Black Milk - Elif Shafak [21]
And that is how they remained . . . apart.
Outside on the street, behind the half-drawn curtains, the wind speeds up, rustling the leaves of the acacia trees through the slanted evening light. Simultaneously, time speeds up. It now flows so fast that I feel a surge of panic as though I’m late for something, but what exactly, I don’t know. How old am I? Thirty-five. Numbers start to go up like the spinning digits on a gas pump. Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine . . . How many more years can I postpone the decision to have children? The clock on the wall, the clock inside my head, the clock in my heart, the clock in my uterus, they are all ticking at once. Suddenly I undergo a strange emotion—as if all these clocks were set to go off at the same time: now.
It is precisely then that the mini women inside me begin to bang against the walls of my chest. They all want to get out. They all want an urgent meeting.
Doing my best to look confident and collected, I jump to my feet. “I am sorry, may I use the restroom?”
“Sure, it is up there to the left,” says Ms. Agaoglu, scrutinizing my face with those dark brown eyes of hers.
But I have no time or wish to explain. I dash to the bathroom, lock the door behind me and turn on the faucet to scalding water so that Ms. Agaoglu doesn’t hear me talking to myself.
“Okay, you can come out now,” I whisper.
Dead silence. On the counter in front of me there is an aromatic candle that smells of green apples. I watch its flame bob with the draft of my movements.
“Hello? Come out already!” I know I am yelling but I cannot help it.
That is when a liquid voice drenched with lethargy responds, “Oh, stop shouting like you have a stomachache, will you?”
I wonder which one of them she is, but prefer not to ask.
“Why aren’t you coming out? I thought you wanted to have an urgent meeting. Because of you, I’ve locked myself in the toilet in a house where I am only a guest.”
“We had wanted to meet, but then we realized it was dinnertime. Everyone went home to grab a bite, so we can’t come outside just now.”
“Oh, great!”
“Don’t be cranky. I’ll tell you what, why don’t you get yourself down here, dear?”
Unlike Alice in Wonderland, I do not need to drink some magic potion and shrink to thumb size in order to travel to another realm, because it is not my body but my consciousness that is doing the traveling. I can take on any shape I want and still have no shape at all. Knowing this, I take a deep breath, grab a candle and start descending the mossy stairs to the dungeons of my soul.
It is time to have a serious talk with my four finger-sized women.
The Harem Within
It is dark and foggy down here. With its labyrinthine alleys and secret passages, my soul is a perfect setting for a gothic novel or a vampire movie. As I look left and right, I realize that I am completely disoriented. So many times I have walked these cul-de-sacs and dimly lit side streets, and yet I still get lost.
Far ahead there is a crossroads from which four separate paths spill. Blinking repeatedly, I lift the candle up to eye level and peer into the thick, uninviting fog. Which way should I go? I try to think of a giant, round machine, something between a compass and a wheel of fortune. This is a mental exercise I visualize when I am indecisive, although I am not sure if it really helps. In my mind’s eye, I spin the wheel as fast as I can until it slows down and comes to a stop at the letter W. I quickly determine that this means West, and dutifully head in that direction.
There, in a city