by Elif Shafak
This intellectual snobbery of hers was limited only to youth. She was not at all troubled by the unlettered elderly, who had never had access to knowledge. But anyone of her own age who sounded as if they treated books as decorative objects to match their furniture, Peri held in mild contempt.
If I ever fall in love, she promised herself, it’ll be with someone’s brain. I won’t care about his looks or status or age, only his intellect.
The venue hired for the wedding was the Grand Salon of a five-star hotel with a magnificent view of the Bosphorus. Satin table runners, cascades of silk flowers, sashed chairs with golden bows, an eight-tier cake with arches and hand-crafted sugar leaves, and a colour-changing crystal tree as centrepiece. Peri was aware that the evening had swallowed a great chunk of her parents’ savings. Her expenses at Oxford had already added a burden to the family budget. Watching the extravaganza around her now, she resolved to find a part-time job as soon as she returned to England.
Shortly the guests began to arrive. Relatives, neighbours and friends on both sides took their seats at the garlanded tables lined up across the vast ballroom space. Meanwhile the newlyweds looked nervous, he waving at everyone, she gazing downwards; he too loud, she far too quiet. The bride wore a lace-and-taffeta long-sleeved ivory dress, embroidered in silver and studded with rhinestones – a dress defined as ‘classy and chic hijabi’ in the sales brochure. It was pretty, if a little thick, and under the spotlights she was already perspiring. The groom, rigged out in a black tuxedo suit, seemed more at ease and took his jacket off when he grew hot. One by one, the guests approached them to offer their congratulations and pin their offerings: gold coins and cold hard cash (lira and dollars). The bride’s gown was adorned with so many banknotes and ribboned coins that when she stood up to pose for a photograph she might have been a contemporary sculpture, delicately poised between the avant-garde and the lunatic.
In the background an amateur rock band played a range of melodies, from Anatolian folk songs to the best of the Beatles, and every now and then threw in an air of their own, however disharmonious. Despite the objections of the bride’s family, alcohol was available in one corner of the room. Mensur had dug in his heels and threatened not to attend the happiest day of his son’s life if raqi, his lifelong companion, was banned. Most of the guests opted for soft drinks but enough seemed to have located the unholy bar. Among the pioneers in this forbidden territory was, surprisingly, the uncle of the bride. Given the speed with which he downed the drinks, it didn’t take him long to become soused – a detail Mensur observed with delight.
Playing the part of the host, Peri – in an aquamarine knee-length dress and her hair coiffured into a bun so large that it shifted her head’s centre of gravity – had to talk with many guests and smile often. As she cooed at children, kissed the hands of the elderly, listened to the tittle-tattle of her peers, she noticed a young man staring at her, intently. This wasn’t the kind of male gaze that conveyed attraction and stopped at that fine line, but one that pushed, insisted, claimed. He seemed not to understand that only a Lilliputian step separated assertiveness from aggression. When their eyes locked, Peri scowled, hoping to make it clear that she was not interested in him. He gave a smirk in return, leaving her signal suspended in mid-air, undelivered.
Half an hour later, when she headed to the ladies’ room, the young man blocked her way. Putting his hand on the wall so that she couldn’t pass, he said, ‘You look like a fairy. Obviously, your parents gave you the right name.’
‘Excuse me. Don’t you have better things to do?’
‘Don’t blame me, you shouldn’t be so pretty,’ he said, leering at her.
Peri felt her blood boil, the words stumbling out of her mouth. ‘Leave me alone! No one gave you the right to bother me.’
Taken aback, he blinked. With exaggerated effort he lowered his arm. His face, which until a few seconds ago had held a confident smile, now showed unmistakable hostility. ‘They said you were uppity. I should’ve listened. Just because you go to Oxford, you think you’re better than us!’
‘This,’ she said evenly, ‘has nothing to do with Oxford.’
‘Arrogant bitch,’ he said under his breath, loud enough for her to hear.
Peri’s face turned white as she watched him stalk away. How easy it was to switch from liking to loathing. In the kingdom of the East, the male heart, like the orb at the end of a pendulum, swung from one extreme to the other. Oscillating between overplayed adoration to overplayed contempt, dangling over the emotional detritus that just the day before had been passion, men loved too much, raged too much, hated too much, always too much.
Upon returning to the salon, Peri found the bride and the groom engaged in the dance everyone had been waiting for. Dozens of eyes pressed against them from all sides. Their backs ramrod straight, their hands rigid, they held their poses without touching and swayed in tandem – two sleepwalkers trapped in the same dream.
Peri felt sad. The chasm between the person she carried inside and the one she was expected to be felt wider than ever. She sensed the distance, unbridgeable as it was, between the environment she came from and the one she wished to head towards. She would not be such a bride. She would not live the life of her mother. She would not be inhibited, limited and reduced to something she was not.
A thought crossed her mind with lightning speed: I should never marry a man from this part of the world. It jarred with everything she had been taught, was so deliciously wrong, so unspeakably blasphemous, she had to look down, lest others could see it in her eyes. Her husband she would choose from a culture as distant and different from hers as possible. An Eskimo perhaps. Someone named Aqbalibaaqtuq.
She broke into a grin as she imagined how her father would invite his Inuit son-in-law to knock back a few drinks together, with fish-head soup, raw whale meat and fermented seal flippers his new mezes. Meanwhile her mother would insist that he convert to Islam, circumcision and all. Aqbalibaaqtuq would become Abdullah. Then her brother Hakan would take him out for a crash course in Turkish masculinity. Aqbalibaaqtuq would fill many idle hours in the tea house playing cards and smoking nargileh. Before long, if he spent enough time in bad company, he would be inducted into the ways of the country’s male archetype, demanding the privileges accorded to his sex. Their arctic love would swiftly melt in the heat of patriarchal customs.
Past midnight the celebration came to an end. One by one the remaining guests said their farewells and the band members packed up and cleared out, leaving only close family members behind. The next morning the newlyweds would embark on their one-week honeymoon. Their destination was an exclusive resort hotel on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, which had made a name for itself, and caused some controversy, through its creation of halal restaurants, halal pools and halal discos, all with gender-specific sections. They had even divided the beach, and parted the sea, into a women’s section and a men’s section.
But tonight, on Selma’s insistence and for the sake of convenience, the newlyweds would spend the night at the Nalbantoğlus’ home close to the airport. The bride’s parents – who lived on the other side of the town – were also invited. Thus they all squeezed into the mini-van, carrying bags and baskets, and a silk bouquet, after so many hours its woven petals creased and frayed.
It was unseasonably cold for this time of year, the wind lashing against the windows with a vengeance, like a wronged spirit.
As the mini-van sped through rain-slicked streets, Peri saw the bride’s mother pull out a bright red sash – ‘the Maidenhood Belt’ – from her handbag and tie it around her daughter’s waist. The sash puzzled her, even though she knew in many parts of the country it was common practice. Not giving it any further thought, she tried to chat to Hakan, who was sitting next to her. Her brother looked tired and distracted, and she noticed a thin film of perspiration on his forehead; soon Peri, too, succumbed to the silence.
The Hospital
Istanbul, 2000
; On arriving home, the newlyweds were given the master bedroom, while the bride’s parents were placed in Peri’s. Selma and Mensur had no choice but to take their son’s room and share the same bed. As for Peri, she would have to make do with the sofa in the sitting room.
As soon as her head hit the pillow, Peri felt a wave of exhaustion sweep over her. Between wakefulness and sleep she heard a distant murmur, words floating in the air just before the last light was turned off. Someone was saying prayers. She tried to guess who it was, but the voice seemed devoid of age and gender. Perhaps she was already dreaming. Lulled by the ticking of the clock in the hallway, too drowsy even to brush her teeth, her chest rising and falling with each breath, she drifted off.
Deep in the night, an hour later or more, Peri woke with a start. She thought she had heard a sound but could not be sure. She propped herself up on her elbow, rigid and still. As she strained her ears, waiting, she wondered whether it was she listening to the dark or the other way round. Holding her breath, she counted heartbeats: three, four, five … there came the sound again. Someone was crying. Between sobs, a steady, insistent rustle was heard like wind through a grove of trees before a storm. A door opened and slammed shut, if not by accident then by a furious hand.
Although she sensed in her gut that something was wrong, Peri lay back, hoping that whatever it was would fade away on its own. But the sounds multiplied. Whispers rose into shouts, footsteps echoed down the corridor, and, in the background, not a sob any more but a moan, the call of a soul in pain.
‘What’s going on?’ Peri said aloud, as she stood up, her voice travelling ahead of her into the depths of the house.
She reached the room where her parents should have been asleep. Her mother was up and awake, her face ashen. Her father was pacing left and right, his hands clasped, his hair in disarray. Next to them was her brother Hakan, a cigarette smouldering between his fingers; he inhaled with a gesture of exaggerated despair. Looking at them, she had the odd sensation that she didn’t know any of these people – strangers impersonating her loved ones.
‘Why is everyone awake?’ Peri asked.
Her brother glared at her, his eyes as narrow as the edge of a blade. ‘Go to your room!’
‘But –’
‘I said, go!’
Peri took a step back. She had never seen Hakan like that – even though he was always prone to fits of temper and swearing, this time his anger was so out of control and fierce it felt like a wild creature in the room.
Instead of returning to the sitting room, Peri veered towards the master bedroom, only to find the door ajar, the bride perched on the edge of the bed in a nightgown, her dark hair tumbling down over her shoulders. Her parents were sitting on either side of her, their mouths drawn into thin lines.
‘I swear it’s not true,’ the bride said.
‘Then why does he say such a thing?’ her mother rasped.
‘You believe him or your own daughter?’
The mother was quiet for a moment. ‘I’ll believe what the doctor says.’
Slowly, as though in a trance, Peri understood the reason behind the sounds she had heard earlier: her brother had stormed out of the bedroom, convinced that his new wife was no virgin.
‘What doctor?’ the bride asked; her eyes, red-rimmed and frightened, stared out of the window into the city. The sky, coal-black with the moon hidden behind a cloud, bled a hue of purple on the horizon, the harbinger of dawn.
‘That’s the only way to get to the bottom of this,’ said the woman as she rose to her feet, grabbed her daughter by the hand and pulled her from the bed.
‘Mum, please don’t,’ the bride whispered, her voice smaller than a pearl.
But the woman was not listening. ‘Go and get our coats,’ she said to her husband, at which he nodded, out of habit if not agreement.
Blood rushing to her face, Peri hurried back to her parents’ side. ‘Baba, stop them. They’re going to the hospital!’
Mensur, in his cotton pyjamas, had the wretched look of someone who’d been thrust into a play in which he didn’t know his lines. He glanced at his daughter, then at the bride and her mother, who were now passing in front of them, heading for the door. It was the same helplessness he had displayed years ago, the night the police had raided their home.
‘Let us all calm down,’ said Mensur. ‘No need to involve strangers. We’re a family now.’
The bride’s mother deflected these words with a wave of her hand. ‘If my daughter is at fault, I’ll punish her myself. But if your son is lying, as Allah is my witness, I’ll make him regret this.’
Mensur said, ‘Please, we must not act with anger –’
‘Let them do whatever they want,’ interjected Hakan, cigarette smoke curling from his nostrils. ‘I want to learn the truth too. I’ve a right to know what kind of a woman I married.’
Peri gaped at her brother. ‘How can you say such a thing?’
‘Shut up!’ Hakan said in a voice so flat it didn’t quite match the harshness of the message. ‘I told you to stay out of this.’
In less than half an hour they were all sitting on a bench in the nearest hospital. All save for the bride.
Of that night, which would replay in her memory for years to come, several details would remain with Peri: the cracks on the ceiling that resembled the map of a forgotten continent; the nurse’s shoes that click-clacked against the concrete floor; the odour of disinfectant mixed with the smells of blood and infection; the moss-green paint daubed on the walls; the sign EMERGENCY SECTIO with the missing letter; and the disturbing thought, drilling into her brain, that no matter how surreal she found everything that was happening, it could easily have been her subjected to the same examination, had her parents married her off to a family that cared about these things. Yes, Peri understood it with a sinking heart.
She had heard about wedding-night crises but she always assumed such things happened to other people – peasants in godforsaken villages, provincials who knew no better. Hers was not a family to get entangled in a virginity test at a ramshackle hospital. Since her childhood she had been treated as an equal to her brothers, if not more favourably. She was treasured, spoiled and loved by both parents. All the same, growing up in a tight neighbourhood where there were eyes behind every lace curtain, watching and judging, she was mindful of the boundaries not to cross, what not to wear, how to sit in public, when to return home from an evening out … that is, most of the time. In the last year of school, the whirlpool of dissent and defiance that had caught most of her classmates in its current and carried them far and wide had at first left her untouched, moored on the high moral ground. While her peers had broken taboos and each other’s hearts with equal fervour, Peri had led a tranquil life. But then she had fallen in love, and love, though as brief as it was bold, smashed her well-preserved boundaries. Unknown to her parents, she had gone all the way with her leftist boyfriend. She could now see the fragility of her position as the ‘beloved daughter’. She felt like a hypocrite. Here she was, waiting for the result of another young woman’s virginity test when she was not a virgin herself.
‘Why is it taking so long? Is there a problem?’ said the bride’s father, jumping to his feet, only to sit back down again.
‘Of course not,’ his wife lashed out at him. The woman was so agitated that the nurse on duty had twice come to tell her to lower her voice.
An hour – or what felt like it – passed. Finally, the doctor appeared, her hair tied up, her grey eyes blazing behind her glasses. She scanned them with undisguised contempt. It was obvious she loathed what she had done and she loathed them more for asking her to do it.
‘Since you are keen to know, she’s a virgin,’ the doctor announced. ‘Some girls are born without a hymen, and some hymens can be torn during sex or a simple physical activity but never bleed.’
She seemed to be doing it deliberately, using medical facts to humiliate them – an act of revenge for the embarrassment they had caus
ed the bride.
‘You’ve destroyed this young woman’s sanity. I advise you to take her to a therapist, if you care for her, that is. I want you all to leave now. We have patients with real problems. You people waste our time.’
Without another word, the doctor turned her back and left. For one full minute no one spoke. It was the bride’s mother who shattered the silence.
‘Allah is great,’ she cried out. ‘They tried to smear my daughter. But God, my God, smacked them across the face and said, “How dare you sully a virgin? How dare you tarnish a rosebud?” ’
In the periphery of her vision, Peri saw her father lower his head, his stare fixed on the concrete floor as though he wanted it to swallow him up.
‘It’s your son who couldn’t do it, hear me! If he’s not man enough, how can you blame my daughter? Instead you should’ve taken your son to you-know-where!’
‘Wife, calm down,’ murmured her husband, looking uneasy and uncertain that this was the right approach.
His intervention only served to further incense the woman. ‘Why should I? Why should I spare them the shame?’
A door down the corridor opened and the bride emerged. She moved towards them, her steps measured and unhurried. In a flash, her mother bolted forward, beating her thighs with her fists as though in mourning. ‘My rosebud, what have they done to you? May they sink into the mud they tried to drag us into!’