I AM A WOMAN
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I hear your objes already: “My dear Storyteller Effendi, you might be able to imitate anyone or anything, but never a woman!” Yet I beg to differ. True, I’ve wandered from city to city, imitating everything into the wee hours of the night at weddings, festivals and coffeehouses until my voice gave out, and thus it was never my lot to marry, but this doesn’t mean I’m unacquainted with womenfolk.I know women quite well; in fact, I’ve known four personally, seen their faces and spoken with them: 1. my mother, may she rest iernal peace; 2. my beloved aunt; 3. the wife of my brother (he always beat me), who said “Get out!” on one of those rare occasions when I saw her—she was the first woman I fell in love with; and 4. a lady I saw suddenly at an open window in Konya during my travels. Despite never having spoken with her, I’ve nursed feelings of lust toward her for years and still do. Perhaps, by now, she’s passed away.
Seeing a woman’s bare face, speaking to her, and witnessing her humanity opens the way to both pangs of lust and deep spiritual pain in us men, and thus the best of all alternatives is not to lay eyes on women, especially pretty women, without first being lawfully wed, as our noble faith dictates. The sole remedy for al desires is to seek out the friendship of beautiful boys, a satisfactory surrogate for females, and iime, this, too, bees a sweet habit. Iies of the European Franks, women roam about exposing not only their faces, but also their brightly shining hair (after their necks, their most attractive feature), their arms, their beautiful throats, and even, if what I’ve heard is true, a portion of their geous legs; as a result, the men of those cities walk about with great difficulty, embarrassed and ireme pain, because, you see, their front sides are always ered this faaturally leads to the paralysis of their society. Undoubtedly, this is why each day the Frank infidel surrenders another fortress to us Ottomans.
After realizing, while still a youth, that the best recipe for my spiritual happiness and te was to live far from beautiful women, I grew increasingly curious about these creatures. At that time, since I hadn’t seen any women besides my mother and my aunt, my curiosity assumed a mystical quality, my head seemed to tingle, and I khat I could only learn how wome if I did what they did, ate what they ate, said what they said, imitated their behavior and, yes, only if I wore their clothes. Therefore, one Friday, when my mother, father, older brother and auo my grandfather’s rose garden on the
shores of the Fahreng, I told them I was feeling ill and stayed at home.
“e along. Look, you’ll eain us by mimig the dogs, trees and horses in the try. What’ll you do here all alone, anyway?” said my mother, may she rest in peace.
“I’m going to put on your dresses and bee a woman, dear mother,” was an impossible answer. So I sa<s>..</s>id, “My stomach hurts.”
“Don’t be such a coward,” said my father. “e along and we’ll wrestle.”
I shall now describe to you, my painter and calligrapher brethrely what I felt ohey’d left and I dohe underclothes and dresses belonging to my now dearly departed mother and aunt, as well as the secrets I learhat day about being a woma me first state fht that trary to what we’ve often read in books and heard from preachers, when you are a woman, you don’t feel like the Devil.
Not at all! When I pulled on my mother’s rose-embroidered wool underclothes, a gentle sense of well-being spread over me and I felt as sensitive as she. The touch against my bare skin of my aunt’s pistachio-green silk shirt, which she could never bring herself to wear, made me feel an irrepressible affe toward all children, including myself. I wao nurse everybody and cook for the whole world. After I uood to some extent what it was like to have breasts, I stuffed my chest with whatever I could find—socks and washcloths—so I might uand what really made me curious: how it felt to be a large-breasted woman. When I saw these huge protrusions, yes, I admit it, I roud as Satan. I uood at ohat men, merely catg sight of the shadow of my overabundant breasts, would chase after them and strive to take them into their mouths; I felt quite powerful, but is that what I wanted? I was befuddled: I wanted both to be powerful and to be the object of pity; I wanted a rich, powerful and intelligent man, whom I didn’t know from Adam, to fall madly in love with me; yet I also feared such a man. Sliding on the bracelets made of twisted gold that my mother hid at the bottom of her trousseau chest o the sheets embroidered with leafy designs, in lavender-sted wool socks, applying the rouge with which she brightened her cheeks on the way back from the public baths, donning my aunt’s evergreen cloak and putting ohin veil of the same color after gathering up my hair, I stared at myself in the mirror with the mother-of-pearl frame, and shuddered. Although I hadn’t touched them, my eyes and eyelashes had bee those of a woman. Only my eyes and cheeks were exposed, but I was araordinarily attractive woman and this made me very happy. My manliness, which took note of this fact before even I had, was ereaturally, this upset me.
In the hand mirror I held, I watched a teardrop slide from my lovely eye and just then, a poem painfully came to mind. I’ve never been able tet it, because at that same moment, inspired by the Almighty, I sang that poem rhythmically like a song, trying tet my woes:My fickle heart longs for the West when I’m in the East and for the East when I’m in the West.
My other parts insist I be a woman when I’m a man and a man when I’m a woman.
How difficult it is being human, even worse is living a human’s life.
I only want to amuse myself frontside and backside, to be Eastern aern both.
I was going to say, “Let’s hope our Erzurumi brethren don’t hear the song issuing from my heart,” for they’ll be cross. But why should I be afraid? Perhaps they won’t be angry at all. Listen, I’m not saying this for the sake of gossip, but I’ve learned how that famous preacher the Exalted Not-Husret-by-a-Longshot Effendi, despite being married, prefers handsome boys to us women just as you sensitive painters do. I’m just telling you what I’ve heard. But I pay no mind to any of this because I find him repulsive besides, and he’s so old. His teeth have fallen out and as the young boys who get close to him say, his mouth stinks, excuse the expression, like a bear’s ass.
All right then, I’m holding off on the hearsay to return to the real issue at hand: As soon as I saw how beautiful I was, I no longer wao wash clothes and dishes and parade about the streets like a slave. Poverty, tears, sorrow, gazing forlornly at a mirror of disappoi and g are the lot of sad and ugly women. I must find a husband who’ll put me on a pedestal, but who might that be?
That was why I began spying through a peephole on the sons of pashas and notables, whom my late father had io our house under various p<cite></cite>retexts. I wanted my predit to resemble that of the petite-mouthed beauty with two children whom all the miniaturists love. Perhaps it’d be best for me to describe to you poor Shekure’s story. But wait a minute, I’d promised to ret the following story tonight:The Love Story Told by a rompted by the DevilIt’s quite simple actually. The story takes pla Kemerüstü, one of the poorer neighborhoods of Istanbul. A promi inhabitant of the neighborhood, Chelebi Ahmet, secretary to Vas 1f Pasha, was a married gentleman with two children who kept to himself. One day, through an open window, he catches sight of a black-haired, black-eyed, silver-skiall and thin Bosniay, and is smitten. But, the woman is married, has no i whatsoever in the Chelebi, and is devoted to her handsome husband. The hapless Chelebi refuses to fide his woes to anybody, and reduced by love to skin and boakes to wine he’s bought from a Greek, yet ultimately he ot hide his love from the neighborhood. At first, because the neighbors adore such love stories and admire and respect the Chelebi, they honor his love, making a passing joke or two about it aing life take its course. But the Chelebi, who ’t trol his incurable agony, begins to get drunk eaight and sit at the doorstep of the house wherein the silver-skinned beauty lives happily with her husband, g for hours on end like a child. In the end this alarms the neighbors. Eaight as the lover cries in agony, they are able her to beat him and drive him away nor to fort him. The Chelebi, as suited a gentleman, learns to cry inwardly without lashing out or annoying anybody. But gradually, h<mark>..</mark>is hopeless grief works its way into the neighborhood, being the sorrow and grief of all; the residents lose their sense of well-being, and like the fountain
which flows mournfully in the square, the Chelebi himself became a font of sorrow. Initially, the talk of misery spreads throughout the neighborhood, being in turn the rumor of ill-fortune and later the certainty of doom. Some move away, some experience a spate of bad lud some are uo practice their craft, because they’ve lost the will to work. After th<tt>?９9ｌｉb?t>e neighborhood empties out, one day the lovelorn Chelebi also moves away with his wife and children, leaving the silver-skinned beauty and her husband all alohis misfortune, of which they are the focus, douses the flames of their love and causes them to drift apart. Though they live together for the rest of their lives, they’re never again able to be happy.
I was on the verge of saying how much I liked this story because it showed the pitfulls of love and women, when for Heaven’s sake, I’d fotten that I’d lost my capacity to reason. Since I’m now a woman, I’m going to say something else entirely. All right then, it’s something like this:Oh, how wonderful love is!
Now then, who are those strangers bursting through the door?
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