The Stone Woman

TWENTY-FIVE

The full moon sets and the new sun rises

I WOKE UP VERY early this morning. I wanted to be completely on my own. I dressed silently and left the house from a side entrance.

Outside the lawn was still bathed in the light of the full moon.

I walked to the top of a little hill which stood just behind the Stone Woman, not far from where we had buried Hasan Baba. I had done this once before when I was sixteen years old and dreaming of the prince who would come from nowhere one day, lift me off the ground, place me firmly in front on his horse and ride away with me for ever.

Here it was, the full moon. I had not seen it so big and so close over the sea for many years. I embraced it from this hill and a mysterious strength poured into my body.

I had come to see it set in the west as the sun of the new day rose in the east. It was a very large and languid moon, to which I bade an emotional farewell from this hill behind Yusuf Pasha’s summer house. How many dreams had been born here. How many others had been stored during hundreds of blissful summers, to be recovered later.

I turned eastwards. There were a few wispy clouds on the horizon. The hidden sun first lit them a glorious pink, which slowly began to turn red. It was a young beauty, visible only for a short time. I knew that any minute the sun would pierce the clouds and burn my eyes. I turned away just in time and as I walked down I saw something that had often been talked about, but never seen by any of us.

As the first rays of the sun hit the Stone Woman, they created a shadow in the shape of a giant prehistoric whale. It only lasted a minute. I had barely time to gasp in awe when it was gone. I stopped to look at the rock that was our Stone Woman and whispered my farewell, just as we used to do when we were children.

My breasts have been feeling very tender for the last few weeks and this is the second month in a row that I have not menstruated. I am pregnant once again. Selim’s child will be born in seven months’ time. It will be as old as the next century.

Summer is over. Tomorrow we return to Istanbul.