( for i am the first and the last. i am the honored one and the scorned one. i am the whore and the holy one. i am the wife and the virgin. i am the mother and the daughter. i am the members of my mother. i am the barren one and many are her sons. i am she whose wedding is great, and i have not taken a husband. i am the midwife and she who does not bear. i am the solace of my labor pains. i am the bride and the bridegroom, and it is my husband who begot me. i am the mother of my father and the sister of my husband and he is my offspring. i am the slave of him who prepared me. i am the ruler of my offspring. but he is the one who begot me before the time on a birthday. and he is my offspring in due time, and my power is from him. i am the staff of his power in his youth, and he is the rod of my old age. and whatever he wills happens to me. i am the silence that is incomprehensible and the idea whose remembrance is frequent. i am the voice whose sound is manifold and the word whose appearance is multiple. i am the utterance of my name. )

Every mind is a house. ( ... )

Hasibe has a lot of names - 'Angelique,' sometimes, or just 'Angel,' when she's onscreen, and once it was 'Delilah,' and once upon a time there had been a woman who called her 'Ümit' even when no one else would; she is, of course, also called Hasi most often, and the name is simple, sibilant. It suits her. ( ... )

When Hasibe finally goes home, for good this time, she is greeted by the old silence of her building's interior and the soft swish of cars outside rushing around, going places in all likelihood less artlessly beautiful than the delicately post-Bohemian playground she has created for herself; she hopes they're fuller, though. ( ... )