Endgame, page 29
‘the woman wore a weary smile … i can’t do that, she said … the man wasn’t expecting such an answer … and again he asked her why … i don’t know, the woman said …. i must be insane … or there must be a reason …
‘the man left without any intention of returning … the woman didn’t know that yet … she’d grown used to suffering because he would never return, yet knowing all the while that he would return …
‘as he was leaving, the woman stood up … or she didn’t … she sat down on a long white sofa … unwittingly brought her hands to her stomach and thought, where am I? … which city, which house? …
‘why is reality never perfect like dreams? …
‘why are we so afraid of pain? …
‘why do we have to choose? …
‘this is all nonsense … you’re right …’
I didn’t know if she was suffering under the burden of the two relationships or because of the pain she assumed Mustafa was feeling, as sometimes she wrote about how she wanted to be free of him …
‘now i want to be free of him and his dream of me … i truly need to be free … can you do that for me? … can you save me from him? …
‘do you know how difficult it is to bear such a pain for so many years, a pain you can’t ever really understand? … living always with the pain in your heart … not knowing why you’re doing anything … forever feeling guilty for what you do … i wonder why my heart has shut all other doors, taking revenge on me for what? … as if mocking every answer my mind comes up with … i just can’t get to the source of the pain … if only i could be sure that this is love …
‘and i don’t know what can save me … asuman tells me the only salvation is a great passion … and i’m not even sure of that …
‘if only we were madly in love …
‘you and me … truly …’
Were those words ‘madly in love’ some kind of invitation, a wish or a joke, I didn’t really know. But sometimes I doubted the reality of this pain she felt because of Mustafa, and I thought it might be something she had cooked up in her own little devil’s workshop of a mind.
That’s what I wrote to her.
‘it seems to me that you have a strange relationship with pain …
‘on one hand you’re addicted to the pain, even though your emotions generally spur the pain into action … and then it also seems that you are afraid of it …
‘it’s as if an artificial “fantasy” pain makes you fearful of true pain … as long as you feel pain over mustafa you may very well be keeping another pain at bay …
‘an artificial pain protecting you from real pain …
‘a kind of inoculation …
‘sometimes i think that in your life mustafa symbolises a kind of protector … a dream that protects you from reality …
‘maybe i got it wrong … but what i said might be true …
‘but the fact that mustafa is an imaginary emotion doesn’t lessen his importance … just the opposite … it makes him all the more important … because you need that shield …
‘or that’s how it seems to me.’
Once she asked me a question I thought about a great deal later on.
‘what do you think is a more wonderful feeling? … to realise your dreams or the dreams of another? …
‘will it make you happy to help me realise my own dreams?’
From time to time I would share with her my thoughts about Mustafa, and I never knew if they were laced with a hint of jealousy. I doubt it. I think that in our home I was always completely honest with her. I never polluted the dream with slanders and lies. Maybe sometimes. An insignificant distortion … perhaps …
‘it seems to me that he’s living out a part from a scenario in his head … and because real life didn’t fit with the narrative there, he was convinced that something was wrong … and believed that everything would work out and unfold according to his script …
‘it seemed to me that everyone who believed in this script would end up getting hurt …
‘i suppose i experience these fleeting moments of enlightenment …. and i would see the truth, moments when i experienced terrible pain and sought consolation … and it’s at those moments i feel i have to call you.’
Sometimes she would miss me. In fact those terrible moments of longing sometimes caught us at the same time.
‘i have such strong feelings for you now … it’s like what i feel for him … an overwhelming love … different from what a woman can feel for a man … or both feelings intertwined …. and a similar belief … nothing will happen to you as long as i’m here … he will see everything, know everything and you won’t let it happen …
‘perhaps when you’re with me i don’t want to be with anyone else …
‘but i’m afraid that when you’re not with me i don’t want anyone else either … strange, isn’t it? …
‘but don’t worry … it will probably pass …
‘what surprises me and strikes fear in my heart is that i don’t want the feelings to go away.’
She went on: ‘i don’t know the reason why … i don’t want to touch anyone else or him to touch me … what was that i told you? … loyalty to lust …
‘there is definitely such a thing … i don’t want to lose that feeling when you touch me …’
She kept giving me suggestions for my novel, as if part of her mind was always working through it. She wanted to help me write a good book and she adopted me and my work and my writing, as if she had become a part of me.
‘maybe you should write about what it is like to realise another person’s dreams … someone outside your family … in fact the dreams of someone you’re not in love with …
‘maybe in realising this other person’s dreams it will eventually become your own … you’ll write about the extraordinary nature of someone’s miracle …
‘are you my miracle? …
‘now i’ll pray that nothing happens to our home … nothing will happen to anyone’s home …’
In the middle of the night she surprised me with these words: ‘i love you …’
If I am to believe she loved me, and made me happy even though I didn’t love her, why was it even important if I loved her or not?
We didn’t see each other but we never left our home, and I never went out, and she came when she had time off work or she cancelled her work, and we would message each other until morning.
Without ever seeing each other.
Without ever hearing each other’s voices.
We never called each other, even when we missed each other the most. Though we had never openly talked about this, we had made some kind of silent pact.
We were living in a fantasy world, waiting for the dream to ripen and then turn into truth, and as we waited, so happily drenched in the dream, it was as if we were wondering which aspect of ‘reality’ might damage the dream, fearful that it would finish it.
We both sensed the greatest threat to the realisation of our dream was exposing it to the real world too soon.
The truth of that moment was the enemy of a reality we both expected and desired.
The truth of what was and what was to come had lodged itself into our dream and we waited.
One night I woke up to find a single line:
‘i’ve gone insane and you’re not telling me.’
In the morning I understood why she thought that way.
‘there was a ring on my finger … the one you bought for me … i feel good when i wear it … but asuman took my hand and asked me what it was … i said, a ring … so it means something? … it does … zuhal, you’re driving me mad, she said … i smiled and said no … then tell me …
‘since yesterday morning i can’t understand why i did it …
‘i told her i was getting married … i said i wanted to see what the ring would look like … then i thought this was just another game … i don’t know … as long as they don’t know who it is, if they don’t have a name, it’s a harmless game …
‘she said she didn’t understand … when did this happen? … it was someone i knew and we decided to get married … God, when? … next month … which day? … at the beginning of the month … next week … i suppose so … where? … in italy … don’t be ridiculous, why are you getting married, are you mad? … i don’t know, he wants to … (don’t laugh but you can divorce me if you want, i deserve it) … well, did you even ask if he was serious? … don’t think so but he’s a bright guy … who is this guy? … some guy, a printer … married before? … yes … we need to meet right away, invite him to dinner … the game finishes here … my shoulders slumped and i realised what a foolish thing i’d done … of course we’ll come, i said …
‘she took my hand, her eyes tearing up (she must have been making that part up) … you look happy … yes, i’m very happy … please introduce him to us … i was just starting to come round but too late …
‘i really don’t know why i did it … i knowingly throw myself into these corners … as i left, i didn’t even think to tell asuman to keep quiet about it …
‘can you tell me why I did it? … i’m dying to know … i wanted to do it and knew the consequences … but believe me that i don’t know why …
‘maybe i was jealous of other married couples … i really don’t know … do you think that’s why? …
‘would you tell me if you thought i was insane? …
‘ok, i’m the one who started all this but i don’t know why …’
‘in my opinion,’ I wrote, ‘for some reason (which we need to work out) you like to provoke people and create incidents … to scare them … as if you want everyone to look at you and cry out …’
She interrupted.
‘i don’t like scaring people but i do like to see their limits … my boundlessness versus their limits …
‘then i convince them of the possibilities … that’s the fun part …’
I went on.
‘your quiet front makes for a delicious contrast with the provocateur that lies beneath …
‘you terrify some people who don’t know your temperament …
‘but more interesting is … while you’re busy devastating a scene, you’re already busy coming up with the solution to clean it all up … if things spiral out of control now, you know what needs to be done in advance … i know that you know …’
I could sense that she was smiling as she read these words and then replied. How? I don’t know.
‘it seemed like the truth when I told them …
‘but if it were, i wouldn’t have been able to hide my true feelings … i couldn’t lie to them …
‘i suppose sometimes i’m a little bit afraid of myself …
‘i don’t know what’s happening … in a way, i can’t decide … and then whatever springs to mind at that moment … i end up doing whatever i feel like or want to do then … and there’s nothing that comes after … or even before … when i get to that point, i can’t assess anything … i feel like i’ll either disgrace myself or die … and i couldn’t care less … i do whatever i feel like doing then …
‘and i don’t think about anything at that moment … it’s dangerous … i suppose i get some kind of thrill out of it … i don’t know …
‘in an instant i want everything to change … to turn my life upside down … to go off the rails, off in an entirely new direction …
‘does any of this make sense? … it all seems empty …’
‘what you’re saying makes sense … i think i know the way it makes your head spin …
‘the power to take control of life and change it if only for a moment …
‘even if you have to pay a high price for it …’
‘i don’t think about that … i could pay with my life … my future … my career …
‘you asked me what i feel at that very moment … i think it’s superiority … i feel above the others … strange … but true …’
I think it was the next morning when she wrote those words again: ‘i love you.
‘whatever happens …
‘and you’re lucky … really … because it’s a beautiful feeling to be loved by me in this way … whenever i think of you, i smile … and i feel warm inside … i always want the best for you … i always pray for you …’
I suppose that over those days I had no sense of time, cordoned off from the real world. I didn’t know where I was, the time of day and what was happening around me, and I didn’t care. I only stayed at home with Zuhal, reading her words, answering, turning in a kaleidoscope of emotions.
I had lost myself in a dream, a virtual world, and one that made me happier than any other.
As she was working as an advisor to several different companies, she was actually quite busy, always had to ‘run’ somewhere, but generally she ran faster and further than she ever had to. I wrote to her about it.
‘yes, you’re right, i have a busy life … i was thinking about it this morning … i want to stop but I’m afraid … it seems as if everything else will stop with me if i do … it’s as if i won’t ever really think, feel excitement again … i know that’s ridiculous …’
Sometimes she carried on writing without having given me the beginning of her thought, like a child, no beginning and no end, sentences that dangled in mid-thought, of an unknown origin.
‘i want to be everything you aren’t … nothing you have already become …
‘to live in places you have never lived, to live lives you could never live … and i want you to think thoughts i cannot think, do things i cannot do, say things i cannot say …
‘where is all this coming from now? … i don’t know …
‘just something that popped up in my mind … so not something we should worry about as i suppose we’re already like that …’
But she went on describing this marriage she’d told her friends about.
‘it was a fun meal … i told them about you … really … i told them how clever and funny you are, and how much you know, and how you’re so kind and understanding with me … and how you make me so happy …
‘it gave me such pleasure to tell them all this …
‘they were all entranced by what i had to say … it was as if i was speaking to them of their own dreams … i was everything they were not and what they could never do (God forgive us, for i know that we will be punished for all of this and i am going to blame you and i am assuming that you will not deny the sins of your wife …)’
‘what did your friends feel when you told them all this?’
‘some of them were sad … slipped into bad moods … i don’t know why … maybe they were thinking of their own marriages … their hopes …. their dreams … the beginning of everything … maybe they were reliving something through me they felt they would never experience again, something far away for them … i really don’t know …
‘but they were far more confused in the end than they were at the beginning …
‘and so am i.’
‘and what did you think?’
‘i’m probably afraid to think about what i’m feeling … and sometimes of what I’m doing … until then it’s as if i’m not thinking, just living … i know that if i was doing all this alone i would go insane …
‘i like mixing fact and fiction, i prefer a dream reality, most of the time i feel that reality can only be tolerated with dreams, but this is too much …
‘this is how people get lost … it’s bewitching … in the past i could still make out reality and dream, even when i had mixed them up, but now i can’t … i don’t know if this should frighten me … madness is something like this …
‘have you ever experienced something like this? … can you understand all this? … tell me …’
In the morning she wrote to tell me that she wasn’t going to work.
‘i feel sick … and i don’t want to get out of bed.
‘i can’t understand why.
‘i probably should ask you this …
‘am i important to you?
‘because i realise that in this game i get all my strength from you … when you can’t play the role then i take over … or i don’t know … i’m just not sure …’
Then she dashed off a series of sentences that made me begin to tire of the dreams …
‘we have to decide if we’re going to live in reality or stay in the world of dreams … isn’t condemning one thing to the world of dreams the same as being a prisoner of your own dreams? …
‘maybe we need to understand that when we are close and touch each other it’s not actually what we want, we only make new dreams …
‘maybe reality is far more beautiful than dreams …
‘or we have trapped ourselves in dreams …
‘but this time it will be our own conscious choice …’
Reading those lines, I felt we’d grown so close that we now had to make that decision.
This mysterious ‘dream’ relationship had reached the point where it could not contain all our other dreams. It was ripening. It wanted to become real.
Then she asked me.
‘have you ever written about a real marriage?’
Once she had a dream about Mustafa. In the morning she told me about it.
‘i dreamt about him again … and so many other things i can’t remember … there was a bed right in the middle of the room … it must have been for me, and i was about to go to bed but i noticed bugs crawling all over the bed … one of them was a scorpion … then they disappeared while i was wondering how to get rid of them, but i still felt them in the room … i sat in an armchair with my feet tucked under me … i was exhausted …
‘he was just about to tell me something when i woke up … it was as if i didn’t want to hear what he had to say and i woke up … but i was curious … or maybe not …
‘that’s the call to prayer …’
Once again it was a sentence I couldn’t understand, a conversation with herself that I happened to overhear.
‘i don’t want to turn into someone else … i can’t do it … i’m not even trying … i think i only like the changes inside me …’
