on the veranda, between carved wooden columns, looking out over the sea, which was light green where it met the golden sand of the beach. It grew darker in the distance, occasionally flecked with white. The palm trees and the red oleanders and the station dome shimmered in the sunlight.
The caramel-coloured floor tiles helped keep the house cool. In the morning I would walk through the house barefoot, looking out every window, gazing at the olive groves, the mountains, the vineyards. I would look out over the town and the sea, taking in the palm trees and the oleanders, and then I would wander among the jasmine, the roses, the bougainvillea and the lemon trees in my garden; it was a paradise without an Eve.
Remzi and I became good friends and he rushed over whenever I needed help. He even found a woman to take care of the house. As Hamiyet fluttered about the house, cleaning and cooking, she wore a smile that was always changing but never absent, one of those smiles that I could never quite define, a smile that intimated a secret sin, never shared in either happiness or grief.
But she spoke to the furniture.
She would whisper to cabinets, tables, chairs, sharing her secrets with them. Once I caught her arguing with a broom. But when she wasn’t talking to the furniture she would give me all the gossip from town. More and more I started to feel like I had come to a den of sin, and as I got to know the people I could put faces to the stories.
Hamiyet was a tall, powerful, busty woman, and she wasn’t shy. She’d roll her skirt up over her calves when she mopped the floors; and when she leaned over to pick something up, her breasts sometimes slipped out of her blouse. She never seemed to mind.
I was full of energy when I woke that morning.
Hamiyet was prattling away with the plates and the tablecloth, and the eggs she had made for my breakfast. It had rained the day before but the sun was shining in a bright blue sky, and the scent of wet grass and dirt, the fruit trees and the flowers was in the air.
I’d told the woman to meet me if she liked my books but I was beginning to have regrets.
I hadn’t had a meal with a woman for such a long time. I was a lonely man. It seemed like no one in the world knew I still existed. And there wasn’t even a splash when I released a new book. I was unhappy and angry, but I did my best to stay in touch with people. I tried to make peace in the hope of driving away a grudge people didn’t even know I carried in my heart. But I had walled myself up in a monastery, and I was reluctant to venture outside. I had settled into a life of seclusion.
I was weak and fragile and this made me angry. I was full of anger and self-loathing, and I felt sorry for myself. Swinging back and forth between two very different states of mind, I either wallowed in defeat or I was drunk on the dream of an imminent victory, a commander setting out on one last adventure, rallying the troops, crying ‘I’ll show the world yet!’ But then I would suddenly find myself steeped in the sadness that comes with inevitable defeat.
‘If you like the books …’ I had said to her, because I wanted her to read them, someone to read them, someone to say something. I wanted to end this oppressive silence. A buried resentment drove me to say it.
Normally I’d never mention my books to a woman before the first date.
I was frustrated for having told her, but no one notices the anger that rages inside me, the ungrounded fear and loathing. The bravado of a beaten man.
It wasn’t easy facing these truths. I was on the verge of giving up and just not going.
But I was dying to see if she’d come.
I wanted her to like my books, and I missed those conversations you have on a first date, when every word is loaded, and anything can happen. I wanted to feel alive again, I wanted someone to admire me, someone who could lead me back to the world of people. I wanted to break down these walls built by arrogance and fragility. I needed someone, but I was afraid to admit it.
In her presence I knew that I’d become another man, whose confidence would rise with every sentence. A woman’s voice would change me. I would become a garden swirling with all the scents that come after rain. I knew that much.
If she came everything would change.
The hours dragged by. I followed Hamiyet around the house. I collected fruit in the garden, watched the doves build nests above the veranda and flicked snails off the trees.
I arrived early and sat down at one of the tables under the magnolia tree in the garden.
Slowly the place filled up with customers. Bigwigs in dark suits alighted at tables like black birds. They were both a frightening and comical sight to behold, with their dark suits and loosened ties and enormous bellies, sweating in the heat. From time to time they’d look over at me suspiciously, making me feel like an outsider. I felt like a zebra among lions.
Then everyone turned to the door. She was there, looking out over the garden.
The black birds were staring at her hungrily. But she didn’t seem to notice.
She greeted everyone in the garden as she came over to me, even exchanging a few words with some of the men, and for a moment it seemed their lust was compassion. They were calmed by her innocent expression, the coy and child-like look in her eye, her grace and the polite distance in her voice. They even seemed a little ashamed, and they wanted to protect her.
I felt the same compassion too, and the lust.
She had the power to tame these savage birds. In an instant. It was impressive to watch.
But I saw something else.
She wore two different smiles on her face, one on top of the other, and when she moved her lips you could almost see the other smile – a self-satisfied, ironic and belittling smile, the real emotions hidden beneath a gentler smile.
That’s when I understood her most dangerous ability: to suddenly inspire compassion. Unhappy with his creation, God sent prophets to spread compassion and to preach against the dangers of lust. It was one of their main messages. But it went unheeded because God, master of contradictions, planted in the human heart a wild desire, a spark left by his awesome powers, that humans were destined to battle – God wanted so much to happen – and most were overwhelmed in the face of this power; if only in their dreams, the most pure of heart, committed the sin in their dreams. And although we could not obey the prophets’ words we learned how to act in the face of sin, we learned how to face it down or take flight, if we do not eventually fall prey to it.
Compassion is another story.
Closing the doors on lust, God flung open a door to compassion. We travel easily on the road to compassion, with no doubt in our heart, determined and never afraid.
The enigmatic smile on her face told me she knew the power of compassion. Her compassion was a kind of Trojan Horse – a God’s compassion – and doors were flung open and she rode in with a conscience veiled. All lustful thoughts had been banished.
God wouldn’t say it but I will: ‘Be careful of the compassion of a beautiful woman.’
Some conceal selfishness and beauty with compassion, and they have the power to devastate and destroy.
It was an idea I wanted to include in my new book, a new message from a prophet, and I wanted God to know.
On second thought
