Black Milk

to their heart’s content and it will be called wisdom.”

Alexandra Kollontai comes to mind-Russian revolutionary, social theorist, writer. Though she wrote passionately all her life, criticizing bourgeois moral values, celebrating love and sexuality as positive forces in life, in her older age she expressed herself even more unreservedly about such topics. Kollontai defended the economic, social and sexual emancipation of women-views that did not make her popular among the ruling elite. She developed her theory on non-possessive love and sexuality in her novel Red Love and a controversial essay titled “Make Way for the Winged Eros,” which was bitterly criticized by the leading figures of the Communist regime.

In a charmingly honest and compelling essay for The New York Times, Barbara Kingsolver says she used to write the shortest sex scenes ever- mostly by means of a space break. However, after two children and reaching the age forty, she dared to write an “unchaste novel,” breaking free.

“And the third condition?” I ask.

“Or else, you have to be reckless-ready to be the talk of the town, to be grain for the gossip mills. You have to be brazen enough so as not to care what people will think of you when they read your passages on sex.”

I think of what Erica Jong did in Fear of Flying. Once she said to a journalist that she had accepted fear as an inseparable part of life, especially the fear of change. But this acknowledgment had not held her back: “I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: Turn back.”

Blue Belle Bovary pauses in case I have anything to add, and when she sees that I don’t, she goes on, just as fervently.

“As for you, I am sorry to say you don’t fulfill any of these conditions. Seriously, darling, you are in some kind of a fix. You never write openly about the body. Of course, I am the one who bears the brunt. My entire existence is censored!”

She could have a point. But there is something she doesn’t recognize. It’s not only me or us female writers who as a matter of self-protection shy away from the depiction of graphic sexuality in our books. The same goes for female academics, female reporters, female politicians and those women who tread into the business world. We all are a little desexualized, a little defeminized. We can’t carry our bodies comfortably in a society that is so bent against women. In order to be a “brain” in the public realm, we control our “bodies.”

I remember Halide Edip Adivar-Ottoman Turkish feminist, political activist and novelist, the diva of Turkish literature. Though she passionately believed in gender equality and worked to improve women’s lives, Adivar often reiterated the good-woman/bad-woman dichotomy in her novels and desexualized the former. Her female characters were intelligent, strong-willed and so modest they did not undress even in front of their husbands. Rabia-the leading protagonist in her novel The Clown and His Daughter-changed into her nightgown inside the closet, and then came to bed where her husband awaited her.

In traditional Muslim society, where Rabia serves as an ideal woman, women can meet our bodies only inside closets or behind closed doors. The same impulse is reflected in our storytelling. More often than we care to admit, we women writers, especially those of us from non-Western backgrounds, are uncomfortable about writing on sexuality.

Could I ever be like Blue Belle Bovary? Could I wear ostentatious lipstick, teeny-tiny skirts and low-cut necklines like she does? Could I flip my hair as if I were in a shampoo commercial? Probably not. Two steps forward, and one of my heels would surely get stuck in a crack and break. I would never make it.

“Have you ever tried being sexy, darling?” she asks, as if she has read my thoughts.

It is a provocative question, when you come to think of it.

That same evening I ask Eyup to meet me for dinner at an elegant fish restaurant by the Bosphorus. I have never been there before, but it was highly recommended by a friend who called the place “as chic as Kate Moss.”

Eyup goes there at seven P.M. and starts to wait for me. Actually, I, too, am at the restaurant, except I am hiding in the bathroom, trying to muster the courage to walk out.

How did I end up here, in hiding? I went to a hairdresser this afternoon and had my hair dyed, my nails manicured and my eyebrows plucked. It was fun for the first ten minutes, but then I got so bored I could have run out with a towel on my head and my hands dripping soapy water. There are very few things to read at a salon, only hairstyle magazines that contain hundreds of photos but roughly only twenty words.

Yet I made it. And here I am, my hair nicely shaped, my face shining under layers of makeup, and though I did not dare to wear the crimson dress Blue Belle Bovary was wearing, I managed to get into a tight, long gown-black, of course-with a feather boa.

Thirty-five minutes later I walk out of the ladies’ room, not because I am ready but because there is an increasing number of women coming in and going out of the restroom, all of whom stop and eye me with a curiosity they don’t bother to hide. So I leave my shelter and, trying not to trip on the hem of my dress or break my four-inch heels, ask the waiter to take me to the table where Eyup is waiting patiently, having eaten three rolls of bread and half of the butter.

Under the inquiring eyes of the customers, the waiter and I cross the restaurant from one end to the other, he marching steadily, me hobbling behind, totally out of sync but with the same unnaturally serious expression carved on our faces.

Eyup looks up and sees me coming. His eyes pop open, his jaw slightly drops as if he has just witnessed wizardry.

“I warn you, my self-confidence is pretty low now, so please don’t say anything bad,” I say as soon as I sit.

“I wasn’t going to-” he says, suppressing a smile.

I feel the need to explain a little bit. “I am trying to resolve my internal conflicts, you know. I need to bury the hatchet and sign a cease-fire with my body.”

He bites his bottom lip but can’t help it, a chuckle escapes. “Is that why you are dressed up like this?”

That is when it occurs to me to look at the other customers more carefully. Though it is an elegant restaurant to be sure, posh and pricey, it is clear to me and everyone else that I am overdressed. I look like a wannabe actress who lost her way on the red carpet.

“Maybe I should ask for a shawl or-” I mumble, desperately needing something to hide my cleavage, and these silly feathers. I eye the tablecloth-but it wouldn’t do. It’s much too thick, too white.

“Don’t worry,” Eyup says. “Just sit back. Take a deep breath. I hear the butter isn’t bad.”

That’s what I do. I forget all my internal struggles, those I know well and those I am yet to see, and enjoy the moment. It is the best butter I have ever tasted.

In Praise of Selfishness

Ayn Rand is one of those rare female writers who has dedicated readers all over the globe, whose fame is of the lasting kind. In addition to being a novelist, she was also an essayist, a playwright, a screenwriter and a philosopher. Since the 1940s numerous developments have contributed to the proliferation of her philosophy worldwide, the recent financial crisis being one of them. She is among the most loved and most hated writers in the literary world.

Born in 1905 in St. Petersburg to a Russian Jewish couple, Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum was a smart, gifted child. She had little interest in the world of her girlfriends and female relatives, preferring reading books to playing with dolls or worrying about her looks. In 1926, after graduating from the University of Petrograd with a degree in history, she moved to the United States with little money in her pocket and an urgent need to reinvent herself. She never returned to her country and never saw her family again. As if cutting a ravel of yarn, she thrust aside the past in no uncertain terms. Shortly after, she renamed herself, taking her surname from the typewriter she used- Remington Rand. “Ayn Rand” was the name she gave herself, the name with which she was reborn in the New World.

Rand was a passionate anticommunist, but, then, she was passionate about all her views. She married an actor named Charles Francis eO’Connor and wrote many low-budget Hollywood screenplays. Though her first