Black Milk Read Online Free PDF

come to think of it, in writing a single-girl manifesto on the letterhead of a company that sells products for new mothers.
    Having noticed this irony, but not sure what to do with it, I stand there dumbstruck. A voice inside me says, “There are no coincidences in the universe, only signs. Can you see the signs?”
    I brush the voice away and put my manifesto in my pocket, no longer completely convinced of its credibility. In this state I disembark the steamboat Gypsy .
     
    Is this a sign I wasn’t seeing? For no reason at all I had written the single-girl manifesto. In that same breath I had seen the woman beside me as my Other. She was “the housekeeper-mother-wife” I would never let myself become. Thinking I was not only different from but also far better than she, I swore to be Miss Spinster Writer. Meanwhile, I wasn’t aware that above my manifesto glowed the name of a company that served new mothers. The universe was mocking my arrogance.
    There must have been signs, not one but many, because months after writing this manifesto I fell head over heels in love. I even got married. As used to assuming that I would descend from Noah’s Ark alone as I was, I awakened to the beauty of being part of a couple. Two years later I gave birth to my first child. During my pregnancy I often remembered how I had belittled the woman on the steamboat and I felt regret, piercing regret.
    There must have been other signs, not one but many, because a few weeks after giving birth—when it became apparent that my milk was not going to be sufficient and had to be increased in quantity—we called a number that friends had given us and rented an electronic milk pump. When the machine was delivered to our house, I noticed a familiar logo on the package: SHOOTING STAR MARKETING.
    Who knows, maybe it was the gentleman from the steamboat who dropped the milk pump at our house. . . . Who knows, maybe the no-longer-fat woman with her blue dress and sons, plastic commandos, roasted chickpeas and newborn twins or triplets was also there somewhere, hiding behind a bush, laughing at the change in my life, at this unexpected twist of fate.

In the Beginning There Was Tea . . .
    A few weeks after the steamboat incident and long before the thought of getting married crosses my mind, I am having tea with a woman novelist. Little do I know that this encounter will motivate me to think harder about the choices we make between creating babies and creating books.
    “I would like to meet you, Miss Shafak. Why don’t you come over for tea?” she had said to me over the phone a few days earlier, and added with bright laughter: “The tea is only an excuse, of course. The real purpose is to talk. Come over and talk we shall.” Eighty-one years old and still as passionate about writing as she was in her youth, Adalet Agaoglu is one of the foremost literary voices of her generation. I am excited to meet her.
    Although she had given me meticulous directions to her home, on the evening of the meeting I spend some time looking for the address. As in many of Istanbul’s neighborhoods, this one, too, has a maze of alleys that snake up and down, wind and intertwine into new streets under different names. Finally, when I find the apartment, I still have ten more minutes until the appointment, so I wander around a bit. Up at the corner there is a makeshift flower stand next to which two Gypsy women are sitting cross-legged in their dazzlingly-colored baggy trousers, jingling the gold bracelets on their wrists, puffing cigarettes. I admire them, not only for the perfect smoke rings they blow out but also for their total indifference to social limitations. They are the kind of women who can smoke cigarettes on the streets in a culture where public space and the right to smoke in the open belong to men.
    Five minutes later, with a bouquet of yellow lilies in my hand and curiosity in my heart, I ring the bell. As I wait for the door to be opened, little do I know