Three Daughters of Eve

by Elif Shafak

  Ignoring her mother, the bride strode towards the exit. As she passed the Nalbantoğlus, and her husband, whose leg shook so violently that the bench was vibrating, she kept her chin up, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. Peri noticed her hands, manicured and hennaed, and her palms, studded with red crescents. It was this detail that affected her more than anything she witnessed during this miserable night. The marks a young woman digs with her fingernails during a virginity examination.

  ‘Feride … wait …’

  It was the first time Peri pronounced her name. To this day she had always been ‘her’ or ‘you’ or simply ‘the bride’.

  Though she slowed down, Feride neither stopped nor turned around. Walking straight ahead, through the automatic doors, she disappeared with her parents in tow.

  Peri felt a seething rage inside – at her brother, whose selfishness and insecurity had brought this misery; at her parents, who hadn’t tried harder to stop the offence; at the ages-old tradition that determined a human being’s worth was between her legs; but mostly at herself. She could have done something to help Feride and yet she hadn’t. It was always like this. In moments of stress, just when she had to take action and demonstrate resolve, she tumbled into lethargy, as if pushed down by an invisible hand, from where she observed the world around her fade and flatten into a blur, and her feelings grow dim, like light bulbs turned down, one by one.

  On the way back home, in the mini-van they had rented for the wedding, the Nalbantoğlus were alone. While Hakan drove and Mensur sat in the back, staring out of the window, Peri took the seat next to her mother.

  ‘What will happen now?’ Peri asked.

  ‘Nothing, inshallah,’ said Selma. ‘We’ll buy chocolates, silks, jewellery … and apologize. We’ll do everything we can to make it up to them, even though it was their idea to go to the hospital, not ours.’

  Peri considered for a moment. ‘How can a marriage survive after such an awful start?’

  Her mother smiled askew, the light from a street lamp splitting her face into two: half flame, half shadow. ‘Believe me, Pericim, many a marriage has survived worse than this. It’ll be fine, inshallah.’

  Peri stared, perhaps for the first time seeing, really seeing her mother. It occurred to her that her parents’ marriage might not be all that it appeared to be, and her darling father not always the gentleman she believed he was.

  Her thoughts flitted to the wedding portrait of her parents that they kept in the cabinet, framed but not on display. Mensur and Selma, both young and thin, stood stiff and unsmiling, as if they had just been hit by the gravity of what they had done. Behind them was an absurd background of wild orchids and flying geese. Around her yet uncovered head, Selma wore a chaplet of plaited daisies – their plastic beauty no less fake than their happiness.

  Peri held her mother’s hand, more by instinct than intention, and squeezed it gently. It occurred to her that the mother she had always seen as frail and tearful might have an inner resilience of her own. Selma dealt with emotional crises the way she did her household chores. Diligently, she picked up the pieces, just as she tidied up the knick-knacks scattered around the house.

  As though she had sensed her daughter’s thoughts, Selma said, ‘I have faith, that helps. There must be a reason why we went through this. We don’t know it yet, but Allah does.’

  Peri could see from the flush in her cheeks and the glint in her eyes that her mother was sincere. Faith, whichever way Selma understood it, infused her with a sense of surrender that could have been a cause of weakness had it not made her stronger. Was religion an empowering force for women who otherwise had limited power in a society designed for and by men, or was it yet another tool for facilitating their submission?

  The next day Peri flew back to England, her mind ablaze with questions – and unable to say whether it was best to search for the answers or to leave them undisturbed.

  The Scavenger

  Istanbul, 2016

  Once she hung up the phone with her mother, Peri made her way down the main staircase adorned with faux-Grecian urns, across the polished marble floor and back to the dinner table. A part of her was disappointed not to have got Shirin’s number. Another part was relieved. She had no idea what she would have said and, even if she’d found the right words, whether Shirin would have listened. She had called her a few times in the past, soon after she had left Oxford, but Shirin had been too angry to talk, the wound too raw. Although years had passed since, there was no guarantee that it would be any different now.

  The guests’ laughter grating in her ears, Peri entered the dining room, only to find the PR woman standing by the drinks cabinet, waiting for her.

  ‘Hey, I called my brother while you were away,’ the woman said with a smile that did not quite extend to her eyes. ‘He was delighted to hear you were at Oxford around the same time that he was. I’m sure you two knew people in common.’

  Peri returned her stare with equal intensity. ‘Maybe, but Oxford is a big university.’

  ‘I told him you had a photo of the scandal professor. He was very surprised.’

  Peri clenched her jaw as she braced herself for what was coming.

  ‘What was he called? My brother mentioned it but I forgot.’

  ‘Azur,’ Peri said, his name burning her tongue like a drop of fire.

  ‘Exactly, I knew it was weird!’ The PR woman snapped her fingers to punctuate her point. ‘Uhm, my brother was curious … he wanted me to ask you, were you his student?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know the professor that well,’ Peri said without missing a beat. ‘The girls in the photo were his students. I was just a friend. Lost touch with all of them anyhow.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the PR woman, disappointment darkening her expression but not yet ready to let go. ‘Try Facebook. I’ve reconnected with all my college friends – even ones from primary school. We have pilaff and beans days –’

  Peri nodded, eager to get rid of this woman who, like a hostile army that invaded her land, was pillaging her privacy, her past. She would never tell her how many times she had googled Azur’s name – his achievements, his books, his photos – and pored over the hundreds of entries about him; and then googled the scandal, after which he had stopped teaching but continued to give interviews and talks.

  ‘My brother said he remembers hearing rumours that there was a Turkish girl taking this professor’s course. He said it was the talk of the town.’

  Tension filled the space between them like a filthy puddle. ‘What are you trying to say?’ Peri asked, amazed at the coldness in her voice.

  ‘Nothing, I was just curious.’

  The image of the tramp flashed before Peri’s eyes. His gaunt frame, his penetrating eyes, his eczema-patched hands. This woman, though privileged and moneyed, was no less of an addict than he was. Peri imagined her holding a plastic bag full of other people’s misfortunes and dark secrets, into which she poked her nose and inhaled as a respite from her own life.

  ‘I wish I had something more interesting to tell you,’ Peri said, the word interesting making her pause for a split second. Her remark, though intended for the busybody, seemed addressed to no one but herself. ‘I was a quiet student, not the type to be involved in a scandal.’

  The PR woman smiled as though in sympathy.

  ‘Next time you talk to your brother, tell him it must have been someone else.’

  ‘Oh, sure.’

  For the rest of the dinner, Peri avoided making eye contact with the PR woman. She didn’t feel bad about lying. She was not going to reveal her past to a stranger, especially to a scavenger-type-of-a-stranger hunting for bits of gossip to feed on. Besides, it wasn’t exactly a lie, come to think of it. After all, it had been a different girl, a different Peri from the woman she was today, who had once been Professor Azur’s favourite student and, later on, the cause of his ruin.

  The Dusk Run

  Oxford, 2000

  Back at college Peri burrowed he
rself into her studies. In the mornings when she picked up her coffee – so unlike the sweet and strong Turkish coffee – she would observe the undergraduates and the dons with absorbed expressions on their faces, books and notes clutched to their chests as they hurried from one building to another; she would wonder how many of them had had a taste of life elsewhere. How easy it was to assume that Oxford – or anywhere, for that matter – was the centre of the world.

  On Wednesday, she left the library at dusk. She had been reading for almost three hours and her brain was saturated with ideas. She imagined her mind as a rambling house with many rooms in which she stored all the things she read, heard and saw, and where they were inspected, processed and registered by a little clerk, a homunculus entirely at her unconscious service. Yet it was possible, she believed, that one’s thoughts could be hidden even from oneself.

  She decided to go for a run. After a quick stop by her staircase to drop off the books she had borrowed and change into her running clothes, she set off down Holywell Street, slowly finding her rhythm. The cold wind on her face was like a balm.

  Cyclists passed silently by, their reflectors winking conspiratorially in the dark. People rode everywhere – to shops, restaurants, seminars – and one of her favourite sights was seeing the senior dons on their bikes, their gowns billowing gently in the wind. She herself was not a good cyclist. It was one of those things she had to work at – like happiness.

  Having veered off her usual course, she dashed through streets and alleys that felt deserted. She inhaled the smell of anonymous winter plants, turned a corner and stopped, panting hard. She found herself face to face with a poster on a wall.

  The Oxford University

  Museum of Natural History

  presents

  THE GOD DEBATE

  Professor Robert Fowler, Professor John Peter

  &

  Professor A. Z. Azur

  Come and join a spectacular debate

  among the brightest minds of our times

  Peri’s eyes widened. She checked the time and location printed on the poster. It was the same day. 5 p.m. Museum of Natural History.

  It had already started. The place was at least two miles away, and she had no ticket and no money on her even if tickets were still available. She had no idea how she would get in, and yet, on the spot, she turned in the direction of the museum, took a deep breath and began to run.

  The Third Path

  Oxford, 2000

  By the time Peri, her hair dishevelled and rivulets of sweat running down her neck, reached her destination, the sun had already set in a low amber sky. She approached the neo-Gothic edifice that had been designed as ‘a cathedral to science’. Architecture in Oxford fell into two categories: the kind that remembered and the kind that dreamed. The Museum of Natural History was both. The gravel crunching beneath her feet, Peri thought that the building – independent of the collections inside – demanded of its visitors awe and respect.

  There were two attendants, a girl and a boy, at the main entrance – students by the look of them – wearing the same bright blue shirts and bored expressions. One of them nodded in her direction.

  ‘I came for the debate,’ Peri said, trying to catch her breath.

  ‘Do you have a ticket?’ asked the boy – a gangling youth with a protruding lower lip and a narrow forehead that was crowned by bushy, ginger hair.

  ‘Uhm … no,’ Peri said anxiously. ‘And I don’t have my wallet with me.’

  ‘It’d have made no difference.’ He shook his head. ‘Sold out weeks ago.’

  Words, of their own volition, spilled out of Peri’s mouth. ‘Oh, but I ran all the way here!’

  At Peri’s response, so loud and spontaneous, the girl smiled with sympathy. ‘It’s about to end anyway, you’re late.’

  Clinging to a thread of hope Peri asked, ‘Can I at least take a peek?’

  The girl shrugged. She had no objections. But the boy was of a different mind. ‘We can’t allow that,’ he said, with the tone of someone who, having unexpectedly found himself in a position of authority, was determined to make the most of it.

  ‘The debate’s being recorded. There’ll be a free screening later on,’ the girl suggested.

  Peri was not satisfied. Even so, she nodded. ‘Okay, thanks.’

  She turned back. Sulking in the faint glow of dusk, she had the look of a disappointed child. If anyone had asked her why she was so keen to go inside, the only answer she could have come up with was instinct. Something told her that many of the questions that had been tugging at the recesses of her mind were being addressed in there. It was this conviction that prompted her to do what she did next.

  Instead of heading towards the main road, Peri wandered around in search of a side door. There was no need. Another opportunity to get in arose when she noticed, gazing back over her shoulder towards the entrance, that the girl was no longer there. The other attendant waited for a few seconds, and then disappeared into the building.

  On impulse, Peri took advantage of the unguarded doorway and entered the museum. Once inside, she moved cautiously, her senses alert as she half expected the ginger-haired boy to pounce from behind a corner and throw her out. But he was nowhere to be seen. Following the signs that said GOD DEBATE, she soon found herself in a large, crowded hall.

  In tight rows, an audience of students and academics sat with rapt attention, their gazes fixed on the four figures on stage. One of them was a prominent BBC journalist moderating the discussion; he seemed to be wrapping up the event. Peri studied the three professors, wondering which one was Azur.

  The first professor – a tall, gaunt man with slanting, intelligent eyes – had a bald head and a spreading, salt-and-pepper beard, which he fiddled with nervously whenever he heard something not quite to his taste. A grey suit, pink check shirt, red braces with metal clasps and a hint of belligerence that slipped now and then from under his elaborate smile. He stared at his hands most of the time, as though they held a mystery he was hopeful to solve.

  The second professor, the oldest of the three, had a broad face, ruddy complexion, thinning grey hair and a paunch he forgot to hide when he became excited. He wore a russet jacket that he found either constricting or uncomfortable in some other way, for he seemed ill at ease, hunched in his chair, his gaze unfocused. To Peri he seemed a gentle type, the sort of man who’d rather spend time with his students or his grandchildren than debating God on a podium.

  The third speaker, sitting apart from the others to the left of the moderator, had brown-blond hair falling in elegant waves over his collar, and a prominent nose that was finely poised between the hideous and the magnificent. His eyes shone like specks of obsidian behind his classic black-and-tortoiseshell frame spectacles as he stared out at the audience with a world-weary smile. Peri could not decide whether his placidity was the sign of a soul at peace with itself or the reflection of a well-polished hubris. It was equally hard to guess how old he was. There was a taut litheness in his posture that suggested he was younger than the others, and his demeanour projected a spiritedness that might or might not have been due to his relative youth. Peri was certain he was the professor Shirin had been raving about.

  ‘I believe I’m speaking for everyone present when I say we’ve had a fascinating discussion, some provocative ideas to chew on,’ enthused the moderator. He seemed rather exhausted and relieved that the event was coming to an end. Peri wondered what had transpired before she arrived, sensing a groundswell of tension under the veneer of academic courtesy.

  ‘Now it’s time to open the floor to the audience. Some basic rules: keep your questions brief and to the point. Please wait for the roving mic and don’t forget to introduce yourselves before you speak.’

  A ripple of excitement travelled across the hall, like a breeze over a field of wheat. Immediately, a few hands went up, the brave and the bold.

  A male student was the first to go. Briefly introducing himself, he unleashed a tirade ab
out the dichotomy of good and evil, beginning with Ancient Greece and Rome up to the Middle Ages. By the time he had reached the Renaissance, the audience was getting restless, and the journalist interrupted, ‘Okay, sir … did you have a question in mind or are you planning to give a secular sermon?’

  Laughter rose. The student blushed and when he finally parted with the microphone – still having not asked a question – it was with visible reluctance.

  The next person to stand up was a cleric in a black cassock, an Anglican pastor perhaps: Peri could not tell the difference. He said he had enjoyed the panel debate but was astonished to hear the first speaker claim that religion brooked no free discussion. The history of the Christian Church was replete with counter examples. The seeds of many universities across Europe, including their very own, had been sown through theology. Atheists were entitled to their opinions so long as they did not distort the facts, he concluded.

  A brief exchange followed between the cleric and the bearded professor, whom Peri understood was the ‘atheist’ in question. The professor said that religion, far from being an ally of free discussion, was its age-old nemesis. When Spinoza questioned the teachings of the rabbis, he was not commended for his intellect; instead he was expelled from the synagogue. The same troubling pattern could be seen in the history of Christianity and Islam alike. As a man devoted to science and clarity he could not be placed under the sway of dogma.

  The next audience member to reach for the microphone was an elegant middle-aged woman. Science and religion could never be bedfellows, she said, citing examples of philosophers and scientists – East and West – who had been persecuted by religious authorities throughout history. She railed at the second professor, who, Peri realized – besides being a famous scholar – was a man of considerable piety.

  This second professor, though not as eloquent as his atheist peer, spoke mildly in a rich Irish brogue, enunciating each word slowly, like a delicacy to be savoured. He said from his point of view there was no conflict between religion and science. The two could go hand in hand, if we only stopped thinking of them as oil and water. He personally knew of several scientists, experts in their fields, who were devout Christians. As Darwin – who had never considered himself an atheist – argued, it was absurd to doubt that a man could be both an ardent theist and an evolutionist. Many scientists hailed as ‘staunch atheists’ today were, in fact, theists in heart.