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

What the Fishermen Know

Two months later, I am walking by the seaside at six o'clock in the morning on a Sunday. I am an early riser, not because I don't like sleep — which I don't, really — but because waking up after the sun comes out leaves me feeling slightly irritated, as if the whole world has been whooping it up, and I am catching only the end of the party.

So here I am, up and out for a walk. The only other life forms awake at this hour are the seagulls, the street cats and Istanbul's amateur fishermen. Music on my iPod (Amy Winehouse), popcorn in my pockets (suffice it to say, I believe that in a better world, popcorn would make it onto the breakfast menu), I walk briskly, mulling over the life of Sophia Tolstoy.

There is a crystalline quality to the air, and the sky hangs indigo above me, furrowed by rose-flushed clouds that move toward the hills far ahead. Istanbul looks rejuvenated and clean, like a young bride fresh out of the hamam. One can almost imagine that this is not the same city that drives its inhabitants crazy day after day. Now it looks picturesque and alluring, a city dipped in honey. I suspect Istanbul is at its prettiest when we Istanbulites aren't around — yet another reason to wake up early.

Along the coastline toward Bebek there are twenty to thirty fishermen — from teenage boys to grandfathers with canes — strung along in a perfect line, facing the sea. Like prayer beads on a thread, they stand side by side with their plastic buckets and jars of wriggling worms, their eyes fixed somewhere on the horizon and their fingers clutched around fishing rods. They do not talk or joke around. They simply, patiently wait for the fish to come and take the bait.

Later in the hour, the sun is rising, but I notice it has company. The moon is still there — a day or two shy of fullness. My eyes are riveted on the sky. Doesn't the moon know it is in the wrong place at the wrong time? As I watch its faint aura, I think about Sophia again.

"If Sophia had been a novelist, would Leo Tolstoy have assisted her in the same way she assisted him?" I wonder. "Would he have made copies of his wife's manuscripts over and over again? Would he have taken the children out for a walk, and met their every need, so that his wife could have more hours of peace and quiet to concentrate on her writing?"

Laden with these questions, I walk toward the park in the midst of the neighborhood. The playground, which is packed with mothers, children and babies during the day, is empty now. I sit on a bench, watching a few pigeons waddle around, poking at the crumbs of bread stuck in the crevices.

Suddenly, a scream pierces the air, pulling me out of my reverie. I rise to my feet, my heart pounding. "Who's there?"

In lieu of an answer comes another scream, shrill and loud, followed by a bang, like something being dropped, or someone being slapped. The sounds are coming from behind the mulberry bush a few feet ahead. More curious than cautious, I tread in that direction.

"Heeelp!"

I know this female voice from somewhere, but where, I cannot tell.

"Oh, shut up! HELP ME INSTEAD!"

This time it is a different person shouting. Are there two ladies being robbed?

"Is there no one to save me from this shrew?" the first voice yells.

Or are there two ladies robbing each other?

"Huh, it's you who is harassing me," the other snaps. "I'm sick and tired of you standing in my way. Why don't you take a vacation? Go to Disneyland."

"Why should I leave? You should go. I've had enough of you confusing Elif with your harebrained ideas!"

Hearing my name, I freeze and strain my ears.

"It's because you want to influence Elif. But I will never let that happen. Over my dead body, you hear me?"

That is enough eavesdropping. I part the bushes and there, standing on a tree trunk, their hands clutched around each other's throats, I see the unmistakable profiles of two finger-women.

"Hey, yo, Big Self. Wassup?" says one of them, forcing a smile.

The second woman takes her hands off her adversary, and makes a sign of peace. "Good to see you, Sister."

I frown from one to the other. "Little Miss Practical! Miss High- browed Cynic! What are you doing here?"

These two have been on a collision course for as long as I've known them. At first glance, they both seem to embrace reason and rationality. But that is as far as their similarities go. While Little Miss Practical wants to overcome every challenge in a pragmatic way, Miss High- browed Cynic isn't interested in easy solutions. The former wants to solve things as quickly as possible while the latter opts for a detailed, complicated, philosophical approach. Where one prefers to be clear and concise, the other favors ambiguity and abstraction. One likes answers, the other prefers questions.

Without a further word, I pick them up by the napes of their necks and place one on each of my shoulders. In this fashion, I walk back toward the Bosphorus. It doesn't take long before another line of amateur fishermen appears before us.

"Look at those fishermen," says Little Miss Practical, craning her head from where she sits on my left shoulder. "They're wack. How many fish do they think they'll catch like that? They stand there for hours, and go back home with a couple of sad rockfish in their buckets. In the time they spend here, they could work and earn real cheddar. They could buy a huge salmon!"

"What do you know?" Miss Highbrowed Cynic says, with a snort, from my right shoulder. "What can any pragmatist know about philosophy, art and literature, and the things that make life worth living?"

"What have fishermen got to do with that?" asks Little Miss Practical.

"Fishing's got to do with that," comes the answer. "It is the perfect way to contemplate the endless mysteries of the universe."

I nod in agreement, but the truth is, I don't understand the fishermen either. How does it feel, and what kind of state of mind does it require, not to rush, not to push? What level of humility does it take to be satisfied with what you have, and be happy to go home with two flimsy fish in a plastic bucket at the end of a long day?

Of all the prophets, it is Job who, on some level, I cannot empathize with — Job who, according to the Qur'an, is the symbol of patience, humbleness and peaceful surrender. I have never understood how he doesn't get angry, not even upset, in the face of the ordeals God puts him through, and remains ever thankful, ever accepting.

Unaware of my thoughts, Miss Highbrowed Cynic continues her dissertation. "Many books have fishermen as their central characters."

"What books?" asks Little Miss Practical. There is nothing about awakening the fisherman within in her enormous self-help collection.

"Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter!"

"What the hell was that?"

Miss Highbrowed Cynic raises her voice over the incipient hum of the city. "I said: Your knowledge is nothing when no one else knows that you know."

"Poser!" hisses Little Miss Practical.

"My point is, how can you follow Melville's adventures of Ishmael and Captain Ahab, and not contemplate our tiny little place in this universe? What about Hemingway's epic battle of wills between the old fisherman and the giant fish he longs to catch? And take Ursula K. Le Guin's A Fisherman of the Inland Sea—you will be thinking twice as hard as you ever have about the roles of good and evil. You see how fishing is intertwined with philosophy?"

"All right, all right, I get the point. While you're at it, you might want to tell the philosophers over there something about efficiency," says Little Miss Practical. "There must be, what, thirty of them. Why don't they, say, rent a fishing boat together? Then, when they go out to sea and cast their nets, their output would increase tenfold."

Miss Highbrowed Cynic heaves a sigh. "Fishing has depth. It has wisdom. You will never understand if your only concern is productivity. Why am I wasting my breath? No philosophy or art will ever come from the shallow waters you swim in."

"You're all big talk! You always talk about depth," grumbles Little Miss Practical. "What are you, a scuba diver?"

"Ladies, ladies, please," I interject. I know I need to handle this as delicately as I can. "Let's not argue on this beautiful morning."

"What is wrong with arguing?" objects Miss Highbrowed Cynic. "The German philosopher Ernst Bloch used the concept noch nicht— not yet what things could be. Instead of trying to be complete, we should embrace the idea of being without a beginning and an end, a state of continuous regeneration. That is why questions should not be answered. They should be deepened with more questions."

"That is the craziest thing I've heard in a long while!" comes a grumpy voice from around the corner.

We turn our heads and see Miss Ambitious Chekhovian ahead of us, standing amid the feet of the fishermen. I am scared out of my wits that someone will accidentally step on her, but she doesn't seem the least bit concerned.

"Deepen dilemmas with more questions? What next? Do you know how much time this stupid Sunday morning walk has already cost our career? Elif, you should be writing right now. Not wasting your time like this!"

I shoot a glance left and right. The fishermen are busy staring at the water. I wonder if there is anyone other than me who can see Miss Ambitious Chekhovian.

I drop my voice to a menacing whisper. "What are you doing?"

"Well, I was hoping you might have had time to reconsider what we were talking about several weeks ago," she says nonchalantly. "You know, the hysterectomy."

"You are nuts," I say, and the two finger-women on my shoulders show their support by clapping their hands.

"All right, if you want to become a moon woman, I'm not going to stop you," Miss Ambitious Chekhovian says. "Go and get pregnant, gain all the pounds, and worry about breast-feeding, then raising the child, sending him to school, sending him to college, and before you know it, you will forget all about literature and writing."

I want to protest but she doesn't give me a chance.

"Don't you dare tell me that the literary world is not a competition, and you don't have to rush or push, because that is gibberish. Even if you're not racing against other writers, you are racing against yourself, and your own mortality."

I open my mouth again, and again she interrupts me.

"And don't you forget that the writer was Leo Tolstoy, not the moon woman Sophia."

"What does that mean?" I ask.

"It means what it means. Remember the woman on the steamboat. The woman who was twenty-five years old but looked forty. The woman who collected pounds and resentments like free cakes. Do you want to become her?"

"You talk as if she were the only one who is unhappy in this world," says Miss Highbrowed Cynic, "whereas all humanity is in a similar position. Melancholy is central to being human."

We ignore her.

"Yo. Women can be both good mothers and good career women. And they can be happy. . It's simple. The key is time management." This from Little Miss Practical.

Miss Ambitious Chekhovian snorts. "Of course, there are women like that, and I call them circus jugglers. Send the kid off to school in the morning, cook the husband a perfect omelet, two eggs and a tablespoon of butter, dress in a hurry, make it to work, rush home in the evening, set the table, feed the kid, then pass out on the couch while watching TV. . Yes, those women do exist. But they never write novels."

"You are the Queen of Hyperbole," I chide.

Her dark eyes smoldering with agitation, Miss Ambitious Chekhovian gives me a faint smile. "The point is, my dear, jugglers can manage only the moment. That's it. They can do motherhood and do their jobs. That much is true. But just how far can they rise in their careers? That is another question."

"Literature and writing is more than a career," I say.

"Exactly," she says. "It is a lifestyle. It is a lifetime passion. An artist needs to be ambitious and passionate. You don't work nine to five. You breathe your art twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. That's why you should consider a hysterectomy."

Half an hour later, we are back in the park, sitting on another bench— the four of us, feeling drab, almost drowsy. That is what happens when more than two finger-women get together. This much quarreling tires us all, draining our energies, yet these Thumbelinas do not know how not to quarrel.

"Hello, everyone! May I join you?" It is Dame Dervish, suddenly mushrooming on the bench, like a Sufi version of Houdini.

She wears a plain smoky-gray dress and a long cloak of the same color, fastened with a pearl brooch. The hem of her dress is fluttering softly in the breeze. She wears a necklace sporting the name Hu,[7] written in Ottoman script.

"Welcome, dear Sufi," I say. "Come and join us."

"Thank you," she says. "I feel welcomed, but I wish you could as well. Look at yourself, always evaluating, always in haste. Sometimes you try to do five things at once and then fall flat from exhaustion. Do one thing at a time. What is the hurry? Give yourself over to the moment. Time does not exist beyond that. The Seven Sleepers in the

Qur'an slept for three hundred years in a cave, but when they woke up they felt like only a few hours had passed."

"Do you want me to sleep?" I frown.

"I want you to stop competing with time."

I try to give myself over to the moment, and realize I don't have a clue what that really means.

"Dame Dervish. ."

"Hmm?"

"Do you think. . I mean, if I ever were to do this, not that I want to, of course, just a question, if I were to someday. . I mean, hypothetically. ." I take a deep breath and try again. "Do you think I could make a good mother?"

Her dark green eyes widen, creasing around the edges. "If you fulfill three conditions you will make a wonderful mother."

"What three conditions?"

"First of all, God needs to want it, so a new chapter must be written in your storybook," she says. "Second, you need to want it, of course, deep in your heart, and your partner's, too."

"Well, what is the third condition?"

"The third condition has to do with the fishermen," she says. "You have to learn what they know."

"Not the fishermen again!" Little Miss Practical says with a snort, raising her hands, palms up.

I look around in bewilderment. What could these fishermen possibly know about becoming a mother? What could they know that I don't know?

"Dear Elif," says Dame Dervish, as if writing me a letter.

"Yes?"

"Have you ever seen a fisherman run at the sea? You can't have— because he, who you call fisherman, doesn't chase fish. He waits for the fish to come to him."

"Which means. .?"

Dame Dervish regards me for a beat before she answers. "It means: Stop running after the waves. Let the sea come to you."

Just then a young mother pushing a stroller passes in front of us and jolts me back to my senses. Despite myself I look at the baby — her pink fingers, powder-soft hair, dimpled cheeks — and I find myself smiling.

"Come on, let's go. What are we waiting for?" asks Miss Ambitious Chekhovian, pulling at my arm. "Time is money."

"Let's go and read novels," says Miss Highbrowed Cynic.

"The shortest route," orders Little Miss Practical. "Let's catch a cab."

Suddenly, I don't want to hear or see any of them. At least for a while. "Go ahead," I say gently, but firmly. "I'm staying."

Thankfully, after a few protests, the four finger-women leave. Arguing among themselves as to which road to take, they walk away on their little feet, their voices trailing off into the air.

I notice a fat, tawny cat nearby, following them with his fixed eyes. Can the cat see them? The thought first excites, and then frightens, me. What if the cat confuses them with mice or birds and tries to gobble them up? But to my relief, even if the feline could see my finger- women, he shuts his eyes and resumes his nap, realizing, perhaps, that they would give him indigestion.

Taking a deep, deep breath, I watch the little women exit the park. What am I going to do with them? They make everything harder for me, and yet I love them.

For one long moment, I, too, want to be a fisherman.

Of Poets and Babies

She was the girl who wanted to be God so that she could create the entire universe from scratch. Such was her desire to live with real intimacy; she couldn't fit into her body or her past. In her youth she was a teacher for a while, though it didn't take her long to decide that being part of the workforce was not for her. She was made to write. Determined to earn her living from her writing, never satisfied with what was placed in front of her, she pushed and shoved. Waiting patiently for tomorrow to come didn't suit her well. She wouldn't make a good fisherman.

To her close friends she was Syl, to her family, Sivvie. To the rest of the world she was Sylvia Plath.

Her marriage to Ted Hughes has been the subject of numerous heated discussions among scholars, feminists and nonfeminists alike. Many have taken either her side of the story or his but the truth must lie somewhere in between, in a hue other than black or white. The essays and books written about her — even after all these years — tend to be as emotionally charged as she was. Perhaps somehow all her biographers end up falling in love with her.

Hers was a rocky marriage that caused much pain. Yet, like many other relationships that ended up similarly, it had started out as an uncontrollable magnetic pull. They were two poets in love: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Shared metaphors, conflicting subjectivities, powerful personalities. Can two poets be in love without competing with each other in the long run? It is not impossible, of course, but it is hard. They were young, headstrong and free. They had things to say to each other and a world to change together. Thus, they fell in love, fought endlessly, made love with passion and urgency, did and said things they bitterly regretted later, forgave each other and themselves, all through words. Words were their particular pride.

There is a poem she wrote titled "I Want, I Want." The central figure is a God-like baby who is yet to be born. Immense, bald and open- mouthed, this is not a cute, angelic baby but a powerful natural force that wishes to come into this world and demands to be given love and attention, and gets them. It is a baby that wants to be. The poet uses a volcano as the symbol of feminine fertility — the ability to breed, broaden and bear life within. But a volcano is also a dangerous and destructive force. Even when it is asleep you cannot be fully sure that it will not erupt at any moment. It cannot be tamed. It cannot be predicted.

Throughout her life, Sylvia Plath underwent various anxieties with regard to womanhood and motherhood. First, she feared she was sterile and could never have babies. Then she lost many nights' sleep fretting over the pains of giving birth. How excruciating was it? Would she survive? And once she had babies, she worried about the outside world and its cruelties.

But she was equally convinced that being a mother would add great things to her life and to her writing. After having a baby, she was going to be a different woman — one whom she would depict in her poems as a superhuman being, a magical mortal who was transformed with the mere touch of a baby's pink thumb. In her diary she wrote, "I must first conquer my writing and experience, and then will deserve to conquer childbirth." Another time she said, "I will write until I begin to speak my deep self, and then have children, and speak still deeper." Maybe she was right, after all. She would write her greatest work, Ariel, after becoming a mother.

Before long she gave birth to a daughter, and sixteen months later to a son. Staying at home to raise her babies was a critical choice, but one that she made. From then on, she would take care of her house and her family, and write her poems and stories. Sometimes the two occupations would overlap, and she would find herself scribbling pages and pages in her diaries about changing diapers and baking chocolate cookies.

As she immersed herself in household chores, she would watch from the sidelines the goings-on in the literary world. She took note of the new works being published and the emerging writers being feted, especially the female ones. She was no stranger to envy. Just like she was no stranger to anger, angst and self-destruction. And that perhaps is one of the things that makes her so real and her presence so palpable so long after her death. Plath openly and brazenly wrote about the myriad dark energies in life that we all recognize but often pretend not to.

In the repetitive rhythm of daily habits, she felt both elated by and frustrated with her motherly duties. Her husband, in the meantime, continued frequenting literary events they used to attend together. He carried on with his life as it had been, writing his poetry, making new contacts, fortifying his fame. Perhaps fatherhood was not as great a rupture in a man's life as motherhood was in a woman's. Or perhaps, she suspected, it was just their own unique situation.

Inasmuch as babies were powerful metaphors in her poems, poems were babies to Sylvia Plath. When she spoke about her works that were not yet complete, she called them "unborn babies." She even described how her poems smiled at her, how "their little foreheads bulged with concentration," and how they changed every day, moving their tiny fingers and toes. She was the mother to not only two children but a thousand poems. And there were times when they were all hungry and crying at once, craving her attention and compassion, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't keep them all happy.

Her split with her husband was a major turning point in her life. After the emotional breakdown, she decided to put herself back together in a more indomitable way, to reinvent herself, to become a brand-new woman. She was ambitious. She was talented. She was alone. Often she started the day at four in the morning — the one or two hours that she had to herself before the children woke up were the most precious time of the day. The poems she wrote during those months are perhaps her brightest — such as "Medusa," "Daddy" or "Lady Lazarus," where she shocked her readers by saying, "Dying / Is an art, like everything else. / I do it exceptionally well." At the kitchen table, in the bathroom or in bed under the covers, she wrote wherever and whenever she could, scribbling furiously in her extra-careful hand, at an incredible speed — as if she were racing against God, against the men she loved and loved no more, against her numerous shortcomings, each of which she despised.

There is a poem she called "For a Fatherless Son." It is about a father who has left his home, his wife and his children. There is more sorrow in this poem than resentment, more surrender than fight. One can sense that something changed in her. For it was not quite rage or rebellion she experienced but a feeling of perpetual sadness. She spoke of the emptiness that was left in her children's lives after their father's departure, an absence that grew beside them like a tree that they would have to learn to live with.

That was the stage in her life when she desired to be many things at the same time, and excel equally in each. A mother, a housewife, a writer, a poet. . She wanted everything to happen immediately and flawlessly. Perhaps she was also in love with her creations. She stubbornly retained the belief that she could be an ideal mother and an excellent poet: the perfect Poet-Mother. It was not an easy combination, especially in the climate of the 1950s, when everyone thought a woman had to make an either-or choice. She refused to choose.

Nevertheless, her effort to become "superwoman" wore Sylvia Plath down. Before long she noticed that she was pushing herself too hard. When she made it to one place, she discovered she had skipped over another; when she fixed one thing, something else was falling apart. Slowly but surely, she realized she could not be perfect. That is why her poem "The Munich Mannequins" begins like this:

"Perfection is terrible, / It cannot have children."

With the money she got from literary prizes or grants she would pay for a nanny. While writing her first and only novel, The Bell Jar, in an attempt to establish a deeper connection with her past and soul, she deliberately prodded the places of fear in herself — fear of sanity, of being like thousands of others; and fear of insanity, of being so fundamentally different there was no hope of mingling with society. She wrote in detail about mental breakdown, electroconvulsive therapy and the suffocating monotony of modern life: "To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world is the bad dream." When the book was published in January 1963, readers were divided and Plath herself was deeply distressed by the tone of the reviews it received.

As she ran out of steam, unable to meet the extremely high demands she had placed on herself, Plath decided that she would rather die than live in the way it had been prescribed for her by others. The creative person with unbridled passion that she was, she wanted everything or nothing at all. . She had tried suicide before, an overdose of sleeping pills at the age of twenty. Yet at the time she had wanted both to die at her own hands and to be rescued. This time she wanted only the former.

It was a cold morning, February 11, 1963, one that reeked of tedium and induced a sense of isolation. After checking on her two children in their beds, and leaving milk and bread on their bedside table, she closed their door and sealed the cracks. She went into the kitchen, turned on the oven's gas and took a dozen sleeping pills, swallowing them one by one. Then she stuck her head in the oven, and as the gas licked at her face, she fell into eternal sleep. She was only thirty years old.

To this day, Plath's legendary heritage is unsurpassed. In Turkey, I have met numerous female college students who admire her work so much they organize special reading nights on campuses for her. In America, there is a colorful, intriguing blog called "Playgroup with Sylvia Plath." In Germany, I once talked to a Filipino woman who had named her daughter Ariel after her. In France, at an international women's organization, I met a chic businesswoman who asked us all to "toast to Sylvia."

No other literary suicide has been talked and written about so much. No other woman writer, after her death, turned into such an icon beyond place and time.

The Midnight Coup d'Etat

One night toward the end of the summer, I hear voices in my sleep. A door opens and closes somewhere in the house, footsteps on the stairs, whispers in the dark. Thinking I'm having a nightmare, I toss and turn in bed. Then someone pokes me on the shoulder, shouting, "Hey, wake up!"

I try to ignore the voice, hoping the moment will pass, as all moments tend to do, but there follows a second command, this time louder.

"Get up! Wake up already!"

I open my eyes and find Miss Ambitious Chekhovian literally right in front of my nose. She has climbed up my shoulder and crawled her way to my face, where she now stands on my chin, legs and arms akimbo. She is looking at me with a kind of triumph I find more puzzling than disturbing in my present state. Her makeup is perfect, her bun of hair is tight, as always. Even at this hour she looks prim and proper. It takes me an extra second to notice she is wearing a military uniform with a badge of rank on her shoulders. Before I get a chance to ask her why on earth she has dressed up like that, she speaks in a tone I can barely recognize.

"There is a matter of great importance. You better get up!"

"Well, can't it wait till morning?" I grumble. "I was sleeping, in case you hadn't noticed."

"No, it cannot possibly wait," she says. "The best time for a military takeover is the wee hours of the night, when everyone is asleep and resistance is slim."

I sit up in bed and stare at her, stunned, like an animal caught in the headlights. "What did you say?"

To my dazed expression she responds with a glacial look. In all these years we have known each other, I have never seen her like this before.

"As of this moment we have declared a coup d'etat," she says. "The regime in this house has changed."

What on earth is she talking about? My hair standing on end, anxiety bubbling up in my throat, I try to make sense of the situation.

"In two minutes we expect you in the living room. Don't be late, the committee won't like that," says Miss Ambitious Chekhovian, and leaves.

Still groggy from sleep, I put on a shawl, wash my face and go downstairs. A surprising scene awaits me when I step into the living room. The members of the Choir of Discordant Voices are there, all of them frowning. The tension in the room is so thick, I can almost touch it. In the corner the CD player is blasting the kind of songs I have never heard under this roof. They sound disquietingly aggressive, like anthems of a country that has waged war on all its neighbors and all the neighbors of its neighbors.

I see Miss Highbrowed Cynic first. She is sitting inside the fruit bowl on the table, dangling her legs as she puffs away on her cigarette. I don't usually allow the finger-women to smoke indoors, but something tells me this is not the right moment to remind her. There is an unusual flicker in her gaze, an odd furtiveness, which I can't quite put my finger on. She is wearing a military-style jacket over her hippie dress, a wacky combination that makes me dizzy.

Behind her, leaning against a tissue box, is Little Miss Practical, wearing a parka, black, bulky boots and commando-style trousers with a matching green hooded top. Her arms crossed over her chest, her brows furrowed, she sighs loudly. For some reason unbeknownst to me, she is staring at the wall, clearly avoiding any eye contact.

Next to the potted petunia under the window, her knees drawn up to her chest, sits Dame Dervish. A clump of her reddish hair has escaped from her turban, and is casting a shadow on her face. Upon closer inspection, I notice she is chained to the radiator with handcuffs.

"What is going on here?" I ask, a trace of panic creeping into my voice.

"Tonight, while you were sleeping, we had an emergency meeting," says Miss Ambitious Chekhovian. "We reached the conclusion that it was high time for a shift in the regime. From this moment onward, I have changed my name to Milady Ambitious Chekhovian and I have taken charge of the Choir of Discordant Voices."

Suddenly Miss Highbrowed Cynic coughs.

"I beg your pardon, we have taken charge," says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian. "That means, Miss Highbrowed Cynic and I. Together, we have performed a coup d'etat."

This has got to be a joke, but all the finger-women look so serious and intense that it's better not to laugh.

"As the chairwoman of the executive committee," Miss Highbrowed Cynic joins in, "I am pleased to announce that we will soon introduce a new constitution that, for the next thirty-five years, will make it impossible to overthrow us. After that, our children will start to reign."

"Hey, that is a far cry from democracy," I object.

But Miss Highbrowed Cynic pretends not to hear. She is extremely agitated tonight and tries to conceal it, which makes her anxiousness even more pronounced, causing her to look as if she were high on amphetamines. "I am proud to announce," she says, "that as the new government our first act has been to consolidate peace and order in the house."

"I don't see any change," I say under my breath.

"Now that peace and order have been consolidated," continues Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, "our second act will be to send you away from this city."

"What. . Why. . Where am I going?" I ask, dumbfounded.

"To America," roars Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, enjoying her newfound power. "We are going to the New World, all of us."

"Okay, girls, that's enough," I say. "I am not going anywhere until you explain to me — in clear and proper terms — why you want me to go to America."

They go quiet for a moment, as if they were not expecting this reaction. Do they really believe they are army generals and cannot be questioned?

"This is not about America, it is about you. It could well have been anyplace, like Australia or Japan," says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian. "What matters is that you need to leave Istanbul at once."

Miss Highbrowed Cynic smacks her lips approvingly. "We are going to America because it just so happens that we applied for a fellowship in your name. Congratulations! You have won. Now get packed!"

I feel a lurch in my stomach, only now realizing how serious they are.

"We have decided that you should take this trip in order to grow as a writer," Miss Highbrowed Cynic adds. "It will be inspiring for you to get away for a while. We are doing this for your own good."

"For my own good," I repeat.

If she heard the scorn in my voice, Milady Ambitious Chekhovian doesn't seem to be bothered by it. "I will be honest with you," she says. "We have been planning this coup d'etat for a while. But it was you— with your recent irrational behavior — who accelerated the process."

"What irrational behavior are you referring to?" I ask as calmly as I can manage.

"Lately, your state of mind has not been well," says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, her voice shaky with emotion. "All these years, we have slaved away so that you could excel as a novelist. We never took off, we never fooled around. People might think novels pop off an assembly line, but they don't. Behind every book, there is toil. There is sweat and pain."

"All right," I say. "Why do you bring this up now?"

Milady Ambitious Chekhovian raises her chin and straightens her shoulders, like the military hero she has become. "Did we do all this for nothing? How dare you throw away the years of sweat in one fell swoop?"

"Wait a minute, I am not throwing away anything," I object. "Where are you getting all of this?"

"From your behavior, of course. I have been watching you for some time. Don't think I haven't noticed!"

"Noticed what?" I bellow. I am not calm anymore, and don't try to be.

"I can very well see that you're considering having a baby."

"Oh my God, is that what this is about?" I ask.

"Yes, sir," she says. "You are wondering: 'Could I become a mother? What kind of mother would I make? I'm getting older. My biological clock is ticking.' All these harmful thoughts are bouncing around your head! I don't see this going anywhere good. Do you think I didn't notice the way you were looking at that baby the other day?"

"How did I look?" I ask suspiciously.

"With sparkling eyes. ."

"What is wrong with that, is it—" I try to defend myself, but Milady Ambitious Chekhovian cuts me off immediately.

"There can be only two reasons why a woman looks with sparkling eyes at another woman's baby: (a) she wants to be a baby again; (b) she wants to become a mother. In your case, I am afraid it's the latter."

Miss Highbrowed Cynic joins in. "Obviously, if you stay around here, you will be led astray."

"Led astray from what?" I ask, incredulous.

"From your literary trajectory, of course!" Miss Highbrowed Cynic and Milady Ambitious Chekhovian exclaim in unison. "From being a writer and an intellectual. . Your path is to write and read."

I am more amazed by their show of solidarity than by the things they are spouting. When did these two become such chums?

I turn to Miss Highbrowed Cynic, managing a smile. "I thought you weren't against motherhood. You said it made no difference. You said, one way or another, we are always miserable."

"Exactly," she says, nodding. "I have now decided that it is better to be a miserable writer than a miserable writer, housewife, spouse and mother."

My head starts to spin. What about Little Miss Practical, I wonder. She's been unusually silent. Noticing my inquisitive gaze, she guiltily plays with the zipper of her parka.

"What is your take on this?" I ask. "I thought you were on the side of liberal democracy and free market economy."

"True, a junta isn't my cup of tea," she admits. "But I'm down for it, under the extenuating circumstances."

"What extenuating circumstances?"

"Well, at first I wasn't thrilled with the coup. But then I saw the benefits. Life in America is far more stable and orderly. My needs will be better met. How pragmatic is that!"

"That is called opportunism, not pragmatism," I say.

"There is no need to get upset," says Miss Highbrowed Cynic. "If we take the time to read Habermas's theory of communicative action, we will see that we all can coexist. Since system rationality and action rationality are not the same thing, as autonomous finger-women agents we can relate to one another through communicative reasoning and develop mutual understandings."

"Yo, I don't know what she is talking about but I couldn't agree more," says Little Miss Practical.

I can't believe what I'm hearing. I always thought the members of the Choir of Discordant Voices were, well, discordant, but apparently the military takeover has brought them together.

It is then that I look at Dame Dervish, who is still sitting on the floor with a brooding expression and concern-filled eyes. She is the only one not wearing a military outfit.

"What about her?" I whisper.

This question makes my tormentors uneasy. After an awkward pause, Milady Ambitious Chekhovian offers an answer. "Unfortunately, Dame Dervish did not approve of our midnight coup d'etat. Despite our best efforts, we could not change her mind. She told us she would not fight us or stand in our way, but she would not, under any circumstances, support us."

"And why is she handcuffed?" I ask.

"Well, it's her fault, really. She tried to stage a peaceful protest, parking herself like a turbaned Gandhi under our feet, and left us with no other option than to arrest her."

"She is a political prisoner now," adds Miss Highbrowed Cynic.

I cannot believe my ears. My finger-women have gone wild, and I don't know how to control them — if I ever did, that is. I want to talk to Dame Dervish privately, but I'll have to wait for an appropriate moment.

A mantle of silence canopies the room: the militarists among us pacing the floor, the handcuffed pacifist sitting on the floor and me staring at the floor. Finally, Little Miss Practical approaches me with an envelope.

"What's this?" I ask.

"Your plane ticket. You're leaving tomorrow. It might be a good idea to start packing. I made a list of the things you need to take with you."

"So soon? But where am I going, what fellowship did I win? I don't know anything!"

The answer comes from Milady Ambitious Chekhovian. "Ninety minutes from Boston, there is a beautiful college called Mount Hol- yoke. That is where you are going. It is an all-girls campus!"

Miss Highbrowed Cynic joins in with pride: "You won a fellowship given to a limited number of women artists, writers and academics from around the world. It is a lively intellectual hub, you'll see."

After that, I cannot go back to sleep. My instinct is to take off to the end of the world as soon as it is morning, but how far could I run from those voices within? My courage melting like hot wax, I sit there, tense and wary, watching the sun rise. In that husky light, everything around me seems to quickly evaporate — the night, the names, the places. .

In that instant I know, in my bones and soul, that the summer has come to an end. Not gradually and imperceptibly, but in a single moment, in a quantum jump.

Perhaps all summers are like that. They go on and on, uneventful and lazy, and just when you have gotten used to the sluggish rhythm, they end abruptly, leaving you totally unprepared for the cold autumn.

All I know is a new season is under way.