The Gaze

by Elif Shafak

  Our hands were tied. On the outdated map of the neighbourhood that the authorities were using, there was a swamp where the Hayalifener Apartments should have been. According to the records, this swamp was quite old; at least a century old. ‘It’s like a wound with a scar on the surface that’s festering underneath. It was never drained,’ said the garrulous civil servant. Yet he was still hopeful. Funds had been appropriated for the draining of the swamp, and it would be taken care of in the near future.

  The authorities accepted the absurdity of the fact that nothing prevented an electric bill being sent to an address they claimed didn’t exist, but as they said so many times, ‘What doesn’t go wrong in this country!’ In truth they could have drawn a new map, or corrected the mistakes on the older map. The fact that the swamp had long since dried up and gone, that in its place a large building had been built and that this building had been named the Hayalifener Apartments, could have made its way into their records. But it was an old neighbourhood, a very old neighbourhood, where morally upright families and freethinking single people frequently lived side-by-side. It was so old that, with false teeth and withered gums, dye in its thinning hair, with a clouding memory that retained nothing but tried to remember its youth in the pitiful manner of a flirtatious old shrew, it reminded everyone else of their youth. The reflection of this beauty that was so much spoken of clutched the yellowing map in her ageing fingers. There was no possibility that she would ever accept a new map.

  Furthermore, it’s not a matter of drawing a new map, but of working out how electric cables that had been laid according to a map were so incomprehensible. At times like these, as soon as the electricity slowly climbed the hill to visit the Hayalifener Apartments, it saw the ogress of night and went back down. Then, the voltage in the houses further downhill rose so much that people had to turn off their televisions. At the same moment the Hayalifener Apartments were plunged into utter darkness.

  ‘It’s like the clogged veins of a forty-year smoker. Once they clog, the blood doesn’t flow any more,’ said the same municipal employee. ‘It climbs the hill, it comes this far easily enough, but the poor thing doesn’t flow past this point.’

  komsu kadin (neighbour-lady): A neighbour-lady is an eye that never closes. They look through curtains and through lace, from the corners of balconies, over walls, through peep holes, and even into the pudding that they cook in order to distribute.

  It wasn’t enough that the electricity cuts left us in the dark at night, we couldn’t see anything during the day either. There’d been a thick fog in the city for a week. In the meantime, the building supervisor had decided that the Hayalifener Apartments, upon which electricity does not smile, needed to be restored from top to bottom. First he went from flat to flat, convincing us that the facade should be painted in lively colours that would open our eyes and our hearts. And who knows, perhaps with restoration the Electric Company’s attitude to us would change.

  The painters were working away in the fog. Though B-C didn’t really seem quite aware of what was going on around him. In fact it had been a long time since he’d taken an interest in anything except the Dictionary of Gazes. We would neither go out in disguise, nor tell each other in the evening what we’d done alone during the day as if we had actually done it together, nor did we visit each other’s dreams. The Dictionary of Gazes was more urgent and more important that anything else. It was as if our relationship grew and developed with the accumulation of material for the dictionary. Now, at the point when the Dictionary of Gazes had become stuck, our love entered an impasse.

  korse (corset): A corset deceives the eyes. It shows the body thinner than it is.

  He became so irritable… Most of the time he paced about restlessly, picking arguments for the slightest of reasons. The flat was too warm, it was too cold outside; the irritable next-door neighbour’s television was too loud, the child upstairs was jumping about too much, the supervisor had found he had too much work to do. It was too messy; or it seemed too messy to him. The cat was shedding too much fur, I was asking too many questions. Everything and all of us were too much for him. The only time he ever calmed down was when he found new material for the Dictionary of Gazes.

  koza (cocoon): The refuge in which, unseen by anyone, ugly caterpillars undergo their transformation before becoming beautiful and emerging.

  One Saturday afternoon, I couldn’t look down from the balcony because of the fog, and I couldn’t find peace in the house because of B-C. I had to go to the nursery because this time the meeting that the director arranged at least once a month in the belief that it was helpful for the teachers and parents to meet happened to fall on a weekend. I was late. On the stairs I met the elderly man who’d freed me the time the thread from my sweater was caught in the front door. The fog clinging to his Fedora hat was like a saint’s halo. He gave me a blank look. He didn’t recognise me. Presumably because of the fog. The fog was pulling layers of leaden curtains between people.

  The fog was so thick I couldn’t even see a step in front of me. I could only move by feeling my way along. Somehow I managed to reach the foot of the hill, but further along it was frightening. Frightening because I couldn’t see.

  kör (blind): Once upon a time, a very, very old man lived in a city with golden domes. He was so old that whenever it rained, water meandered for days through the wrinkles in his face. No one could calculate his age, and nothing that happened in the world came as a surprise to him. Whatever he saw, he’d already seen before.

  One day, there was a terrible fire in one of the city’s schools. The flames spread so quickly that it was impossible to save the children inside. When the fire was finally extinguished, nothing was left of the school building. Everyone was heartsick, except the old man.

  ‘It burned down once before,’ said the old man, ‘But at that time the building was a prison. All of the prisoners inside were burned. And once it was a hospital, and all of the patients burned. How many fires these eyes have seen, this is nothing!’

  A mother who had lost a child in the fire and who had gone mad with grief threw stones at the old man and chased him away.

  Many years later, there was famine in the city with golden domes. As people strangled each other for a bite to eat, the old man watched them calmly. ‘It happened before,’ he said. ‘For three springs in a row not a drop of rain fell on this city. And once we were besieged by an invading army, and went hungry again. These eyes have seen so much hunger. This is nothing!’

  When a hungry man heard these words, he started slapping and kicking the old man.

  Then a war broke out in the city with golden domes. As the war drew on, every household had lost a member. Everyone was speechless from grief. Only the old man, only he kept talking. ‘How many wars, how many massacres these eyes have seen. This is nothing!’

  The bayonet of a young man who had not returned from battle became so angry at these words that it gouged out the old man’s eyes.

  This time the old man shouted in amazement. ‘Darkness! Darkness everywhere! This I’ve never seen before.’

  He was so surprised by this darkness that he’d never seen before that his tired old heart stopped.

  Actually there were two different hills. Because one hill started where the other finished, from the middle it looked as if it was a single hill. And right at the point where one hill finished and the other began, there was an old fountain that had dried up who knew how many years ago. It was completely covered with bills that had been posted on top of one another, and spray-painted slogans and darkened obscenities. But the fountain was still there; even if it was no longer functioning as a fountain, if you looked at it closely, you could see in time, and with a little effort, what it had once been. The strangest thing was that I’d passed this way every day without seeing it, and that I only noticed it when I was struggling to feel my way step by step through the fog.

  Below, the fog was thicker, and it was more difficult to walk. I made my way with great
difficulty. Finally I made it to the bottom of the second hill, and sat on a wall to catch my breath. Once again I was tired and covered in sweat. A little further along, the bus stops were waiting for me. Today, because of the fog, buses were few and far between, and the traffic was badly jammed. Suddenly, I made a decision that until now I’d been afraid to make. I was going to resign. I wasn’t going to go to the nursery. I was going to return to the Hayalifener Apartments right away, and I wasn’t going to go out unless I wanted to.

  körebe (blind-man’s bluff): The person who is ‘it’ stands in the middle of the circle, blindfolded. (Research songs sung during the game!)

  As I was climbing the stairs on my return, the downstairs neighbour hurriedly opened her door to put out the trash. Then she thrust a huge bowl of pudding into my hands.

  When I got home I found B-C sitting on the bed with a long face. He complained about not being able to find any new material for the Dictionary of Gazes. ‘Why are you in such a hurry? You can take a break.’ I said. He looked at me angrily, then lay his head down and slept. Whenever he was distressed, he fell asleep.

  köstebek (mole): A land animal whose eyes do not see well.

  In any event, the fog didn’t last long. One morning when I woke up, the painters were gone and the fog had lifted. The Hayalifener Apartments had been painted from top to bottom in a cherry colour.

  The building supervisor had chosen the colour. I was quite happy about the change; B-C didn’t seem to care. He’d started getting up and going out quite frequently again.

  At times like these I didn’t wonder where B-C had gone or what he was doing, because a feeling told me that he couldn’t go very far from here, and that he couldn’t stay out of the neighbourhood for long. Whether or not it was because of my presence, a deep bond tied him to this place, to the hill that was so difficult to climb and to descend, and to the area around the Hayalifener Apartments. He himself said something like this in the days before he devoted all of his time to the Dictionary of Gazes, when he used to love to chat with me.

  ‘It’s just like a murderer returning to the scene of the crime,’ he said. ‘There are places that get stuck in our memories. Whether because of our dreams or because of our past lives, there are places that keep drawing us back.’ Then, in a frightened voice, he confessed: ‘Do you want to know something strange? I’m already in the place that I visit in my dreams. In my dreams I’m always wandering around near the Hayalifener Apartments!’

  kurban (sacrificial victim): Before monotheism, what was to be sacrificed was bound to whom it was being sacrificed to. In Ancient Greece, female animals were sacrificed to goddesses, and male animals were sacrificed to gods. White animals were sacrificed to the gods of the sky, black animals to the subterranean gods, and red animals to the god of fire.

  Kurban comes from the Arabic krb, which means ‘being close’… According to the Koran, when Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, God sent him a ram, and in this way the tradition of human sacrifice was ended… In addition to rams, camels, cattle, water buffalo, sheep and goats are acceptable sacrificial animals… The animal’s eyes are bound before they are killed.

  I didn’t worry because I knew that in the end he would think of coming back here. In any event I was starting to get over my anxieties. When B-C was out I bought a huge sunshade for the terrace. A loud, purple sunshade. With a chaise-longe of the same colour underneath it. Because, except for a few small shopping trips, I hadn’t gone outside since I left my job, I hadn’t had to be strangled by other people’s eyes. It was so nice not to be seen by anyone! I was in good spirits! I no longer chewed my cuticles, and I was no longer constantly seized by anxiety. And, strangely, but pleasantly, I was daily drifting deeper into indifference. On top of this, I was also losing weight.

  kursuna dizilenler (members of a firing squad): The members of a firing squad bind the eyes of the person who is to be shot.

  When B-C finally came back days later, he squinted his bitter-chocolate eyes at the terrace. He came to my side. He didn’t say two words to me. He turned on the computer and went to work on the Dictionary of Gazes at once. Not a sound came from inside. I was aware that he was struggling, and that he wasn’t able to write the way he used to. But since he didn’t want my help, I wasn’t going to try to help. Let him thrash about inside while I lay comfortably in my small world of pleasure. Under my purple sunshade, stretched out on my purple chaise-longe, I watched people going up and down the hill; I slurped diet cola and tried to guess which of my three bellies was melting faster. I constantly calculated how much weight I’d lost. I kept calculating as if each time I calculated there would be a few grams less. To tell the truth, my stomach heaved when I saw boiled squash, and I tired more easily than before, and I was very, very hungry, but so be it. I was determined!

  kursun dökme (pouring lead):To ascribe meaning to the shapes that appear when molten lead is poured into cold water. If lead poured on a person’s head, belly, feet or in the right corner of the room or in the doorway takes the form of an eye, this means that the evil-eye has been cast.

  When I saw his eyes I knew that something bad was going to happen. He stood there in the terrace doorway, looking at me in a way I’d never seen him look before. After he’d been sitting at the computer for an hour without being able to work, he started to shout in order to relieve the frustration of the word he hadn’t been able to find, or the sentence he hadn’t been able to finish, or the story he hadn’t been able to tie together. He didn’t drink the tea I made him, and wrinkled his nose at the things I said to try to calm him. I went back out to the terrace and didn’t pay any more attention to him. For me it was still a pleasant day. I had no intention of going inside and sharing his misery. The edges of the purple sunshade were playing sweetly in the evening breeze. Quite some time had passed. Suddenly, a strange shiver passed through me, and when I turned my head there was B-C. He was standing in the terrace doorway, watching me. Who knew how long he had been standing there watching me, knowing how much I hate being watched.

  ‘I see you’re in good spirits,’ he said in a hazy voice. I tried to smile but couldn’t hide my uneasiness. I couldn’t take my eyes off his eyes. His eyes were so strange… His eyes had always been strange, but now…now they’d become unknowable. His eyes were like a dim curtain that had been drawn between us. And this curtain allowed me neither to see him or to see how he saw me. I waited for him to stop talking and go back inside. But he stayed, and continued talking. ‘As if your huge body didn’t already attract enough attention. With a sunshade of this colour I’ll bet you can be seen all the way from the bottom of the hill!’

  Sometimes the heart turns upside down. As it makes it’s own way slowly, it bumps against the cage of the chest. It feels itself badly broken somewhere depending whether it managed to rise or not. It will examine itself but will not be able find a wound that is apparent from outside. It will shout at the top of its voice. ‘I have to get out immediately. I have to get out!’ Weeping and moaning it will shake the bars of its cage. And when finally it succeeds in breaking free of the cage of the chest, it will stand looking at the roads stretching in front of it, uncertain of which direction to take; ground as yet not trodden. The roads will become confused with one another. The waters will become cloudy.

  The heart is a diamond eye. If it is scratched once, it will always look at the world through a mother-of-pearl-like crack.

  Kyklop (Cyclops): Cyclops are giants with one eye. They live in enormous caves; they herd sheep and grow fruits and vegetables. Odysseus and his men entered a Cyclops’ cave. They found wheels and wheels of cheese, barrels and barrels of water, mounds and mounds of meat, and bunches and bunches of grapes.

  Suddenly the Cyclops arrived. Under a single eyebrow that stretched from ear to ear, he had a single, enormous eye. He ate two of Odysseus’ men right then and there. The next day he swallowed two more sailors, and each day from then on he did the same.

  One night Odysseus made the
huge Cyclops drunk. When the Cyclops became drunk, he began to see double. Because he had only one eye he wasn’t accustomed to seeing the world double. At this point Odysseus had little trouble killing him.

  B-C went inside, and I stayed out on the terrace. With my enormous body, under the purple sunshade. I watched the sunset, and the death of the clouds, and the rising of the moon, and the thickening of the stars, and all the while I wondered how I had managed to still be motionless. I was burning up. The Lodos was blowing. As the Lodos grew stronger my fever raged. It was our pledge to each other that was burning up.

  B-C and I had made an unspoken pledge to each other. What we would say about each other’s appearance was decided the day we first saw each other. From that moment on B-C hadn’t said a word about my appearance. From that moment on I hadn’t said a word about B-C’s appearance. Neither of us said anything more about the subject because we had no reason to. And both us found the privacy of our house pleasant, despite the unpleasantness of the roles we were burdened with outside. And whatever the forms of our bodies, we were as fluid and as mutable as water in each other’s eyes. For this reason I had never once troubled myself about how I looked to B-C. On the top floor of the Hayalifener Apartments I’d found a peace I’d never found elsewhere; I was free of the weight of the letters f-a-t-t-y. I became lighter here. And perhaps this was why, for the first time in my life, I’d actually succeeded in losing weight.