The Gaze Read Online Free PDF

whole day at the baths, professional midwives who knew at a glance what cure was needed for anyone’s troubles, swan-necked dancing girls who never danced, never even smiled without hearing the sound of money, poor Jewish women from the miserable shacks of Balat, Gypsy women who carried their babies on their backs and their secrets in their bosoms, spoiled, pink-skinned Circassion girls, Arab women with mascara and jet-black hair, brides-to-be who tied silk handkerchiefs to the branches of the trees around the tent, rich Armenian women with palanquins inlaid with mother-of-pearl, Persian women who smelled of hot spices, French governesses who taught etiquette to the children of elite families, multi-talented concubines who were raised to be given as gifts to the palace, pregnant women with swollen bellies, Italian actresses who couldn’t share with their troupes, deeply religious grandmothers who were forcibly dragged here by their grandchildren and the grumbling of their daughters-in-law, ladies who were the toast of Pera society, house-proud Greeks from Tatavla, Russian women of slight and graceful build and languorous looks, successful English dance teachers, usurer’s wives who had new clothes made each time their husbands made a killing, self-sacrificing nurses from the hospitals of Beyoglu and so many others…young, old, children, everyone imaginable was here.
    There was one only reason these varied women, who did not mention each other in their prayers and who did not let each other exist in their dreams, struggled up the hill to meet at the westward-facing gate of the cherry-coloured tent: in order to see the ugliest of the ugly, that wretched, plagued creature, the Sable-Girl!
    Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi was responsible for all of it. Indeed no one but him would ever have thought of all these things. Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi was a clever and agile man. His strangeness was apparent from birth.
    Keramet Mumî Keşke Memiş Efendi came to this realm in the following manner:
    His mother, whose life would not have been fulfilled if she had died before giving birth to a son, and who had poured the blood of sacrificial victims onto the earth in the hope of this good fortune, who had even sought the help of a sorceress in order not to leave any spell untried, who had given birth to six girls one after another, and after so many miscarriages, finally, having learned this in a dream one night from a hairless, beardless dervish, tied locks of her hair to the thin branches of the blackberry trees in the garden and arranged candles in concentric circles, and her husband, who she’d pleaded with, shaking with embarrassment at having to undress in the innermost circle, not saying it was not because of the cold but because ‘the neighbours will see and we’ll never live it down,’ was made to believe her, and not change his mind. Towards dawn that night she became pregnant with Memiş. After nine months and ten days of not lifting a finger about the house, on a violently windy autumn evening, the poor woman gave birth to Memiş with a stillness and patience that amazed the midwife.
    Although in truth the name was not given to her in the dervish dream, she was absolutely certain that Memiş was the most appropriate name for such a generous-hearted person. Living up to his name, Memiş wouldn’t even hurt a fly. Indeed, as a baby Memiş didn’t even utter a sound of complaint to his mother. Unlike his elder sisters, throughout the pregnancy he did not cause his mother to drown from her tears, to cook unmentionable foods, or to have awful nightmares. Even stranger was the fact that the birth was painless. He wasn’t born but rather slid out; he didn’t slide out but virtually flowed out. He flowed from one shell to another without panic or hope. As if all he wanted was to establish himself here without bothering anyone, he slid himself into the midwife’s hands without causing any trouble or inconvenience.