Black Milk by Elif Shafak Read Free Book Online

start the game down 7–0.
     
    Let us now apply Virginia Woolf’s critical question to the Middle East.
    Fuzuli was one of the greatest voices of the Orient, a renowned sixteenth-century poet highly respected today by Arabs, Persians and Turks alike. Let’s say Fuzuli had a talented younger sister—he very well may have had one—and her name was Firuze, meaning “turquoise,” the color of her eyes.
    This Firuze is a whiz kid, an explorer by nature, bent on learning, bubbling with ideas. Her hair is curly, her smile dimply and her mind is full of questions, each tailing the next one. Like images in opposite mirrors, her ideas multiply endlessly, extending into infinite space. Imagination flows out of her sentences like water through the arches of an aqueduct, always fresh, always free.
    She loves stories, the more adventurous and dangerous the better. Day and night she spins stories about pirates carrying human skulls with rubies set into their eye sockets, magic carpets that fly over spice bazaars and crystal palaces, and two-headed green giants who speak a language alien to all ears but hers. She endlessly tells these tales to her mother, grandmother and aunts. When they can listen no more, she relates them to guests, servants and whoever else should come calling.
    The elders in the family shake their heads in unison and say, “Girl, you have an imagination deeper than the oceans. How do you come up with all these stories? Do you sneak up to the peak of the Kaf Mountain in your sleep and eavesdrop on the talks of the fairies till morning breaks?”
    Firuze wonders what kind of a place is this Kaf Mountain. How she would love to go there and see it with her own eyes. The world is full of wonders, and there are some corners of Earth that remind you of paradise; this she knows not through experience but through intuition. She has read the verses about paradise in the Qur’an where it says, “Those who are accepted into heaven will be adorned with golden bracelets and be given clothing made of the finest green silk . ” One of her favorite pastimes is to close her eyes and imagine herself donned in fine silks, jangling crafted bells on her ankles as she walks by streams of the coolest waters, picking juicy fruits from the trees, each bigger than an ostrich egg.
    Dream is a rosy-cheeked lass, as charming as a water nymph, and just as playful. If you attempt to hold her in your arms, she will slip out of your grip, lithe and nimble, like a fish, like the mirage she is. Those who crave her touch only wear themselves out.
    Reality is a crone with hair as gray as stormy skies, a toothless mouth and a chilling cackle. She is not ugly, not really, but there is something disturbing about her that makes it difficult to look her in the eye.
    Dream is Firuze’s bosom buddy, her best friend. While they play, laughing and joking as they skip about, Reality watches them from a distance with eyes narrowed to slits.
    “Someday soon,” says Reality, “that spoiled Dream will be out the door and I will languish in that throne of hers. Firuze can play with Dream for a while longer. But she’ll be a woman soon and then she’ll have to part ways with that adored playmate of hers.”
     
    One morning Firuze wakes up with a strange wetness between her legs and a red blotch smeared upon her nightgown. Her heart skips a beat. She fears she has cut herself on something. Sobbing, she runs to her mother. But no sooner has she said a few words than she receives a whopping slap.
    “Be quiet,” says her mother, the tenderness in her gaze not matching the sharpness in her tone.
    “But what is going on, Mother?” asks Firuze in a horrified whisper.
    “It happens to all women,” replies her mother. “Just don’t tell anyone about it, especially your brothers. Here, take these cloths and go clean yourself.”
    “It happens to all women,” Firuze repeats incredulously.
    “That is right, and it means you are not a girl anymore. From now