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

A Djinni in the Room

One morning in November when I wake up, I sense a strange presence in the room. The baby is two months old and is sleeping better now. There is a dusky light penetrating through the curtains, a whispery sound in the background and a perfumed smell in the air. I shiver as if being pushed into a Murakami novel where everything is surreal.

There is a creature in the corner — not human, not animal, not like anything I have seen before. He is as dark gray as storm clouds, as tall as a tower, as elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp. He has a long, black pony- tail, though he has dyed a clump of it white and let it hang across his face. A diamond the size of a hazelnut glitters on one ear. His face is small, his goatee is tiny, but his fiery eyes appear enormous behind his metal-rimmed spectacles. One second he stretches up, his head reaching the ceiling; the next he widens, spreading from one end of the room to the other. Like thick cigar smoke he drifts in the air. In his hand he carries a beautiful cane and on his head is a silk top hat.

I immediately recognize him as one of the djinn my maternal grandmother warned me against in my childhood. I don't know anything about their sexual orientation, but this one seems gay to me.

"Who are you?" I ask fretfully.

"Ah, but don't you recognize me?" he says, chivalrous and poised, as if he were a brave knight and I, a damsel in distress.

"No, what do you want?"

"Please, cheri," he says snippily. "Have you never heard of the djinni who haunts new mothers?"

I give a sobbing breath and my face gets hot. "My grandma says there is a djinni named Alkarisi, known to molest women who have recently given birth."

He cracks a laugh. "The times are changing fast, cheri. Alkarisi is so old-school. She retired long ago, that minx. Today nobody knows about her anymore. She wouldn't make it to the top ten."

I am surprised to hear the djinn have a top ten list, but instead of asking about this, I remark, "I didn't know you guys could age."

Taking a napkin from his pocket, he begins to wipe his glasses. "Of course we do age, though we haven't lost our minds over Botox creams, like your kind. At least not yet—"

I look at him more closely, only now suspecting that he might not be as young as he looks.

Putting his glasses back on, he continues: "Of course, we don't age as quickly as you poor sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. Your ten years are approximately" — he makes some calculations in his head— "equal to 112 years in djinn time. So a hundred-year-old djinni is just a kid where we come from. As for Alkarisi, how should I put it? Her name is synonymous with nostalgia."

"Do djinn have nostalgia?"

"Not us, you guys do! Don't you ever watch Disney movies? They use us as decor. I mean, what is that thing about the djinni in a lamp? We are living in the twenty-first century, hello! No one hangs out in lamps anymore!"

"Do djinn find Disney movies politically incorrect?" I ask, mesmerized.

"You, too, would feel the same way if your kind were portrayed as pudgy-bellied, five-chinned, blue ogres with baggy trousers and fezzes on their heads," he flares. "Don't you see we've all adjusted to the times? I go to the gym four days a week and I don't have an extra ounce of fat on my body."

"Who are you, for God's sake?!"

Like a good gentleman he tips his hat and bows to me with a roguish smile. "My sincere apologies if I forgot to introduce myself. I am your obedient servant, the Djinni of Postpartum Depression. Otherwise known as Lord Poton."

I feel a chill go down my spine. "What do you want?" I ask, although I am not sure I want to hear the answer.

"What do I want?" he prompts. "It is a good question because, as it happens, my wish is your command."

"Hmm, shouldn't it be the other way round?"

"As I said, forget those clichés. Let's get to know each other better."

Lord Poton is such a shifty being that I don't immediately realize how creepy he can be. For the first couple of days I watch him more out of curiosity than worry. Little do I realize that he is settling in during that time, making himself at home. Then one day, he produces a lockbox.

"What is that?"

"It's my gift to you," he says, grinning. "Don't you always complain about how your finger-women tire you out with their endless quarrels?"

"Yes, but—" I say tentatively.

"Good, I will lock them all away so that they won't bother you anymore."

"Wait a minute," I object. "I want no such thing."

But he doesn't listen to me. "My wish is your command, remember," he whispers, as if to himself. Then he stretches out his manicured nails and pulls the members of the Choir of Discordant Voices out of me, one by one.

The first to get caught is Milady Ambitious Chekhovian.

"What do you think you are doing, mister?" she admonishes him as he holds her by the nape of her neck and forces her into the box. "I have important things to do! Let go of me!"

Next comes Little Miss Practical. I would have expected her to follow the course of least resistance and surrender, but apparently she finds swearing more practical. Smoldering with anger, she yells, "Yo, who do you think you are? You moron! Get your hands off me!"

"Please don't bother, I will go where I need to go," says Dame Dervish as she walks with dignity into the box.

"Poton, darling, why the rush? Why don't we talk first tete-a-tete? Just the two of us. May I call you Potie?" says Blue Belle Bovary, pouting her lips, tilting her head to one side, trying to use her feminine wiles to get herself off the hook. Despite her best efforts, she, too, is sent into the box.

"But I have lentil soup on the stove, you cannot arrest me now," begs Mama Rice Pudding.

Finally comes Miss Highbrowed Cynic. "You call yourself 'Lord' and you think you represent the black sun of melancholy. But you seem to have forgotten that that sun is not solely a destructive force. As Julia Kristeva said, 'melancholy is amorous passion's somber lining.'"

"Ughh?" asks Lord Poton, sounding seriously confused, but he tucks her into the box anyhow.

So it is that all six members of the Choir of Discordant Voices find themselves trapped in a lockbox. The silence in the house is disconcerting.

"At last we are rid of the Thumbelinas!" says Lord Poton, the sweetness in his tone contradicting the sharpness of his glance. "They are all gone."

"Yeah, they are," I say.

"From now on there will be no one around to yammer at you. You will hear only my voice. Isn't that great?"

I try to join his laughter, but it just doesn't pass through my throat.

Quickly I assess the new situation: centralization of authority under a dictator, the suppression of alternate voices via violence, systematic usage of propaganda, absolute obedience to the leader. . All the signs are here. Political scientists have widely analyzed the connection between fascism and economic depression. In my case, there is a connection between fascism and psychological depression.

Now I know that after oligarchy and martial law, after monarchy and anarchy, the days of fascism have arrived.

Womanhood as an Incomplete Narrative

Today Lou Andreas Salome is less remembered as an author and intellectual in her own right than as the colorful and controversial woman behind several powerful men of letters. She is portrayed as the mysterious muse who inspired Rilke, Nietzsche and Freud to look more closely at womanhood and feminine creativity. Such descriptions, though no doubt intriguing, do not do justice to Salome's vision or versatility. In her time she was a famous author, which makes it hard to understand why her novels have been so widely forgotten today. In addition to fiction and plays, she wrote contemplative essays on a wide spectrum of topics such as Russian art, religious philosophy, theater and eroticism.

Born and raised in St. Petersburg, Salome grew up with five brothers and was much loved and pampered by her father. As a child she had a special gift for telling stories, though she found it difficult to abandon her imaginary characters afterward. She felt guilty for leaving them. This tendency to blame herself for things for which she was not responsible would continue to haunt her throughout her entire life.

Salome arrived in Zurich in 1880, only nineteen years old. She was beautiful, brilliant and dauntless. Almost instantly she was drawn to the avant-garde circles where she met Europe's leading scholars and artists. With them she engaged in heated debates, surprising many with her self-confidence and zeal to learn. Women, in her eyes, could not be expected to just complement men, or be sidelined, silenced and strapped in housework and motherhood. A woman was an affirmative, inventive creator on her own — not an object to derive inspiration from, and thereby not necessarily a muse. Salome believed that every attempt to control women would damage their natural, creative femininity.

Rilke adored her, seeing Salome as the personification of sublime femininity. Inspired by her, he maintained that an artist, whether man or woman, had to bring out the feminine power within. Producing artwork was akin to childbearing, for through this process the artist gave birth to new ideas and visions. Rilke claimed that "one day. . the woman will exist whose name will no longer signify merely the opposite of masculinity, but rather something in itself, something thought of in terms not of completion and limitation, but rather of life and existence."

Yet it was rather ironic that it was Salome who later convinced Rilke to modify his name on the grounds that it sounded "too effeminate." The "Rene" in his name was changed to "Rainer," though Rilke didn't give up "Maria." Thus he became Rainer Maria Rilke.

Salome had a long affair with the author Paul Ree, and later got married to the linguistic scholar Carl Friedrich Andreas. Being a married woman didn't seem to change her critical views on bourgeois marriage. She openly flirted with men, all of whom happened to be intellectuals or connoisseurs of the arts. The fact that she was married and had many lovers makes it difficult to understand how it was that she remained a virgin for long years. Her marriage was unconsummated. The powerful, independent writer and thinker was either scared of sexuality or unwilling to lose herself in an Other.

Nietzsche once said, "For the woman the man is a means: the end is always the child." As compelling as it sounds, the statement did not apply to Lou Andreas Salome. Not that she did not want to have children. She did. She even proclaimed motherhood as the highest calling for a woman. Her own childlessness was a source of regret and sorrow for her and she talked candidly, sometimes mordantly, about it. She interpreted the bond between the mother and the child as one that truly connected the Self to the Other.

Yet she also loved men. Those she treasured she did not see as a means to an end. In her eyes, each was a world unto himself. Like a housewife who took a special satisfaction in ironing out the wrinkles in a shirt, she patiently strived to smooth down the flaws in their personalities. She was an intuitive, insightful and controversial writer with strong opinions. Those who loved her — mostly men — loved her deeply; those who hated her — mostly women — did so with the same intensity.

Marguerite Duras — the diva of French literature according to many— was born in Saigon in 1914. Her parents were both teachers there, working for the French government. She lost her father at an early age, after which her mother remained in Indochina with her three children. The family did not have an easy life and there were financial problems deepened by quarrels and domestic violence. When Marguerite was a teenager she started having an affair with a wealthy Chinese man, a relationship she wrote extensively about in both her fiction and her memoirs.

At the age of seventeen she went to France, where she got married and wrote novels, plays, movie scripts, short stories and essays. She moved deftly between these different genres. When she wrote The Sea Wall, which was based on her childhood in Indochina, she and her mother had a huge quarrel about the way she had depicted her family. "Some people will find the book embarrassing," she said. "That doesn't bother me. I have nothing left to lose. Not even my sense of decency."[17] There is a scene in her memoirs where her mother reads the book for the first time upstairs and the writer waits anxiously for her approval downstairs. When she comes downstairs her mother's face is stern, showing her dislike. She accuses Marguerite of distorting the truth and playing to the gallery of readers; Marguerite, in turn, defends her book and her right to blur fact and fiction.

If the past is a foreign land, Duras visited it often, coming back with different memories of the same events. "No other reason impels me to write of these memories, except that instinct to unearth," she said. Her interpretation of the story originally told in The Lover, which was based on her affair as a teenager with a Chinese man twelve years her senior, subsequently changed from book to book. Though prolific and generous with her craft, Duras was a writer who did not shy from exploring the same themes over and over. After the turmoil of 1968, her writing took on a more political overtone. In tandem with the spirit of the period, the title of one of her books reads Destroy, She Said.

She lost her first child, carrying the loss and pain with her all through her life. She had a second child — a turning point after which she started running at breakneck speed from one task to another. Juggling motherhood, housework and writing books during the day, she would drink and socialize at night. She didn't want to miss anything. Her marriage faltered under several pressures. She and her husband split but did not really separate — still spending time together, seeing to their son's education. She had several other love affairs later on; she was a woman who could do neither without loving men nor without writing books.

Her passion for writing was commendable, yet her personality was overshadowed by self-obsession and self-absorption to the point of narcissism. She liked to be adored and praised, and retained a competitive, possessive spirit until the end. She did not speak to several members of her family and was widely criticized by critics and fellow writers for her egomania. Several times throughout her life, she lapsed into bouts of guilt, self-pity and alcoholism.

Rebecca West was a novelist, literary critic, travel writer and journalist. Born in 1892 as Cecily Isabel Fairfield, she adopted her nom de plume from a play by Ibsen, Rosmersholm. She began her writing career as a columnist for a suffragist weekly. As a young woman she embraced radical feminist and socialist views. Though she revised her views over the years, her concern for social justice and equality lasted a lifetime. In 1913 she met the famous science fiction writer H. G. Wells after writing an acerbic review of his novel Marriage. They fell in love, though Wells was twenty-six years her senior, and married. Their affair lasted ten years, and in 1914 their son, and her only child, Anthony, was born.

Striving as a single mother from then on, West started to write critical essays for various newspapers and magazines. She became one of the leading intellectuals of the time and a prolific novelist. Yet, in her private life, she was not always happy or successful. The relationship with Wells suffered from repeated ups and downs and she had several other affairs. In some ways she was like Lou Andreas Salome, a sharp- witted woman in male intellectual and artistic circles, friend and lover.

Her relationship with her son was strained to the breaking point in later years. Anthony West, a gifted author himself, wrote a biography of his father that became very popular but made his mother very unhappy. Rebecca West accused her son of distorting reality, sharing private memories and, especially, unfairly degrading her as a bad mother. She sued him in order to prevent the publication of his semi- autobiographical novel Heritage. Perhaps what hurt her most was that she had raised him on her own while his father had been absent for most of the time and yet Anthony had written more favorably about his father than his mother. There were mutual accusations and the wounds were never fully healed. When Rebecca West died in 1983 her son was not with her. After her death, Anthony West published his Heritage and his tone toward his late mother remained critical, bitter.

Simone de Beauvoir once said a "woman is not a completed reality, but rather a becoming, and it is in her becoming that. . her possibilities should be defined." Lou Andreas Salome, Marguerite Duras and Rebecca West, three headstrong women with different stories but similarly stormy lives, similarly dealing with issues of body, love and femininity, were women "becoming."

Just like all of us.

Stranger in the Mirror

There should be a law forbidding people who are going through a depression to come anywhere near a mirror. They should be prevented, for their own good, from seeing their reflections until they are way out of their gloom. If for some reason a depressed person must look into a mirror, he or she ought to do so fleetingly. Mirrors are the worst objects you can have around when your self-esteem has hit rock bottom and there are dark clouds hovering above your soul.

Yet here I was, alone in the room, looking into a mirror for what felt like an eternity. It was a round mirror with budding and flowering roses carved in its silver frame and a reflection of a young woman staring back. Her hair was unwashed, her body was that of a rag doll and her eyes were immensely sad. Never lifting my gaze off her, I scrutinized this familiar stranger with a curiosity that verged on anger. As she was new to me, I couldn't help wanting to know more about her. I was furious with her, too, because somehow she had replaced me. Of one thing I was sure: The woman in the mirror was sinking, and if she sank deeper, she would take me down with her.

In some parts of Turkey, elderly women believe that mirrors are not, and have never been, simple decorative objects. That is why they adorn not the fronts but the backs of mirrors and then hang them on the walls with their backs facing out. If and when a mirror has to be turned around, it is covered with a dark cloth — preferably black or red velvet. You move the cloth aside to take a peek at yourself when combing your hair or applying kohl, then you pull it back down. The surface of a mirror is thought to be too dangerous to leave exposed in the open for too long. It is an old Eastern tradition nowadays mostly forgotten, but there are still many grandmothers who see in every mirror a gateway to the unknown. If you look into a mirror for too long, there is a chance that the gate might suddenly open and suck you inside.

Around the globe there are several words that function like common currency. East or West, wherever you go, the words sound more or less the same in every language and culture. Television and telephone are the most well-known examples; Internet is yet another. And so is depression.

As common as the word depression is across languages, there are still noteworthy cultural differences. In Turkish, for instance, one says "I am at depression" instead of "I am depressed." The word is used as if depression were less a state of mind than a specific area, a dark corridor with only a weak light bulb to illuminate the place. The person who is depressed is thought to be not "here," but in that "other space," separated by glass walls.

Not only are the depressed in a different place but their relationship to time is also warped. Depression recognizes only one time slot — the past — and only one manner of speech: "If only." People who are depressed have very little contact with the present moment. They live persistently in their memories, resurrecting all that has come and gone. Like a hamster on a wheel or a snake that has swallowed its tail, they are stuck in a roundabout of gloom.

That, pretty much, was my state of mind in the weeks that followed. Something had ripped inside of me, something I could not quite put my finger on, and through that opening in my soul all the anxieties and worries I had accumulated throughout the years were now pouring out in an unstoppable flood.

But what really made it worse was that I could not write anymore.

I was eight years old when I started writing fiction. My mother came home one evening with a turquoise notebook and asked me if I would like to keep a personal journal. In retrospect, I think she was slightly worried about my sanity. I was constantly telling stories, which was good, except that I told these to imaginary friends, which was not so good. So my mother thought it could do me good to write down my day-to-day experiences and emotions.

What she didn't know was that I then thought my life was terribly boring. So the last thing I wanted to do was to write about myself. Instead I began writing about people other than me and things that never really happened. Thus began my lifelong passion for writing fiction, which from the very beginning I saw not so much as an autobiographical manifestation as a transcendental journey into other lives, other possibilities.

Now, however, I felt as if illiterate. Words that had been my lifelong companions abandoned me and dissolved into soggy letters, like noodles in alphabet soup.

Gradually, my condition became apparent to those around me.

Some people said, "You must be having a writer's block or something. No big deal, it happens to everyone. It will pass."

Others said, "It's because you went through some pretty stressful days. You were brought to trial due to the words uttered by characters in your novel The Bastard of Istanbul. Being pregnant at the time, it was a taxing experience and took its toll."

My maternal grandmother said, "Your depression must be the doing of the evil eye. May those malicious eyes close!"

A spiritual master I visited said, "Whatever the reason, you need to embrace your despair and remember, God never burdens us with more than we can bear."

Finally, a doctor I consulted said, "Welcome to postpartum depression. Let's start with two Cipralex a day and see how it goes. If you experience any mood changes down the road, you should immediately report them to me."

"Thank you, Doc," I said, putting the pills in my shirt pocket.

Cipralex, Xanax, Prozac. . The trouble was, if I started taking them, my milk would have been affected, and I wanted to breast-feed.

That same afternoon, back at home, I thought hard about this dilemma and decided to give my Cipralex pills to the pink cyclamen in the kitchen. One in the morning and one in the evening, on an empty stomach. Every second day, the fuchsia in the sitting room got its share of Xanax. Four times a week, I put Prozac into the gardenia's soil and watered it to make it easier for the plant to gulp the pill down.

A month hadn't passed when the cyclamen turned a color so dark it was almost purple and the fuchsia's leaves went numb, unable to feel anything. The gardenia was perhaps the one that was most deeply transformed. What a blissful flower she had turned into — jovial and buoyant, cracking jokes, giggling from dawn to dusk.

My mood, on the other hand, remained the same.

Lord Poton and His Family

Today it is a well-known fact that many new mothers go through an emotional turbulence in the early stages of motherhood. Yet only a few actually get to meet Lord Poton. Most women come across his young, innocent nephew, and then there are a small number of women who, unfortunately, run into his nasty uncle.

1. Baby Blues (Poton's nephew)

Baby Blues is a low-key emotional imbalance that may occur immediately after the delivery. A harmless and frequent visitor to maternity wards, Poton's nephew is not regarded as a serious problem.

2. Postnatal Psychosis (Poton's uncle)

This is the most dangerous and alarming psychological transformation that a new mother can go through. Those who come into contact with Lord Poton's uncle can end up harming themselves, their children and their surroundings. It requires long-term and serious medical therapy to be rid of him.

3. Postpartum Depression (Lord Poton)

As the lord of the djinn, he is estimated to appear to one out of ten new mothers. Usually he pays his first visit within four to six weeks after the delivery. He looks simple and innocuous at first, but gradually reveals his true colors.

Months into my depression, I began to read extensively on the subject, dying to learn the reason behind my condition, if there was one. I had stopped asking why this didn't happen to other women. Now I wanted to understand why it happened to me. Thus I frequented Web sites, gathered brochures, devoured books and medical reports. Curiosity of this sort was pointless perhaps and yet it was essential for me to be able to move on.

As I researched I understood that it was not only "unhappy" or "unfulfilled" women who suffered from postpartum depression. New mothers of every class, status, religion and temperament were susceptible to it. There were no golden formulas to explain each and every case. Yet, there were a number of causes that triggered the process, such as previous experience with depression, physical health issues during pregnancy, ongoing marital, financial or social problems, lack of cooperation of close relatives and friends, a sudden change in surroundings and so on.

It is not easy to detect the symptoms for postpartum depression, as Lord Poton is highly skillful in reinventing himself. But the following are good signs: lack of energy, excessive sensitivity and irritability, feeling guilty or inadequate, inability to focus, forgetfulness, a fear of hurting yourself or the baby, irregular sleep patterns, lack of appetite, lack of sexual drive, antisocial behavior (closeting yourself in the house, avoiding people and even close friends), lack of interest in physical appearance, an ongoing indifference toward the rest of the world. .

The truth is, as women of flesh and bones, as the granddaughters of Eve, we all experience ups and downs every now and then, particularly at a time as challenging and stressful as the arrival of a new baby. So, more than the symptoms per se, it is how strongly and persistently we suffer from them that matters.

Dissatisfied with the information I gathered, I decided to prepare my own pop quiz for new mothers.

Lord Poton and You

HOW LIKELY WILL YOU TWO MEET?

How did you feel after you checked out of the hospital and

came back home?

A. Like a baby bounced out of his bath. I wish we had stayed a bit longer at the hospital. The nurses were cool and comforting, and were constantly checking on us. When we came home I realized I didn't even know how to hold the baby properly.

B. I felt like a fish out of water, but figured that was normal. Isn't it?

C. I felt terrific, ready for a new beginning! Good thing I had made the baby's room ready. Pink and lavender with unicorn murals. I painted every unicorn myself.

What is your clearest memory of the day of delivery?

A. The pain! And the stress I felt as we entered the operating room. How can I wipe off my mind the sight of masked doctors and nurses?

B. Oh, the moment I held the baby in my arms. It was an incredible feeling. I cried and cried. I still cry when I think about it.

C. The flowers and chocolates sent by our friends and relatives! They were fabulous and those teddy bears were so cute!

Think about how you've been eating lately.

A. I feed the baby but I neglect myself. I don't have much of an appetite anyway.

B. I have been eating regularly, though now that I think about it, I'm not sure how regularly.

C. My appetite is so huge I can eat three breakfasts a day. Don't blame me! Blame Rosita, our cook. Oh, those biscochitos! How am I going to shed the extra pounds?

Think about how you've been sleeping lately.

A. What sleep! Listening to make sure the baby is breathing properly, I stay awake all night, every night.

B. I sleep fine, I guess. Well, some nights I sleep better than others.

C. I'm like Sleeping Beauty. When the baby cries my husband gets up to check. Isn't he adorable?

Do you see any differences in yourself since the birth?

A. Better to ask me, "What has stayed the same?" My life has changed, I have changed, everything has changed.

B. I am not my usual self but I'm not sure in what way exactly.

C. Well, I'm fatter than I was before the pregnancy, if that's what you are trying to get at. But I'm much thinner than I was during the pregnancy! So there you go!

A romantic movie that you've watched before is showing on

TV. When it gets to a heartbreaking scene, how do you feel?

A. Heartbroken, of course. I cry at pretty much everything these days.

B. Since I've seen the movie before it won't affect me that much, I guess. But you never know.

C. Why on earth would I sit and watch a movie I've seen before when there are plenty of new movies out there?

After giving birth how did you feel toward your husband?

A. I had to go through all the pain, and the guy became a dad, just like that. And then he goes and buys her overalls that have "Daddy's Girl!" written all over. I'm the one who changes diapers, but the baby still gets to be "Daddy's girl." I should have been born a man!

B. I think I feel some distance toward him, but I don't know why.

C. He took me out the other night. We were like high school sweethearts. We even popped a bottle of champagne.

When your doctor comes to mind, how do you feel?

A. Resentment! I'm mad at him. He could have done an epidural.

B. I wonder what it feels like to bring so many babies into the world and see so many women going through the miracle of birth. Must be nice, right?. . Right?

C. My doctor is the sweetest guy. So the other day I asked him, "Will I be able to wear a bikini this summer?" He said, "Oh, sure, and you will make a few heads turn!" Isn't he charming?

Do you feel energetic during the day?

A. I don't feel like doing much. What's the point anyway?

B. Sometimes my knees feel like rubber. They turn into jelly for a moment and then the feeling passes.

C. Oh, and how! I exercise like crazy. I even hired a fitness trainer. He is Italian!

Who did you argue with last?

1. Oh, just about everyone: my mother, who so favors my husband; my neighbor, who was being testy at a ridiculously early hour; my sisters, who have taken to asking stupid questions over the phone; my mother-in-law, who is trying to control my life; and my husband, who is always on her side.

2. I don't argue with people. I'm always accommodating. Always.

3. I don't fight, honey. I make love.

When was the last time you got together with your close

friends?

A. Two months ago? Maybe more? I am not in the mood to socialize these days.

B. Friends and family come to visit, bless them. I have no control over who is coming, who is going.

C. The other day the girls threw me a baby shower; we had so much fun. I had to go off my diet, of course. How could I resist those cupcakes?

How at peace are you with your body and sexuality?

A. My husband and I sleep in different rooms. I won't be the least bit surprised if we soon start living in separate houses or even on separate continents.

B. We still sleep in the same bed, but I'd rather sleep with the baby. I don't say that though. I wouldn't want to hurt his feelings.

C. Oh, you mean hanky-panky? Oh, yeah, like bunny rabbits.

What do you think about this test?

A. A waste of time.

B. I don't know, I didn't fully concentrate on it.

C. It was fun. Not a problem!

The Evaluation Key

If your answers were overwhelmingly A: You've not only met Lord Poton but you may already consider him your best friend. Call your doctor immediately and get help.

If your answers were overwhelmingly B: Your self-esteem is not at its highest and you show signs of passive-aggressive behavior. Be on guard. Lord Poton may knock on your door at any moment.

If your answers were overwhelmingly C: You don't have to ever worry. Depression to you is like Earth compared to Jupiter. In all likelihood, you will never cross paths with Lord Poton.

Writer-Mothers and Their Children

Alice Walker is one of the leading and most outspoken figures among contemporary American women writers. She has an international following and her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. The youngest of eight children, she was born in Georgia to a family of farmers. Her childhood was not a privileged one. Yet her mother was determined to give her children the same opportunities that white children had and did everything in her power to make sure they had a good education. Alice started school at the age of four. When she was eight years old she suffered an eye injury that was to have a profound impact on the course of her life and, perhaps, her writing. Though she forgave the brother who caused her a permanent loss of sight in her right eye, she became timid and withdrawn in the face of the teasing and bullying of other children. From those days on she retained a fondness for solitude and a passion for storytelling, weaving together both oral and written traditions.

In the turbulent early 1960s in the South, Walker followed her heart and married a white lawyer. At a time of rampant racism and xenophobia, they were the only interracial couple in the circles in which they moved. They had one daughter, Rebecca. Becoming a mother was a significant turning point in Alice Walker's life. She felt more fully connected not only with her own mother but also, perhaps, with mothers around the world — those whom she would never meet. Later on, in an essay called "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" she wrote, "For these grandmothers and mothers of ours were not Saints, but Artists; driven to a numb and bleeding madness by the springs of creativity in them for which there was no release." Elsewhere she said that her novels carried the kind of thoughts and feelings that she felt her ancestors wanted to pass on to the new generations.

The marriage ended in divorce, after which Walker refused to walk down the aisle again. Her views on matrimony and domestic life have been critical ever since. In an essay entitled "A Writer Because of, Not in Spite of, Her Children," Walker questions the conventional ideas about art and creativity in the Western world. She says the dominant culture draws a boundary between the duties of child rearing and the area of creativity. She sees the institution of marriage as a patriarchal construct unsuitable for an independent, free-spirited writer like herself. She playfully adds, "Besides, I like being courted."

Her most acclaimed novel, The Color Purple, vividly testifies that Walker is an author who deals head-on with misogyny and racism. Throughout her life she has worked for a better world where there would be equality and freedom regardless of sex, class or race. In her youth she was active in the civil rights movement and the women's movement. Interestingly, she has resisted the term feminism, criticizing it for being indifferent to the problems of women of color. Instead she suggested using a term she coined: womanism. She said womanist was to feminist as purple was to lavender.

More recently she has taken up criticizing the Bush administration's policy in Iraq, drawing the attention of the media to Iraqi mothers and children. She has also traveled to Gaza, meeting with NGOs and the people of Palestine and Israel, bridging cultural differences. She has always been openly political.

In the last few years Alice Walker's private life has been brought to the fore due to a controversy that rose between the writer and her daughter. Rebecca has made several disparaging remarks about her mother, accusing her of forgetting her own child while trying to save the children of others. She says that as a child and teenager she was constantly neglected while her activist mother was running from one event to another. She did not have an easy youth, using drugs and having affairs with both men and women by the age of thirteen. A year later, she became pregnant. She wrote extensively about her ups and downs in her autobiography, Black, White and Jewish. After giving birth to a son she wrote a second memoir about the experience and how she came to choose motherhood after a period of hesitation and doubt. Rebecca believes feminism has deceived many women and has even betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness.

It is a complicated story. One that has two very different sides, like all mother-daughter stories tend to have. For me, it is interesting to see how such a successful, outspoken writer and empathetic mother like Alice Walker could become so estranged from her daughter. Did she experience an existential clash between her life as a mother and her life as an author? Is this a personal story, incited by specific circumstances, that rests between the two of them? Or does it indicate something more universal that can happen to anyone at any time?

Inasmuch as I love reading Toni Morrison, I must say I also love listening to her. She has an androgynous raspy voice, as if speaking to us from beyond invisible barriers, beyond the ghosts of past generations. She is the kind of person to whom you could listen attentively even if she were reciting a recipe for pumpkin pie. You would sit spellbound, just the same.

The critic Barbara Christian calls the kind of realism found in Morrison's work "fantastic earthy realism." Morrison doesn't introduce the past in one swoop; she delivers it in bits and pieces, expecting us to work along with her. She wants the readers to be actively engaged in constructing the story, rather than sitting by passively. The past for her is a mesmerizing jigsaw puzzle that is painful to put together, but it must be done. She writes with rage and melancholy, but also with compassion and love. In one of her most acclaimed books, Beloved, which tells the riveting tale of the fugitive slave Sethe, motherhood is examined against the background of slavery. At the end of the novel, Sethe murders her own baby daughter rather than see her become a slave and suffer like she has.

Morrison's women are brave and epic, yet there is nothing overtly heroic about them. It is this combination of the extraordinary with the ordinary in her fictional characters that makes her work remarkable. The kind of motherhood she depicts is based on an elated love that is, at its heart, transformative and healing. Nevertheless, mother and child do not live in a social vacuum, and a woman's performance as a mother is not immune to the ills and sins of the world in which she tries to survive.

Morrison married young to an architecture student. It wasn't an easy marriage, and after having two sons the couple split. She worked as a book editor to support her family. This was the time when she started writing her acclaimed novel The Bluest Eye. It was difficult for her to write after work — she felt she was not very bright or witty or inventive after the sun went down. Her habit of getting up very early, formed when her children were young, became her choice. In interviews about that period she admits with modesty that she found it difficult to call herself a writer, preferring instead to say "I am a mother who writes" or "I am an editor who writes."

Her sons once said that they did not particularly enjoy growing up with a mother who wrote for a living. When asked about the reason for this, Morrison gives a candid and wise answer: "Who does? I wouldn't. Writers are not there." Morrison says writers like, need and value vagueness. Yet the same vagueness that is crucial for literature and creativity can be burdensome for the children of writers.

Morrison is a writer before everything else. She says her friends understand this and accept her the way she is. Real friends do. Sometimes she even needs to give priority to her writing over her children. There is a wonderful memory she shares that I find very moving. When she was working on Song of Solomon, she told her younger son— who was ten years old at the time — that this would not be a fun summer for him because she would be working all the time. She asked him to please bear with her, which he reluctantly but kindly did. Morrison says her son still calls that period of their life "a terrible summer."

Both Alice Walker and Toni Morrison value the richness found in oral storytelling, which has been passed down from grandmothers to granddaughters. Whenever they face great obstacles they are inspired by the many courageous women of earlier generations, and they inspire us to care about untold stories and silenced subjects, past and present. Although motherhood is precious for both, in their fiction they refrain from depicting it as a sacred identity. They talk openly about the conflicts of motherhood, including the hardships they have personally experienced. Numerous defeats, weaknesses and losses shape the women in their stories; sometimes they carry hearts so bruised that it hurts to read about them. Yet these female characters are fighters. They are survivors. It is their passionate struggles — not the losing or winning— that make them who they are.

A Crystal Heart

By late December, Istanbul had adopted a Christmassy look, bright and colorful, and I had tried a few cures to no avail. On the electric pole where the sneakers had hung, there was now a single string of lights, pale green and flimsy. I watched them blink weakly at night, as if they had long given up fighting the dark.

During this time I went to a psychiatrist — a smart woman who had a habit of biting her thumbnail when distracted — but I didn't have much faith in the treatment, and when there is no faith, there is little success. The side effects of the antidepressants she prescribed ranged from an itch in my hands (although this may well have been caused by my desire to write again) to dry mouth and a red rash on my face. It is an endless irony that as beneficial as antidepressants may be for some people, for others their side effects can generate even more depression. I went to therapy, too, but after each session my problems felt amplified rather than diminished. I briefly tried a support group, but being an introvert by nature, I couldn't get used to the idea of talking about my private life to a circle of strangers. As soon as words slipped out of my mouth, they felt unreal, almost illusory.

I didn't know anymore how much of my depression was due to hormones or outside forces, how much of it was self-imposed or culturally imposed. Depressions happen to us against our will and without our knowledge, but then, slowly and furtively, they may turn into a river in which we willingly paddle. There was a nagging fear at the back of my mind that I could be suffering from The Magic Mountain syndrome. In Thomas Mann's novel, his hero, Hans Castorp, goes to a sanitarium to visit a friend who suffers from tuberculosis. During the visit he develops similar symptoms and ends up staying seven years in the same sanitarium. Mann believed that sickness opens up a set of new possibilities for human beings and facilitates moral growth.

Likewise I had embraced depression to the point of seeing it as a permanent condition and looking at life through its blurry lenses. I urgently had to go back to writing to find my way out of this quagmire. I had to put my thoughts on paper, but the words wouldn't flow. I couldn't write for eight months.

Eight months might seem like nothing; for me, however, it felt like an eternity. During that time, postpartum depression became an inseparable part of my life. Wherever I went, whatever I did, Lord Poton followed me like an avid stalker. His presence was tiring, and yet he never took things to the extremes. He didn't eradicate you, but he turned you into something less than human, an empty shell of your former self. Perhaps he didn't stop you from eating and drinking altogether, but he took all the pleasure out of it. Perhaps he didn't destroy all your reserves of strength, but he drained them enough that you felt stuck between deep sleep and wakefulness, like a doomed somnambulant.

Before I knew it, literature turned into a distant and forbidden land with bulky guards protecting its boundaries. Worried that I would never be allowed in again, I wondered if writing was like riding a bike — something you didn't really ever forget once you learned how to do it. Or was it like learning Arabic or Korean? The kind of skill that abandoned you, little by little, if you were out of practice for long.

First, I convinced myself that I had forgotten how to write.

Then I started suspecting that writing had forgotten me.

Writing novels — composing stories, creating and destroying characters — is a game favored by those who refuse to grow up. Even though the game takes place on paper, the possibility of playing it over and over again helps you forget your own mortality. "The spoken word perishes, the written word remains." Or so we like to think. It gives comfort against the fleetingness of life. A novelist believes, somewhere deep down inside, that she or he is immortal.

And faith is an important part of being a writer. You come to believe so intensely in the stories you create that the outside world at times will seem dull and inconsequential. When your friends call, when some important matter arises, when your husband wants to go out to dinner, when social responsibilities weigh down on your shoulders, you will find an excuse to get out of each. Everything will be "secondary" — only for writing will you find the time.

The novelist is, and has to be, selfish. Motherhood is based on "gⁱving."

While the novelist is an introvert — at least for the duration of writing her novel — a mother is, by definition, an extrovert. The novelist builds a tiny room in the depths of her mind and locks the door so that no one can get in. There she hides her secrets and ambitions from all prying eyes. As for the mother, all her doors and windows must be wide open morning and night, summer and winter. Her children can enter through whichever entrance they choose, and roam around as they please. She has no secret corner.

When your child falls and scrapes his knees or comes home with his tonsils swollen or lies in bed with fever or when he performs as SpongeBob SquarePants in the school play, you cannot say, "Okay, well, I am writing a new chapter just now. Can you please check back with me next month?"

Betty Friedan — writer, activist, feminist — firmly believed that we needed a broader definition of success than the one largely held by modern society. We had to reframe family values in order to change the system in which every suburban mother struggled on her own, thinking there was something intrinsically wrong with her when she experienced the slightest sense of failure. Friedan herself wrote groundbreaking books and raised three children. "People's priorities— men's and women's alike — should be affirming life, enhancing life, not greed," she said.

All kinds of depression deepen when we forget to enhance life. Perhaps the most persistent question we ask ourselves at times like these is, Why? Why is this happening to me? Why not to others, why me? Saint Teresa of Avila once said, "Our soul is like a castle created out of a single diamond or some other similarly clear crystal." The trouble is we women sometimes fear the crystal is irreparably fractured when it is not, and we think it is our fault when it is not.

My maternal grandmother was married at the age of fifteen to an army officer she had seen for only two minutes (my grandfather knocked on her door pretending to be looking for an address, and she opened the door and gave him directions, similarly pretending). My mother married a philosophy student at the age of twenty, when she was still in college and could not be dissuaded from marrying so young.

One woman had an arranged marriage in Turkey in the 1930s, raised three kids and was fully dependent on her husband's ability to support her. The other married in a love marriage of her choice, got divorced, graduated from college (she finished her degree after the divorce), raised her kid and was economically independent. Although my grandmother was bound by traditional gender roles and my mother was the emancipated one, interestingly, when it came to surviving the vicissitudes of womanhood (like postpartum blues, menopause, etc.), there were times when my grandmother was better prepared. From one generation to the next some valuable information was lost along the way: that at different stages in her life a woman could need, would need, the help of her sisters, blood or not. As for my generation, we are so carried away with the propaganda that we can do anything and everything we want, our feet don't always touch the ground. Perhaps we forget how to ask for help when we need it most.

Today, we do not speak or write much about the face of motherhood that has been left in the shadows. Instead, we thrive on two dominant teachings: the traditional view that says motherhood is our most sacred and significant obligation and we should give up everything else for this duty; and the "modern" women's magazine view that portrays the quintessential "superwoman" who has a career, husband and children and is able to satisfy everyone's needs at home and at work.

As different as these two views seem to be, they have one thing in common: They both focus solely on what they want to see, disregarding the complexity and intensity of motherhood, and the way in which it transforms a woman and her crystal heart

Farewell to a Djinni

Katherine Mansfield once remarked in that captivating voice of hers, "True to oneself! Which self? Which of my many — well really, that's what it looks like it's coming to — hundreds of selves? For what with complexes and repressions and reactions and vibrations and reflections, there are moments when I feel I am nothing but the small clerk of some hotel without a proprietor."[18] As the small clerk of my own hotel, I wish I could say that, in the end, using my willpower, self-control or wits, I defeated Lord Poton. I wish I could claim that I beat him with my own strength by cooking up a grand scheme, tricking him into oblivion. But it didn't happen like that.

This is not to say that none of the treatments had any effect. I'm sure some of them did. But the end to my postpartum depression came more of its own accord, with the completion of some inner cycle. Only when the time was right, when I was "right," did I get out of that dark, airless rabbit hole. Just as a day takes twenty-four hours and a week takes seven days, just as a butterfly knows when to leave its cocoon and a seed knows when to spring into a flower, just as we go through stages of development, just as everything and everyone in this universe has a "use by" date, so does postpartum depression.

There are two ways to regard this matter:

The Pessimist: "If one cannot come out of depression before the time is ripe, there is nothing I can do about it."

The Optimist: "If one cannot come out of depression before the time is ripe, there is nothing depression can do to me."

If you are leaning toward the Pessimist's approach, then chances are you are in the first stages of postpartum depression. If you are leaning toward the Optimist's, then congratulations, you are nearing the exit. Every woman requires a varying amount of time to complete the cycle. For some it takes a few weeks, for others more than a year. But no matter how complex or dizzying it seems to be, every labyrinth has a way out.

All you have to do is walk toward it.

Lord Poton: There is something different about you this morning. A sparkle in your eyes that wasn't there before.

Me: Really? Could be. I had a strange dream last night.

Lord Poton: I hope it was a nightmare! Sorry, I have to say that. After all, I am a dastardly djinni. I can't wish you anything good, it's against the rules.

Me: That's okay. It was as intense as a nightmare anyway.

Lord Poton (more interested now): Oh, really? Tell me!

Me: Well, we were standing by a harbor, you and I. It turns out you were leaving on a ship that transports djinn from this realm into the next. It was a mammoth ship with lots of lights. The port was so crowded, hundreds of pregnant women were gathered there with their big bellies. Then you embarked and I sadly waved good-bye to you.

Lord Poton (confused): You were sad to see me go? Are you sure? You must have been jumping for joy. Why, I've destroyed your life.

Me: No, you haven't. It was me who has done this to myself.

Lord Poton (even more confused): Are you trying to tell me you're not mad or angry with me?

Me: I am not, actually. I think I needed to live through this depression to better reassemble the pieces. When I look at it this way, I owe you thanks.

As if I have smacked him in his face, Lord Poton flushes scarlet up to his ears and takes a step back.

Lord Poton (his voice shaking): No one has spoken to me like this before. I don't know what to say. (His eyes fill with tears.) Women hate me. Doctors, therapists, too. Oh, the terrible things they write about me! You have no idea how it feels to be insulted in brochures, books and Web sites.

Me: Listen, that ship in my dream had a name: Aurora. It means "dawn" in Spanish, safak in Turkish.

Widening his slanting eyes, he looks at me blankly.

Me: Don't you understand? I am that ship. I was the one who brought you into the port of my life.

Lord Poton (scratching his head): Let's accept what you are saying for a moment. Why would you do such a thing?

Me: Because I thought I couldn't deal with my contradictory voices anymore. I've always found it hard to handle the Thumbelinas. If I agreed with one, I could never make it up to the others. If I loved one a little more, the others would begin to complain. It was always that way. I had been making do by leaning a little bit on one and then a little bit on another. But after I gave birth the system stopped functioning. I couldn't bear the plurality inside of me. Motherhood required oneness, steadiness and completeness, while I was split into six voices, if not more. I cracked under the pressure. That was when I called you.

That is when the strangest thing happens. There, in front of my eyes, Lord Poton starts to dissolve, like fog in the sunlight.

Lord Poton (taking out his silk napkin and dabbing at his eyes): I

guess it is time for me to leave, then. I never thought I would get so emotional. (He wipes his nose.) I'm sorry — you took me by surprise is all.

Me: That's all right.

Lord Poton (sniffling): I guess I'll miss you. Will you write to me? Me: I'll write about you. I'll write a book.

Lord Poton (clapping his hands): How exciting! I'm going to be famous!

A heavy silence descends, rushing into my ears like the wind through the leaves. I feel light, as if something has held me and lifted me up.

Lord Poton: Well, good-bye. But what will happen to the finger-women?

Me: I will take them out of the box. I'm going to give them each an equal say. The oligarchy has ended, and so have the coup d'etat, monarchy, anarchy and fascism. It is finally time for a full-fledged democracy.

Lord Poton (laughing): Let me warn you, love, democracy is not a bed of roses.

Me: You might be right. But still, I'd prefer it to all other regimes.