My Name is Red_I AM A WOMAN

I AM A WOMAN

I can hear your objections 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 in eternal 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 carnal desires is to seek out the friendship of beautiful boys, a satisfactory surrogate for females, and in due time, this, too, becomes a sweet habit. In the cities 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 gorgeous legs; as a result, the men of those cities walk about with great difficulty, embarrassed and in extreme pain, because, you see, their front sides are always erect and this fact naturally 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 contentment 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 knew that I could only learn how women felt 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 aunt went to my grandfather’s rose garden on the

shores of the Fahreng, I told them I was feeling ill and stayed at home.

“Come along. Look, you’ll entertain us by mimicking the dogs, trees and horses in the country. 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 become a woman, dear mother,” was an impossible answer. So I said, “My stomach hurts.”

“Don’t be such a coward,” said my father. “Come along and we’ll wrestle.”

I shall now describe to you, my painter and calligrapher brethren, exactly what I felt once they’d left and I donned the underclothes and dresses belonging to my now dearly departed mother and aunt, as well as the secrets I learned that day about being a woman. Let me first state forthright that contrary 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 affection toward all children, including myself. I wanted to nurse everybody and cook for the whole world. After I understood 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 understand 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 was as proud as Satan. I understood at once that men, merely catching 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 next to the sheets embroidered with leafy designs, in lavender-scented 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 on the thin 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 become those of a woman. Only my eyes and cheeks were exposed, but I was an extraordinarily attractive woman and this made me very happy. My manliness, which took note of this fact before even I had, was erect. Naturally, 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 to forget it, because at that same moment, inspired by the Almighty, I sang that poem rhythmically like a song, trying to forget 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 and Western both.