The Gaze (4 page)
There was one only reason these varied women, who did not mention each other in their prayers and who did not let each other exist in their dreams, struggled up the hill to meet at the westward-facing gate of the cherry-coloured tent: in order to see the ugliest of the ugly, that wretched, plagued creature, the Sable-Girl!
Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi was responsible for all of it. Indeed no one but him would ever have thought of all these things. Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi was a clever and agile man. His strangeness was apparent from birth.
Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi came to this realm in the following manner:
His mother, whose life would not have been fulfilled if she had died before giving birth to a son, and who had poured the blood of sacrificial victims onto the earth in the hope of this good fortune, who had even sought the help of a sorceress in order not to leave any spell untried, who had given birth to six girls one after another, and after so many miscarriages, finally, having learned this in a dream one night from a hairless, beardless dervish, tied locks of her hair to the thin branches of the blackberry trees in the garden and arranged candles in concentric circles, and her husband, who she’d pleaded with, shaking with embarrassment at having to undress in the innermost circle, not saying it was not because of the cold but because ‘the neighbours will see and we’ll never live it down,’ was made to believe her, and not change his mind. Towards dawn that night she became pregnant with Memiş. After nine months and ten days of not lifting a finger about the house, on a violently windy autumn evening, the poor woman gave birth to Memiş with a stillness and patience that amazed the midwife.
Although in truth the name was not given to her in the dervish dream, she was absolutely certain that Memiş was the most appropriate name for such a generous-hearted person. Living up to his name, Memiş wouldn’t even hurt a fly. Indeed, as a baby Memiş didn’t even utter a sound of complaint to his mother. Unlike his elder sisters, throughout the pregnancy he did not cause his mother to drown from her tears, to cook unmentionable foods, or to have awful nightmares. Even stranger was the fact that the birth was painless. He wasn’t born but rather slid out; he didn’t slide out but virtually flowed out. He flowed from one shell to another without panic or hope. As if all he wanted was to establish himself here without bothering anyone, he slid himself into the midwife’s hands without causing any trouble or inconvenience. After six girls in a row, the first boy child!
The poor woman was so certain that this time her child would be a boy, she didn’t even feel the need to ask the child’s sex when it was born. Burying her head in the pillow, she drew in the dense smell of the room. The room had a smell that she wasn’t used to: it smelled as if, somewhere nearby, they were using the smoke from different kinds of tree barks in order to get rid of termites. ‘Strange thing,’ she thought to herself. She had to tell them that there were no termites in that room. ‘When I wake,’ she said to herself, ‘When I wake I’ll tell them.’ After a last smile of delight, she closed her eyes and never opened them again.
Because the midwife couldn’t take her eyes off the baby, it was some time before she noticed that the mother had left them. There was something unsettling about this tiny, tiny boy, but she couldn’t quite understand what it was. Thank God, there was nothing wrong with his body; he did not start to cry, but it was possible to take care of that with a little slap. There was something else about this baby; some…thing…else…a little later one of the neighbour women came in and handed the midwife a bowl full of the blood of a ram that had been sacrificed. Just as the midwife was about to dip her finger into the blood and dab his forehead, she started to chuckle. Finally she realised the cause of her uneasiness: it was the baby’s face.
The baby Memiş’s face was virtually transparent. His mouth-nose-eyebrows-eyes were both complete and incomplete. His mouth-nose-eyebrows-eyes hadn’t come in person, but had sent their shadows instead. The midwife’s anxiety transmitted itself to the others in the room, and now everyone leaned over and carefully examined the face of this baby who didn’t cry or move and who seemed to greet the world with an indifferent smile. All of those who were examining this face that had just come into existence found nothing extraordinary about its features, but at the same time couldn’t take their eyes off of these extraordinary features. As if every feature of this baby’s face had been scattered randomly, but there was still a hidden order in this randomness. Because of the state it was in, they couldn’t quite understand what the face resembled, or decide whether it was ugly or beautiful. The blessed baby’s face confused them so much that, except for the midwife who didn’t like the gloominess one bit and stood up all of a sudden, no one could leave the cradle’s side.
Confronted with the boy in the cradle and the dead woman in the bed, the midwife asked God for strength and said to herself: ‘There’s surely a miracle here!’ In this way, Keramet was added to the baby Memiş’s name.
If it were up to the midwife, there wouldn’t have been reason to delve into the matter too much. Indeed if there was a miracle involved, there was no point in worrying to such a degree. But the baby’s aunt was a bold and fearless woman; very intelligent, and stalwart too. That day she sensed immediately that things were going wrong, but because she didn’t want to go out of her room unless the house was deserted, she sat in her room for hours, reading the Koran and waiting for a sign. Then, when at last things became quiet, she took the baby into her lap, and looked it over carefully. She agreed with the others about baby Keramet Memiş having flowed out rather than being born. But the way he flowed didn’t quite resemble the flowing of nocturnal rivers vengefully scooping out their beds, or of wild waterfalls cascading loudly, or of endless seas agitating sadly, shabby, heavy rains pouring down indifferently or of melting snow in the first warmth of the beginning of spring. It would be more accurate to say that he dripped rather than flowed.
Moreover, there was a difference between dripping and dripping. Water drips too, and blood; oil drips, and time; and tears also drip, for instance. But each one drips differently. Some of them could become steam and dry themselves with the desire to rise into the sky, some of them stayed in the place they’d landed, some of them could come to the top of whatever hollow they had been put into and show off, some of them could depart from their eternity and arrive at endlessness; some of them could leave behind deposits of anguish on the paths they’d travelled. When it came to the baby Keramet Memiş, his dripping didn’t resemble any of these. He looked as if he would stay where he had dripped, in the state in which he had dripped; that is, he was more like a drop of wax rather than of water or blood, oil or time, or even tear drops.
For a long time, the aunt smelled this baby that still didn’t cry, or move, but simply remained where he was, and how he was. And when she determined that the smell wafting from the baby was definitely that of wax, she became frightened. Because a drop of wax stays where it flows and hardens where it stays as soon as it is far from the source of heat. Because the wax cannot become liquid unless it can return to the bosom of heat from which it came. But the warm womb that had brought the baby Keramet Memiş into the world had long since begun to grow cold. Soon, as the source of light that was his mother’s body became as cold as ice, the liquid would solidify and then become rigid. And once something had hardened, it was impossible for it to take shape. So the baby’s face needed to be shaped. It was as if a curtain of wax, half transparent and half mysterious, had been pulled between the baby Keramet Memiş’s face and humanity. At that moment the poor woman realised that she had to pull herself together and do something.
Since this strange baby had dripped into this world instead of being born, from moment to moment he was hardening just like a drop of wax where he fell and in the state in which he fell; and since he was completely deprived of the source of heat that would warm and soothe him, and by soothing melt him, if she didn’t intervene at that moment, the baby’s face would freeze in its transparent immobility. If she hadn’t appreciated this and taken it into hand quickly, Keramet Memiş wouldn’t have had a face for the rest of his life.
Immediately, the aunt took a piece of hazelnut shell and burned it in the fire. Later, she began to shape the baby’s face even as it began to harden. With the black of the hazelnut shell, she drew the eyes and mouth, the eyebrows and eyelashes, the chin and forehead and the cheeks and temples. When it came time for the eyes, the dead woman in the bed was about to freeze and the wax-drop baby was just on the point of hardening completely. From that moment on, it very definitely wouldn’t take shape, or come to life. Indeed time was so short that, with her hands tangled up by panic, she could only draw two thin slits for eyes. There was no more time for the eyes.
That day, the baby was not only left with the face his aunt drew with the hazelnut shell, he was also left with a name: ‘Mumî!’
After that they showed Keramet Mumî Memiş to his father. The poor man was so very delighted that he finally had a son after all these years he swore to feed all the poor of seven neighbourhoods and to bring anyone who hadn’t been washed since birth to the baths for a good cleaning, But before he had finished saying this, a lump formed in his throat. He sensed some kind of misfortune. With the terror of a sparrow whose wing has been caught by a cat, he ran with his heart in his throat to the room where his wife slept. He couldn’t find the courage to open his eyes. Feeling his way in the darkness, he found the now completely ice cold body. He buried his nose in his wife’s hair, which as always smelled of walnuts and cinnamon and the north-west wind. But it was as if another smell had been added to these. As if…the smell of wax was hanging in the air.
He laid the baby Keramet Mumî Memiş next to his mother. As he left the room he didn’t even turn and look once; either at the mother nor at the baby. In his mind he had buried the two of them together, side-by-side. As the door closed, he murmured something, perhaps a farewell.
‘If only!’ he said, ‘If only she’d lived, if only she’d given birth to a girl again.’
So that’s how Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş came into this world. The rest was left to time. Later on, when his form had grown, Efendi was also added to these famous names.
Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi was very clever and agile. Every night he wrestled with a different group of demons. He climbed mountains no one else had the courage to climb, he was quick to develop a thesis in his mind, but once he had developed it he grew bored with it. If he wanted, he could squeeze blood out of a stone, or imprison the wheel of fortune within itself. Then leaving the poor wheel of fortune as it is, he would be seized by lust in sinful hidden places. Everybody knew that he regularly visited houses of ill repute. According to rumour, he loved listening to the stories of the regulars and the working women; he distributed gold in exchange for the stories he heard and for the pleasure he had received.
From time to time he also went out hunting. The aim of hunting was not to gallop across the meadows with a bow in his hand, it was to spend the whole day painstakingly and delicately laying the completely undetectable traps he’d spent such tremendous effort preparing; but at the end of the day, because he hadn’t the motivation to return to collect whatever had fallen into his traps, he always returned from the hunt empty-handed. He’d long since been as rich as Croesus and as wise as Solomon. Nevertheless, if it crossed his mind, he’d give everything he had at hand to charity, and be left without a penny. Later, he’d straighten things out again. If he wanted, he could sell a crow as a nightingale, or an old horse as a donkey, could even fool the devil himself and gather seven neighbourhoods for his show. He also loved to surprise people, but grew cold toward them when they were surprised by the unsurprising. However, it wasn’t Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi’s intelligence or proficiency that people found odd, it was his eyes.
His eyes were already like that when he was a child. They were always like that.
His eyes didn’t give away what he felt. Perhaps he didn’t feel anything.
His childhood passed like this. On one side there were his elder sisters. The sisters who found new games every day simply so he wouldn’t get bored, who lit rows of oil lamps day and night, winter and summer in every corner of the wooden house to replace the warmth of his departed mother, who gathered in his room and set up a shadow play for him that would last until morning, on the evenings when the child was being punished, who went from door to door in every corner of the city in order to collect the best tales, not hesitating to give away their favourite parts of their trousseaus; who would get sick with envy if one of the others told him a tale that had never been heard or told before, who continued to love their youngest brother above all else even after they’d married and started families, despite their husband’s beatings and their children’s reproaches.
On the other side there was his father. The father who, once night fell, didn’t hide the fact that he didn’t like to see his son; who until his last breath slept in the bed in which his wife had died, and never touched another woman; who some nights would wake up suddenly and smash all the oil lamps in the house to pieces; who forever opposed the affection the girls showed this little boy; who would fly into abrupt rages, and take out his cherry-wood stick; who would ask after his son as soon as he came to his senses the next day; who would feel pangs of regret and beg forgiveness when he saw his son’s bruised and purple flesh; but who before a few days had passed would fly into a worse rage, and give him an even worse beating; who drank constantly, and swore constantly; who was not good at anything…
So he spent his childhood lurching between these opposites. On the one side his sisters’ undying affection, and on the other his father’s passing rages. Indeed Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi’s strangeness was already apparent then. But whether he was treated with respect and deference or whether he was put down and treated with contempt; whether he was fed more than he could eat or whether he was taught a lesson with dry bread and water, whether he was loved or whether he was beaten, it had no effect on his expression. Not once did his eyes ever give away what he felt. It was as if those two narrow, slanting slits of eyes were devoid of any emotion. He was like that as a child and he’s still like that today. Even when he married, and saw his fate before him, his eyes, as always, were as mute as ever.