During the next silence I sensed that there was somebody else in the house and I stood dead still so he wouldn’t hear my footsteps. Strangers talked as they passed on the street. I thought of Hayriye and the children. I hoped to God that they wouldn’t catch cold. In the silence that followed, I was gradually overcome by regret. Black wasn’t coming. I’d made a mistake, and I ought to return home before my pride was damaged even further. Terrified, I imagined that Hasan was watching me, and then I heard movement in the garden. The door opened.
I abruptly changed my position. I didn’t know why I did so, but when I stood to the left of the window through which a faint light from the garden was filtering, I realized that Black would be able to see me, to borrow a phrase from my father, “within the mysteries of shadow.” I covered my face with my veil and waited, listening to his footsteps.
Black passed through the doorway and saw me, then took a few more steps and stopped. We stood five paces apart and beheld each other. He looked healthier and stronger than he’d appeared through the peephole. There was a silence.
“Remove your veil,” he said in a whisper. “Please.”
“I’m married. I’m awaiting my husband’s return.”
“Remove your veil,” he said in the same tone. “Your husband won’t ever come back.”
“Have you arranged to meet me here to tell me this?”
“Nay, I’ve done so to be able to see you. I’ve been thinking of you for twelve years. Remove your veil, my darling, let me look at you just once.”
I removed it. I was pleased as he silently studied my face and stared at length into the depths of my eyes.
“Marriage and motherhood have made you even more beautiful. And your face has become entirely different than what I remembered.”
“How had you remembered me?”
“With agony, because when I thought of you, I couldn’t help but think that what I was remembering wasn’t you but a fantasy. In our childhood, you remember how we used to discuss Hüsrev and Shirin, who fell in love after seeing images of each other, don’t you? Why was it that Shirin hadn’t fallen in love with handsome Hüsrev when first she saw his picture hanging from a tree branch but had to see that image three times before falling in love? You used to say that in fairy tales everything happens thrice. I would argue that love ought to have blossomed when she first saw the picture. But who could have depicted Hüsrev realistically enough for her to fall in love with him, and precisely enough that she would recognize him? We never talked about this. Over these last twelve years, if I had such a realistic portrait of your matchless face, perhaps I wouldn’t have suffered so.”
He said some quite lovely things in this vein, stories of looking at an illustration and falling in love and of how he’d suffered desperately for me. I noticed the way he slowly approached; and his every word flitted through my conscious mind and alighted somewhere in my memory. Later, I would muse over these words one by one. But at the time my appreciation of the magic of what he said was purely visceral and it bound me to him. I felt guilty for having caused him such pain for twelve years. What a honey-tongued man! What a good person this Black was! Like an innocent child! I could read all of this from his eyes. The fact that he loved me so much made me trust him.
We embraced. This so pleased me that I felt no guilt. I let myself be borne away by sweet emotion. I hugged him tighter. I let him kiss me, and I kissed him back. And as we kissed, it was as if the entire world had entered a gentle twilight. I wished everybody could embrace each other the way we did. I faintly recalled that love was supposed to be like this. He put his tongue into my mouth. I was so content with what I was doing, it was as if the whole world were engulfed in blissful light; I could think of nothing bad.
Let me describe for you how our embrace might’ve been depicted by the master miniaturists of Herat, if this tragic story of mine were one day recorded in a book. There are certain amazing illustrations that my father has shown me wherein the thrill of the script’s flow matches the swaying of the leaves, the wall ornamentation is echoed in the design of the border gilding and the joy of the swallow’s matchless wings piercing the picture’s border suggests the elation of the lovers. Exchanging glances from afar and tormenting each other with suggestive phrases, the lovers would be depicted so small, so far in the distance, that for a moment it’d seem like the story wasn’t about them at all, but had to do with the starry night, the dark trees, the exquisite palace where they met, its courtyard and its wonderful garden whose every leaf was lovingly and particularly rendered. If, however, one paid very close attention to the secret symmetry of the colors, which the miniaturist could only convey with total resignation to his art, and to the mysterious light infusing the entire painting, the careful observer would immediately see that the secret behind these illustrations is that they’re created by love itself. It’s as if a light were emanating from the lovers, from the very depths of the illustration. And when Black and I embraced, well-being flooded the world in the very same manner.
Thank God I’ve seen enough of life to know that such well-being never lasts for long. Black sweetly took my large breasts into his hands. This felt good and, forgetting all, I longed for him to suck on my nipples. But he couldn’t quite manage it, because he wasn’t all that sure of what he was doing, though his uncertainty didn’t prevent him from wanting more. Gradually, fear and embarrassment came between us the longer we embraced. But when he grabbed my thighs to pull me close, pressing his large hardened manliness against my stomach, I liked it at first; I was curious. I wasn’t embarrassed. I told myself that an embrace such as we’d had would naturally lead to another such as this. And though I turned my head away, I couldn’t take my widening eyes off its size.
Later still, when he abruptly tried to force me to perform that vulgar act that even Kipchak women and concubines who tell stories at the public baths wouldn’t do, I froze in astonishment and indecision.
“Don’t furrow your brow, my dear,” he begged.
I stood up, pushed him away and began shouting at him without paying the slightest mind to his disappointment.
I AM CALLED BLACK
Within the darkness of the house of the Hanged Jew, Shekure furrowed her brow and began raving that I might easily stick the monstrosity I held in my hands into the mouths of Circassian girls I’d met in Tiflis, Kipchak harlots, poor brides sold at inns, Turkmen and Persian widows, common prostitutes whose numbers were increasing in Istanbul, lecherous Mingerians, coquettish Abkhazians, Armenian shrews, Genoese and Syrian hags, thespians passing as women and insatiable boys, but it would not go into hers. She angrily accused me of having lost all sense of decorum and self-control by sleeping with all manner of cheap, pathetic riffraff-from Persia to Baghdad and from the alleyways of small hot Arabian towns to the shores of the Caspian-and of having forgotten that some women still took pains to maintain their honor. All my words of love, she charged, were insincere.
I respectfully listened to my beloved’s outburst, which caused the guilty member in my hand to fade, and though I was thoroughly embarrassed by the situation and the rejection I was suffering, two things pleased me: 1. that I refrained from lowering myself to match Shekure’s wrath with a response of similar hue, as I often had reacted viciously to other women in similar situations, and 2. that I discovered Shekure’s particular awareness of my travels, proof that she’d thought of me much more than I’d assumed.