"What about her?" I whisper.
This question makes my tormentors uneasy. After an awkward pause, Milady Ambitious Chekhovian offers an answer. "Unfortunately, Dame Dervish did not approve of our midnight coup d'etat. Despite our best efforts, we could not change her mind. She told us she would not fight us or stand in our way, but she would not, under any circumstances, support us."
"And why is she handcuffed?" I ask.
"Well, it's her fault, really. She tried to stage a peaceful protest, parking herself like a turbaned Gandhi under our feet, and left us with no other option than to arrest her."
"She is a political prisoner now," adds Miss Highbrowed Cynic.
I cannot believe my ears. My finger-women have gone wild, and I don't know how to control them — if I ever did, that is. I want to talk to Dame Dervish privately, but I'll have to wait for an appropriate moment.
A mantle of silence canopies the room: the militarists among us pacing the floor, the handcuffed pacifist sitting on the floor and me staring at the floor. Finally, Little Miss Practical approaches me with an envelope.
"What's this?" I ask.
"Your plane ticket. You're leaving tomorrow. It might be a good idea to start packing. I made a list of the things you need to take with you."
"So soon? But where am I going, what fellowship did I win? I don't know anything!"
The answer comes from Milady Ambitious Chekhovian. "Ninety minutes from Boston, there is a beautiful college called Mount Hol- yoke. That is where you are going. It is an all-girls campus!"
Miss Highbrowed Cynic joins in with pride: "You won a fellowship given to a limited number of women artists, writers and academics from around the world. It is a lively intellectual hub, you'll see."
After that, I cannot go back to sleep. My instinct is to take off to the end of the world as soon as it is morning, but how far could I run from those voices within? My courage melting like hot wax, I sit there, tense and wary, watching the sun rise. In that husky light, everything around me seems to quickly evaporate — the night, the names, the places. .
In that instant I know, in my bones and soul, that the summer has come to an end. Not gradually and imperceptibly, but in a single moment, in a quantum jump.
Perhaps all summers are like that. They go on and on, uneventful and lazy, and just when you have gotten used to the sluggish rhythm, they end abruptly, leaving you totally unprepared for the cold autumn.
All I know is a new season is under way.
PART THREE Brain Versus Body
Where the Fairies Hang Out
An hour later, when the three women in uniform leave the room to pack their suitcases, I go to rescue their detainee. Feeling like some hero in a war movie, Saving Private Dame Dervish, I sneak toward the captive, careful not to make any noise. With the help of a pair of tweezers, I unlock her handcuffs. She rubs her wrists, giving me a tired smile.
"Thank you, dear," she murmurs.
Finished with Operation Freedom, we steal out of the house. I'm walking and she, having crawled into my bag, pokes her head out once in a while to have a look around. The minute we make it to the street, I begin to complain.
"I cannot believe they are doing this to me. Have they lost their minds? This time they've crossed the line."
Dame Dervish listens with raised eyebrows, saying nothing.
"And now they want me to go to the States. Just like that, out of the blue," I continue. "You know what? Maybe you and I should take up arms, organize an underground resistance and topple them. They'd be so freaked out."
"I am a pacifist. I don't take up arms," says Dame Dervish. "'Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.' That's what Gandhi teaches."
"With all due respect, let's not forget that Mr. Gandhi had not met Milady Ambitious Chekhovian," I say.
"'Nevertheless, an elephant cannot swallow a hedgehog.'"
"Was that Gandhi again?"
"That was a slogan from the Prague Spring," says Dame Dervish. "In 1968. If you can say that against the Soviet tanks, you can say it against any finger-woman you want."
She never ceases to surprise me, this Sufi of mine.
"Look around you, Elif. What do you see?" asks Dame Dervish.
Pedestrians hurrying up and down the street, commuters standing still in public buses that are full to the brim, peddlers selling replica designer bags, street children cleaning the windshields of the luxurious cars that stop at red lights, billboards advertising fast money and glitzy lifestyles, a city of endless contradictions. . That is what I see when I look around in Istanbul.
"All right, now look at yourself," says Dame Dervish. "What do you see?"
A woman who is split inside, half East, half West. A woman who loves the world of imagination more than the real world; who, year after year, has been worn down by useless paradoxes, wrong relationships, mistaken loves; who is still not over the hurt of growing up without a father; who breaks hearts and has her heart broken; who cares too much about what other people think; who is afraid that God may not really care for her and who can be happy or complete only when writing a novel. In short, "a personality under construction" is what I see when I look at myself. But my tongue won't cooperate in making this confession.
At my uneasy silence, Dame Dervish says, "You have to accept the universe as an open book that is waiting for its reader. One must read each day page by page."
Her voice sounds so calm and soothing, I feel embarrassed about my outburst a minute ago. "Then, tell me, how am I supposed to read this very day?"
"There is a voyage knocking at your door," says Dame Dervish, as if she were holding an invisible cup in her hand and telling my fortune from the configuration of the coffee grounds at the bottom. "If you don't leave Istanbul, these three finger-women will not let you be. From morning till night, they will pick at you."
"Tell me about it," I say, exhaling loudly.
"I think one of these days you should sign a peace treaty with all of us," says Dame Dervish. "The reason why the finger-women are quarreling so much among themselves is because you are quarreling with us. You think some of us are more worthy than others. While in truth, we are all reflections of you. All of us make up a whole."
"You want me to make no distinction between you and Milady Ambitious Chekhovian? But you two are completely different!"
"We don't have to be identical. She and I share the same essence. If only you could understand this. Until you realize that every voice inside you is part of the same circle, you will feel fragmented. Unite us all in One."
"You are talking about my embracing them, but those rascals instigated a coup d'etat while I was asleep, for God's sake. It is only a pacifist who trusts a despot. It's never the other way around!"
Dame Dervish gives me a nod, her smile as warm as a caress. "May be."
I look at her, awaiting an explanation. That is when she tells me this story.
"Once upon a time, there was a dervish who spoke little. One day his horse ran away. When they heard the news, all the neighbors came to see him. 'That is terrible,' they remarked. The dervish said, 'May be.'
"The next day, they found the horse with a gorgeous stallion next to it. Everyone congratulated the dervish and said this was wonderful news. Again, he said only, 'May be.'
"A week later, while trying to ride the stallion, the dervish's son fell off and broke his leg. The neighbors came to say how sorry they were. 'How awful,' they exclaimed in unison. The dervish replied, 'May be.'
"The next day, some state officials came to the village to draft young men to the war zone. All the boys had to go, except the dervish's son, who lay in bed with a broken leg."