have laughed at my six finger-women and then brought out her own numerous finger-women so that they could all dance together under a warm summer rain.

Sandra Cisneros is an eloquent writer and an outspoken scholar who calls herself "nobody's mother and nobody's wife." She has always talked candidly and courageously about the difficulties — and beauties — of being a single woman from a patriarchal background and a writer on the border of two cultures, Mexican and American. She says, "I think writers are always split between living their life and watching themselves live it."

Born in Chicago in 1954, the only daughter in a family of six sons, Cisneros closely observed the making of manhood and how painful it could be for those who did not fit into given gender roles. Though she grew up in a crowded, noisy house, she received a lot of love from both parents and was given her own space. "I am the product of a fierce woman who was brave enough to raise her daughter in a nontraditional way," she says.

Cisneros says she wants to tell the kind of stories that do not get told. The House on Mango Street is the riveting story of Esperanza, a Mexican-American girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago. The book deals openly with machismo, chauvinism and the struggle of a woman of color to find her own voice. Esperanza soon discovers that writing heals her wounds, frees her soul. It helps her to develop her natural talents, find out who she really is and resist all kinds of indoctrination that limit her choices in life due to her gender, culture or class.

Questioning both Mexican and American constructions of femininity, Cisneros wants to explore alternative models of womanhood. Her views on marriage and motherhood have always been controversial. In an interview she says in many ways she still feels like a child. And precisely because of this, because she is still one of them, she doesn't pick up children and fuss over them. That is not what one child does to another. Cisneros explains how throughout her twenties and thirties she put off marrying and starting a family in order to focus on her writing and work. When she reached her forties, however, she felt like she had to get married soon, not because she wanted to but because her father wanted her to. It took her some more years to realize she didn't need to do this — a realization that brought her to a final decision: She would not get married. When asked why she chose not to start a family of her own, her response is intriguing: "My writing is my child and I don't want anything to come between us."

Dorothy Parker, Audre Lorde and Sandra Cisneros — women who refused to identify female creativity with reproduction and pursued their writing with passion. We learn from them to look with a new perspective into the making of womanhood, sisterhood and manhood, respectively. Reading their works wakes up our souls, pierces the shell of our daily habits. Learning more about their lives makes us realize that the cultural predispositions that have been bred in each and every one of us since early childhood are neither incontestable nor unchangeable. True, the three of them led different personal lives and came from diverse backgrounds. But there is one thing they have in common: They did not take gender roles and barriers for granted. They questioned the established norms and, most important, changed the world by changing themselves first.

A Sea without a Shore

The baby is sleeping in the crib. Whoever came up with the expression "to sleep like a baby" doesn't know what he is talking about. Babies doze in bits and pieces, waking every

so often as if to check whether you are still there and the birth were not only a dream.

As for me, I don't sleep at all. The second I close my eyes, unpleasant thoughts and discomforting images barrage my brain. Who knew that my head was such an arsenal of anxieties? I haven't been able to sleep properly for days. Around my eyes there are circles as dark beige and round as the simits[15] of Istanbul. Never had it entered my mind that my heart could hold so bleak an anguish.

I am wearing a long, lavender nightgown with sporadic shapes across the breast line. One of the shoulder straps has snapped and been tied into a hasty knot. But because one strap is now shorter than the other, the neckline — from a distance — looks sloped, giving the impression that I am sliding to one side, like a sinking ship. Perhaps I am. As for the shapes on the gown, though they seem to be the creation of a crazy fashion designer, they are in fact breast milk and puke stains.

It has been seven weeks since I gave birth.

I want to be a brilliant, perfect mother but I end up doing everything wrong. I am all thumbs when it comes to changing diapers, burping the baby or figuring out how to end bouts of hiccups. Myself-confidence has become a scoop of ice cream melting fast under the duress of motherhood. It would have helped if Eyup were by my side, but he has gone to serve his compulsory military duty. For the next six months he will get military training in a small division in North Cyprus, and I will be on my own.

Five nights a week a television channel shows reruns of Wheel of Fortune for those who cannot sleep. Two blond women in skimpy miniskirts and glittery tops turn the letters on the manually operated

puzzle board. I sit and watch. The letters spell D_ PR ION, but

I refuse to read it aloud.

Meanwhile, a giant wheel of fortune is spinning inside my brain, flashing its gaudy bulbs. I apportion my daily tasks into slots of different colors and give points to each, except they are all negative.

Causing the baby to puke by lifting her up too fast from -15 points the crib

Yelling at people, taking your own mistakes out on others -25 points

Feeling unusually untalented -30 points

Panicking when the baby cries and crying with her -50 points

Not stopping crying even after the baby has quieted down -70 points

At the end of each day, I add up my points, always ending in the red. My record of motherhood so far resembles a plummeting stock-exchange index. I have a deep suspicion that other women were told to spend years preparing themselves for the transition that comes with the birth of a baby, and I missed the memo. How am I — who could not even manage womanhood naturally and effortlessly — now going to manage motherhood? I know I need help but it never occurs to me to ask for it.

I think of Doris Lessing — a remarkable writer and pursuer of ideas. Born in Persia in 1919, the Nobel laureate spent her childhood on a farm in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). She was raised by a domineering

mother and sent to a Catholic school, where she was taught to be a proper and pious lady. She remembers much of her colonial childhood today as a time with "little joy and much sadness." Lessing dropped out of school when she turned thirteen, ran away from her home and from her mother two years later and basically had to raise herself.

She was a girl-woman who mothered herself.

When she turned nineteen, Lessing got married and had two children, a son and a daughter — a revolutionary experience that she talks about in great detail in her two-volume autobiography, Under My Skin and Walking in the Shade. She writes candidly about the conflicting feelings she had during this period — a longing to spend more time with other new mothers, talking about babies and mashed food, and an equally strong desire to run away from them all. Lessing is highly critical of the ways in which many capable women seem to change after giving birth. She believes such women are happily domesticated for a while, but then sooner or later they start getting restless, demanding and even neurotic. "There is no boredom like that of an intelligent young woman who spends all day with a very small child," she says. Looking back at the early years of motherhood, she is surprised to see how hard she worked and how tired she was all the time. "I wonder how I did it. I swear young mothers are equipped with some sort of juice or hormone that enables them to bear it."[16]

The triple role of housekeeper, mother and wife did not make Lessing happy. In 1943 she left her husband and two children to get married to Gottfried Lessing, a Communist activist. They had a son, Peter. The marriage ended in 1949. By this time she was unable to bear life in Rhodesia, particularly the racism of the white ruling class. Taking her son, some money and many ghosts with her, she moved back to Britain. It was a big, painful decision and one that required her to leave her two children with her first ex-husband. She came to England with the manuscript of her first novel, The Grass Is Singing.

The book was published a year later and henceforth Lessing dedicated herself fully to writing.

A cauldron boils in my mind. What if I fail to become a good mother and a good wife? I do not want to betray myself or to pretend to be someone I am not. What scares me most is the possibility of an adverse chemical reaction between authorship and domestic responsibilities. Novelists are self-enamored people who do not like to draw attention to that fact. Mothers, on the other hand, are supposed to be selfless creatures — at least for a while — who give more than they take. Perhaps I am worrying too much, but worrying comes with thinking.

How can I tell my brain not to think?

Eyup calls whenever he can between field exercises. The line is always crackly and there is stomping and marching, shouting and yelling, in the background, which is the complete opposite of my life in Istanbul, where I watch Baby TV and listen to the rain fall on the begonias.

"Hello, sweetheart," Eyup says.

"Hi there," I say. "How's it going, my love?"

"I lost eight pounds," he says, "but I'm surviving. We do a hundred push-ups, a hundred lift-ups and run two miles every morning. I now have biceps like Chuck Norris and my face is so tanned from exposure to the sun that I would stand out even in a dark alley."

I smile — as if he could see me.

"I've missed you sorely," he says, his voice wavering a little.

"I've missed you, too."

"What were you doing when I phoned?"

"I was putting ten droplets of gripe water onto a spoon for the baby's hiccups and thinking about Doris Lessing."

"Does it help?"

"Not really, perhaps it makes it worse."

"Which one? Gripe water or Doris Lessing?"

"Both," I say.

There is a brief silence at the end of the line. Then, softly, Eyup says, "Honey, you are thinking too much. That makes things harder for you."

"What do you mean?"

"Many people do not constantly analyze and reanalyze every little thing, you know, they just go along with the daily routine," he remarks. "Like when you know you have to do a hundred push-ups, you just accept and do it."

"You want me to start doing push-ups?" I ask. "Come on, you know what I mean," he says with a gentle laugh. "Can't you do without thinking for a while?"

"I don't know," I say. "Let me think about that."

Why Are We Depressed When We Want to Be Happy?

The next day in the evening, the Choir of Discordant Voices begins to yammer inside me. I ask all of them the same question: How is it possible to feel so down when I am, in fact, happy and grateful?

1. "Yo, it's 'cause of the hormones," says Little Miss Practical. "Everything will be just fine. We can run a few tests and see what the problem is. Take some happy pills. You know what they call them: 'bottled smiles.' The mighty hand of Western science will fix the problem in a jiffy. Call the doctor and ask for help. Let them solve this. Be practical!"

She could be right. I should call my doctor. But my pride — or vanity — won't let me do it. I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me or make assumptions about my sanity. My doctor has always been friendly and fatherly, and we have a superb relationship; I don't want him to see me in my freak-on-wheels moment.

"Let me pull myself together first, then I'll talk to him," I say.

So I make a plan: I will go to see a professional when I am much better and no longer need to go to see a professional.

2. "Forget about doctors and pills. What you need is books," prompts Miss Highbrowed Cynic. "You feel demoralized because you are not reading enough. You have missed the intellectual

world. You have missed me. All this baby food and diaper changing have numbed your brain. You need to reactivate your intellect, that's all."

She could be right. My mind might settle into some kind of order if I start reading novels again. If I focus on other people's stories, I'll stop running in circles around my own. Proust will save me.

But there is something I can't confess to Miss Highbrowed Cynic. I have started to suspect that in the months following birth a new mother's brain doesn't work like it used to. I couldn't read even if I wanted to. Forget Proust, I can't even focus on a tomato soup recipe.

3. "You don't need books, what you need is to take that horrible nightgown off and put on something sexy," suggests Blue Belle Bovary. "If only you paid a little attention to your appearance it would push that depression right out the door. Let me take you to a hairdresser. Don't you know that the first thing women should do when they are down is to change their hair? A new cut and a new color will cure the deepest melancholy, darling."

She could be right. I might feel better after a visit to the hairdresser, and from there, to the shopping mall. But I just don't feel like it. Quite to the contrary, I want to cling more firmly to my oily hair, my pallid skin, my tattered clothes. In a world that feels increasingly foreign, only this nightgown is familiar and comforting.

4. "Pure nonsense," objects Milady Ambitious Chekhovian. "The only reason why you are down in the dumps is because you are producing below your full capacity. I have to get you out of here immediately. Let's arrange a book tour for you. We need to get back to work."

She could be right. If there was a literary festival or a book signing now, I could possibly ditch this gloomy mood. It is always a morale boost to meet my readers, listen to their sincere comments, answer their questions and do more readings. But I have little, if any, ambition or desire these days. How can I sign books when my hands are tucked into my armpits for warmth all the time? As Jane Smiley beautifully shows in her 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, there is a difference between the novelist as a literary person and the novelist as a literary persona.

Smiley says the literary persona is always a more mature personality, more polished and worked upon and with a different set of duties and responsibilities. It is shaped by three major inspirations— literature, life and language — and is therefore not fully in the author's control.

If Smiley is right, and I think she is, then the gap between my literary persona and me as a living person has never been wider. There is a huge postpartum canyon stretching between the two sides now.

5. "What Milady says is sheer gibberish!" snorts Mama Rice

Pudding. "You're feeling this way because you are not focused enough on being a mother, that's all. This is the time when you have to put everything else aside, all that artistic and literary gobbledygook, and be a full-time mom. Only then will you come out of this depression."

She could be right. Spending time with my lovely daughter makes me feel good, elated and blessed. Perhaps I should close myself off to the outside world and just be a mom from now on. Perhaps I am depressed because I haven't fully enacted that decision yet.

But there is something I can't explain to Mama Rice Pudding, something that I know she would never understand: In a society where motherhood is regarded as the best thing that can happen to a woman and with an upbringing that tells us to settle for nothing less than excellence, how can I not compare myself to other mothers? And when I weigh myself against other moms, how can I not be envious of their accomplishments and ashamed of my deficiencies? I am not proud of feeling this way but this is what I experience deep down. It is not my love for my baby that I doubt. Love is there, pure and tender, enveloping my soul in its pearly glow. It is my talents as a mother that I find lacking.

6. "Try to see this as a test," says Dame Dervish. "God likes to try us from time to time. He does so through failure and vulnerability sometimes, success and power at other times, and believe me, we don't always know which case is worse. But remember one thing: Where there is difficulty there follows ease."

She could be right. I must not forget that this is a temporary phase and probably some good will come out of it, though I cannot see that now. Later on when I look back with hindsight, I will judge things from a different and brighter perspective.

But there are some things I cannot reveal to Dame Dervish. I know there are thousands of people out there who try hard to have children, who put themselves through all sorts of medical procedures, make huge sacrifices and suffer endless frustrations, individually and as a couple, and yet still cannot reach their goal. I know how appreciative I should be, and I am, but my embarrassment for not being happy enough, thankful enough or good enough is so profound, I cannot even talk to God anymore.

All I know is that after a period of oligarchy and a short interval of military rule, this monarchy, too, has come to an end. Now there is only anarchy in the Land of Me.

The Celestial Eye

When I was a little girl, maybe six or seven years old, I stayed with my paternal grandmother for a few weeks in W W Smyrna. The idea was to make sure I got to see my father and spend quality time with him, but I ended up seeing more of my grandma than my dad. She was a stern woman who wore large glasses that magnified her eyes and spoke in sharp, curt sentences that usually boiled down to "Do that! Don't do this!" She often talked about the fires of hell, which she described in vivid and frightful detail. To her, Allah was an unblinking Celestial Eye that saw everything I did and recorded every single one of my sins, even the ones I only thought about.

I came back from her house with a glowing imagery of blazing flames and boiling cauldrons, and the idea of God as an austere father frowning down at His creation. I don't know if this experience had any role in my choices later on, but as soon as I was old enough to know what the word agnostic meant — that is, around the time I was seventeen years old — I decided I was going to be one. I have never felt close to atheism — for I found it too arrogant in its outright rejection of God— but agnosticism seemed befitting of people who were perpetually bewildered about things, including religion. For an atheist, faith is not a very important matter. For an agnostic, however, it is. An atheist is sure of his convictions, and speaks in sentences that end with a full stop. An agnostic puts only a comma at the end of his remarks, to be continued. . He will keep pondering, wondering, doubting. That is why he is an agnostic.

I went to college to major in international relations. At the time, I was a rebellious young woman who liked to wrap several shawls of "-isms" around her shoulders: I was a leftist, feminist, nihilist, environmentalist, anarcho-pacifist. . Though taking questions of faith seriously, I wasn't interested in any specific religion, and the difference between "religiosity" and "spirituality" was lost on me. Nevertheless, having also spent several years of my childhood with my maternal grandmother, I had a feeling there was more to this universe than I could take in with my five limited senses. But the truth is, I wasn't interested in understanding the world. I wanted only to change it.

Then one day Dame Dervish came into my life. She introduced herself as my spiritual side and explained to me that the Creator was not a nucleus of "fear," but a Fountain of Limitless Love. A kind of wonder possessed me. At first, her very presence in my life was more intriguing than anything she said. Around her was an aura of light and calmness, like the moonlight shining on a gently rolling sea. Motivated by her, I started to read about Sufism. One book led to another. The more I read the more I unlearned. Because that is what Sufism does to you, it makes you "erase" what you know and what you are so sure of. Then you start thinking again. Not with your mind this time, but with your heart.

Of all the Sufi poets and philosophers that I read about during those years there were two that moved me deeply: Rumi and his legendary spiritual companion, Shams of Tabriz. Living in thirteenth-century Anatolia, in an age of deeply embedded bigotries and clashes, they had stood for a universal spirituality, opening their doors to people of all backgrounds equally. They spoke of love as the essence of life, their universal philosophy connecting all humanity across centuries, cultures and cities. As I kept reading the Mathnawi, Rumi's words began to tenderly remove the shawls I had always wrapped around myself, layer upon layer, as if I were always in need of some warmth coming from outside. I understood that no matter what I chose to be—"leftist," "feminist" or anything else — what I most needed was an intimate connection with the light inside me. The light of Truth that exists inside all of us.

Thus began my interest in Sufism and spirituality. Over the years it would ebb and flow. Sometimes it was more vivid and visible, at other times it receded to the background, faint and dusky, like the remains of a candle still burning, but at no stage in my life did it ever disappear.

Then why is it that now, after having devoured so many books on spirituality and religious philosophy, after having been through thick and thin with Dame Dervish, I once again feel like that timid girl in Smyrna? These days I cannot raise my eyes to the sky for fear that God might be looking down at me with his brows drawn over his eyes. Is that what depression is about — the sinking feeling that your connection to God is broken and you are left to float on your own in a liquid black space, like an astronaut who has been cut loose from his spaceship and all that linked him to Earth?