Perhaps all summers are like that. They go on and on, uneventful and lazy, and just when you have gotten used to the sluggish rhythm, they end abruptly, leaving you totally unprepared for the cold autumn.
All I know is a new season is under way.
PART THREE. Brain Versus Body
Where the Fairies Hang Out
An hour later, when the three women in uniform leave the room to pack their suitcases, I go to rescue their detainee. Feeling like some hero in a war movie,
“Thank you, dear,” she murmurs.
Finished with Operation Freedom, we steal out of the house. I’m walking and she, having crawled into my bag, pokes her head out once in a while to have a look around. The minute we make it to the street, I begin to complain.
“I cannot believe they are doing this to me. Have they lost their minds? This time they’ve crossed the line.”
Dame Dervish listens with raised eyebrows, saying nothing.
“And now they want me to go to the States. Just like that, out of the blue,” I continue. “You know what? Maybe you and I should take up arms, organize an underground resistance and topple them. They’d be so freaked out.”
“I am a pacifist. I don’t take up arms,” says Dame Dervish. “‘Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.’ That’s what Gandhi teaches.”
“With all due respect, let’s not forget that Mr. Gandhi had not met Milady Ambitious Chekhovian,” I say.
“‘Nevertheless, an elephant cannot swallow a hedgehog.’”
“Was that Gandhi again?”
“That was a slogan from the Prague Spring,” says Dame Dervish. “In 1968. If you can say that against the Soviet tanks, you can say it against any finger-woman you want.”
She never ceases to surprise me, this Sufi of mine.
“Look around you, Elif. What do you see?” asks Dame Dervish. Pedestrians hurrying up and down the street, commuters standing still in public buses that are full to the brim, peddlers selling replica designer bags, street children cleaning the windshields of the luxurious cars that stop at red lights, billboards advertising fast money and glitzy lifestyles, a city of endless contradictions… That is what I see when I look around in Istanbul.
“All right, now look at yourself,” says Dame Dervish. “What do you see?”
A woman who is split inside, half East, half West. A woman who loves the world of imagination more than the real world; who, year after year, has been worn down by useless paradoxes, wrong relationships, mistaken loves; who is still not over the hurt of growing up without a father; who breaks hearts and has her heart broken; who cares too much about what other people think; who is afraid that God may not really care for her and who can be happy or complete only when writing a novel. In short, “a personality under construction” is what I see when I look at myself. But my tongue won’t cooperate in making this confession.
At my uneasy silence, Dame Dervish says, “You have to accept the universe as an open book that is waiting for its reader. One must read each day page by page.”
Her voice sounds so calm and soothing, I feel embarrassed about my outburst a minute ago. “Then, tell me, how am I supposed to read this very day?”
“There is a voyage knocking at your door,” says Dame Dervish, as if she were holding an invisible cup in her hand and telling my fortune from the configuration of the coffee grounds at the bottom. “If you don’t leave Istanbul, these three finger-women will not let you be. From morning till night, they will pick at you.”
“Tell me about it,” I say, exhaling loudly.
“I think one of these days you should sign a peace treaty with all of us,” says Dame Dervish. “The reason why the finger-women are quarreling so much among themselves is because you are quarreling with us. You think some of us are more worthy than others. While in truth, we are all reflections of you. All of us make up a whole.”
“You want me to make no distinction between you and Milady Ambitious Chekhovian? But you two are completely different!”
“We don’t have to be identical. She and I share the same essence. If only you could understand this. Until you realize that every voice inside you is part of the same circle, you will feel fragmented. Unite us all in One.”
“You are talking about my embracing them, but those rascals instigated a coup d’etat while I was asleep, for God’s sake. It is only a pacifist who trusts a despot. It’s never the other way around!”
Dame Dervish gives me a nod, her smile as warm as a caress. “May be.”
I look at her, awaiting an explanation. That is when she tells me this story.
“Once upon a time, there was a dervish who spoke little. One day his horse ran away. When they heard the news, all the neighbors came to see him. ‘That is terrible,’ they remarked. The dervish said, ‘May be.’
“The next day, they found the horse with a gorgeous stallion next to it. Everyone congratulated the dervish and said this was wonderful news. Again, he said only, ‘May be.’
“A week later, while trying to ride the stallion, the dervish’s son fell off and broke his leg. The neighbors came to say how sorry they were. ‘How awful,’ they exclaimed in unison. The dervish replied, ‘May be.’
“The next day, some state officials came to the village to draft young men to the war zone. All the boys had to go, except the dervish’s son, who lay in bed with a broken leg.”
“You see what I mean?” asks Dame Dervish.
“I guess so,” I answer.
“I want you to see the fellowship in Massachusetts not as something imposed on you but as an opportunity. Turkey or the United States, it isn’t important, really. What matters is the journey within. You won’t be traveling to America, you will be traveling within yourself. Think of it that way.”
There is a confident serenity about her, which I like. She might well be right. I have to learn to live peacefully, fully, every day with the voices inside me. I’m tired of constantly being at war with them.
With a sudden urge and zest, I flag down a passing taxi. “Come on, then, let’s go,” I say as I open the door to the cab.
“Where to?”
“To the train station,” I announce, beaming.
“Did you decide to go to America by train?” Dame Dervish asks as she chuckles to herself.
I shake my head. “I just want to go and smell the trains…”
I just want to spend some time at the station-inhale its strange, pungent aroma, the odor of people rushing in all directions, the heavy tang of the destitute with their dreams of affluence, the refreshing hint of new destinations. Whenever I feel the need to contemplate a mystery or observe the world, whenever the nomad in me wakes up, I go there.
Airports are too sterile, clean and controlled when compared with train stations, where the heart of the underprivileged still pulsates.
Haydarpasha Station is an old, majestic building with too many memories. And like many old, majestic buildings, it, too, has its own djinn and fairies. They perch on the high windows and watch the passengers below. They watch couples split, lovers meet, families unite, friends break up… They gaze at the thousand and one predicaments of the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, and still find us puzzling.
If you ever go there and walk right into the middle of the station, if you then stand still amid the hullabaloo with eyes firmly closed, listen, you can hear them whispering, the djinn and fairies of the station… uttering strange
