by Elif Shafak
Aphrodite and Ares carried on their love affair in secret, meeting only at night, and parting before daybreak. But one night they overslept. When the sun took its place in the sky, the lovers were discovered lying side-by-side by the sun. (Note: of course the sky has always been the best place from which to watch the earth.) The sun immediately carried news of what he’d seen to Aphrodite’s ugly husband Hephaistos. He bound the two naked lovers in a net, and displayed their treachery as a lesson for others.
‘Is this what you call contradiction?’ asked the eye. ‘Do you think it more contradictory for Aphrodite to have an affair with the god of destruction, or for her to remain faithful to the ugly Hephaistos? Show me contradiction, is there no contradiction?’
That day I told B-C how we’d shopped together at the supermarket that afternoon. I related it as if he knew what he’d seen; wide mirrors, security guards, hidden cameras. In this land of freedom and variety, the signs reading, ‘Dear customers, our shop is protected by hidden cameras!’, wandering among the eye-pleasing counters, the shopping we did with our eyes rather than with our purse, and before I reached how we paid the cashier and our money was taken, and we had to leave some things behind, I told him that on the way we couldn’t see the things we’d bought as we had left our eyes behind with the things we didn’t buy.
‘Now you tell. What did we do outside today?’
B-C returned at once to his Dictionary of Gazes. He hadn’t even heard my question. I regarded him with curiosity. How many more states was I going to see him in other that the one he was in here and now?
zihin (intellect): When the intellect is clouded, what is seen becomes clouded.
He sat in front of the computer, lit a cigarette, and read what he’d just written with raised eyebrows. I saw that B-C, who usually loved to chat, wasn’t going to give me an answer no matter what I said. From now on, the Dictionary of Gazes came first.
zilzâl: Zilzâl, reminiscent of earthquakes, is the name of the ninety-ninth chapter of the Koran. According to this chapter, the earth was going to throw out all of the weight it was carrying. Then all of the layers invisible under the ground would emerge aboveground and be visible.
The interest in the dictionary had begun at the cinema almost a week earlier. Both of us loved the cinema. The cinema was the only place outside the Hayalifener Apartments where we could be together. Generally, we went in separately, and watched the film separately. But if the cinema was deserted, if there weren’t too many curious eyes, we sat next to each other. We would hold hands in the dark throughout the film. Again I was on tenterhooks. I hated the ten minute intermission. Sometimes, when the intermission was drawing near, one of us would get up and go somewhere else, but most of the time we got involved in the film and missed the moment, and as soon as the lights came on we’d shrink guiltily into our seats. During that endless ten minutes, B-C, as round as a ball, would slide well down into his seat. As for me, there was nothing I could do. No matter how much I shrank, I was still too big to escape notice.
This interest began almost a week ago at the cinema. That day the cinema was almost completely empty. We were sitting together, holding hands, watching a film about a haunted house, when suddenly, when there was still a long way to go before the ten minute intermission, B-C jumped to his feet.
‘I’m going home. I have to work.’
He left before I had a chance to ask any questions. I stayed behind at the cinema and continued watching the film.
zina (adultery): In order to prove adultery, there must be four male witnesses who saw the act with their own eyes. It is not enough for the witnesses to have seen the same thing, they’re expected to state what they’ve seen in the same manner. If one of their statements arouses suspicion, the other witnesses’ statements are considered perjurous, and the accusation is considered groundless.
When the film was over, I went out the back door into the back streets. I saw, on the edge of the pavement, the same blind peddler I’d seen before at different times and in different places. There was an endless variety of evil-eye beads arranged on the counter; hundreds of eyes, big and small. A number of cats, most of them still kittens, were wandering around near the peddler. I grew uneasy. A single large dog was more suitable for a blind man outside than a flock of kittens. On top of this, the cats swarmed around him as if he were a large piece of liver that might get up and run away at any moment.
There, on the edge of the pavement, a blind man sold eyes to those who could see. As I was handing him money, one of the kittens on his lap arched its back and hissed at me. I wasn’t surprised, because I’d long known that cats don’t like me, but it still made me nervous. Clutching the evil-eye bead, I took myself off to the nearest place where I could get Albanian liver.
ziya (light): Light is that which makes all other things visible.
Well, when I came back from the cinema that day I found B-C working at the computer. Excitedly, he called me to his side.
‘My love, this is a Dictionary of Gazes’ he said pointing to the screen. He was like someone who was at last able to introduce the two people he loved most, expecting them to become close friends right away.
Well it all started like this.
zorba (tyrant): Because he’d lampooned the tyrant’s tyranny, the sharp-tongued satirist’s head was left impaled for days on a stake in the square. Passers-by stopped to look, and some came back to look again. Because the tyrant’s power was the power of display.
In the beginning B-C’s interest in this dictionary had to do with the interpretation of his own madness, and I thought it would pass the way it started. But it didn’t happen that way. On the contrary, with each passing day it increased gradually. He worked away furiously, and was interested in a number of visual details that were completely unrelated to each other. He generally wrote at night. In time I became accustomed to falling asleep to the clacking of the keyboard, which at first used to keep me awake. At the end of each night, he’d put what he’d written into a transparent folder, and hide it from the sun and from me. When I got up in the morning, he’d just be lying down to sleep. Even though we lived in the same house, we began to see less and less of each other as time went by.
‘Now where did this come from?’ I asked one day.
‘Where did it come from? It was already here. It was always here. Look, our lives are based on seeing and being seen. All of our troubles, worries, obsessions, our happiness and our memories…our very existence in this world too…and also our love…everything, I mean everything, has to do with seeing and being seen. Well, the Dictionary of Gazes is going to demonstrate this entry by entry. At first the entries will seem unrelated to each other, but because they all have to do with seeing and being seen, each entry will be secretly linked to another. In this way the Dictionary of Gazes will be like a shaman’s cloak of forty patches and a single thread. I thought of this metaphor just this morning. So, what do you think?’
I smiled. How he loved to make pretentious statements. I went into the kitchen to look for a snack to go with my tea. Anyway, there were still some of those little round cakes filled with apricot jam that I bought at the bakery yesterday. When I went back to the living room with my plate in my hand, he was waiting for me with a long face.
‘You’ll see,’ he said without hiding his hurt feelings. ‘I’m going to prove to you how important the Dictionary of Gazes is.’
To mollify him, I wanted to say that he didn’t have to prove anything to me, but he pushed my hand away roughly when I tried to stroke his hair. He didn’t want to taste the apricot jam cakes either. He was hurt. As I was trying to think of a way to appease him, my eyes strayed to the computer screen.
‘All right, you’ve just started the dictionary. Why didn’t you start with the letter A?’ I asked as pieces of apricot fell out of my mouth. ‘All dictionaries start with the letter A. Why are you at Z?’
Whenever he has that look, his dark, bitter-chocolate eyes turn into shadows painted with a t
hin watercolour brush. My hands trembled as if they’d been charged with the responsibility of painting those delicate lines again. I was terrified that there’d be too much water, and the paint would drip, and erase his eyes. At times like these, I couldn’t take my eyes off the strangeness of his eyes.
Zühre (Venus): They say that love can be forgotten just like everything else. And that love can be forgotten not only when it’s over and done with, and the ashes are growing cold, but also at the moment when it’s strongest.
Anyway, there was a star called Venus in the third level of the heavens. Those who couldn’t remember whether or not they were in love, or who they were in love with if they were in love, would climb to the third level of the heavens to look into the mirror of love that Venus held in her hand. The face they saw would be the face of the person they loved.
They say that some people saw only pitch darkness in the mirror. These people were wrong to suspect their memories. What they lacked was not memory, but heart.
‘I decided it wasn’t important to go in order,’ he said in a dry voice. ‘I don’t know…I wanted it to be a little more random. But I don’t think so any more, you’re right. It has to be orderly. I’ll proceed from A to Z. It’s better if I go back.’
I didn’t understand why his mood had soured, or quite what he wanted to say. But I was still pleased that he’d listened to my idea. I smiled with the taste of apricots.
Adem ile Havva (Adam and Eve): When Adam and Eve tasted the forbidden fruit, they saw their differences for the first time. They became ashamed, and wanted to hide their nakedness with fig leaves. But one had a single fig leaf, and the other had three. Once they learned how to count, they were never the same again.
The following days were all alike. In the mornings B-C stayed at home, and I went to work. When I left he’d still be sleeping. When I came home I’d find him working on the Dictionary of Gazes. According to the day, he greeted me with either with extreme bad humour, extreme indifference or extreme good spirits. Sometimes too he’d narrow his eyes again like that; and I couldn’t work out what he felt. The Dictionary of Gazes determined not only his mood, but also what happened to the rest of our day.
But there were things in our life that weren’t determined by the Dictionary of Gazes. Like paying the rent. It didn’t seem as if B-C was concerned about this problem. He’d dropped all the work he was doing and devoted all of his time to the dictionary. It seemed as if the owner of the art studio was more put out about this than anyone else. Just as he was on the point of suggesting that B-C model every evening instead of just Monday evenings, the man found out that he’d stopped working. From that moment on, he called again and again, telling B-C that he wanted the students to work with him, that anyway this job didn’t take up much time, that at this point it was going to be difficult for him to find a model who interested everyone so much, and if necessary he’d raise the fee. To no avail. B-C simply didn’t want to be involved with anything except the dictionary.
At this point I’d found a job teaching half days at one of the newly opened nursery schools. It didn’t pay much, but the conditions were good. What I had to do was sing with the children, paint with them, make up stories, and kneed coloured clay with them from morning till noon. At one-thirty we had our lunch break. Our cook prepared different meals each day according to the weekly plan given to him by the parents’ association. But it seemed to me as if we ate köfte and potatoes every day. Sometimes the köfte were made of meat, sometimes of chicken, sometimes of fish, sometimes of cracked wheat and sometimes of soy. The potatoes were always the same. And we always drank a lot of milk. It made the children giggle to see the way I drank milk. Every day we had a different kind of pudding that passed for dessert. When lunch was over the little ones would take their afternoon nap. Then after I’d gone back and cleaned up my classroom, I’d turn my post over to someone else. The director of the nursery was always calling me in and telling me that the parents wanted me to work full-time. According to him the parents loved me. The parents wanted it to be me they saw when they came to pick up their children in the evening.
But I wasn’t any better than any of the other teachers. I was just much much fatter. My appearance gave the parents confidence. While I was in charge, they were less worried about their children falling and hurting themselves, or being rough with each other, or playing with sharp instruments. Like an enormous balloon filled with dreams that had the taste and consistency of strawberry pudding, I softened all movement around me. When I was there, modelling knives were a little less sharp, the corners of the desks a little less pointed, the pushing and shoving less harsh, even the slides in the playground were less slippery. When I was around, the children were secure. Perhaps I was even made for this kind of work.
But I had such a hard time going to the nursery in the mornings. Actually I didn’t want to do anything that would take me out of the Hayalifener Apartments. As soon as the front door opened I was seized by the desire to go back home. I don’t like the outside.
Outside is the land of appearances. The children at the nursery were competing with one another to remind me how fat I was. When I got home my hair smelled of the letters f-a-t-t-y the way someone’s hair smells in the evening when they’ve been around people puffing on cigarettes all day. Indeed the first thing I did when I got home was to wash my hair. The letters would wash off me and swirl away down the drain. But no matter how much I shampooed my hair, some of them wouldn’t come out. They’d stick to me like burs. Then, B-C would come help me: he’d pick out the f’s, the a’s, the t’s, the y’s.
So one day I decided to dye my hair. It was clear I couldn’t get rid of the letters f-a-t-t-y. But with the right hair colour I could make them invisible; like a sweater that doesn’t show stains.
ask (love): A widow was in the arms of her lover. ‘This thing called love should be forbidden,’ she muttered to herself, ‘and what is forbidden should be kept out of sight.’
However, the young man wanted everyone to see him make love to the widow. He had to prove to others that he was growing up. For this reason he always kept the window open. But no one ever passed down that street.
Then one day as the young man was wandering around the house, he managed to open a door that was always kept locked, and that he’d never once touched before. ‘My God!’ he shouted. ‘Is that why you’ve locked everyone into this room? Did you do this so no one would see us?’ As he stood waiting for an answer, the widow locked the door on the callow young man and left.
The widow met a caterpillar on the road. ‘Will you be my secret love?’ she asked him. ‘Why keep it a secret?’ asked the caterpillar. ‘If someone’s in love with me I want everyone to see her love. Then I’ll be thought less ugly.’ For a while, the widow watched the caterpillar gnaw on the leaves. Then she locked the whole wide world on the ugly caterpillar.
She came across the cosmos and asked it the same question. The aged cosmos answered, ‘If someone’s in love with me I want everyone to see her love. Then I’ll be thought younger.’ The widow shrugged her shoulders. In any event she had a bunch of keys in her pocket. She locked the aged cosmos in on itself.
In order to continue on her way she had to step off and fall into the void. As she fell she took a new key out of her pocket, but there was no lock in sight. ‘Are you an idiot? What would a lock be doing drifting through the void? There’s nothing here but nothingness,’ grumbled the void. The widow looked at the void with great admiration. ‘In that case, please let me stay with you. You’re the one I’ve been seeking.’
‘That’s completely out of the question,’ said the void. ‘If you stay with me, you’ll fill my void, and then I’ll no longer exist.’
‘Go on back now,’ said the void in a sweet voice, as if wishing to ask forgiveness for having been rude. ‘Go back and open all the doors. Let them out. You need them.’
The widow did as the void asked, and opened all the doors she’d locked. When they saw that their
captivity had come to an end the prisoners rushed out pushing and shoving; as they ran around dazed by their freedom, some of them were injured. The widow was surprised and angry. ‘As if things were any better now?’ she was heard to have said. She locked herself in her house in order not to have to witness any more of this tumult. And after this she forbade herself love.
The colour catalogue they thrust into my hands at the hairdresser’s was wonderful. There were curls of all colours, but I was more enchanted by the names than by the colours. For instance the caption for a copper-coloured curl was ‘Farewell to the Train at Sunset’, for a loud reddish tone ‘Also Known as Seduction’, for an ash-coloured curl, ‘What the Fireplace Knows’, for a yellow curl, ‘Natural Blond’, for a dark, chestnut-coloured curl, ‘Roasting Chestnuts in the Evening’. I stroked the curls again and again with my index finger. If it were up to me, I’d give each of the coloured curls names that had to do with food. Since I was little, colours have always evoked food for me. As I thought, I looked carefully at my index finger. My cuticles were torn and chewed away, and in horror I hid my finger so no one would see it.
After hesitating for some time, I decided on a curl with silver glitter in it. It was called ‘Coal-cellar Black.’
‘It will suit you very well,’ said the hairdresser. ‘It will make your face look thinner.’
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t return his smiles. I looked at him in the wide mirror in front of where I was sitting. He grew uncomfortable and avoided my eyes. I hate those who think fat people are stupid.
ay (moon): For centuries people, thinking that the moon was close to them, gave it a human face. (Note: research the moon’s faces!)