the most naked day of the month

International Writing Program -The University of Iowa BUKET UZUNER (Turkey) An Unbearable Passion of a Young Man HE WOKE UP just like any other morning. He hovered on the border between sleep and waking on the second floor of one of those wood-frame Moda houses that are almost extinct. The late-winter smell of sooty rain had crept into the room. He opened one eye and blinked. The sight wasn't encouraging. The room was icy cold. The mattress was warm and the coverlet soft. He snuggled under the bedclothes. No matter how many stoves or electric heaters he installed, he was unable to cope with the cold Istanbul March that seeped through the walls of his wooden house-the sole surviving house among the ugly chimneys of the concrete apartment blocks that had long ago spoiled this charming quarter of the city. He should have become acclimated this house, which had been inhabited by his ancestors for two centuries. However, he hadn't managed to warm to the house at all and fought a lonely battle against the sneaking cold and its depradations. He mustered all his will power and jumped out of bed, deliberately not looking at the clock. He pressed the "play" button of the cassette player and plugged in the electric. The steamy pulse of a jazz number and the electric energy of the heater began to break the chill. He tried to warm himself by doing a kind of dance, muttering the lyrics as if he were cursing. He went into the bathroom, which was even more wretched than the bedroom. An invasion of plastic cans and buckets because of the erratic water supply made the cold even more daunting. He surveyed the room, shivering warily. "It's not only just the cold that makes one shiver," he thought. He entered the kitchen. The floor was an obstacle course of red paint cans. He jumped over the cans carefully to keep from knocking them down. Now, in the morning cold, the idea of painting the kitchen cupboards did not seem at all attractive. He put some water in the tea kettle, lit the gas, and went back into the bathroom. He scooped some cold water out of a plastic bucket with a pitcher and washed his hands and face. Peeing was too much trouble. "Later on, when I feel warmer," he thought. A longing to wake up in a warmer, more comfortable house smoldered within him. He could at least put this house in order, and install carpeting and central heating. He knew he could do gradually, if he could only decide to face problems. Although he'd been an engineer in a large construction firm for two years, he'd lived as a bohemian for so long that it was hard for him to adapt to his present situation. Paying his debts, working eight hours a day, waking up at seven in the morning no matter how late he had gone to bed-and, furthermore, his sudden inheritance of this two-storied wood-frame Moda house with its related obligations-it was all turning his life into one big insoluble problem. As soon as his chimney was mended, the front door needed fixing; after whitewashing the walls, he'd barely rescued the balcony from falling down. He couldn't communicate his sense of the old-fashioned appeal of this house to the contractors who kept hanging around. He turned around the other way whenever he saw them and avoided their phone calls by answering "He's not home." In fact, he sometimes missed his penniless and carefree days. But the novelty of not being so young anymore that came over him with his thirtieth year-along with the boredom of living the same way for so long, and the idea of having a small place all his own where he wouldn't lose his books and jazz cassettes anymore-had, for the time being, dissuaded him from his plan to sell the old house and use the money for a trip to South America. So he'd postponed adding South America to his various adventures in Europe and North America. However, the thought of settling down horrified him. "What if I become just like everyone else living in the neighborhood?" No, to prevent that, you have to reject comfort and lose the habit of being at ease. Once you're contaminated by it, you can never recover from the plague of comfort and ease. The most vulnerable age of infection is the thirties. Thinking this way and repeating the arguments comforted him, and he felt less cold. He squeezed some shaving cream on his palm, but when he raised his hands to his face, he didn't encounter the expected prickle of his beard, which usually grew with merciless speed. He was surprised, but he didn't mind. He put a new blade in his razor and started shaving-but he couldn't. When he looked in the mirror to see what was going on, he was stunned. He saw someone he'd never met before. Could this be someone he knew? He made a grimace of astonishment, turned his head, and put out his tongue-and the stranger made the same gestures. The image in the mirror was wiping the foam off its face, just as he was. There was now a soft, downy, white complexion in the mirror. Loud laughter replaced astonishment-high-pitched, nervous laughter. The person in the mirror laughed with him. In the mirror was the face of a woman. He looked at his body-with two full breasts and pudenda, his body had been metamorphosed into a shape quite different from it used to be. He had become a woman. He was dumbfounded. Kafka metamorphosed his Gregor into an insect. Fellini sent Mastroianni into the "City of Women." In one of Nazli Eray's stories, the hero becomes pregnant. Maybe there were lots of others who wrote, drew, or created such things, but they were all fiction. Then . . . , then there was a psychological condition that he'd heard about: an overwhelming curiosity among some men to know about female orgasm and childbirth, and a subconscious desire to become a woman. But he was never curious about it, and what he saw in the mirror, what he touched and held, was neither fiction nor a psychological phenomenon but rather a flesh-and-blood woman. He fought against panic, but the more he resisted, the more he panicked. He was paralyzed, wondering what to do next. Was it a nightmare? A mischievous joke? He dreamed of being transformed back to his former state after a few hours' sleep and hoped that he would wake up the same as he'd always been. He jumped into bed at once, clenched his hands tightly under the pillow, and closed his eyes. The moment he did this, a sentence written in large capital letters on a dark background appeared before his eyes: IS IT BAD TO BE A WOMAN? Hadn't he always loved women, admired those who were intelligent, daring, conscious of their femininity? Hadn't he always believed that it was the women who were going to redeem the evils of the world by bringing up a generation of loving, thoughtful, and beautiful children? And hadn't he been impatient with women who were stupid, passive, inferior, cheap, and who took the easy way out? No, being a woman wasn't at all bad. The bad thing was the change in one's habitual shape and gender, after a full thirty-two years. For some reason or other, he remembered the way his girlfriend Yeshim used the term "humiliation" when she talked about a woman's changing her surname upon marriage. She would say, "Suddenly changing the name you've always been known by and regarding this change as normal is sheer humiliation." Although the name change in is primarily symbolic, unlike the change he'd just undergone, in a strange way he was sure this was the first time he thoroughly understood Yeshim's feelings. He opened his eyes in trepidation, looked at his body cautiously and touched himself timidly. To tell the truth, he had splendid breasts. Fresh, round, and medium-sized. His hand slid down beneath the rounded curve of his slender waist and he touched his genitals, which were covered with the same light chestnut hair he had on his head. It was a fleshy pudenda, the kind he liked. Although it was tempting, he suppressed his excitement with an unfamiliar instinct. Suddenly, he rejoiced as an idea occurred to him. "Maybe I'm the only one who can see myself as a woman." Although it was a pathological condition, it seemed less threatening than physical metamorphosis. But anger overcame his joy. "Naturally!" he thought in irritation. "It serves me right! Who had joined in the campaign 'Hand in Hand with Women for Women'? . . . and who was swaggering around claiming, 'one need not be a woman to be a feminist'? I kept saying, 'Who wants to be with a stupid woman who can't live alone, who doesn't know herself, who always needs others to survive?' . . . It was me! I was asking for trouble. Why in the hell did you try to support those women, you goddamn fool! Mind your own business, find some chicks, sleep with them, have fun, use them! What does it matter whether they are clever, bold, conscious of their rights, or not? Do you think they want to change? Can't you see that even the so-called 'feminists'-the most independent, intelligent, and craziest jump at the first chance of a wedding ring, an easy life as a 'wife,' and freedom from economic responsibility? What the hell were you after? Why worry? Let them stay the way they are!" He rolled out of bed. The late-winter cold and the mess didn't matter anymore. He surrendered himself to a soothing voice-a defensive mechanism-that told him that the whole thing must be one of his crazy fantasies. He ran to the mirror for reinforcement-and again saw a woman. He stripped off his clothes and stood inspecting himself boldly before the full-length mirror. "My goodness, here I am, the very image of the ideal woman in my mind, exactly my favorite type!" But this time it was his voice that startled him rather than what he said. It was an alto, feminine voice! A bit hoarse, but confident and warm. He hesitated between laughter and tears, but laughter won out. "I wish my other dreams had come true, I wish I'd been a handsomer man, or richer, or had a gift for drawing or playing the sax," the same voice laughed. He looked at the image earnestly. A lovely woman was laughing in the mirror. He really admired her. However, he was dying to be this woman's lover of instead of simply being her. The radio, signaling eight o'clock, startled him. He rushed to the phone and called the office. Omar was ill, he told the secretary, and couldn't come to the office that day. "Oh, what has happened?" the secretary asked anxiously. "Is it serious? I hope he recovers soon. I . . . , I mean, we're very fond of Mr. Omar." This was indeed something he hadn't been aware of. He could barely keep himself from crying out, "It's me, it's Omar! Some strange things have happened to me and I don't know how or why. But they've happened . . . " Even if he'd spoken out, his voice would have sounded too feminine to convince the secretary. He'd dreamed for a long time of having a leisurely day without work. Breakfast in bed and a day of pleasure, "a day of one's own," a warm day to spend reading in bed. "Maybe I'd better make it today." He smiled. He put on his pajamas and went to the kitchen. First he rescued the teapot from scorching, then added some more water, and put it on the gas. He put cheese, olives, butter, and honey on the tray with great care, and with the pleasant anticipation of having an excellent breakfast on a stolen day. He toasted the bread and returned to his bed with a fragrant cup of coffee in his hand. He sat in bed, drew up a blanket, put the tray on his knees, and began to spread some butter and honey on a slice of bread. Right then, his arm knocked against his breast. The breast quivered. He trembled. He was excited. Opening the buttons of his pajamas, he saw a pair of breasts, luscious and fresh. Then he lost his appetite. He stopped looking at his body, put the tray on the bedside table, got out of bed, and took off his pajamas. He put on the turtleneck sweater and corduroy trousers he found. The waist of the trousers was too large for him but it was tight on his hips. He fastened the waist with a safety pin. Now all his shoes were too loose. He crammed some cottonballs into the toes of his shoes. Looking in the mirror, he saw a beautiful woman in man's attire. "Damn it!" he said. He put on his overcoat and rushed out of the house. He joined the morning flow and walked along without knowing where. With the biting breeze of a cold March morning on his face and enormous shoes on his feet, he trudged along, stopping now and then to readjust the shoes. Cold weather lingered under the clear blue sky, as if winter hadn't lasted long enough. He could have walked this way all day long in hope of coming to his senses again, without knowing where he'd been or what he'd been thinking, but before long something broke into his reverie, first brushing against his buttocks, then nudging his chest. Looking around, he saw dirty faces and grinning mouths with yellow teeth under black mustaches. "Hey you! What the hell do you think you're doing?" he shouted at one of them. But this words came out in an alto voice, mysterious, as elegant as a leaf scratched by a fingernail-for him, the most becoming voice for a woman. The sentence simply provoked the grinning mouths with yellow teeth under black mustaches, and they grinned even more. He walked straight ahead, lifting his arm to strike a blow, and the grinning yellow faces with dark mustaches shouted, "Gee! Look at that hussy! You're gonna beat me, eh?" They roared with greedy laughter. He felt helpless. He was furious. All of a sudden, the feeling of injustice and unhappiness that he'd experienced in his childhood, when his father had struck him in the face for not kissing his grandmother's hand, wrung his heart as sharply as ever. Then tears came to his eyes, the first tears of helplessness since he'd had to suppress his rage when the teacher had given his own daughter the part of Grape, which Omar was dying to act, and had made him Potato in the fruits- and-vegetables play they'd performed in elementary school to commemorate Domestic Products Week. He raised his arm to hail a cab and tried to calm himself down. As he stepped inside, the yellow-toothed, black-mustached dirty faces-probably unwashed for weeks-were grinning and shouting: "Don't run away, chick! Where ya goin', baby? Let us lick you, lass. Who ya gonna give it to, tart!" He felt himself first growing red and then pale from shame and helplessness. None of the stupid words were new to him. Whenever he'd heard people talk like that, he'd thought it was mean and despicable, and had condemned such behavior. But this was the first time he felt how degrading and ugly it really was. This was the first time it had been directed at him. He remembered Simone de Beauvoir's words, which Yeshim used to repeat: "Can any white defender of the rights of blacks understand their humiliation without being black himself?" Was it the same thing? Or . . . ? Surely it came close. . . . "Where to, ma'am?" He tried to pull himself together when he saw the driver looking at him sharply. "Well . . . ," he murmured. His tone of voice revealed that he didn't have the slightest idea. He looked around. He was somewhere near Kiziltoprak-a crowded region on the Asian side of Istanbul. He wanted to go someplace where he could be alone, walk by the seashore, and think calmly about what was happening. "Let's go to the Bosphorus," he said. His voice was so hoarse that he could barely hear himself. The driver's expression softened, broadened, and stretched into an impudent smile. He reached for a tape, picked one, and put it into the tape player. Strident throbbing and incomprehensible words filled the cab-a local folksong had been reduced to a cacophony that belonged to no culture. "What should I do now?" he thought. "Should I stop the cab and get out, or hit him on the head and yell at him not to molest women, or should I simply ignore him?" He looked at the driver and saw how ugly, dirty, and seedy he was. Warning him would be a wasted effort. The driver, with hopes of his own and in high spirits, joined the music and began repeating the lyrics. Omar was astonished that he could understand the words. He then became lost in his own thoughts, without really knowing what he was thinking about. He was out of it for a long time. "There's a good restaurant around here. Want to go?" He was startled by the driver's brashness. He wanted to beat him. He was enraged. "Who do you think you are?" were the words that came out of his mouth, but the driver was happy to hear them, since they'd been spoken in a feminine voice. "Don't be mad at me, ma'am," he said, grinning. "I just wanted to do you a favor." "Stop the cab-here's your money!" He jumped out. He was in Beylerbeyi on the Bosphorus. The weather had grown warmer, almost springlike. A surprise sun was shining in the winter sky and an unexpected surge of spring joy had spread over the Bosphorus. He wanted to go to an outdoor cafe by the shore and relax. He took off his overcoat and crossed the street. He felt as if he couldn't walk normally and quickened his pace until he was nearly running without knowing why. Suddenly, he was startled by the whistles of a group of young boys who'd surrounded him. They were whistling, laughing, prodding each other, and pointing at him. "Hey, look at those breasts! . . . Just like apples! Bless 'em, I never saw a pair like that!" He looked down and saw his breasts, without a bra, bouncing under his sweater. He stopped. His breasts and the boys stopped too. Should he be ashamed or proud of his breasts? Whether there was some correlation between breasts-in-bras and women-with-legal-husbands passed through his mind with lightning speed. He wouldn't know. He continued walking as if nothing had happened. Would he need to start ignoring things as a defense? He reached the outdoor cafe and sat down at a table. He ordered tea, enjoying the fresh air for the first time since last fall. Sipping his tea, he wondered whether the Bosphorus looked different to a woman. No, the Bosphorus was beautiful in a woman's eyes as well. "This is ridiculous," he thought. He decided to quit brooding and turned his attention to others. Middle-aged housewives were catching the morning sun, not wasting a moment; they sat chatting and drinking their tea, making the most of each sip. A young mother was murmuring to her child, who was sitting on the table. Another woman was buying breadcakes for her grandsons. Two students-God knows how they managed to be there this time of day-were laughing. He felt better. To be a woman was not so terrible after all. Here were some women who could find a place to be by themselves without being bothered. Perhaps the important thing was not to be timid and to know how to behave in different places under varying circumstances. . . . Maybe. . . . He needed to reconsider everything. His mode of thinking and his memories were the same as always; the only thing that had changed was his gender. Only that? What about his preferences and tastes? But was he going to live as a woman from now on? Maybe it was all a dream. . . . But if he was going to be a woman from now on, wasn't he supposed to be interested in men? At this point he stopped. He was irritated. The idea of making love to a man was so alien and bizarre that he was practically terrified. No, he wasn't opposed to homosexuality; it was only a matter of pleasure and taste. He'd always preferred women. And touching, kissing, and caressing the body of a woman-a woman he found beautiful or one he liked or (best of all) one he loved-had always been as meaningful as knowing and recognizing himself, as mysterious and attractive as discovering the most distant and most secret thing, as delicious as a very tasty childhood dish cooked by one's mother, and as exciting as the joy of swimming upward from the bottom of a deep sea. The very thought of giving up this pleasure was terrifying. He could only associate his sex change with the loneliness of naked masturbation, as if caressing and loving himself were all he could imagine doing. He remained at the table, helpless. The waiter brought one more cup of tea and then another. He badly wanted someone to talk with, to tell everything to, someone with whom he could share the burden of what had happened. Yeshim? . . . The last time he'd seen her-two days earlier-she was still spouting hopelessness and pessimism, yearning to escape from the human race, shaking her fist at the heavens, and whining and whimpering that nobody understood her. "Omar, you have to understand me, you just have to. There's no alternative! I don't want to go out anymore. I don't want to see anyone. It's like a man who changes his clothes to play the role of a driver, a baker, a technician, a vice-manager, a manager, a reporter, a waiter, an editor, a draughtsman, an engineer, a politician, an advertising agent-even so, the mindset stays the same. . . ." And then she'd grabbed a stick of peppermint gum, a substitute for cigarettes since she'd quit smoking, and chewed it dejectedly but at a steady tempo. Ah Yeshim, he thought, my dear misanthrope, I wish I had you by my side to listen to me now . . ." He paid for the tea and left the table. He began looking for a telephone as if the world would end unless he talked to her. He'd often encountered shopkeepers who, with a telephone in plain sight, would deny its existence. Still, he went into a shop to ask whether they had one. The shopkeeper handed him the receiver with a lewd gleam in his eyes. "Hello, may I speak to Yeshim please?" "She's not here. She'll be at the exhibition all day long." "Exhibition? What exhibition?" "The March 8th exhibition! In Cagaloglu." "Oh, right!" "Who should I say called?" "Tell her it was Omar . . . I mean . . . Aisha." The shopkeeper didn't want to charge him and escorted him toward the door. Were these perhaps among the advantages of being a beautiful woman? "Eighth of March." He tried to figure out what it was on the way to Cagaloglu. The taciturn cabdriver offered no help. Was it Ecology Day? No, International Environment Day was June 5. Well, what else might have aroused Yeshim's interest? While he was wandering around Cagaloglu with no idea where he was going, he spotted some reporter friends. Some he greeted; others he pretended not to recognize. Those he greeted either were puzzled or greeted him with pleasure. Those he pretended not to recognize weren't aware that he knew them anyway. It finally occurred to him to go into a bookstore and ask where the exhibition was. "The women's exhibition?" Yes! March 8 . . . International Women's Day! He saw Yeshim among the ticket collectors at the entrance of the exhibition hall. He could barely restrain himself from running to embrace her. "Excuse me, you must be Yeshim. Well, . . . I'm a friend of Omar's. He asked me to look for you. "Omar? What's happened to Omar? Is he sick?" "No, he's as healthy I am. Trust me. Uh, . . . is there somewhere we can talk privately?" "But I can't leave the exhibition." "It's urgent. Please . . . please!" Yeshim asked the other girls' permission, then put on her jacket and beret as they left together. "Omar didn't tell me anything about you. What's your name?" "My name? Oh, yes, I'm Aisha. We met just a few days ago." Yeshim stopped in her tracks. She looked at him earnestly. Standing before her was a beautiful but unkempt-looking young woman. Brown-haired, green-eyed, full-breasted, and long- limbed, she was just like those attractive women Omar would point out to her in films, advertisements, and fashion magazines. She thought of her own short dark hair, large green eyes, and small breasts. She felt a fleeting pang of jealousy but recovered immediately and held her head up proudly. "Are you dating Omar?" "Me?" he laughed. "Oh no, that's theoretically impossible. Besides, ha ha . . . it's practically impossible as well." "Who are you? What do you want?" Omar was astonished at the indignation in Yeshim's voice. He'd always assumed that she was a girl who would rather die than be jealous of anyone. He stifled his laughter and, trying to be serious, answered: "It's not what you think. I'll tell you everything. Please, come with me." They went to the Café Pierre Loti. Yeshim sat looking perplexed and dumbfounded by what she was hearing. She didn't seem to believe the beautiful woman-who claimed to be Omar himself. "Don't you believe me, Yeshim? Please say something. I'm afraid I'll lose my mind." After a long silence, Yeshim began talking as if from a great distance. "It's biologically impossible!" "Yes, but it happened." "Even if it happened, why should this happen to Omar of all people?" "Yeshim, my love . . . ." The onlookers at the other table snickered at the two women who sat holding hands, apparently courting each other. Yeshim quickly drew her hand back. "Yeshim, try to remember the day we first met. You'd pinned a ribbon protesting nuclear power on your collar. Then . . . , when I first came to meet your mother, she grumbled over my long beard. She made coffee and served it with a razor and shaving cream on the tray. Don't you remember how we laughed about it later?" Yeshim giggled. When their eyes met, she grew silent. "Omar could have told you all that." "Well then, what about the beauty mark on your right buttock?" "Omar could have told you about that too." After a couple of hours they'd exhausted themselves. They looked at each other hopelessly. As they got up to go, Yeshim spoke in a broken voice: "I'll phone you in the evening." Her tone was full of misgivings. She turned and walked away without looking back. In the afternoon Omar went to a cinema-without caring what was playing-to keep from going crazy. There wasn't much of a crowd for the matinee. The dark, middle-aged usher- unshaven and unwashed at least for a month-approached and sat down next to him in the almost empty darkened theater. Omar switched seats, but every time he moved, the usher shifted to the aisle seat in the same row and scratched his crotch. On the screen Michel Piccoli was whispering sweet nothings to the woman he loved, accompanied by the usher's scratching. Omar was upset. He wanted to give the usher a good beating, but he'd already begun losing his muscles. Any pleasure in the film had been spoiled, and his hope of holing up in the theater to unwind a bit had been thwarted. Intent on registering a complaint against the usher, he found a door labeled "Manager" and knocked. The man who responded-he could have been the usher's twin brother-tried to hide the twinkle in his eye and pretended to be sorry. All he said was, "It will be taken care of." Annoyed, Omar left the cinema and returned home. His place was unchanged: bed, windows, walls, books, jazz cassettes, waterless taps, overshadowing concrete buildings, everything, everything was the same. Except he was still a woman! He tried to sleep, to relax, to read and forget himself for a while. No luck. Darkness was closing in. When he remembered that he hadn't eaten anything all day long, he tried eating, but with no appetite. He was caught between reality and dream, between madness and fantasy. He was depressed and tired of roaming the house like a trapped animal. The pain he'd felt in his groin for the past few hours drove him to the bathroom, where he discovered something even more awful- bright red stains on his underpants. He screamed at the sight of his own blood. First to be metamorphosed into a woman, then all this blood. He felt dizzy; he couldn't see; he staggered. . . . When he regained consciousness, he was lying half naked on the cold floor of the bathroom. He pulled himself together and used water from the cans to wash himself. Although the bleeding was moderate, it didn't stop. He went to the bedroom and dug into the drawers, telling himself not to panic. He took a pad out of a package that Yeshim had left. He peeled off the adhesive backing and stuck the pad in his underpants. He had carried a male sexual organ between his legs for a full thirty-two years, and now he had a menstrual pad there instead. He put on clean flannel trousers and a shirt, and again fastened the waist of the trousers with a safety pin. To ease the abominable pain, he took two painkillers, the sort Yeshim took when she was having her period. He was bombarded by a swarm of thoughts. Surely there were a few wise, understanding, well-balanced men in this country, especially among his own circle. He felt desperately in need of some enlightened companionship. He remembered the friends he sometimes dined with at the Artists' Club-Chetin, Ilker, Dogan-young men who often expressed a longing for a woman who was wise, sensible, and who knew what she wanted. He combed his hair and dabbed himself with aftershave. He left the house, headed for the Artists' Club. When he got in the dolmush, he had to sit between the driver and a male passenger. The driver all but caressed his legs whenever he shifted gears, while the man on the other side kept his legs spread as wide as possible. He was squeezed tightly between them. Was the driver touching his legs deliberately, or was that the only way he could shift? Would the driver have behaved that way if Omar had looked the way he usually did? He didn't know. He didn't want to know. He was fed up. As usual, the club was crammed with people. He smiled at the young doorkeeper, who leered back. He went to the bar and ordered campari with a slice of orange. Barman Suha took the order courteously. He was just on the point of asking, "What about your lottery ticket, Suha? Did you miss the chance to become a millionaire this month too?" But he remembered his situation and stopped short just in time. Next to him, a handsome, middle-aged man was looking at him, smiling. Omar smiled back. The man offered him a cigarette, and they began to chat. Although their conversation was light and superficial, it was comforting. How badly he needed to talk, to take an interest in other subjects and other people. Otherwise he'd soon go mad. Ah, he thought with pleasure, here's a man who isn't the least bit rude. But then he heard Yeshim's angry voice echoing in his ears: "Most men, if you just happen to glance at them, immediately take it as an invitation to harass you. You have to train your eyes either to look at the ground or to avoid meeting a man's gaze." As the conversation deepened, his middle-aged bar companion relaxed, grew more intimate, and began talking about his private life. He was one of those men who had an unhappy marriage but couldn't divorce because of various social obligations. So he sought excitement and satisfaction in bars. I'll have to get rid of this creep, thought the old Omar / the new Aisha. But it wasn't quite that easy; it took quite a while, in fact. The conversation, which had begun with compliments on his beauty and simplicity, transformed into a harsh, abusive diatribe against the cruelty, selfishness, and hypocrisy of women. Luckily, Ilker and Chetin entered just in time. He went straight up to them and explained that he was a friend of Omar's and that he'd just come to town. Chetin and Ilker greeted him warmly. They drank, ate, and chatted together. Here are two bright men I can talk to, whether I'm Omar or Aisha, Omar/Aisha thought happily. Late at night, the darkness thickened, tongues and eyelids grew heavier, and people began to sputter. All night long, Chetin had sat close to the new Aisha / the old Omar, who was making him feel lightheaded. When they all left the table for home, Chetin invited Omar home for a cup of coffee. The moment the prospect of making love with Chetin dawned on him , Omar/Aisha grew terrified. The idea of sleeping naked in bed with his old friend Chetin, caressing his naked body and accepting his caresses in turn, kissing, feeling one body melting into the other-it first struck him in the pit his stomach and then formulated itself in his mind as a question. But, he asked himself, if I'm a woman, aren't I supposed to enjoy it?" He went to Chetin's apartment. As soon as they entered, Chetin embraced Omar/Aisha and began kissing him frantically. He dragged Omar impatiently into bed and undressed him. He rained kisses on him and then tried to penetrate Omar/Aisha. He tried and tried but couldn't do it. Sweaty and furious, he asked: "Could you possibly still be a virgin?" Omar couldn't respond. There was mixture of disgust and anger in Chetin's eyes. "How old are you?" "Thirty-two," he admitted. "You mean, in all those thirty-two years, you've never . . . ." Annoyed, Chetin began to grumble. "God damn it! You're all alike in this bloody country! You talk and talk, but you're still virgins." Omar/Aisha lay there naked and abandoned, uncertain what to do. In the full-length mirror on the wall, he saw a splendid nude woman on the bed. "How beautiful I am," he murmured. Could that make him happy? "Damn it! I'm fed up!" he burst out and started putting his clothes back on. Chetin was smoking and watching him with discontent. "Let me take you home," he said reluctantly. "It's too late to catch a cab. It can be dangerous for a woman at night." Yes, but what if he saw where Omar lived? Wouldn't he realize then who he was? Chetin would figure it out, he thought with alarm. "No, I want to go home alone," he said firmly. When he reached home, he felt as if he were carrying a century's worth of exhaustion on his back. He climbed into bed and shut his eyes. "What now?" He repeated those words a few times: "What now?" He wanted to relax, to surrender himself to the loving arms of sleep. But his alcohol-induced exhaustion was artificial. He couldn't get comfortable and kept tossing and turning. Then the telephone rang. "Hello, uh, it's Yeshim. I called you several times but you weren't home." "Yeshim! Oh, you can't imagine how glad I am. I was afraid you wouldn't call." "Well, I've done a lot of thinking. . . . I'm confused. I even suspected that you might have killed Omar." "Well, yeah, in a way." "But I'm sure about one thing. I . . . I love Omar. . . . I love him very much. He's a wonderful man, and I'm ready to fight for him so I can find him again." "Yeshim! My love, my darling! I . . . I mean, Omar loves you very much too." "I want to ask you something. If . . . I mean, let's suppose that you are Omar. Then you're sure to know one very private thing that he's shared only with me-at least I don't think anyone else knows about it." "My diary! You're the only one who knows about my diary! You're right-it's true. "Yes, yes, . . . I am." "Are you listening to me?" "Yes. Just one last question. Could you tell me some of the code names he uses for people in his diary?" "Of course! My father, Dr. Faustus; your brother, Peter Pan; you, George Sand; me, Mephistopheles." "What about my mother?" "Ho! Your mother! Olive Oil, of course!" "All right. You've convinced me that you must be Omar. I'll come early in the morning and we'll try to sort things out. We'll find a solution, Aisha. I mean, Omar . . . ." They laughed. At each end of the line, they burst into a paroxysms of laughter till tears came to their eyes. It was a fit of nervous laughter, almost crying. An Unbearable Passion by Buket Uzuner edited CBB / IWP 1996 International Writing Program 1996