Maybe they are right. Ayn Rand hadn't been born to be a mother or a wife. If she had been a mother she would very likely have been a dominant one, seeing each of her children as a different scientific experiment. But perhaps we are all badly mistaken. She may have found motherhood to be a "wonderfully intense intellectual excitement" — the way she described school and classes as a young girl in her diary. I am curious to know what she would have done when her child turned into a rebellious teenager.
It is equally plausible that early on she realized that in the mother- child relationship, the child always wins. Perhaps that was the real reason why she didn't want children. Ayn Rand liked to win.
Giving birth to books was enough for her.
When the Grand Bazaar Smiles
Exactly a year later we are sitting in a cafe at the Grand Bazaar, Eyup and I.
The finger-women are nowhere to be seen and I suspect each is shopping in a separate store. After Mount Holyoke I was a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I taught courses in women's studies, and slowly I started writing my new novel, The Bastard of Istanbul.
Now it is summer again. I am back in the city. We are sitting here, my love and I, between silver bracelets, smoke pipes, carpets and brass lamps that remind me of Aladdin's. A rumpus is going on around us. Young men pushing carts loaded with merchandise, old men playing backgammon, merchants haggling in every language known to humankind, tourists struggling to keep pushy sellers at bay, apprentices carrying tea glasses on silver trays, cats meowing in front of restaurants, children feeding the cats when their parents are not looking — everyone is in their own world.
Suddenly, Eyup holds my hand and asks, his voice raised over the din in the background, "Honey, I was just wondering. Are you still against marriage?"
"I certainly am," I say with conviction, but then add, "theoretically."
"And what exactly does theoretically mean?" he asks sweetly.
"It means, generally speaking. As an abstract idea. As a philosophical model—" I try to explain.
"In plain language, please?" he says, swirling the spoon in his tea glass.
"I mean, I am against human beings getting married, at least most of them, because they really shouldn't, but that said—"
"That said?" he repeats.
"I am not against me marrying you, for instance."
Eyup laughs — his laughter like a sword being pulled out of a silken sheath before the final thrust.
"I think you just made the most roundabout marriage proposal that a man has ever received from a woman," he says. "Did I?"
He nods mischievously. "You can take it back, of course."
"But I don't," I say, because that is how I feel. "I am asking you to marry me."
The Grand Bazaar doubles up laughing at my endless contradictions, jingling its wind chimes, clinking its teaspoons and tinkling its bells. With a record such as mine, who am I to judge Ayn Rand's inconsistencies?
Eyup's eyes grow large and sympathetic. "It is a joke."
"But I am damn serious," I say and wait, hardly breathing.
His eyes rake my eyes for a long moment, as if searching for something, and then his face brightens, like the sun reflecting on a silver dome.
"And I gladly accept," he says. "I do."
Oscar Wilde once said, "Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious." But if there is anyone who is tired here, most probably it is I. I've grown tired of my own biases. I've grown tired of failing to see the beauty in small things, of being against marriage and domestic life, of wearing myself thin, of carrying around suitcases from city to city and country to country.
But will I stop commuting when I tie the knot?
In English the word matrimony comes from the Latin word for "mother." The Turkish word for it, evlilik, is connected with "setting up a house." Laying down roots is a prerequisite for marriage.
"You know I have a problem staying in one place," I say guiltily.
"I noticed," Eyup says.
"Is this not a problem for you?" I ask, afraid to hear the answer.
"Honey, I stopped expecting anything normal from you the day you quoted Neil Gaiman as your motto on love," he says.
"I see."
He bows his head and adds in a softer tone, "We will do the best we can. You will be the nomad, I will be the settler. You will bring me magic fruits from lands afar, I will grow oranges for you in the backyard. We will find a balance."
I turn my head. Genuine kindness always makes my eyes tear, which I can hide, I think, but it is a different story with my nose, which reddens instantly. Eyup hands me a napkin and asks, "And since you are the worldwide traveler, tell me, where on earth would you like to say 'I do'?"
"Somewhere where brides are not expected to wear white," is my answer.
Using his teaspoon as a baton to emphasize his point, Eyup says, "That leaves us with three options: a nunnery, preferably medieval; a bar frequented by a gang of rockers on motorbikes; or the set for a movie on Johnny Cash. These are the places where you can wear a black bridal gown without anyone finding it odd."
I briefly consider each option, and then ask, "How about Berlin?"
"What about Berlin?"
"I have been offered a fellowship by the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. If I accept, I will be there for a while next year."
"Hmm, makes sense to me," he says, suddenly serious. "We will be like East and West Berlin, remarkably different and previously independent but now surprisingly united."
Little Women Big Hearts
One of my favorite fictional female characters as a young girl was Jo in Little Women. Jo the writer. Jo the dreamer. Jo the romantic, adventuresome, idealist and independent sister. When her sister Amy burned her manuscript — her only copy — in an act of pure revenge, I was horrified. It took me a long time to forgive Amy — even though Jo herself wasn't that innocent; after all, she had not invited Amy to a play and almost drowned her while ice-skating. At any rate, the story of the four March sisters during the American Civil War was so unlike my life as the child of a Turkish single mother, and yet many things were familiar — absent father, struggling with financial ups and downs, nonconformity to gender roles. . That was the power of Louisa May Alcott's words, to create a universal saga shared by millions everywhere. It takes no little magic to "zoom" a story written in the late nineteenth century to readers across the globe more than a hundred years later.
A woman ahead of her time, a writer who held Goethe dear, Louisa May Alcott, too, favored Jo and was a bit like her: full of energy, ideas and motivation. The stories told in Little Women were highly reminiscent of her familial life as the second of four sisters. She keenly observed the people she met, absorbed the dialogues she heard and then incorporated them all in her stories. Always planning new books, living the plots in her head and scribbling whenever the inspiration struck, she was determined to earn her own money from writing.
"I never had a study," she once said. "Any paper and pen will do, and an old atlas on my knee is all I want."
When Little Women was published it brought its author fame and success beyond her modest expectations. Alcott wrote intensely, sometimes forgetting to eat or sleep. That her readers and critics wanted to see a sequel to the story must have both motivated and limited her. She had originally planned that Jo would not get married, earning her bread by the sweat of her own brow, but her publisher was of a different mind. Under constant pressure from him and others, a male character was introduced into Jo's life: Professor Bhaer. And the reader knew Jo was torn between two impulses — her sense of responsibility toward her family and her desire to nurture her individuality and freedom. "I'll try and be what he loves to call me, 'a little woman,' and not be rough and wild, but do my duty here instead of wanting to be somewhere else. . " Struggling with her family's expectations of her, Jo eventually chose marriage and domestic life instead of a career in writing — a drastic decision Alcott herself would have never made.