Black Milk

“I think you just made the most roundabout marriage proposal that a man has ever received from a woman,” he says.

“Did I?”

He nods mischievously. “You can take it back, of course.”

“But I don’t,” I say, because that is how I feel. “I am asking you to marry me.”

The Grand Bazaar doubles up laughing at my endless contradictions, jingling its wind chimes, clinking its teaspoons and tinkling its bells. With a record such as mine, who am I to judge Ayn Rand’s inconsistencies?

Eyup’s eyes grow large and sympathetic. “It is a joke.”

“But I am damn serious,” I say and wait, hardly breathing.

His eyes rake my eyes for a long moment, as if searching for something, and then his face brightens, like the sun reflecting on a silver dome.

“And I gladly accept,” he says. “I do.”

Oscar Wilde once said, “Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious.” But if there is anyone who is tired here, most probably it is I. I’ve grown tired of my own biases. I’ve grown tired of failing to see the beauty in small things, of being against marriage and domestic life, of wearing myself thin, of carrying around suitcases from city to city and country to country.

But will I stop commuting when I tie the knot?

In English the word matrimony comes from the Latin word for “mother.” The Turkish word for it, evlilik, is connected with “setting up a house.” Laying down roots is a prerequisite for marriage.

“You know I have a problem staying in one place,” I say guiltily.

“I noticed,” Eyup says.

“Is this not a problem for you?” I ask, afraid to hear the answer.

“Honey, I stopped expecting anything normal from you the day you quoted Neil Gaiman as your motto on love,” he says.

“I see.”

He bows his head and adds in a softer tone, “We will do the best we can. You will be the nomad, I will be the settler. You will bring me magic fruits from lands afar, I will grow oranges for you in the backyard. We will find a balance.”

I turn my head. Genuine kindness always makes my eyes tear, which I can hide, I think, but it is a different story with my nose, which reddens instantly. Eyup hands me a napkin and asks, “And since you are the worldwide traveler, tell me, where on earth would you like to say ‘I do’?”

“Somewhere where brides are not expected to wear white,” is my answer.

Using his teaspoon as a baton to emphasize his point, Eyup says, “That leaves us with three options: a nunnery, preferably medieval; a bar frequented by a gang of rockers on motorbikes; or the set for a movie on Johnny Cash. These are the places where you can wear a black bridal gown without anyone finding it odd.”

I briefly consider each option, and then ask, “How about Berlin?”

“What about Berlin?”

“I have been offered a fellowship by the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. If I accept, I will be there for a while next year.”

“Hmm, makes sense to me,” he says, suddenly serious. “We will be like East and West Berlin, remarkably different and previously independent but now surprisingly united.”

Little Women, Big Hearts

One of my favorite fictional female characters as a young girl was Jo in Little Women. Jo the writer. Jo the dreamer. Jo the romantic, adventuresome, idealist and independent sister. When her sister Amy burned her manuscript-her only copy-in an act of pure revenge, I was horrified. It took me a long time to forgive Amy-even though Jo herself wasn’t that innocent; after all, she had not invited Amy to a play and almost drowned her while ice-skating. At any rate, the story of the four March sisters during the American Civil War was so unlike my life as the child of a Turkish single mother, and yet many things were familiar-absent father, struggling with financial ups and downs, nonconformity to gender roles… That was the power of Louisa May Alcott’s words, to create a universal saga shared by millions everywhere. It takes no little magic to “zoom” a story written in the late nineteenth century to readers across the globe more than a hundred years later.

A woman ahead of her time, a writer who held Goethe dear, Louisa May Alcott, too, favored Jo and was a bit like her: full of energy, ideas and motivation. The stories told in Little Women were highly reminiscent of her familial life as the second of four sisters. She keenly observed the people she met, absorbed the dialogues she heard and then incorporated them all in her stories. Always planning new books, living the plots in her head and scribbling whenever the inspiration struck, she was determined to earn her own money from writing. “I never had a study,” she once said. “Any paper and pen will do, and an old atlas on my knee is all I want.”

When Little Women was published it brought its author fame and success beyond her modest expectations. Alcott wrote intensely, sometimes forgetting to eat or sleep. That her readers and critics wanted to see a sequel to the story must have both motivated and limited her. She had originally planned that Jo would not get married, earning her bread by the sweat of her own brow, but her publisher was of a different mind. Under constant pressure from him and others, a male character was introduced into Jo’s life: Professor Bhaer. And the reader knew Jo was torn between two impulses-her sense of responsibility toward her family and her desire to nurture her individuality and freedom. “I’ll try and be what he loves to call me, ‘a little woman,’ and not be rough and wild, but do my duty here instead of wanting to be somewhere else…” Struggling with her family’s expectations of her, Jo eventually chose marriage and domestic life instead of a career in writing-a drastic decision Alcott herself would have never made.

Alcott regarded the matrimonial institution with suspicion. It was clear to her that women who wanted to stand on their feet would have a hard time adapting to conjugal life. “Liberty is a better husband than love to many of us,” she said, insinuating that sometimes the only way for a woman writer to find freedom was to remain a spinster.

Her sister May-a creative, prolific painter who had chosen to live abroad-was happily married. She seemed like a woman who had achieved it all-a successful career and a good marriage. Louisa Alcott compared her loneliness with her sister’s fulfillment, saying, “she always had the cream of things and deserved it.” Unfortunately, May died shortly after giving birth to a baby girl. Her last wish was to send the baby-named Louisa May after her aunt and nicknamed Lulu-to her Aunt Louisa to be raised by her.

So it was that Louisa Alcott, who never married, found herself raising the daughter of her sister. She gave her full love to this child and even wrote short stories for her, thus creating what later was to be named “Lulu’s Library.”

There is a wonderful passage in the second volume of the Little Women series, which was titled Good Wives, where Alcott describes Jo’s, and I believe her own, urge to write fiction. I think it is one of the best descriptions ever written about the creative process and I can’t help but smile each time I read it: “She did not think herself a genius by any means, but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh.” [12]

Always a hardworking writer and a Chekhovian by nature, she said, “I don’t want to live if I can’t be of use.” That’s how she died, when she couldn’t write anymore due to old age, in Boston in 1888.

Mary Ann Evans, born on November 22, 1819, was a shy, introspective and emotional child who loved to read and study. The story of her life is one of transformation-a journey that turned her into the restless, headstrong and outspoken writer known to everyone as George Eliot. When she was thirty-two years old, she fell in love with the philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes. He was a married man, but his was an “open marriage”-even by today’s