by Elif Shafak
Azur was aware that his critics, who were plentiful, were rubbing their hands, thrilled to anticipate a scandal unfolding with him at the centre. Some openly wished him to be sacked. There was a certain type of person who rejoiced in another’s miseries, as pointless as a man who expected to fill his stomach with someone else’s hunger.
And Peri … beautiful, timid, fragile, self-reproaching Peri. What would she say about him? He was not worried about her. After all, the accusations regarding Peri were baseless, and he felt sure she would be objective, honest. She would testify, if not for him, for truth, which would amount to the same thing.
In his hands Azur held an imaginary set of scales, the pros and cons of his case resting on each palm. Against him: pressuring students with assignments that some might deem objectionable, even offensive; causing some of them to break down in class and to collapse psychologically; and, of course, having an affair with the irresistible Shirin. In his defence: his long years of teaching, research and work; his contribution to intellectual and academic life; his productivity in turning out books and articles; and the fact that Shirin – the only ‘moral’ aspect of his file – was not his student at the time their affair began.
Despite the best attempts of Troy and his allies, the case against him was weak.
He had always reasoned that if you didn’t know how to take a punch, you wouldn’t know how to win a fight. Even so, he could see how vain he had been. He had wanted to develop God into a language that was, if not spoken, at least understood and shared by many. God, not as a transcendental being or a vengeful judge or a tribal totem, but as a unifying idea, a common quest. Could the search for God, when stripped of all labels and dogmas, be turned into a neutral space where everyone, including atheists and non-monotheists, could find a discussion of value? Could God unite people, simply as an object of study? It was a mental experiment: if each soul on earth completed God, as Hafez claimed, what would happen when unlikely individuals were put in the same room, made to look each other in the eye and encouraged to complete one another’s understanding of God? He admitted being demanding, and controlling, at times. True, he had used his classroom as a laboratory. But it was all for a good reason.
The students … disadvantaged in knowledge, advantaged in age, quick to judge and self-centred to the core. It never occurred to them that their teachers, too, had a story, a secret, a life elsewhere. Azur had created a Tower of Babel with them. He had pushed them as far as he could. He had failed.
One great mistake had been to become involved with Peri. It had piqued his interest that a girl this quiet and withdrawn had a hidden side, in touch with what she called ‘the mystical’. Peri, more than any other student in his seminar, had a personal dispute with God and he had been attracted to that. Yes, he had spent extra time with her, even though he saw – for how could he not? – the girl had feelings for him. She was too young. Too naive. Too bottled-up. He should have been more careful, but when was the last time he was?
Azur himself had not been raised in a religious household. His father was a wealthy English entrepreneur, whose happiness was inversely proportional to his success; his mother a talented but frustrated Chilean pianist who was filled with resentment at not having received the recognition in her lifetime that she thought she deserved. His family had a business in Havana, Cuba, where Azur was born. His father told tales of shark fishing with Ernest Hemingway – though little evidence of that remarkable friendship remained, save for a few photographs and handwritten notes. Azur had chosen Philosophy as his calling in defiance of family duties and expectations. However, to make his parents happy, he had agreed to major in Economics, which he did, at Harvard.
In his last year at university, his life changed when he began to take classes with a specialist in Middle Eastern Studies. Professor Naseem had challenged young Azur like no one had done before. From an Algerian Berber family, he had exposed Azur to different cultures and shifting perspectives and uneasy questions. He had also introduced him to the works of mystics – Ibn Arabi, Meister Eckhart, Rumi, Isaac Luria, Fariduddin Attar and his Conference of the Birds, and his favourite, Hafez.
One afternoon Azur visited Professor Naseem at his house in Brookline. It was there that he met Naseem’s younger daughter, Anissa. Big hazel eyes, dark curly hair and a vivacity that touched and kindled everyone around her. They talked endlessly – about books, music, politics. She dreamed of moving out to her own flat. ‘But wherever I live, I must see the water,’ she said.
The same evening Azur was invited to stay for dinner. Of course the food was good, unlike anything he had tasted before, but it was the easy laughter and the Arabic melodies that mesmerized him. Anissa’s eyes darted over his face in the candlelight. In that moment Azur wished that this were his family. How different was their spontaneity, their unforced effervescence, from the measured politeness he knew from home. To this day, Azur was unsure whether he had fallen in love with Anissa or with her family.
Less than seven weeks later they were married.
Before long the young couple discovered how incompatible they were. Anissa lived mostly in her own mind. She was fiercely possessive and extremely jealous, and prone to emotional breakdowns, sometimes for the stupidest reasons. She had been on medication since she was a teenager.
Anissa had an older half-sister – Nour – from Professor Naseem’s first marriage. Considerate, thoughtful, kind, every time the family would get together, she would sit at the table next to them, listening to the conversation between Azur and her father, asking probing questions. Slowly, Azur began to see her in a different light. The sweetness of her smile, the brightness of her gaze, the delicacy of her fingers, the sharpness of her mind. She respected his views. He respected hers. Never before had Azur thought that such respect in itself could be a source of attraction.
The same year, at the end of the summer, Azur and Nour crossed a threshold. The family soon found it out. Professor Nassim, that fine old man, summoned Azur and shouted in his face; the veins on his neck were bulging blue creeks. He accused his young prodigy of acting like Sheitan, sneaking into his home with the sole intention of destroying his peace and hard-earned reputation.
Azur and Anissa moved out and managed to make up. They decided to get away from Boston. Start afresh in Europe. It won’t follow us, your shame, Anissa said. Shame can’t swim oceans. She never stopped talking about it, though, not openly but through insinuations and sarcastic remarks, convinced that no amount of remorse on Azur’s part could mend what he had so badly broken. In some incidental way, she seemed to savour her husband’s sin, which gave her a moral advantage in their marriage, a sense of righteousness sweeter than ripe berries.
They arrived in Oxford, with a view over the water, where Anissa seemed to adapt easily and Azur quickly found his feet. He thrived here. His wife was welcomed by the Oxford community. What no one who met her could see was the depth of the darkness gnawing at her soul. When happy, she was euphoric. When sad, she was crushed. In joy or in sorrow, it was always extremes with Anissa.
She was four months pregnant when she disappeared. Early in the morning, the mist hanging close to the ground, she went walking down the river and never returned. Her body was found twenty-six days later, even though the police divers had repeatedly searched the river. There was an article about it in the Oxford Mail carrying a photograph of her in her wedding dress with a spring-blossom wreath. How they had got hold of that photo Azur had never worked out. Her death was being treated as unexplained, the police spokesman said. Foul play was not suspected. The coroner gave an open verdict, but Azur became obsessed with that one remark: the unexplained.
Professor Naseem blamed Azur and his affair with Nour for Anissa’s mood swings and sudden disappearance. The family never forgave him, nor deep within did Azur forgive himself. It made him hypersensitive to apologies, though. He hated it when people asked for pardon for trivial things when there were bigger apologies in life that could never be expressed. Betw
een the freethinking of his upbringing and the justice-orientated faith of Professor Naseem, he tore open a space for himself. He would teach the unexplained. He would teach God.
As the morning wind mellowed into a breeze, Peri approached the committee hearing in a dreamlike state. Her legs felt heavy and stiff. The sun hid behind a cloud, a swift soared overhead and it felt like another season – as though the world had changed since she had left the Botanic Garden and the dawn redwood that had shaded her.
Troy was pacing back and forth at the entrance. Shirin was sitting at the stairs, her arms folded across her chest, her eyes swollen from crying. Each was keenly waiting for Peri to arrive so that they could pull her over to their side. Somewhere inside that building were people with impenetrable expressions and impertinent questions.
Where was Azur, she wondered, and what was going through his mind. How she wished he were next to her now, so they could shelter inside one of the many fantasies she had about him. They could walk past these people, oblivious to their judging stares, unaffected by this calamity that had struck them out of nowhere. She wished it were night-time and that he would talk to her about poetry and philosophy and the paradox of God, words that flew in the wind like sparks from the embers of open fires; only the two of them under a sky that could have been anywhere, a dreaming university town or a teeming city, her head resting in the crook of his neck. She wished for all the differences in their ages, status and cultures to evaporate into the air. She wished for him to lean over and touch her face, kiss her lips and speak her name like an incantation. She wished for her mind and her heart to fuse into a blade that would destroy the spirit of Shirin that resided within him. It was so long since she had desired anything this fervently.
Peri pulled her coat tight, feeling the cold penetrating her skin. If she testified on his behalf, as she felt morally bound to do, maybe he would understand how much she cared for him and he would love her – at least a little. Maybe … Yet in her heart she knew none of these things was likely to happen. His name would be cleared and he would celebrate it with Shirin – who always got whatever she wanted.
From a distance, Peri thought all these things. Then, slowly, as if she had run out of energy, she stopped. Was she not the girl who had watched her twin brother choke to death and not cried for help? Always in-between, afraid of drawing attention to herself, unwilling to choose sides, so focused on not upsetting anyone that in the end everyone was left disappointed. Despite all her attempts to change herself, she wasn’t strong enough to overcome the emotional paralysis ingrained in her soul. She, Peri, Nazperi, Rosa, Mouse, would not testify. Neither now, nor later. She was not an actor but a mere spectator. This was their problem. Their stupid game. She turned back and walked away as though it were a stranger’s good name at stake and not the future of the man she had loved, dreamed of and desired with all her being.
Years had to pass before she came to the realization that her passivity actively contributed to the ruination of the man she loved. When she betrayed Azur, she betrayed the truth.
The Wardrobe
Istanbul, 2016
A third man, his face half covered with a bandana, had joined the two intruders. From the way he spoke, he seemed to be their leader. He must have waited outside in the garden while the other two had barged into the mansion, clearing the way for him.
‘Do as we say and nobody gets hurt,’ he roared. Yet he sounded neither angry nor agitated; just cold, detached. ‘Your choice.’
Peri realized she was shaking. Her heart thumped inside her ribcage. Should she run or hide? Who were these men – organized mafia, ordinary robbers or terrorists – all of whom populated Istanbul in great numbers? Or was this about money? How many people had the businessman pissed off as he accumulated money and envy in equal measure? She recalled his troubled expression on the terrace. But there was no time to contemplate. Eyeing the kitchen door from the passage where she found herself crouching, she paused. She couldn’t run in there without being seen from the drawing room. She took a step backwards. Her hands felt the surface of the mirror behind her. It moved slightly – the door of a built-in wardrobe.
She pushed it open. Inside there were coats, boxes, shoes, umbrellas. Without thinking, she jumped in and pulled the magnetic catch closed. Her back pressed against the wooden plank, she hunched up into a tight ball in the dark. Once again in her life she became a terrified hedgehog.
A minute later, maybe less, somebody stomped up and down the corridor, shouting. ‘Get out of the kitchen! All of you. Now!’
They were rounding up the staff. The chef, the assistant, the maids hired for the night. Hurried footsteps. The heavy tread of boots. Frightened whispers.
Inside the wardrobe, Peri clicked the mute button on the mobile and typed a message to her mother. Call the police, urgent. You know where I am.
‘Damn!’ she said, realizing Selma had probably gone to bed and might not see her text until the next morning. She felt immensely relieved that Deniz had left, and was safe. But Adnan was here … there. Her husband, her confidant, her best friend. Her breath came out in a sharp whimper.
She heard a thud. A woman screamed. Peri picked out a cry, which devolved into hysterical laughter. It sounded like the girlfriend of the famous journalist. ‘You didn’t see them coming? You call yourself a psychic – psychic my arse!’
Clutching her knees, Peri froze. Was all this about the businessman getting his just deserts? Or was it merely a coincidence – another chance occurrence that one tried in vain to make sense of? She remembered the security cameras and barbed wire she had seen at the entrance – all to no avail. The world was full of danger. Chaos and disorder lurked around every corner. Was evil some sort of divine retribution for our actions, or the fickle workings of an arbitrary fate? If randomness ruled, what point was there in trying to be a better person? How did one atone for past sins if not by changing one’s ways? She had been good – except to the man she had loved years ago, and, in some untouched corner of her heart, still did. Professor Azur had taught her that uncertainty was precious. But what if confusion was all there was to it?
Sick to her stomach, she dialled the police. An officer picked up and instantly began bombarding her with questions, treating her less as a witness than a criminal. Peri cut him off in the most muted tone she could manage, ‘There are armed men …’
‘Can’t hear you. Speak louder,’ the officer reprimanded.
Peri gave him the address.
‘Why are you in that house?’ said the officer.
‘I am a guest,’ she hissed in frustration. ‘They’ve got guns.’
‘Where are you in the house?’ asked the officer but did not wait for an answer. He wanted to know her name, what she did, where she lived. Useless questions. She had been an exemplary citizen all this time, but in the database of the state she was a digital creation, a number without a story.
Finally, the man said, ‘O-kay, we’ll send out a team.’
Afterwards, she checked the battery. It would last for another fifteen minutes or probably less. She wondered what would happen in the interim: would she be discovered and taken hostage along with the rest or would the police arrive and launch an operation, during which they could all be rescued or killed? Perhaps by the time the battery died, this Last Supper of the Turkish Bourgeoisie would be over for good or bad. Life often felt unjust, but death was the bigger injustice. Which was harder to accept: that there was a hidden purpose in this madness, if one only knew where to look; or that there was no logic at all, and therefore no justice?
Her hand was throbbing again, as if it had a mind of its own, the arm of an octopus. In the phosphorescent light from the mobile’s screen, squeezed in among the racks of coats and shoes while outside her husband and friends were hostages, she held up the number Shirin had given her.
She called Azur.
The Disgrace
Oxford, 2016
Every day at dusk Azur went out for a walk. He hiked fo
r a good five to seven miles, following historic pathways, passing through ancient woodlands and over rolling farmland. A clarity of mind descended on a person in the open air, he thought, purposeful and measured but with no particular destination in mind. If there was one firm belief he had come to hold about human beings, it was that they were mental chameleons, capable of adapting even to shame and disgrace. He knew this not from speculation but from personal experience. He had been shamed. He had been disgraced. If someone had told his younger self as he climbed his way up both in academia and in society, ambitious and ever-confident, that he would one day fall to earth as if he’d flown too close to the sun, he would have found it too depressing to believe. In truth, the principled, younger Azur would have probably said it was better to die than to live with that kind of dishonour. Yet here he was, more than a decade after the scandal, still around, still alive and still deeply bruised inside.
Fourteen years ago he had been forced to leave his teaching position. Since then he had retained a loose tie with the college that was once his academic home, like an umbilical cord that no longer provided sustenance but could not be severed. He had not been asked to come back and teach, and he had not tried, lest his name brought embarrassment on his colleagues or department. Over the years he had read a number of articles about himself, but one was like no other. It accused him of being a megalomaniac with delusions of authority, a Foucaultian amalgam of power and knowledge that blighted young, insecure minds like a canker. Drawing a perfect whole of evil, the writer had connected Peri’s suicide attempt with Anissa’s disappearance. ‘Here is a man who clearly brought tragedy to every young woman he seduced intellectually.’ Passionately written and fearsomely well researched, the article had destabilized Azur, pushing him into a depression so intense it was impossible for him to recall a time when his world wasn’t suffused with melancholy. Nevertheless, he had kept on working, as though he knew that if he stopped writing he would have no reason to look forward to another day. Work was a survival instinct.