The Gaze Read Online Free PDF Page B

After six girls in a row, the first boy child!
    The poor woman was so certain that this time her child would be a boy, she didn’t even feel the need to ask the child’s sex when it was born. Burying her head in the pillow, she drew in the dense smell of the room. The room had a smell that she wasn’t used to: it smelled as if, somewhere nearby, they were using the smoke from different kinds of tree barks in order to get rid of termites. ‘Strange thing,’ she thought to herself. She had to tell them that there were no termites in that room. ‘When I wake,’ she said to herself, ‘When I wake I’ll tell them.’ After a last smile of delight, she closed her eyes and never opened them again.
    Because the midwife couldn’t take her eyes off the baby, it was some time before she noticed that the mother had left them. There was something unsettling about this tiny, tiny boy, but she couldn’t quite understand what it was. Thank God, there was nothing wrong with his body; he did not start to cry, but it was possible to take care of that with a little slap. There was something else about this baby; some…thing…else…a little later one of the neighbour women came in and handed the midwife a bowl full of the blood of a ram that had been sacrificed. Just as the midwife was about to dip her finger into the blood and dab his forehead, she started to chuckle. Finally she realised the cause of her uneasiness: it was the baby’s face.
    The baby Memiş’s face was virtually transparent. His mouth-nose-eyebrows-eyes were both complete and incomplete. His mouth-nose-eyebrows-eyes hadn’t come in person, but had sent their shadows instead. The midwife’s anxiety transmitted itself to the others in the room, and now everyone leaned over and carefully examined the face of this baby who didn’t cry or move and who seemed to greet the world with an indifferent smile. All of those who were examining this face that had just come into existence found nothing extraordinary about its features, but at the same time couldn’t take their eyes off of these extraordinary features. As if every feature of this baby’s face had been scattered randomly, but there was still a hidden order in this randomness. Because of the state it was in, they couldn’t quite understand what the face resembled, or decide whether it was ugly or beautiful. The blessed baby’s face confused them so much that, except for the midwife who didn’t like the gloominess one bit and stood up all of a sudden, no one could leave the cradle’s side.
    Confronted with the boy in the cradle and the dead woman in the bed, the midwife asked God for strength and said to herself: ‘There’s surely a miracle here!’ In this way, Keramet was added to the baby Memiş’s name.
    If it were up to the midwife, there wouldn’t have been reason to delve into the matter too much. Indeed if there was a miracle involved, there was no point in worrying to such a degree. But the baby’s aunt was a bold and fearless woman; very intelligent, and stalwart too. That day she sensed immediately that things were going wrong, but because she didn’t want to go out of her room unless the house was deserted, she sat in her room for hours, reading the Koran and waiting for a sign. Then, when at last things became quiet, she took the baby into her lap, and looked it over carefully. She agreed with the others about baby Keramet Memiş having flowed out rather than being born. But the way he flowed didn’t quite resemble the flowing of nocturnal rivers vengefully scooping out their beds, or of wild waterfalls cascading loudly, or of endless seas agitating sadly, shabby, heavy rains pouring down indifferently or of melting snow in the first warmth of the beginning of spring. It would be more accurate to say that he dripped rather than flowed.
    Moreover, there was a difference between dripping and dripping. Water drips too, and blood; oil drips, and time; and tears also drip, for instance. But