Women Who Blow on Knots

by Ece Temelkuran

  Your absence isn’t darkness. Your absence is a flood of light, leaving people no other choice but to shut their eyes.

  Come on then, sweetie. Let’s walk. Beautifully. If you walk beautifully your destination comes to you.

  Grace me with the crumb of a prayer. My heart is always locked in a prayer for you.

  Your puppet on limp strings,

  Muhammed

  *

  “So that means that you actually … I mean since the beginning… Breaking the bride’s neck in the hamam and all that … I mean you actually did all that, and those things didn’t happen to you… In other words you wanted to get lost… Seeing that Muhammed Efendi was already talking about it … I mean because this Muslim Romeo said those things you… Amira! Are you trying to destroy yourself? Amira! I’m talking to you.”

  It was the first time Maryam was speaking with real surprise in her voice. She wanted to hold Amira responsible for finding herself in the middle of the desert, as she had so many times before. Most likely the best thing to do was keep quiet, maintain a solemn silence, and understand without knowing; in short, we had to be like a mirage. And so a dreamy, oriental and entirely mystical stage would perfectly suit the course of that day and the evening to come. But the “desert tea” we had been steeping throughout the day under the sheltering sky wasn’t all that fresh.

  *

  The three men started walking towards us and Madam Lilla checked to see if our necklaces were visible. They were all wearing headscarves – one blue, one black and one with a black and white pattern. She pulled my necklace out from under my shirt. The fuss she was making over the necklaces seemed awkward and old-fashioned in comparison to the brusque style of the men. They immediately hurried us up onto the camels while Madam Lilla slowly mounted as if she were delighting in a documentary film about herself that was finally being shot. Each camel had a canopy made of fine white cloth. And Madam Lilla’s camel…

  “Ah … he hasn’t forgotten how much I love dark-blue silk…”

  Her canopy was made of the sweetest, loveliest night-blue silk; and as a love letter sent by the blue-faced man with no hope of an answer, it fluttered in the wind like a flag. Fleetingly stroking her necklace, she pulled herself up onto her camel with the men helping. We got on, too. Maryam went first, I was in the middle and Amira brought up the rear. Of course Madam Lilla rode ahead. Once the men had placed our bags up on the camels, which they did in the twinkling of an eye, we were ready to go. Two of the men chose to walk alongside us, thinking one of us might topple off. The man in black was next to me and the man wearing black and white was between Maryam and Amira. The little man in blue rode on the camel in the rear. With her hair blowing in the wind, Madam Lilla set off on course. Not a word was said. The desert began.

  It seemed as if we had come to believe deeply not only in Madam Lilla but in her lovers, too. The only official documents we had were the necklaces around our necks, and our only escorts were the men of Lilla’s former lover. And we couldn’t even see their faces as they led us across the desert. We were travelling with these men but we only could make out their feet. And we went on.

  Here time covers everything like a great physical mass. You can see it. It comes right at you. It is long, deep and wide. And when you see this yellow headless mass of time from a distance, you understand that you will talk to yourself about things you never talked about before, or so you think. But the time and the space can be so overwhelming that you feel drowsy and you postpone the conversation with yourself. A voice inside you says, ‘In any event those words will come when the time comes.’ But time is not something that comes and goes, time is now, a bright, yellow mass that pulls you within. You are in the heart of time. So for a long time in the desert you are quiet. You aren’t really thinking. So as not to be swept away in this sandy presence, you must press your mind to keep a hold on the names of things. But your effort is like a child in the face of the ancient desert. When the desert dashes its mind upon you, unleashing that great swathe of time and mass, you understand that it is futile to persist in the same old way of thinking.

  For the first time we were travelling without looking at each other’s faces. Under the sun we were all shimmering waves of heat rising into the sky; the outlines of our bodies splintering into eternal vibration; our shapes and the world around us separating as we moved higher and higher. We were roasting in the heat.

  Madam Lilla kept sniffing the air. Though there wasn’t much to smell in the heat she seemed hungry, as if a faint scent kept eluding her. From under her dark blue canopy, she gazed out over that blank, infinite desert as if it was an infinite circus. There must have been layers and layers of memories in what she saw. Beneath everything we could see she must have seen so much more. Every passing moment she must have seen versions of herself from past stages in her life: there to one side is a thirty-three year old Lilla riding camelback into the distance and Madam Lilla of today looks at her and smiles at all the foxes bounding through the mind of her former self; then over there is the forty-two year old Lilla on horseback, galloping beside the blue-faced man. Lilla now sees the worry carved into her younger face and she feels a pang of sorrow; and perhaps an entirely different Lilla in her fifties is passing over this very spot in a plane above, dabbing at her mascara with a handkerchief. She looks up to see that even then she was already on the way to killing Jezim Anwar. Probably cursing so much life spent on such a mission. Maybe she could have turned out to be a different woman, sitting in a garden and fanning herself with a newspaper after finishing the crossword puzzle, and forgetting the name of her grandson. But instead she’s gazing out over the desert like she’s looking through her album with moving photos. She is a woman with tremendous stories, a woman who sees so much when she looks at nothing, and who must live without sharing these stories. She must keep her mind busy. She must laugh at her life and the desert because she’s learned on countless occasions that no mirage has a direct equivalent in the real world. Here was a Madam Lilla we would never know, steeped in all her years. Now swaying from side to side on her camel, which Maryam had aptly nicknamed Rosinante, Madam Lilla was stewing like strong tea. Yes, Maryam was right, this woman is living in another world altogether, because she sees the images of a magnificent life covered by layers of time.

  Whenever I turned around I saw Amira looking down at her foot. She’d also taken off her shoes when she got up on the camel. But her feet were now different – something else altogether. She was looking down at the place that had been kissed. Now she adores her ankles in a way she never did before. Madam Lilla was right. It was a sheer lie, this thing about loving yourself, whoever made that up. You only learn to love yourself after you have been loved. I look down at my feet. Just feet. I look at Maryam’s feet and her ankles, body parts that are still unaware. Then I look at Lilla’s feet thrown up on her camel’s back. I look and look and look. The song Lilla played for us on our first night runs through my head:

  How long it’s been without love

  I look and the song is spinning.

  Only Amira’s feet have been refreshed with love.

  With that kiss the body becomes one. But when those lips go away the body is divided: there is a foot, a hand, a belly. Maryam and I are like this. Pieces and parts.

  Maryam has many parts. Beside Amira she is her male counterpart. When Amira isn’t around there is a genderless aspect that comes back to her. And there is a part that struggles to knead dough despite a head without hair. There’s an angry part but also a part that does up Madam Lilla’s buttons. She struggles to love something. If she can, her locks will open. And then she would fall apart. There is something she isn’t saying. There is something Maryam never says. I look at all the feet again. In fact there is something they are all hiding. All but a mirage. A figment of the imagination.

  When the sky starts to turn red you can catch the tail end of time. When the sun reaches its appointed place in the sky it dies. In their chadors the men pit
ch tents against the wind. Pat-pat-pat went the wind and their scarves and the tents were intertwined. After twisting and hammering and covering they are done and the bodies of the men separate from the cloth. Frugal like three pigeons: piling one piece of garbage on top of another and calling it sweet home and faithfully settling down. They make a fire and we all sit round the flames. I expect them to roll bread in the palms of their hands or go hunting and roast an animal on a spit, just like in the movies. But it doesn’t happen. Instead they crack open tins of tuna and pull slices of bread out of plastic bags. They eat from under their veils and we take little bites. Nobody says a word. We aren’t there – only our feet. We stretch out to each other. And the men’s feet are there – more prominent than their eyes.

  When we finish eating they lean close to the fire with their hands on their chests and say their names from under their veils.

  “Furkan.” With the black-and-white patterned veil. He has young, eager feet. Toes that were allowed to grow freely and so there is laughter between them. Each one sits like a shameless little boy never accused of a thing. Feeling neither beautiful nor ugly. Forever walking and smiling without an ounce more sadness than the world has ever given them, they have raced and jumped and have always been calmly scratched. These feet are so light you get the impression their soles have always hovered just above the sand; and their toenails have never touched stone. Light and shadowy like the fine line between night and day.

  “Tariq.” The giant of a man in the black veil. Whose wrists were incredibly thin despite the vast open space of the desert… whose feet were still walking though covered in deep scratches and so many scars… he must have had faith in the road… with every step he took there was the slightest hesitation and his foot didn’t strike the ground directly but rolled a little to either side. Sinking into the sand, his heel slid from side to side. With every step the desert sand filed down his feet a little more. No doubt this ever-so-slight hesitation before every footfall wore down his skin much more than other walkers.

  The third man never lifted his little head out from under his blue veil. And he never said a word. He slowly pushed his feet out from under his robe… And the moment we saw them…

  “I am Tin Abutut,” she said. Revealing her face. “His daughter…”

  Her expression is blank. She looks at Madam Lilla with something close to admiration. Her eyes lined with kohl are as empty as the desert. She pulled out her necklace, a token of her words. It was the same as ours – a silver necklace. Once she was sure Madam Lilla had seen it she put it away and covered her face. Furkan and Tariq bowed their heads. Amira and I were shocked. Maryam crossed her arms as if she suddenly felt a chill. And Madam Lilla… She was startled for only a moment and then – as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, as if there was nothing strange about this young woman, indeed the daughter of the blue-faced man who was travelling with us in man’s clothing – she leaned closer to the fire and changed our names:

  Houeida, Rasha, Rana.

  As if in a dream Madam Lilla rose to her feet and started walking. There must have been an expression on her face she didn’t want anyone to see. Her feet sinking into the sand, she left us. Shaking her skirt and the sand around it, the girl went into her tent. She was a chess player who had just made her opening move. And she had stepped back to wait.

  Plucking embers out of the fire, Furkan and Tariq moved a little further on. Sitting opposite one another they lit a smaller fire and took out little pipes. Slowly they began to crumble the hashish in the palms of their hands. They were doing it so slowly it seemed as if they were already smoking through the tips of their fingers. They filled their pipes. Gravely they lit them, only their eyes gleaming. Two or three puffs later and they were still silent. But then they began as if picking up a conversation from the night before.

  “The holy book says that ‘humankind must consider why they were created.’ Why do you think we were created Tariq?” asked Furkan.

  Without hesitation, Tariq answered.

  “The book says, ‘Your Creator has given you the power to see his love and compassion for you.’ If we are of His breath then that is our binding duty, Faruk. It is not about thinking but about showing compassion and conscience. Surely that is why we were created!”

  They paused. Then Tariq calmly read from the Alaq verse.

  “He made us out of love, fascination and care.”

  Furkan was restless again.

  “But the Book says, ‘Pay attention to those who glorify their fancies.’ But in that case what makes love possible without ambition?”

  They thought about it together. Tariq spoke.

  “Draw away the blankets that cover ambition, Furkan. And look closely at what is underneath. But first get lost. Now you are on the thin line between light and darkness. You are on the razor’s edge of life. Lose yourself, young brother. Lose yourself until you reach the core.”

  And they lay down and slept. It was such a strange conversation that I couldn’t be quite sure if the three of us lying there awake beside the fire were nothing but a dream. The scene was strange enough to make us forget the possible story of this girl who had been named Tin Abutut. Dusting the sand off her hands, Maryam brought her legs to her chest and smiled.

  “Yes, azizi. We’re in the middle of another strange scene in this adventure. Let’s make the best of it.”

  “What is going on here, girls!? This adventure is nothing but one strange day after another,” I said. Resting her chin on her knees, Amira said, “This is really weird…”

  “Where do you start?” asked Maryam, “that girl there … there’s something strange about her. If you ask me…”

  Looking pensively down at her feet and wiggling her toes, she said, “This thing about getting lost….”

  “What are you talking about,” Maryam asked Amira. She looked up at us absentmindedly.

  “What are you saying, girl. Out with it,” I said impatiently and Amira reached for her bag and pulled out her letters. She began to read. When she finished Muhammed’s fourth letter it was the first time Maryam spoke with such surprise.

  “So that means that you actually … I mean since the beginning … breaking the bride’s neck in the hamam and all that… I mean you actually did all that, and those things didn’t happen to you…?

  Amira’s eyes were glazed over and still. Muhammed had told her to ‘get lost’. And that’s just what she did. Now there is hardly any room to move. We’re in the middle of the desert.

  “Amira,” I said. “Sometimes people set traps for themselves without even knowing. Is that what you did?”

  Maryam asked: “Amira are we here right now because of this Muhammed?”

  Amira’s voice was strained. “I didn’t forgive Muhammed and I’m alone, Maryam. But you have a wound far worse than cancer. Something you can’t forgive yourself for. I have no idea what it is. But you’re out here to lose yourself. You don’t even want to see yourself. Isn’t that it?”

  Maryam was calm and, like Amira, she rested her chin on her legs.

  “You can breathe on her but a breath that can blow you right into hell, and you just can’t say when and where.”

  Both looked at me at the same time.

  “That’s enough,” I said, slapping the sand out of my hands, “Tell me why in the world I need to get lost in your breathing? Explain that riddle for me?”

  They were both staring at the fire. Even calmer now, they looked as if they had already answered me and I hadn’t heard. Maryam stopped for a spell and then said, “Eh!” or something like that and she was leaning back as if protesting against her own hesitation. She pulled her notebook out of her bag. Looking over at me, her eyebrows raised, she said, “Azizi, allow me to repeat to you what Madam Lilla said to me when we were crossing the border, ‘don’t take yourself so seriously. Otherwise you’ll end up taking your own life.’”

  And with that she started to read…

  *

  Dido�
�s Fourth Tablet

  Hey, lofty soldier! So you won’t come. Then the sorceresses with marked cheeks were right: there will be no miracle. The gods will all love me as if I am one of their own. They will never show compassion and make me happy. This morning I turned my face to the swamps of Carthage. I turned my back on the sea. No longer am I searching the horizon for ships. I am only hoping for a storm. Today I will consecrate animals to the gods so that they will tear your ships from the sea and your image from my mind. Seven days have passed and you have not arrived.

  And so I will confess, stranger! My enemies never received the punishment that was due. What they have done to me is already forgotten and no justice was done. They are now no different than all the other frogs in the swamps of Carthage. I have swallowed such rage, stranger, only to stay on my feet, and my stomach is full of bile. They are under the impression that a ruler can maintain the throne by simply wiping out all her enemies. They are under the impression that a queen lives by killing. Yet a ruler only maintains rule if she can remain quiet in the face of fools. And preserving pride in the face of fools is like being cut with a dull knife.

  I am a weary queen, stranger. And you are not coming. And if you do you will bring me no miracle. By expecting such a miracle from you I am throwing myself into a terrible pit of fire. Sadly life has left me no other choice. Having seen my misery the most dangerous thing for me now is to believe in you. Don’t come! Go away! Sail away from my shores. There is not enough room in these swamps for another frog!

  I have fallen out of the gods’ favor because I convinced myself to believe in you. But I do not care at all about the gods and so I have forsaken them. Even Penelope now looks at me with pity. I have grown so small that I took shelter in her who once took shelter in me. Your love cannot heal me. So go, stranger!