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

Signs

It is noontime in Istanbul. I am on the steamboat Gypsy, named after the way it dances in the blue waters, ferrying passengers between the islands and the mainland. Young lovers stealing kisses, high school students skipping class, office workers prolonging their lunch break, photographers lugging their cameras, salesmen backpacking their wares, tourists being tourists. . Somehow people from all walks of life seem to have found themselves in this nutshell of a vessel that is swaying from side to side. I am squashed in a corner. With books on my lap, I am sitting between an overweight woman and a well-groomed, elderly gentleman. Having completed an interview for a literary magazine on one of the islands, I am on the return route. The city girl is going home. Alone.

Shortly after the boat leaves port, I realize I have forgotten my notebook at the place where I did the interview. Suddenly, I feel bad. Why do I always go around forgetting something or other? Umbrellas, cell phones, vitamins, mascaras, lipsticks, hair bands, gloves. . I forget half-eaten sandwiches that I've put aside for a few minutes, and I forget, in public toilets, my silver rings after I've taken them off to wash my hands. Once I even forgot a glass bowl with two turtles in it, a birthday present from a dear friend. As I couldn't bring myself to confess to my friend that I had lost her present the very day she had given it to me, during the weeks that followed, every time she asked me about the turtles, I made up stories.

"Oh, they are doing great, gorging on my cyclamens, gaining weight."

Then I said: "You know, the other day one of the turtles sneaked out of the bowl without my noticing. I looked everywhere but couldn't find it. Then later, when I turned on the reading lamp, there it was. Sitting comfortably on the bulb! The shadow it cast on the wall looked like a monster."

I went on inventing the adventures of my two turtles until one day my friend looked me in the eye and asked me to please stop. Her voice suddenly dwindled into a whisper; she told me she had a confession to make.

"I need to get this off my chest," she said. "When I first bought the turtles I had serious doubts whether you would take good care of them. But you proved me wrong. You are doing such a great job that I think I owe you an apology."

I bit my lip and stood still, not breathing. That was it. After that I couldn't fabricate turtle stories and a few days later it was my turn to make a confession. I told my friend that she did not owe me an apology as it was I who had to apologize, not once but twice, for my carelessness and for my deception. I then explained to her that her turtles had never made it to my house.

"You know, I had a hunch," she said after a long, awkward silence. "When you told me the turtles were nibbling sunflower seeds out of your hands, I wondered if you were confusing them with caged canaries."

To my relief she broke into a laugh and I joined her. We made fun of my sloppiness. I didn't really mind. Other than the embarrassment of losing the gift, the incident induced no further self-criticism in my soul. What difference did it make if I was a good caretaker or not? After all, turtles weren't babies.

Suddenly the steamboat rocks, like a giant stretching out of sleep. All of us passengers live through a moment of panic. Lips move restlessly, hands reach for something to grab. Far ahead there is a Russian tanker creating massive waves. We watch the tanker uneasily, and yet as soon as the waves smooth out into ripples, we end our prayers, loosen our fists and sink back into lethargy.

But I have other concerns on my mind. Since realizing I no longer had my notebook, I have been thinking of nothing but writing. I guess I have a tendency to make life more difficult for myself. If I actually had paper, I might not have such a strong urge to take notes at this instant. But because I don't have paper, I must write. I furiously dig in my bag and empty everything onto my lap, but I can't find even a receipt to write on the back of.

I don't know why I am fretting. There is an idea buzzing in my head but just what it is I cannot tell until I put it in writing. Many people, including many writers, prefer to mull things over in detail before jotting them down, but I am the opposite. In order to understand the thoughts churning in my mind, I have to first see them in the form of letters. I know I have an idea now, but I need to put pen to paper to learn what it is. And for that I need paper.

I glance left and right. The woman next to me doesn't look like she could be of help. There appears to be a ton of knickknacks in her shopping bags, but I doubt there is a notebook among them. Now that I have paid attention to her, I realize how young she actually is. She seems to be around twenty-five. It is her extra weight that makes her appear, at first glance, ten to fifteen years older. She is wearing a balloon-sleeved, puffy-skirted azure dress — as if she has just walked out of a 1930s movie and got on a steamboat in Istanbul. Her hair, a wavy dark brown, is cut at shoulder length and newly combed. A pair of golden earrings dangles from her ears. Her toenails, visible through her open shoes, are painted a vivid red. Though the buttons of her dress look as though they are about to burst, she doesn't seem to mind. She has accepted the largeness of her breasts as a blessing and exhibits them as a favor to all mankind without discrimination. A woman who is proud of her womanhood and all the more womanly in her pride, she exudes a strong, bold and magnetic femininity.

As I do next to all women who glow with this kind of femininity,

I feel like an impostor, a poor imitation of my gender. To her, womanhood comes naturally, like a yawn or sneeze, just as effortless. To me, womanhood is something I need to observe and study, learn and imitate, and still can never fully comprehend.

If the woman next to me were a cat, she would be lying in a gorgeous basket beside a heater, her eyes narrowed to slits, or she would be curled up on the lap of her owner purring in delight, flicking her tail to a rhythm of her own. If I were a cat, I would be sitting anxiously by the windowsill all day long, watching the cars drive by and the pedestrians pass, and I would run from the house at the earliest opportunity into the wide world outside.

On the other side of the woman, there is a boy around eight years old, and next to him, a younger boy who strikingly resembles his brother. Both boys are wearing the same jeans and navy striped T-shirt. They have the same toys in their hands. Muscular, dark green, fully equipped plastic commandos, armed in one hand with a grenade whose pin is ready to be pulled, in the other with a Kalashnikov. Both boys are chewing wads of gum as big as walnuts, blowing one bubble after another. Every time a bubble pops, I flinch — as if they have shot at someone with those plastic commandos. Another enemy gets cleared off the steamboat.

Their toys may assault, but the boys are introverted. They don't even lift their heads to look at their mother. They are particularly careful not to come eye to eye with her. I suppose it is not easy for boys of their age to have a mother who is that attractive.

Convinced that neither the boys nor their mother can help me in my quest to find paper, I turn to the man on my left. He has metal- framed glasses, a serious expression, and though he must be forty at most, the top of his head is already balding. The man's body language screams, "I AM A SALESMAN." He is holding a leather bag, in which I'm certain there is paper somewhere. When I ask, he kindly offers me more than a few sheets, each sporting the letterhead shooting star MARKETING LTD.

Thanking the man, I start to write, watching the ink dry as I move on. The letters pour forth as if of their own accord: THE MANIFESTO OF THE SINGLE GIRL.

I look at the paper in bewilderment. So this is what was on my mind.

The woman beside me edges closer, her head craned toward the paper on my lap. On Istanbul's steamboats you get used to people reading newspapers over your shoulder, but this woman is openly reading my notes. Though my first instinct is to try to cover what I've written, I soon accept the futility of looking for privacy in such a small, confined space and let her read.

1. Saying that loneliness is reserved for God the Almighty, and thus expecting everyone to pair up for life is one of the biggest illusions invented by Man. Just because we embarked on Noah's Ark in twos doesn't mean we have to complete the entire trip in pairs.

I'm writing and the woman is reading. At one point she leans so far onto my right shoulder that her hair touches my face. I inhale the scent of her shampoo, tangy and fruity. She seems to be having problems deciphering my notes, and, given my handwriting, I don't blame her. I make an effort to write more clearly.

2. How is it that in traditional societies, people who dedicated their lives to their faith and swore never to marry were revered by all, but in today's culture being a "spinster" is almost a disgrace, a pitied condition?

3. How is it that, even though marriage needs a woman and a man, and being unmarried is a condition that applies to both sexes equally, the term spinster has different — and more negative— connotations than bachelor?

My neighbor pulls out a pack of trail mix from her bag, shares half of it with her sons and turns her attention back to my writing, munching as she reads. Amid salty peanuts, roasted yellow chickpeas and pumpkin seeds, I write and she looks on, happily entertained.

4. Women who have been "left on the shelf" should have their dignity returned and be applauded for daring to live without a man to watch over them.

5. Those who use the expression "the female bird builds the nest" don't understand the bird. It is true that birds build nests, but with every new season they abandon the home they have made to erect a new one in a different place. There is no bird that stays in the same nest for the entirety of its life.

I notice the woman briefly shudder. The hair on her arms stands up as if the day were not pulsing with heat.

6. Change and changeability are life's alphabet. The vow to stay together "till death do us part" is a fantasy that runs against the essence of life. Besides, we don't die only once. It is worth remembering that human beings die many deaths before dying physically.

7. Therefore one can promise only to love at this very moment and nothing beyond that.

8. If I must resort to marriage as a metaphor, I can claim that literature is my husband and books are my children. The only way for me to get married is either to divorce literature or to take a second husband.

9. Since divorcing literature is out of the question and since there is no man among mankind who would agree to become "husband number two," in all likelihood, I will be single all my life.

10. Herewith this piece of paper is my manifesto.

I lean back and wait for the woman to finish reading. She is lagging behind, mouthing the words syllable by syllable like a schoolgirl who has just learned the alphabet. The gentle breeze that licks the deck carries the scent of the sea toward us and I taste salt on my tongue. After a few seconds the woman leans back and heaves a sigh, really loud.

I can't help but feel curious. What did she mean by that? Did she agree with me? Was it a sigh that meant, "You are so right, sister, but this is the way the world is and has always been"? Or did she rather want to say, "You write all this crap, honey, but real life works differently"? I have a feeling it is the latter.

Suddenly I am seized by an urge to needle her. This woman is my Other. She is the kind of woman who has gladly dedicated her life to her home, to her husband and to her sons. Since youth she focused her energy on finding an ideal husband and starting her own family, became a mother before saying farewell to her girlhood, gained weight for the cause, has aged before her time, has allowed her desires to turn into regrets and become sour inside. This woman, with her canned dreams, comfortable social status and bygone aspirations, is my antithesis. Or so I want to believe.

"For a woman, any woman, the right way to engender is through her uterus, not through her brain."[1] That is what some of the leading male novelists in my country believed. They claimed fiction writing as their terrain, an inherently manly task. The novel was a most rational construct, a cerebral work that required engineering and plotting, and since women were, by definition, emotional beings, they wouldn't make good novelists. These famous writers saw themselves as "Father Novelists" and their readers as sons in need of guidance. Their heritage makes me suspect that in order to exist and excel in the territory of literature, I, too, might have to make a choice between uterus and brain. If it ever comes to that, I have no doubt as to which one I will choose.

The steamboat is about to arrive at the shore. Unaware of my thoughts the woman next to me leaps to her feet. Gather the bags, pack the chickpeas, ready the boys, bundle the Kalashnikovs, squeeze feet back into shoes… In less than thirty seconds she is all packed. Pushing and shoving through the crowd with her boys by her side, she moves toward the exit, away from me.

Only then, only when the woman gets up, do I notice something I should have detected before. The woman isn't overweight. She isn't even plump. She is heavily pregnant, that's all. Her belly looks so huge, she could well be expecting twins or triplets.

For some reason unbeknownst to me, this insignificant detail turns my head. But there is no time to muse. The steamboat is at the dock. Everybody springs to their feet in a hurry, swarming chaotically toward the doors. In that commotion, I come eye-to-eye with the man beside me.

"Thank you for the paper…" I say.

"You are most welcome," he says. "I am happy if I was able to help."

"Oh, you were," I say. "Just curious, what is Shooting Star Marketing?"

"We are a new company specializing in products for mothers and newborn babies," he says. "Electronic milk pumps, bottle warmers and things like that …"

The man's smile blossoms into a grin. Or maybe it just looks that way to me. Suddenly it feels like somewhere in that bright blue sky where the sun has now begun to descend, the angels are pointing their milky-white fingers at me, making fun. There is an irony, when I come to think of it, in writing a single-girl manifesto on the letterhead of a company that sells products for new mothers.

Having noticed this irony, but not sure what to do with it, I stand there dumbstruck. A voice inside me says, "There are no coincidences in the universe, only signs. Can you see the signs?"

I brush the voice away and put my manifesto in my pocket, no longer completely convinced of its credibility. In this state I disembark the steamboat Gypsy.

Is this a sign I wasn't seeing? For no reason at all I had written the single-girl manifesto. In that same breath I had seen the woman beside me as my Other. She was "the housekeeper-mother-wife" I would never let myself become. Thinking I was not only different from but also far better than she, I swore to be Miss Spinster Writer. Meanwhile, I wasn't aware that above my manifesto glowed the name of a company that served new mothers. The universe was mocking my arrogance.

There must have been signs, not one but many, because months after writing this manifesto I fell head over heels in love. I even got married. As used to assuming that I would descend from Noah's Ark alone as I was, I awakened to the beauty of being part of a couple. Two years later I gave birth to my first child. During my pregnancy I often remembered how I had belittled the woman on the steamboat and I felt regret, piercing regret.

There must have been other signs, not one but many, because a few weeks after giving birth — when it became apparent that my milk was not going to be sufficient and had to be increased in quantity — we called a number that friends had given us and rented an electronic milk pump. When the machine was delivered to our house, I noticed a familiar logo on the package: shooting star marketing.

Who knows, maybe it was the gentleman from the steamboat who dropped the milk pump at our house. . Who knows, maybe the no-longer-fat woman with her blue dress and sons, plastic commandos, roasted chickpeas and newborn twins or triplets was also there somewhere, hiding behind a bush, laughing at the change in my life, at this unexpected twist of fate.

In the Beginning There Was Tea

A few weeks after the steamboat incident and long before the thought of getting married crosses my mind, I am having tea with a woman novelist. Little do I know that this encounter will motivate me to think harder about the choices we make between creating babies and creating books.

"I would like to meet you, Miss Shafak. Why don't you come over for tea?" she had said to me over the phone a few days earlier, and added with bright laughter: "The tea is only an excuse, of course. The real purpose is to talk. Come over and talk we shall." Eighty-one years old and still as passionate about writing as she was in her youth, Adalet Agaoglu is one of the foremost literary voices of her generation. I am excited to meet her.

Although she had given me meticulous directions to her home, on the evening of the meeting I spend some time looking for the address. As in many of Istanbul's neighborhoods, this one, too, has a maze of alleys that snake up and down, wind and intertwine into new streets under different names. Finally, when I find the apartment, I still have ten more minutes until the appointment, so I wander around a bit. Up at the corner there is a makeshift flower stand next to which two Gypsy women are sitting cross-legged in their dazzlingly-colored baggy trousers, jingling the gold bracelets on their wrists, puffing cigarettes. I admire them, not only for the perfect smoke rings they blow out but also for their total indifference to social limitations. They are the kind of women who can smoke cigarettes on the streets in a culture where public space and the right to smoke in the open belong to men.

Five minutes later, with a bouquet of yellow lilies in my hand and curiosity in my heart, I ring the bell. As I wait for the door to be opened, little do I know that this meeting will have far-reaching consequences in my life, triggering a series of reflections inside me about womanhood, motherhood and being a writer.

Ms. Agaoglu opens the door. Her skin is slightly pale, her smile cautious and her short hair the style of a woman who doesn't want to spend too much time with her hair.

"Here you are! Come on in," she says, her voice brimming with energy.

I follow her into the large sitting room. The place is spacious, immaculate and tastefully decorated. Every object seems to have fallen into its niche in seamless harmony. Though we are still deep in the heart of summer, it is a gusty day, with Istanbul's infamous northeast poyraz wind pounding on the windowpanes, penetrating the cracks in the doors. But her home is serene and smells of years of order and quiet.

I perch myself on the closest armchair. But no sooner do I lean back than I realize this happens to be the highest chair in the room and it might not be appropriate for me to sit here. I leap to my feet and try the sofa on the opposite side. It is so soft that I almost sink into it. Sensing I won't be comfortable there either, I slide over to the adjacent chair, which I instantly regret, because who would sit on a hard chair when there is a comfy sofa instead?

Meanwhile, hands folded on her lap, Ms. Agaoglu sits erect and composed, watching my every move from behind her glasses with an amusement she doesn't feel the need to hide. If it weren't for the look on her face I could have changed places again, but I hold my breath and manage to stay still.

"Finally we have met," she says. "Women writers are not great fans of each other, but I wanted to meet you in person."

Not knowing what to say to that, I smile awkwardly and try a less contentious beginning. "How very quiet it is here."

"Thank God it is," she says. "It is hard to admit this in a city as noisy as Istanbul, but I get disturbed by the slightest sound when I am writing fiction. It is crucial for me to have absolute peace and quiet while I work."

She pauses, measuring me with brightened interest, then continues, "But I understand you are not like that. I read your interview the other day. You seem to write on the move, enjoying disorder and displacement. I find that really. ."

"Strange?" I offer.

She arches her thin eyebrows in dissent, searching for the exact word.

"Incomprehensible?" I make another attempt.

"Bizarre," she says finally. "I find it really bizarre."

I give a small nod. How can I explain to her that the order and quiet she so values give me the creeps? To live in the same house for decades, to know the face of every store owner and neighbor in the area, to be rooted in the same street, same quarter, same city, is an idea that I find harrowing. Steadiness and stability are Russian and Chinese to me. While I know they are great languages with rich histories, I don't speak them.

Silence is the worst. Whenever a thick cloud of silence descends, the yapping voices inside me become all the more audible, rising to the surface one by one. I like to believe I know all the women in this inner harem of mine but perhaps there are those I have never met. Together they make a choir that does not know how to tone down. I call them the Choir of Discordant Voices.

It is a bizarre choir, now that I think about it. Not only are they all off-key, none of them can read notes. In fact, there is no music at all in what they do. They all talk at the same time, each in a voice louder than the other, never listening to what is being said. They make me afraid of my own diversity, the fragmentation inside of me. That is why

I do not like the quiet. I even find it unpleasant, unsettling. When working at home or in a hotel room, I make sure to turn on the radio, the TV or the CD player, and sometimes all three at the same time. Used to writing in hectic airports, crowded cafes or boisterous restaurants, I am at my best when surrounded by a rich ruckus.

It suddenly occurs to me that this might be why I, unlike all my friends, never get upset with those drivers who roll down their windows and broadcast pop music over and beyond the seven hills of Istanbul. It's my belief that those magandas[2] are just as scared of the quiet as I am. They, too, are afraid to be left alone with their inner voices.

Just like those showy types, I open my windows as I sit down to work on a novel. Surely my aim is not to invade the outside world with my personal music. I want the music of the outside world to invade my inner space. The cries of seagulls, the honking of cars, the siren of an ambulance, the quarrels of the couple living upstairs, the clamor of the children playing football across the street, the sounds of backgammon pieces coming from coffeehouses, the yelling of peddlers and the punk and postpunk music spinning on my CD player. . Only in this hullabaloo is the revelry inside me briefly drowned out. Only then can I write in peace.

"Would you like to see the desk where I have written most of my books?" asks Ms. Agaoglu suddenly.

"Sure, I would love to."

It is an elegant mahogany desk topped with neatly organized manuscripts and books, decorated with carefully chosen memorabilia. A nice antique lamp radiates soft yellow light. She tells me she doesn't let anyone else clean her desk, as she wants to make sure every single object on it remains in the right place. I wonder for a moment whether that restriction applies to the entire room since there are also many items and photographs scattered all over the bookshelves, as well as the coffee and end tables. A collector's passion for objects, each loaded with meaning and memory, is something that I have always found perplexing.

My relation with objects is based on serial disloyalty. I get them, I love them, I abandon them. Since childhood I have gotten used to packing and repacking boxes. When you move between neighborhoods, cities and continents, you can take with you only a certain amount of things. The rest of your possessions you learn to leave behind.

Born in France in 1903, Anai's Nin was an author who left a big impact not only on world literature but also on the women's movement of the twentieth century. Though she was a prolific writer who produced novels, short stories and literary criticism, it was her diaries— most of which were published during her lifetime — that were most widely celebrated. Critics said most, if not all, the female characters in her fiction were her, a comment she heartily denied. One of the many intriguing things about her was how she, tired of dealing with the rules of the publishing world, decided to publish her own books. She bought a hand-fed printing press, learned how to run it and began to typeset. It was heavy labor, as she called it, especially for a woman who weighed no more than a hundred pounds. Later on when she talked about this experience, she said that printing her own books — setting each sentence into type — taught her, as a writer, how to be more succinct and less wordy.

Circumstances help us to learn how to be content with less.

Similarly, moving around has taught me how to survive with a minimal amount of furniture. What I buy in one city I abandon before leaving for the next. It is as if with every step I take and every gain I make, I lose something else somewhere. There is, however, one item in my hand baggage I have been able to take with me wherever I have gone. A satchel as old as the Dead Sea but as light as a feather, and not subject to customs anywhere in the world: the art of storytelling.

Even my most treasured books I could not keep together, piled as they are in cardboard boxes divided among the basements of relatives and friends. My Russian literature collection is in Ankara at my mother's house; all my books in Spanish, including Don Quixote de la Man- cha, rest in the garage of a friend in a suburb of Istanbul; and Arabian Nights, all one thousand and one of them, still wait for me at Mount Holyoke College, where I was once a fellow.

In a strange way, such disorganization helps to bolster my memory. When you cannot keep your books with you, you have no choice but to memorize as many of the stories and passages as best as you can. That is how I have fragments of dialogue from Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago and poems from Rumi's Mathnawi carved in my mind. I cannot carry them with me, not books that thick or volumes that many, but I can always recite a few lines from Rumi off the top of my head. "Without Love's jewel inside of me, let the bazaar of my existence be destroyed stone by stone."

"Do you have a similar writing space you deem sacred?" Ms. Agaoglu asks.

"No, not really, but I have a laptop," I reply, knowing it sounds pathetic but saying it anyhow.

She gazes at me with eyes of wonder but then lets the subject drop. "Let's have tea now, shall we?"

I smile with relief. "Yes, please, thank you."

Back in the sitting room, as I wait for my host to return, a fact I have always known but never really faced plants itself in front of me: I have always clung, or maybe I wanted to cling, to bits and pieces of existence here and there, with no coherence, no center, no continuity in my life. There is a shorter way of saying this: I am a mess.

I see, in that precise moment, that however settled Ms. Agaoglu is, I am peripatetic to the same degree. However disciplined she is, I am disordered to the same extent. However hard I try to attach myself to an object, a home, an address or a relationship, the glue I use is never strong enough, and yet, odd though it is, such displacement has been both a curse and a blessing.

In a little while, Ms. Agaoglu reappears with a tray topped with porcelain teacups and plates. On my plate are pastries, the salty biscuits on the left, the sweet cookies on the right, all lined up in perfect symmetry and in equal number.

During the next half hour she tells me how it was for women writers in the past and, in her view, what has changed today. I listen, enjoying the conversation. There is no rush. No appointments to keep or tasks to accomplish. We speak of art and literature, of writers who have come and gone, and then of being a female writer in a patriarchal society.

Just then, out of the blue, Ms. Agaoglu catches me off guard by broaching a new topic. "I think at some point in their lives, women writers feel like they have to make a choice," she says. "At least that is what happened to me. I decided not to have children in order to dedicate myself to writing."

She tells me, in a voice calm but firm, that to be able to stand on her feet as a woman novelist and to write freely and copiously, she chose not to have any children of her own.

"I was lucky," she says, "because my husband backed me in this difficult decision. There is no way I could have done it without his support."

My stomach clenches. Please don't ask me. But she does.

"How about you? Is motherhood something you are considering?"

The manifesto I penned on the steamboat flashes in front of my eyes in gaudy capital letters. This might be the right time to recite some parts of it. But before I get a chance, the Choir of Discordant Voices begins to sing, as if an on button has been pressed.

"Shhh, be quiet," I whisper into my collar. "Shut up, girls, for God's sake."

"Did you say something?" Ms. Agaoglu asks.

"No, no. . I mean, yes, but I was just murmuring to myself. . It's nothing really. . " I say, feeling the color rush to my face.

"And what were you murmuring to yourself?" Ms. Agaoglu asks, not letting me off the hook.

I swallow so hard that we both hear the gulp go down my throat.

I dare not say: "I was just reprimanding the four women inside me. You see, they hold opposing views on motherhood, as with all the important topics in my life."

I dare not say: "There is a mini harem deep down in my soul. A gang of females who constantly fight for nothing and bicker, looking for an opportunity to trip one another up. They are teeny-tiny creatures, each no taller than Thumbelina. Around four to five inches in height, ten to fourteen ounces in weight, that is how big they are. They make my life miserable and yet I don't know how to live without them. They can come out or stay put as they like. Each has declared a different corner of my soul her residence. I cannot mention them to anyone. If I did they would have me institutionalized for schizophrenia. But isn't the personality schizophrenic by definition?"

I dare not say: "Each member of the Choir of Discordant Voices claims to be the real me and therefore sees the others as rivals. So deep is their distaste of one another, if given a chance, they would scratch one another's eyes out. They are flesh-and-blood sisters but they function under Sultan Fatih's Code of Law.[3] Should one of them ascend to the throne, I am afraid the first thing she would do would be to get rid of her siblings once and for all.

"Chronologically speaking, I don't know which finger-sized woman came first and who followed whom. Some of them sound wiser than others but that is less because of their ages than because of their temperaments. I guess I got used to hearing them quarrel inside my mind all the time."

I dare not say any of this. Instead I throw a question into the fray, taking the easy way out:

"Tell me, Ms. Agaoglu, if Shakespeare had a sister who was a very talented writer or if Fuzuli had a sister who happened to be a poet as gifted as he was, what would have happened to those women? Would they write books or would they raise children? I guess what I am wondering is, could they have done both?"

"That is a question I have tackled long ago. . " she says, her voice trailing off. "The answer I came up with was a clear no. But now, my dear, it is your turn to answer. Do you think a woman could manage motherhood and a career at the same time and equally well?"

A Talented Sister

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf makes the claim that it would have been impossible for a woman, any woman, to write the plays of Shakespeare during his age. To clarify her point she brings up an imaginary woman whom she introduces as Shakespeare's sister. She names her Judith.

Let's assume for a moment that this Judith was as passionate about theater as Shakespeare was, and just as gifted. What would have been her fate? Could she have dedicated her life to developing her talent like Shakespeare had done? Not even a chance, says Woolf.

The answer is no because a different set of rules holds for men than for women. Judith can be as talented as she likes, as fond of art and literature as she likes, but her path as a writer will be strewn with obstacles, small and large. She will have a hard time finding wiggle room in the "sociable-wife, meticulous-housewife, faithful-mother" box she is expected to fit into. More important, between her womanly tasks and motherly roles, she will not be able to find the time to write. Her whole day will pass with household chores, cooking, ironing, taking care of the children, shopping for groceries, tending to her familial responsibilities. . and before she knows it, she will become a Sieve Woman, all the time in the world leaking through the holes in her life. In those rare moments when she finds herself alone, she will give in to exhaustion or frustration. How will she write? When will she write?

From the very beginning, the opportunities presented to Shakespeare will be barred from Judith. In this world where girls are discouraged from developing their individuality and are taught that their primary role in life is to be a good wife and mother, where women are vocal in the realm of oral culture but mostly invisible when it comes to written culture, women writers start the game down 7–0.

Let us now apply Virginia Woolf's critical question to the Middle East.

Fuzuli was one of the greatest voices of the Orient, a renowned sixteenth-century poet highly respected today by Arabs, Persians and Turks alike. Let's say Fuzuli had a talented younger sister — he very well may have had one — and her name was Firuze, meaning "turquoise," the color of her eyes.

This Firuze is a whiz kid, an explorer by nature, bent on learning, bubbling with ideas. Her hair is curly, her smile dimply and her mind is full of questions, each tailing the next one. Like images in opposite mirrors, her ideas multiply endlessly, extending into infinite space. Imagination flows out of her sentences like water through the arches of an aqueduct, always fresh, always free.

She loves stories, the more adventurous and dangerous the better. Day and night she spins stories about pirates carrying human skulls with rubies set into their eye sockets, magic carpets that fly over spice bazaars and crystal palaces, and two-headed green giants who speak a language alien to all ears but hers. She endlessly tells these tales to her mother, grandmother and aunts. When they can listen no more, she relates them to guests, servants and whoever else should come calling.

The elders in the family shake their heads in unison and say, "Girl, you have an imagination deeper than the oceans. How do you come up with all these stories? Do you sneak up to the peak of the Kaf Mountain in your sleep and eavesdrop on the talks of the fairies till morning breaks?"

Firuze wonders what kind of a place is this Kaf Mountain. How she would love to go there and see it with her own eyes. The world is full of wonders, and there are some corners of Earth that remind you of paradise; this she knows not through experience but through intuition. She has read the verses about paradise in the Qur'an where it says, "Those who are accepted into heaven will be adorned with golden bracelets and be given clothing made of the finest green silk." One of her favorite pastimes is to close her eyes and imagine herself donned in fine silks, jangling crafted bells on her ankles as she walks by streams of the coolest waters, picking juicy fruits from the trees, each bigger than an ostrich egg.

Dream is a rosy-cheeked lass, as charming as a water nymph, and just as playful. If you attempt to hold her in your arms, she will slip out of your grip, lithe and nimble, like a fish, like the mirage she is. Those who crave her touch only wear themselves out.

Reality is a crone with hair as gray as stormy skies, a toothless mouth and a chilling cackle. She is not ugly, not really, but there is something disturbing about her that makes it difficult to look her in the eye.

Dream is Firuze's bosom buddy, her best friend. While they play, laughing and joking as they skip about, Reality watches them from a distance with eyes narrowed to slits.

"Someday soon," says Reality, "that spoiled Dream will be out the door and I will languish in that throne of hers. Firuze can play with Dream for a while longer. But she'll be a woman soon and then she'll have to part ways with that adored playmate of hers."

One morning Firuze wakes up with a strange wetness between her legs and a red blotch smeared upon her nightgown. Her heart skips a beat. She fears she has cut herself on something. Sobbing, she runs to her mother. But no sooner has she said a few words than she receives a whopping slap.

"Be quiet," says her mother, the tenderness in her gaze not matching the sharpness in her tone.

"But what is going on, Mother?" asks Firuze in a horrified whisper.

"It happens to all women," replies her mother. "Just don't tell anyone about it, especially your brothers. Here, take these cloths and go clean yourself."

"It happens to all women," Firuze repeats incredulously.

"That is right, and it means you are not a girl anymore. From now on you have to watch how you behave. You cannot run around or skip rope. You cannot talk loudly or giggle. You are a woman now."

When? Why? How did she switch from girlhood to womanhood? She had always thought becoming a woman was like walking a long, winding road with trees on each side, learning your way step by step. Why had no one told her that it was, in fact, a trapdoor you stepped on and tumbled into without knowing it was there?

Firuze feels dirty and guilty, not due to something she has done, but due to what she is. Her grandmother tells her not to touch the Qur'an until her bleeding has stopped and she has thoroughly cleansed herself. It seems even God doesn't want her anymore.

Firuze feels hurt. The color goes from her face, the smile from her eyes. That carefree girl whose laughter echoed in the house like a dozen tinkling bells is now replaced by a woman whose body weighs down on her. Her head bent low, her face clouded by thoughts, Firuze is in a foreign land even as she sits by the brazier with Reality.

The elders of the family do not take their eyes off her, whispering among themselves about possible suitors. Matchmakers come and go, bearing lokum wrapped in silk handkerchiefs. As her parents haggle for her bridal price, it becomes ever more important that Firuze be modest. But no matter how strictly they supervise her, they can't stop her from running up to the second floor and pressing her nose into the latticed windows. She stays there until the holes leave marks on her face like chicken pox, inhaling the smell of the wild herbs carried by the wind from the valleys afar.

If only she could walk out of the house and find a caravan that would take her beyond the city of Karbala to the ends of the world. She wants to go to school like her brother Fuzuli, and study theology, tafsir[4], astronomy and alchemy. If only she could walk along the streets proudly carrying books and brick-thick dictionaries under her arms. If only her parents would say, "Well done, Firuze. May you become a great poet like your brother, God willing!"

Firuze has a secret she won't reveal to anyone: For years now she has been writing poems. In the beginning she used to scribble down whatever was weighing on her heart, without any expectations, as if talking to herself. Before long she realized that this, to her, was more than a pastime. It was a passion.

Her writing progresses like an illness that has infected and invaded her body and soul. More often than not, inspiration comes at dawn. She rises before the morning breaks, puts a shawl on her thin shoulders and starts to write. Those who hear the soft tinkering from her room think she has risen to pray. They don't know that in a way she has. Poetry to her is true prayer, rising from the depths of her soul, addressed to a force far higher and mightier. If there were no poetry, Firuze believes, God would be too lonely.

She reads the works of other poets, especially the Iranian Hafiz and the Turkish Nesimi. She also adores her brother's poems, one of which she came across today and instantly memorized:

All that is in the world is love

And knowledge is nothing but gossip

Though she loved the poem she couldn't help thinking that only a man who had been well educated and versed in grammar and language could make such a statement. For Firuze, and all who had been excluded from school, knowledge was surely much more than gossip.

It was burning thirst.

There is an aged concubine, a woman with skin darker than ebony, who has been taking care of Firuze since the day she was born. When she walks she glides across the room as silent as silk; when she talks, she does so in whispers. One morning while crocheting a lace bedspread together, Firuze turns to her nanny and says, "I want to go to the madrassa[5] and be a famous poet."

"Is that so?" The nanny chuckles, her large breasts jiggling.

"Why are you laughing?" says Firuze, sounding hurt.

"Allow me to tell you a story first," the nanny says, suddenly serious again.

And this is the story she tells: One day Nasreddin Hodja was working in a watermelon patch when he stopped for a break and sat under a walnut tree. Looking up, he murmured to himself, "God Almighty, I don't understand Your ways. Why on earth did You grow huge watermelons on the thinnest stems and put those tiny little walnuts on those thick branches? Wouldn't it have been better the other way around?"

Just as he finished speaking a strong wind blew and a walnut fell down from the tree, falling square on his head.

"Ouch!" Nasreddin Hodja yelled in pain. As he massaged his bruised head, he understood his mistake. "God forgive me and my silly tongue," he said. "Now I understand why You didn't place watermelons on a tree. If Thou had replaced watermelons for walnuts, I wouldn't be alive now. Keep everything in its place, please. You know better!"

Firuze listens, hardly breathing. "What's that got to do with me?"

"Crazy girl, don't you see?" the nanny asks. "Who has ever heard of a female poet? There is a reason why God made everything as it is and we'd better respect that reason, lest we want watermelons raining on our heads."

That afternoon Firuze walks into the backyard. She walks past the well straight to the hen coop in the corner. Opening the small wooden gate, she enters, inhaling the pungent smell of earth, dust and dirt. Neither the rooster nor the chickens pay attention to her. The hen coop is her room. This place, with its sharp odor and noisy residents, is her only breathing space.

Under the feeding bowls, inside a velvet box, she keeps her poems. Cleaning off the dust, she grabs the box and goes to see her brother.

"Hey, little sister, what are you doing?" Fuzuli says, surprised to see her standing by the door.

She hands her poems to him, the smile on her face as tight as an oud string. "Read them, will you?"

He does. Time slows down and moves to a different rhythm, like a sleepwalker. After what seems like an eternity, Fuzuli lifts his head, a new flicker in his eyes that wasn't there before.

"Where did you find these poems?" he asks.

Firuze's eyes flicker away from his face. She dares not say the truth. Besides, she wants to know whether her poems are any good. Does she really have talent?

"One of the neighbors came calling the other day. The poems belong to her son," she says. "She implored you to take a look at them, and tell her, in all honesty, if her son has any talent."

A shadow crosses Fuzuli's face as if he were suspicious but when he speaks his voice is calm and assuring. "Tell that neighbor her son should come and see me. This young man has a great talent," he says, stroking his long, brown beard.

Firuze is alight with joy. She plans to tell her brother the truth when the right moment comes along. If she can convince her brother, he can convince the whole family. They will understand how much words mean to her. Believing in poetry is believing in love. Believing in poetry is believing in God. How can anybody say no to that?

But the moment she waits for never comes. Only weeks after their conversation, Firuze is married off to a clerk eighteen years her senior.

With drums and tambourines they sing on her henna night. The women first dance and laugh with joy, then their faces crumble, awash with salty tears. On wedding days at the celebrations of women, and only then and there, happiness and sorrow become two different names for the same thing.

Yesterday she was a child/swimming in a sea of letters/she bled poetry

A stain grew on her nightgown/dark and mysterious

In a heartbeat/in a blink/she became a woman

Her name a forbidden fruit. .

Due to her husband's connections, it is decided that the couple shall settle down in Istanbul. Firuze is swept away from her home, her family and her childhood. As she leaves her house, she does not pay a last visit to the hen coop. She doesn't care. Not anymore. Hidden in a hole under the feeding bowls, her poems go to waste. Her big secret turns to dust and the dust is swept away.

Months later in Istanbul, Firuze sits in a konak by the Bosphorus watching the dark indigo waters. She gags but manages not to throw up this time, being seven weeks into her pregnancy. She hopes it will be a son to carry her husband's name across generations and to the ends of the Earth. Sometimes she utters poems but she doesn't write them down anymore. The words she breathes disperse in the wind like shards of a broken dream she once had but can no longer remember.

Who knows how many women like Firuze lived throughout Middle Eastern history? Women who could have become poets or writers, but weren't allowed. . Women who hid their masterpieces in hen coops or dowry chests, where they rotted away. Many years later, while telling stories to their granddaughters, one of them might say,

"Once upon a time I used to write poems. Did you know that?"

"What is that, Grandma?"

"Poetry? It is a magical place beyond the Kaf Mountain."

"Can I go there, too? Can I?"

"Yes, my dear, you may go but you cannot stay there. A short visit is all you are allowed."

And she would say this in a whisper, as if that, too, were a fairy tale.

Perhaps the question that needs to be asked is not: Why were there not more female poets or writers in the past? The real question is: How was it possible for a handful of women to make it in the literary world despite all the odds?

When it comes to giving an equal chance to women like Firuze, the world has not advanced so very much. Still today, as Virginia Woolf argued, "when one reads. . of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Brontё who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to."

Still today there remains a rule in place: Male writers are thought of as "writers" first and then "men." As for female writers, they are first "female" and only then "writers."

One More Cup of Tea

Are you all right?" Ms. Agaoglu asks. "You look like you're miles away."

"Oh, do I?" I smile guiltily.

Glancing meaningfully across the table, she offers me another cup of tea and says, "Being a mother and a writer are not opponents, perhaps, not necessarily. But they are not best buddies either."

My mind acts like a computer gone awry. Names and pictures bounce around on the screen, disconnected and displaced. I think of women writers who are also mothers: Nadine Gordimer, Margaret Atwood, Annie Proulx, Anita Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri, Naomi Shihab Nye, Anne Lamott, Mary Gordon, Anne Rice, the legendary Cristina di Belgioioso. . A large number of female writers have one or two children. But there are also those, like Ursula K. Le Guin, who are mothers of three or more.

Yet at the same time, there are also many poets and writers who did not have children, for their own good reasons. Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Emily Brontё, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, Ayn Rand, Gertrude Stein, Patricia Highsmith, Jeanette Winterson, Amy Tan, Sandra Cisneros, Elizabeth Gilbert. .

Then there are female writers who chose to both give birth and adopt. Of these, the most remarkable is a woman who was not only a prolific writer but also an advocate of racial and sexual equality, a woman with a great heart, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Pearl S. Buck.

Noticing that the adoption system in America discriminated against Asian and black children in favor of white, in the early 1950s Buck decided to fight the system and help the disempowered. After a long struggle she founded the Welcome House — the first international, interracial center for adoption — and changed the lives of countless children. While doing all of this, she never gave up literature, or slowed down her writing. Quite to the contrary, her motherhood and activism seem to have propelled her career as a writer.

Last, there are also women writers who might have wanted to have children, but their husbands didn't, and therefore neither did they. Many believe that that was the case with the renowned British writer Iris Murdoch. There have been claims that her husband, John Bayley, never wanted to have kids and she went along with his wishes. A biography published after Murdoch's death outlined this lesser-known side of their relationship, causing quite a stir.

I try to find a formula, a golden formula, that could apply to most, if not all, women writers, but obviously there is none.

J. K. Rowling started writing the Harry Potter series after her son was born and dedicated the subsequent books to her newborn daughter. She says motherhood gives her inspiration. One assumes that a mother who writes about magic must be telling supernatural stories when she tucks her children into bed, but J. K. Rowling says she doesn't believe in witchcraft, only in religion. I don't know how smoothly her household runs, but Rowling seems to have a real knack for fusing motherhood and writing.

Then there is Toni Morrison, who had two small sons that she was raising by herself when she first began to write. For many years she could not work in the daylight hours, her rendezvous with pen and paper taking place before dawn, when the boys would wake up. As difficult as life was for her then, she says she drew inspiration from each hardship.

Sometimes the biggest award a woman writer hopes to receive is neither the Man Booker Prize nor the Orange Prize but a good-hearted, hardworking nanny. It is a dream shared by many, to hear those five magic words: "And the Nanny goes to. ." No wonder some of the grants Sylvia Plath won were written up as "nanny grants" — money with which she could hire a professional caretaker so as to find the time and energy to write.

But then there is the other side of the coin. In her thought-provoking "Notes to a Young(er) Writer," Sandra Cisneros tackles head-on the question of class, and women writers and poets having "a maid of their own." "I wonder if Emily Dickinson's Irish housekeeper wrote poetry or if she ever had the secret desire to study and be anything besides a housekeeper," Cisneros writes. "Maybe Emily Dickinson's Irish housekeeper had to sacrifice her life so that Emily could live hers locked upstairs in the corner bedroom writing her 1,775 poems."[6] As much as the literary world avoids talking about such mundane things, money and social class are still privileges that empower some more than others.

One should also pay attention to the children, not only to the mothers. Susan Sontag's son, David Rieff, followed in his mother's footsteps in becoming a writer and an editor. In fact, he was his mother's editor for a while. Kiran Desai speaks of the close writing relationship she has with her mother, Anita Desai. Likewise, Guy Johnson, the son of one of the most beloved voices of American poetry, Maya Angelou, also chose to become a poet.

"If these children had for some reason hated their mother's world, surely they would not have followed the same path," I think to myself. "I suppose female writers don't make such shabby mothers after all."

But even as I say this I know that there are also examples to the contrary, cases that are much more difficult to talk about. There are women writers who had great talent but perhaps were not great mothers. We do not know a lot about them. Relationships that seem enviable from the outside might tell a different truth behind closed doors. Beyond pretty photographs and bright façades there are bruised hearts that we seldom hear about.

One well-known example is Muriel Spark.

Spark is, no doubt, one of the most influential female authors of the past century. She wrote more than twenty novels and dozens of other works, including children's books, plays and storybooks. When she passed on from this world at the age of eighty-eight, friends, relatives, publishers, editors, critics, readers and journalists attended her funeral. There was only one person who didn't: her son, Robin.

One wonders what must have transpired for a son, an only son, upon learning that his mother has passed away, to decline to go to her funeral. How much hurt, how much suffering, does that take? And how could a mother, knowing she is going to die soon, spend her final days making sure her son is left out of her will? What sorrow, what pain, could have led her to make that decision?

Born in Edinburgh, Spark left her homeland shortly after getting married and moved to Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), where her husband had been offered a teaching position. In 1938 the couple had a son. I don't know if they were any unhappier than the families around them, but sometime later Muriel Spark decided to return to Britain. Alone. When she walked away from her six-year-old son, did she sense that it would be the hardest moment of her life, or did she believe, in all sincerity, that she would soon come back? In any case she never did. Robin was raised by his father and paternal grandmother.

As the years went by, the distance between mother and son widened. But it was not until the day Robin, now a grown-up man, announced his wish to become Jewish that whatever ties remained completely snapped. Spark, who had become a devout Catholic, reacted bitterly to her son's attempts to prove that his grandmother (and, therefore, mother) was, in fact, Jewish. She claimed that her son was seeking to create sensationalism and scandal just to get back at her. After that her relationship with her son was so strained that when a journalist asked her if she ever saw him, she answered: "As long as he stays away from me he can do as he pleases."

And that is how they remained. . apart.

Outside on the street, behind the half-drawn curtains, the wind speeds up, rustling the leaves of the acacia trees through the slanted evening light. Simultaneously, time speeds up. It now flows so fast that I feel a surge of panic as though I'm late for something, but what exactly, I don't know. How old am I? Thirty-five. Numbers start to go up like the spinning digits on a gas pump. Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty- eight, thirty-nine. . How many more years can I postpone the decision to have children? The clock on the wall, the clock inside my head, the clock in my heart, the clock in my uterus, they are all ticking at once. Suddenly I undergo a strange emotion — as if all these clocks were set to go off at the same time: now.

It is precisely then that the mini women inside me begin to bang against the walls of my chest. They all want to get out. They all want an urgent meeting.

Doing my best to look confident and collected, I jump to my feet. "I am sorry, may I use the restroom?"

"Sure, it is up there to the left," says Ms. Agaoglu, scrutinizing my face with those dark brown eyes of hers.

But I have no time or wish to explain. I dash to the bathroom, lock the door behind me and turn on the faucet to scalding water so that Ms. Agaoglu doesn't hear me talking to myself.

"Okay, you can come out now," I whisper.

Dead silence. On the counter in front of me there is an aromatic candle that smells of green apples. I watch its flame bob with the draft of my movements.

"Hello? Come out already!" I know I am yelling but I cannot help it.

That is when a liquid voice drenched with lethargy responds, "Oh, stop shouting like you have a stomachache, will you?"

I wonder which one of them she is, but prefer not to ask.

"Why aren't you coming out? I thought you wanted to have an urgent meeting. Because of you, I've locked myself in the toilet in a house where I am only a guest."

"We had wanted to meet, but then we realized it was dinnertime. Everyone went home to grab a bite, so we can't come outside just now."

"Oh, great!"

"Don't be cranky. I'll tell you what, why don't you get yourself down here, dear?"

Unlike Alice in Wonderland, I do not need to drink some magic potion and shrink to thumb size in order to travel to another realm, because it is not my body but my consciousness that is doing the traveling. I can take on any shape I want and still have no shape at all. Knowing this, I take a deep breath, grab a candle and start descending the mossy stairs to the dungeons of my soul.

It is time to have a serious talk with my four finger-sized women.

The Harem Within

It is dark and foggy down here. With its labyrinthine alleys and secret passages, my soul is a perfect setting for a gothic novel or a vampire movie. As I look left and right, I realize that I am completely disoriented. So many times I have walked these cul-de-sacs and dimly lit side streets, and yet I still get lost.

Far ahead there is a crossroads from which four separate paths spill. Blinking repeatedly, I lift the candle up to eye level and peer into the thick, uninviting fog. Which way should I go? I try to think of a giant, round machine, something between a compass and a wheel of fortune. This is a mental exercise I visualize when I am indecisive, although I am not sure if it really helps. In my mind's eye, I spin the wheel as fast as I can until it slows down and comes to a stop at the letter W. I quickly determine that this means West, and dutifully head in that direction.

There, in a city as neatly organized as Brussels, in a chic and modern flat furnished minimalist style, lives Little Miss Practical. She is the side of me who has great common sense and even greater pragmatism. I press her doorbell and, upon being screened by a camera, hear a buzzer that lets me inside. She is sitting at her desk, looking sprightly and sporty. On the plate in front of her is a sandwich of goat cheese and smoked turkey on wheat bread. Beside the plate is a thimbleful of Diet Coke. She has been watching her weight for as long as I can remember.

She is four and a half inches tall and weighs barely thirteen ounces. She wears casual, comfortable clothing: a breezy beige shirt, red bone- framed glasses and a pair of brown linen pants with lots of pockets to keep everything at hand. On her feet are leather sandals; her dark blond hair is cut short so that it doesn't need extra styling. Washing (shampoo and conditioner all in one) is good enough. Drying her hair would be one step too many.

"Yolla, Big Self," she says cheerfully. "What happened to you? You look awful."

"Yeah, thanks," I grumble.

"What's up, yo?" she asks. For some reason beyond my comprehension, she loves speaking in rapid-fire sentences peppered with slang, sounding like a street kid by way of Tucson.

"Oh, Little Miss Practical, you've got to help me," I say.

"Nema problema! Help is on the way."

"Did you hear the question Ms. Agaoglu asked me? I don't know how to answer. Is it possible to be a good mother and good writer at the same time? Do I want to have kids? If not, why not? If so, when, why, how?"

"Hey, be easy, Sis," she says as she pats her mouth dry with a napkin. "Don't sweat the small stuff. One can be a writer and a mama, why not? All you need to do is to trust me."

"Really?"

"Yup. Here's what we'll do. We'll split your time into two chunks: writing time and nursing time." She pauses with an impish smile, measuring my reaction. "That means you'll have to start wearing a watch."

"You know I never wear a watch," I say. "Watches, the color white and wasabi. . The three Ws I'd rather stay away from."

"Well, there's a W word you might welcome," she says mysteriously. "Because it happens to be the answer to your problem."

"What is it?"

"Winnowing!"

Seeing me draw a blank, she laughs. "Separating the grain from the chaff," she remarks. "That's exactly what you need to do."

Again I look vacantly: Again she smiles with confidence as if she has the pulse of the world under her finger.

"Think of it this way, Sis. The human brain is like a set of kitchen drawers. The cutlery is placed in one drawer. The napkins in another. And so on. Use the same model. When you are nursing, open the 'motherhood' section. When you are writing, pop open the 'novelist' one. Simple. Close one drawer, use the other. No confusion. No contradictions. No fretting. All thanks to winnowing."

"Wow, that's splendid, but there is a small detail you left out: While I'm writing, who will take care of the baby?"

"As if that's a problem," she says with a snort. "Hello. The age of globalization is here. Snap your fingers. You can find a nanny. Filipino, Moldavian, Bulgarian. . You can even choose her nationality."

Little Miss Practical thrusts her hand into one of her pockets and produces a paper. "Look, I've made a list of all the information you'll need. Phone numbers of the nanny agencies, babysitters, nursery schools, pediatricians. You should also get an assistant to answer your e-mails. It'll make life easier. And if you get a secretary and a tape recorder, you can stop writing altogether, ya' mean?"

With a heavy heart I ask, "What do you mean?"

"I mean, instead of writing your novels, you can speak them. The recorder will tape your voice. Later, your secretary can type up the whole text. Isn't it practical? That way you can finish a novel without having to leave the kid."

"Just curious," I say as calmly as I can manage. "How exactly am I going to afford a nanny, an assistant and a secretary?"

"Oh, you're being so negative," she says. "Here I'm offering practical solutions for material problems and you see only the downside."

"But money is a material problem," I object, my voice cracking. For a brief moment neither of us says a word, mutually frowning and sulking.

"Besides, even if I had the money," I say, "I still couldn't do what you suggest. It goes against my sense of equality and freedom. I can't have all those people working for me, as if I were a raja or something."

"Now you're talking nonsense," snaps Little Miss Practical. "Don't you know that every successful female writer is a raja?"

"How can you say that?"

"How can you deny that?" she asks back. "Remember that wolf woman you adore so much."

Just when I am about to ask what wolf woman she is talking about, it dawns on me that she is referring to Virginia Woolf.

"Do you think that lady of yours had only a room of her own? No way. She also had a cook of her own, a maid of her own and a gardener of her own, not to mention a butler of her own! Her diaries are full of complaints about her many servants."

Laden with curiosity I ask, "Since when do you read about the lives of novelists?"

Little Miss Practical's readings are based solely on two key criteria: efficiency and functionality. How to Win Friends and Hearts, The Key to Unwavering Success, Ten Steps to Power, The Art of Knowing People, Awaken the Millionaire Inside, The Secret to Good Life. . She gobbles up self-help books like popcorn, but never reads novels. Fiction, in her eyes, has no function.

"If it's useful, I'll read it," she says defensively.

"And what is the use of the wolf woman?"

She turns a disparaging dark gaze on me. "That lady of yours used to write orders to her servants on scraps of paper. What chores needed to be done, what dishes needed to be prepared, which dresses needed washing. . She would write them down. Can you imagine? They lived under the same roof but instead of talking to them, she wrote to them. . "

"Well, we don't know her side of the story," I say meekly.

"Everything was her side of the story. She was the writer, Sis!"

I don't feel like quarreling. With a ruler in her hand, a calculator in her pocket and plans in her head, Little Miss Practical is used to measuring, calculating and planning everything. I take the list she has prepared for me and leave in a hurry, still feeling uneasy.

I spin the wheel again. It stops at letter E. This time, I walk east.

There, in a city as spiritual as Mount Athos, beyond a wooden door, sits Dame Dervish — her head bowed in contemplation, her fingers moving the amber prayer beads. On the tray in front of her there is a bowl of lentil soup and a slice of bread. Her thimble is full of water. She always makes do with little. On her head is a loosely tied turban that comes together in the front with a large stone. Patches of hair show from beneath the turban. She wears a jade dress that reaches the floor, a dark green vest and khaki slippers.

Seeing she is in the midst of a prayer, I sneak in and listen.

"God, Pure Love and Beauty, may we be of those who chant Your name and find restoration in You. Don't let us spend our time on Earth with eyes veiled, ears deafened and hearts sealed to love."

I smile at these words and I am still smiling when I hear her next words.

"Please open Elif's third eye to Love and broaden her capacity to grasp the Truth. Connections are the essence of Your universe; please don't deprive her of Your loving connection."

"Amen to that," I say.

She flinches as she surfaces from her thoughts. When she sees me standing there she breaks into a smile, lifting her hand to her left breast in greeting.

"I need your help," I say. "Have you heard the question Ms. Agaoglu asked me? I don't know how to answer it."

"I heard it indeed and I don't know why you panic so. God says He sometimes puts us through a 'beautiful test.' That is what He calls the many quandaries we face in this life. A beautiful test. There is no need to rush for 'the answer' because all answers are relative. What is right for one person may be wrong for another. Instead of asking general questions about motherhood and writing, ask God to give you what is good for you."

"But how am I supposed to know what is good for me?"

She ignores my question. "Whether you have children, write books, sell pastries on the street or sign million-dollar business contracts, what matters is to be happy and fulfilled inside. Are you?"

"I don't know," I say.

Dame Dervish takes a deep breath. "Then let me ask you another question. Are these novels of yours really yours? Are you the creator of them?"

"Of course they are mine. I create them page by page."

"Rumi wrote more than eighty thousand splendid verses and yet he never called himself a creator. Nor did he see himself as a poet. He said he was only an instrument, a channel for God's creativity."

"I am not Rumi," I say, a bit more harshly than I intended.

Our eyes meet for a second and I look away, uneasy. I don't want to confer the authorship of my books to another, even if it be God.

"Let me tell you a story," Dame Dervish says. "One night, a group of moths gathered on a shelf watching a burning candle. Puzzled by the nature of the light, they sent one of their members to go and check on it. The scouting moth circled the candle several times and came back with a description: The light was bright. Then a second moth went to examine it. He, too, came back with an observation: The light was hot. Finally a third moth volunteered to go. When he approached the candle he didn't stop like his friends had done, but flew straight into the flame. He was consumed there and then, and only he understood the nature of the light."

"You want me to kill myself?" I ask, alarmed.

"No, my dear. I want you to kill your ego."

"Same thing, isn't it?"

Dame Dervish sighs and tries again. "I want you to stop thinking. Stop examining, stop analyzing and start living the experience. Only then will you know how being a mother and being a writer can be balanced."

"Yes, but what if. ."

"No more what-ifs are needed," she says. "Did the moth say 'what if'?"

"Okay, I am not Rumi, I am not a moth. I am a human being with a mind and four mini women residing inside me. Surely my way of dealing with things is more complicated."

"Uh-huh," says Dame Dervish, chewing her bread.

It is the kind of "uh-huh" that can mean only, "You aren't ready yet. Like a fruit that needs more time to ripen, you are still hard on the inside. Go and cook a little, then we'll talk again."

Shuffling my feet, I take my leave and walk toward the south.

There, in a city as crowded as Tokyo, behind a thrice-bolted door, is the relentless workaholic Miss Ambitious Chekhovian. Four and a half inches in height, ten and a half ounces in weight, she is the skinniest of all the finger-women. She is always eating away at herself, so naturally she doesn't gain any weight.

"Time is not money, time is everything," she is fond of saying.

In order not to lose time, instead of cooking supper and setting a table she munches on crackers and chips and takes a lot of vitamins as supplements. Even now, there is a pack of biscuits, tiny cubes of cheese and a minuscule box of orange-carrot juice in front of her. There is also a vitamin C tablet and a gingko biloba pill beside her plate. This is her dinner.

Of all the statements made by men and women since time immemorial, there is one by Chekhov that she has taken up as her life's motto: "He who desires nothing, hopes for nothing, and is afraid of nothing, cannot be an artist." That is why she is a good Chekhovian. She desires, hopes and fears, all abundantly and all at the same time.

Today, Miss Ambitious Chekhovian is wearing an indigo skirt that reaches just below her knees, two strands of pearls around her neck and a matching jacket with an ivory silk blouse inside. She has a tiny bit of foundation on her snow-white skin and is wearing dark red lipstick. Her chestnut hair is held back in a bun so tight that not a single strand of hair manages to get loose.

Every inch of her is groomed, clipped and buffed, as always. Her porcelain teeth gleam in their straight rows like expensive pearls. She is determined, resolute and hardworking — excessively so.

"Miss Ambitious Chekhovian, will you please help me," I say. "You heard what Ms. Agaoglu asked. What is your answer?"

"How can you even ask?" She frowns at me with her thinly plucked eyebrows. "Obviously, I am against you having a baby. With all that we have to do ahead of us, it is hardly time for children!"

I look at her with puppy eyes.

"But I was next to Dame Dervish a minute ago and she said that there is no point in running amok in life."

"Forget that crazy finger-woman. What does she know? What does she understand of worldly desires?" she says offhandedly. "She has lost her mind somewhere inside those prayer beads of hers."

She pops a biscuit into her mouth, then a vitamin pill, and takes a sip of juice to wash it all down. "Listen, dear, let me summarize again my philosophy of life: Did we ask to be brought into this world? Nope. No one asked our opinion on the matter. We just fell into our mothers' wombs, went through arduous births and voila, here we are. Since we came along in such an accidental manner, is there anything more sublime than our desire to leave something worthy and lasting behind when we depart the world?"

I find myself nodding heartily, though the more she speaks, the more lost I am becoming.

"Unfortunately too many lives are crushed in a monotonous routine. Such a pity! One must actually aim to be special. We have to become immortal while we are still alive. You have to write better novels and develop your skill. 'You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will. . Each hour is precious.'"

"Was that Chekhov again?" I ask suspiciously.

"It was Anton Pavlovich Chekhov," she says with a frown, and to hammer home the point, she repeats his name in Russian. "Антон Павлович Чехов."

"Right." I sigh.

"Look, I made a calculation: If you write a new novel every year for the next ten years, give a lecture every month, attend all the major literary festivals in Europe and tour the world, then in eight years and two months you'll have reached new heights in your career."

"Oh, give me a break, will you?" I say, exasperated. "Do you think literature is a horse race? Do you think I am a machine?"

"What is wrong with that?" she says nonchalantly. "Better to be a machine than a vegetable! Instead of living like a sprig of parsley, passionless and lifeless, better to live with the dash and zest of a working machine."

"And what about motherhood?"

"Motherhood. . motherhood. ." she says, glowering, as if the word has left a bad taste in her mouth. "Better leave motherhood to women who are born to be mothers. We both know you are not like that. Motherhood would upset all of my future plans. Promise me. Say you won't do it!"

I look into the horizon, longing to be somewhere else. In the ensuing silence Miss Ambitious Chekhovian slowly gets up, walks to her bag and fishes out a piece of paper.

"What is this?" I ask when she holds it out to me.

"It is an address," says Miss Ambitious Chekhovian. "The address of an excellent gynecologist. Guess what! I already got you an appointment. The doctor is expecting you at six-thirty on Tuesday."

"But, why?"

Miss Ambitious Chekhovian's eyes light up as her voice gets an eerie softness: "Because we want to solve this problem once and for all. This operation will do away with all of the existential questions that have been messing with your mind. I've decided to have you sterilized."

"What am I, a stray cat!?" I say, flushing scarlet with rage.

Dissatisfied, she shrugs and turns around. "It is up to you."

I know I should mind my temper but I can't. Still grumbling, I leave her to her veterinary campaign and head up north.

There, behind an ornamented iron door, in a city as bustling with ideas as New York, lives Miss Highbrowed Cynic. Her windows are covered with burgundy velvet curtains and flimsy cobwebs, her walls with posters of Che Guevara and Marlon Brando.

She wears slovenly hippie dresses that reach the floor and mirror- threaded Indian vests. She wraps bright foulards around her neck and wears bangle bracelets of every color up to her elbows. When she feels like it, she goes to get a tattoo or another piercing. Depending on the day, she either leaves her shoulder-length hair loose or puts it up in a haphazard bun. She does raja yoga and advanced Reiki. All the acupuncture she's received has yet to help her quit smoking. If she isn't smoking a cigarette or a cigarillo, she chews tobacco.

Her handbags are cluttered sacks, where she fits in several books, notebooks and all sorts of knickknacks. She usually doesn't wear makeup, not because she is against it but because when she puts a mascara or lipstick in her handbag, she can never find it again.

Miss Highbrowed Cynic is following an alternative diet nowadays. She has a plate of organic spinach, organic zucchini and some kind of mixed vegetables with saffron in front of her. She is a staunch vegetarian on the verge of turning vegan. It has been years since she last ate meat. Or chicken. Or fish. She claims that when we consume an animal, we also consume their fear of death. Apparently that is the reason we get sick. Instead, we are meant to eat peaceful leafy greens, such as spinach, lettuce, kale, arugula. .

"Hello, Miss Highbrowed Cynic," I say.

"Peace, Sister," she says, waving her hand nonchalantly.

"I need to pick your brain on an important matter," I say.

"Well, you came to the right place. I am brains."

"Okay, what is your opinion about motherhood?"

"What is the use of asking rhetorical questions when it is a well- known fact that everyone hears only what they want to hear," she says. "Wittgenstein wrote about the limits of language for a reason. You ought to read the Tractatus."

"I don't have time to read the Tractatus," I say. "Ms. Agaoglu is still in the living room waiting for an answer. You've got to help me now."

"Well, then, I urge you to think about the word envy."

"Come again?"

"Envy is not a simple emotion, mind you, but a deep philosophical dilemma. It is so important, in fact, that it shapes world history. Jean- Paul Sartre said all sorts of racism and xenophobia stem from envy."

"I am afraid I don't get a word of what you are saying. Could you please speak more plainly?"

"All right, let me put it in simple terms: The grass is always greener on the other side."

"Which means?"

"It means if you have a baby, you will always be envious of women who don't have children and focus fully on their careers. If you choose to focus on your career, however, you will always envy women who have kids. Whichever path you choose, your mind will be obsessed with the option you have discarded."

"Is there no way out of this dilemma?" I ask.

She shakes her head desolately. "Envy lies at the root of our existential angst. Look at the history of mankind, all the wars and destruction. Do you know what they said when World War I broke out? The war that will end all wars! Of course that is not what happened. The wars didn't end because there is no equality and no justice. Instead we have an imbalance of power and income, ethnic and religious clashes. . All of this is bound to generate new conflicts."

I take a long, deep breath. "You are making me depressed."

"You ought to be depressed," she says, wagging a finger in my face. "To live means to be saddled with melancholy. It is no coincidence that Paul Klee painted the Angel of History so lonely and hopeless. Remember the look on the face of Angelus Novus. I highly recommend that you read Walter Benjamin on. ."

"You are making me soooo depressed," I interject.

She stares at me as if seeing me for the first time. "Oh, I see. In the age of Internet and multimedia, no one has the time or patience for in-depth knowledge anymore. All right, I will cut to the chase."

"Please."

"My point is, whichever woman you will grow into, you will wish to be the Other. According to the great French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, the essence of ethics is the point where you come face-to-face with the Other. Of course, from a phenomenological stance, we could speak of the 'other' inside the 'I.'"

"Ugh, hm!" I say.

"Read Heidegger to see how a human being, any human being, cannot be taken into account unless seen as an existent among the things surrounding him, the key to all existence being Dasein, which is being-in-the-world." She widens her dark green eyes at me. "Therefore, my answer to your banal question is as follows: It doesn't really matter."

"What do you mean?" I say, trying to keep frustration from my voice.

"Whether you don't have children or you have half a dozen of them, it is all the same," she says with customary assurance. "In the end, it all boils down to the envy of the Other, and to deep existential dissatisfaction. Humans do not know how to be satisfied. Like Cioran said, we are all sentenced to fall inside ourselves and be miserable."

A freezing wind blows in through an open window. The candle in my hand flickers sadly and I shiver. Miss Highbrowed Cynic's voice, stiff with relish and conviction, scratches my ears. I begin to walk away from her.

"Hey, where are you going? Come back, I haven't finished yet."

"You'll never be finished," I say. "Bye now."

It is getting late and talking to Miss Highbrowed Cynic has demoralized me so profoundly I cannot stand to hear another word on this subject. I clamber up the stairs of the Land of Me, two at a time, panting heavily, and fall back into Ms. Agaoglu's bathroom. I make a move to wash my face but the running water is too hot and adjusting the temperature requires an energy I am not sure I have now. So I turn off the faucet and, doing my best to look calm and composed, return to the living room.

Everything is the way I left it. The paintings on the walls, the books on the shelves, the porcelain teacups on the table, the cookies on the plates, the ticking of the clock, are the same and the house preserves the same solemn silence. Ms. Agaoglu is tranquilly waiting in her seat.

The question she asked me a while ago still hangs in the air between us. But I don't have an answer. Not yet.

"Umm. . thank you so much for your hospitality," I say. "But I should really get going."

"Well, it was nice talking to you," she says. "Woman to woman, writer to writer."

When I step out into the street I catch sight of the two Gypsy women sitting in the same spot. Judging by the flushed looks on their faces, they are excitedly talking about something, but upon noticing me, they go quiet.

"Hey, you," one of them says. "Why do you look so down in the dumps?"

"Probably because I am down there," I say.

The woman laughs. "Come, give me your palm and I'll tell you the way out."

"Forget about telling my fortune," I say. "What I need is a cigarette. Let's have a smoke together instead."

It is as if I’ve suggested robbing a bank. They get serious and become suspicious all of a sudden, eyeing me distrustfully. I ignore their gaze, sit down on the sidewalk and take out a pack of cigarettes from my bag.

That's when a smile etches along the lips of the Gypsy who offered to read my fortune only moments ago. She slides over to me. A few seconds later the other one joins us.

As darkness falls, only paces from Ms. Agaoglu's living room, the Gypsy flower sellers and I are seated cross-legged on a sidewalk, puffing away. Above us a wispy cloud of smoke lingers lazily. For a moment, the world feels sweet and peaceful, as if there were nothing to worry about, no questions gnawing at my mind.

Moon Woman

In 1862, Leo Tolstoy married a woman sixteen years his junior: Sophia Andreevna Bers. Although the marriage was to become known as one of the unhappiest in literary history, there may have been much love and passion between them — at least in the early years. There was a time when they laughed together, he like a wild horse galloping at full speed, she like a mare cantering across the paddock, timid but excited. Thirteen children came of this union (nineteen, according to some). Five of them died during childhood. Sophia raised the remaining eight (or fourteen). She spent a large portion of her life as a young woman either pregnant or breast-feeding.

She was like the moon in its phases, glowing against the starry skies. Her body changed every minute of the day, every week, and every month, filling out, rounding up to fullness, and then slimming down only to fill out again. Sophia was a moon woman.

While Tolstoy was in his room, writing by the light of an oil lamp, Sonya — the Russian diminutive for Sophia — distracted the children lest they disturb their father. Her diaries bear witness to her dedication. When Tolstoy asked Sophia not to nag him for not writing, she was so surprised she wrote down in her diary, "But how can I nag? What right do I have?" Night after night, year after year, she worked hard to make the process of writing easier for him. And in the hours that were not consumed by her kids, she acted as her husband's secretary. Not only did she keep the notes for War and Peace, she rewrote the entire manuscript seven times over. Once when she suffered a miscarriage and fell gravely ill, she was worried that because of her illness he would not be able to write. She inspired, indulged and assisted him — a fact that is hard to remember when one sees the depth of the hatred that cropped up between them later in life.

Then he wrote the marvelous Anna Karenina—the novel that begins with one of the most quoted lines in world literature: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." One question literary historians and biographers are fond of bringing up is to what extent Tolstoy's real life influenced the subject matter of the novel. How many of Tolstoy's own fears, with regard to his wife and his marriage, found their way into Anna Karenina? Perhaps the famous writer, then forty-four, steered his story into the stormy waters of adultery as a warning to Sophia, who was then only twenty-eight. Perhaps by writing about the disastrous consequences that a high- society lady could suffer through infidelity, he was simply cautioning his wife.

As if a married woman's debauchery isn't sinful enough, when lovers live not in the high mountains in isolation but in the heart of the civilized world, it is a sin far worse. The first time Alexey Alexandrovitch has a serious talk with his wife, he makes this very clear: "I want to warn you that through thoughtlessness and lack of caution you may cause yourself to be talked about in society." Things get out of hand not when a woman has feelings for a man other than her husband but when the knowledge of this becomes public.

It is also probable that through his novel, Tolstoy wasn't only sending his wife a message but was also teaching his daughters of varying ages a lesson in morality. Strangely enough, the novel ended up having more impact on him than on his wife or daughters. He went through a moral torment, the first of many, which would end up paving the way for a very different sort of existential crisis — one that would strike at the very essence of his marriage.

No matter how we interpret the events that followed, this much is true: Sophia never saw Anna as a role model, positive or negative. The fictional character who wore dark lilac, who wished to be like a happy heroine in an English novel, who worked on a children's book and who smoked opium — although similar in some ways to Sophia — was clearly not her. Despite the concerns her husband harbored, she never abandoned him or loved another man. On the contrary, she remained attached — perhaps too attached — to her husband and to her family, until it drove her over the edge. Every year a new baby came, and with every child Sophia turned a bit more irritable and their marriage took another blow.

A day would not pass without an argument erupting within the house, the husband's and wife's energies drained by petty squabbles no bigger than a speck of dust. In this way, the Tolstoys waded through the thick fog of marriage for several more years. Sexuality was still a way of reconnecting, but when that, too, was gone — more for him than for her — and the fog began to dissolve, Tolstoy couldn't bear to see what it had been hiding all that time.

When Tolstoy peered into the soul of his wife, he saw youth, desire and ambition, and was displeased with what he found. When Sophia peered into the soul of her husband, she saw self-centeredness mixed with the seeds of altruism, and never sensed how much this would affect their lives in the future. He stared at her and wondered how she, as comfortable and well brought up as she was, could still have worldly aspirations. She stared at him and wondered how he, as pampered and respected as he was, could love anything, be it his writing or God, more than he loved her.

Like Dr. Frankenstein, who struggled to rid himself of the creature he had designed and crafted, Tolstoy made an unhappy, argumentative wife out of the young girl he had married years earlier.

For a while he tried to put up with her, but his patience rapidly ran out. In a letter written to his daughter Alexandra Lvovna, he complained of Sophia's "perpetual spying, eavesdropping, incessant complaining, ordering him about, as her fancy takes her. . " In the same breath, he said he wanted freedom from her. He suddenly, abrasively and irreversibly distanced himself from his wife and from everything that was associated with her.

Then one day, he simply took off.

That afternoon, for the first time in a long while, he felt freedom by his side, not as an abstract concept or an idea to defend, but as a presence, so close, solid and tangible. He walked. He skipped and jumped. At the top of his voice, he sang songs that no one had heard before. The peasants working in the nearby fields solemnly watched the most respected novelist in Russia doing one crazy thing after another, and they spoke about it to no one. As if in return for their silent support, that same evening, Tolstoy decided to give away his possessions to the poor. The man who came from an aristocratic background, who had been sheltered all his life, was now determined to shed all the privileges of his station.

When Sophia, the matriarch, heard about this, she went berserk. Only a fool would squander his wealth like that, she was certain — only a fool with no wife or children to care for. Before long, and much to her chagrin, Tolstoy publicly declared that he had wiped his hands clean of the material world. He gave away all of his money, all of his land. Abandoning the banquets he was so fond of, he swore off eating meat, hunting and drinking, and put himself to work like a village craftsman.

Sophia watched his transformation in absolute horror. The nobleman she married, the writer she adored and the husband for whom she bore children was gone, replaced by a badly dressed, flea-ridden peasant. It was an insult that drove straight into her heart.

She called Tolstoy's new habits "the Dark Ones," as if speaking of a fatal illness, like a plague that had tainted their household. Her lips chapped from biting them, her mouth contorted in unhappiness and her face that of a woman older than her age, she suffered one nervous breakdown after another. One day her son Lev asked Sophia if she was happy. It took her a while to answer a question as simple and challenging as this. Finally she said yes, she was happy. Her son asked, "So why do you look like a martyress?"

The love between husband and wife, as strong as it might once have been, could not accommodate the woman and man they had grown into, generating mutual rage and resentment, like a wound bleeding inwardly.

Finally, in the fall of 1910, a few months after secretly taking his wife out of his will, and giving the publishing rights of his novels to his editor, Tolstoy fell sick with pneumonia. Fading in and out of consciousness, the way he had faded in and out of his wife's life for decades, he died in a train station where he had fled to after yet another argument at home. It is symbolic that the writer, who had started his literary walk by claiming that true happiness lies within family life, ended his life by walking away from his family, away from her.

For a long time Sophia was seen as solely a mother and wife. Her great contribution to Tolstoy's literary legacy was either ignored or belittled. It is only recently that we are beginning to see her in a different light — as a diarist, intellectual and businesswoman — and can appreciate her as a talented, selfless woman with many abilities and unrealized dreams.