Elif Shafak is one of Turkey’s most acclaimed and outspoken novelists

Ella 
NORTHAMPTON, MAY 20, 2008
Belly dancers and dervishes spun in Ella’s dream on the night her husband didn’t come home. 
Her head resting on the manuscript, she watched as rough-looking warriors dined at a roadside 
inn, their plates piled high with delicious pies and desserts. 
Then she saw herself. She was searching for someone in a bustling bazaar in a citadel in a 
foreign country. All around her, people moved slowly, as if dancing to a tune she couldn’t hear. 
She stopped a fat man with a drooping mustache to ask something, only she couldn’t remember 
the question. The man looked at her blankly and hobbled away. She tried to talk to several 
vendors and then shoppers, but no one responded to her. At first she thought it was because she 
couldn’t speak their language. Then she put her hand to her mouth and realized with horror that 
her tongue had been cut off. With increasing panic she looked around for a mirror to see her 
reflection and figure out if she was still the same person, but there was none in the bazaar. She 
started to cry and woke up to a disturbing sound, not knowing whether she still had a tongue. 
When Ella opened her eyes, she found Spirit frantically scratching at the back door. An animal 
had probably gotten onto the porch, driving the dog crazy. Skunks made him particularly 
nervous. The memory of his inopportune encounter with one last winter was still fresh. It had 
taken Ella weeks to remove that nasty odor from the dog, and even after she’d washed him in 
tubs of tomato juice, the smell lingered, reminiscent of burning rubber. 
Ella glanced at the clock on the wall. It was a quarter to three in the morning. David was still not 
back, and perhaps he never would be. Jeannette had not returned her call, and in her pessimistic 
state Ella doubted she ever would. Seized by the terror of being abandoned by her husband and 
daughter, she opened the fridge and looked through it for a few minutes. The desire to scoop out 
some cherry vanilla ice cream warred with the fear of gaining weight. With no small effort, she 
took a step away from the fridge and slammed the door, a bit more harshly than necessary. 
Then Ella opened a bottle of red wine and poured herself a glass. It was good wine, light and 
lively, with an underlying hint of bittersweetness that she liked. Only when she was filling the 
second glass did it occur to her she might have opened one of David’s expensive Bordeaux. She 
checked the label—Château Margaux 1996. Not knowing what to make of that, she frowned at 
the bottle. 

---

She was too tired and too sleepy to read anymore. So she decided to check her e-mail. There, 
among half a dozen junk e-mails and a message from Michelle inquiring about how the 
manuscript was going, she found an e-mail from Aziz Z. Zahara. 
Dear Ella (if I may),
Your e-mail found me in a village in Guatemala called Momostenango. It’s one of the few places 
left where they still use a Mayan calendar. Right across from my hostel, there is a wish tree 
bedecked with hundreds of pieces of fabric of every color and pattern you can imagine. They call 
it The Tree of the Brokenhearted. Those with broken hearts write down their names on pieces of 
paper and tie these to the branches, praying for their hearts to be healed.
I hope you won’t find this too presumptuous, but after reading your e-mail I went to the wish tree 
and prayed that you and your daughter solve this misunderstanding. Even a speck of love should 
not go unappreciated, because, as Rumi said, love is the water of life.
One thing that has helped me personally in the past was to stop interfering with the people 
around me and getting frustrated when I couldn’t change them. Instead of intrusion or passivity, 
may I suggest submission?
Some people make the mistake of confusing “submission” with “weakness,” whereas it is 
anything but. Submission is a form of peaceful acceptance of the terms of the universe, including 
the things we are currently unable to change or comprehend.
According to the Mayan calendar, today is an auspicious day. A major astrological shift is on its 
way, ushering in a new human consciousness. I need to hurry to send you this e-mail before the 
sun sets and the day is over.
May love find you when you least expect, where you least expect.
Yours sincerely,
Aziz
Ella shut off the laptop, moved to learn that a complete stranger in a remote corner of the world 
had prayed for her well-being. She closed her eyes and imagined her name written on a piece of 
paper tied to a wish tree, dangling like a kite in the air, free and happy. 
A few minutes later, she opened the kitchen door and stepped out into the backyard, enjoying the 
unsettling coolness of the breeze. Spirit stood beside her, uneasy and growling, constantly 
sniffing the air. The dog’s eyes grew small, then big and anxious, and his ears kept perking up, as 
if he had recognized in the distance something scary. Ella and her dog stood side by side under 
the late-spring moon, staring into the thick, vast darkness, similarly frightened of the things 
moving in the dark, frightened of the unknown.