A Migrating Bird: A Short Story from the collection, Reader, I Married Him. Elif Shafak
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A Migrating Bird
Elif Shafak
Published by The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Foreword © Tracy Chevalier 2016
A Migrating Bird © Elif Shafak 2016
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
Cover design by Heike Schüssler © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Jacket photograph © Dan Saelinger/Trunk Archive
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This story is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical events and figures, are the works of the authors’ imaginations.
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Source ISBN: 9780008150594
Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008173418
Version: 2016-05-10
Contents
A Migrating Bird – Elif Shafak
Why is Charlotte Brontë’s “Reader, I married him” one of the most famous lines in literature? Why do we remember it and quote it so much?
Jane Eyre is “poor, obscure, plain, and little”, with no family and no prospects; the embodiment of the underdog who ultimately triumphs. And “Reader, I married him” is Jane’s defiant conclusion to her rollercoaster story. It is not, “Reader, he married me” – as you would expect in a Victorian society where women were supposed to be passive; or even, “Reader, we married.” Instead Jane asserts herself; she is the driving force of her narrative, and it is she who chooses to be with Rochester. Her self-determination is not only very appealing; it also serves to undercut the potential over-sweetness of a classic happy ending where the heroine gets her man. The mouse roars, and we pump our fist with her.
Twenty-one writers, then, have taken up this line and written what it has urged them to write. I liken it to a stone thrown into a pond, with its resulting ripples. Always, always in these stories there is love – whether it is the first spark or the last dying embers – in its many heart-breaking, life-affirming forms.
All of these stories have their own memorable lines, their own truths, their own happy or wry or devastating endings, but each is one of the ripples that finds its centre in Jane and Charlotte’s decisive clarion call: Reader, I married him.
Tracy Chevalier
WINTER, IN THIS FORSAKEN town, carries itself like a sultan, ceremonious and controlled, sending emissaries of howling winds and messengers of thunderstorms weeks before to let everyone know that it will be arriving soon. Not this year, though. This time winter descends in a day, if not in a couple of hours, as if determined to catch us unawares. Early in the morning we wake up to a piercing chill, and by midday entire streets are canopied by a white mantle. In the afternoon, the snow, no longer falling in soft flakes, comes down in thick flurries. Those of us who have been able to get to the university now realise we are trapped on campus until the roads are opened again.
My feet crunching in the snow, my boots as heavy as the sand buckets used for fire protection, I make my way to the canteen frequented by students, staff and assistants. I am surprised to find it filled to capacity. It seems as if everyone thinks this will be the best location to wait in until the weather calms down.
There, at a corner table, I see a stranger occupying my usual seat, invading my space, surrounded by my friends. The first thing I notice about him is his hair – wavy and brittle, a blond so pale that, in the anaemic light from the window, it appears almost silver. Amidst people who all have skin and hair of different shades of brown, he looks like a drawing in a colouring book that a child has forgotten to fill in.
As I approach the group, the stranger leans over a notebook and says something that I cannot catch over the noise. My friends clap and laugh. By the time I reach them, the laughter subsides, though their faces are still beaming.
“Ayla, come and join us. We have a visitor; he is learning Turkish!” says Yasemin, whom I have known since first grade.
Why an outsider would move to a place everyone is trying to get away from is a mystery to me. Well, maybe not everybody is eager to leave. I certainly am. Ours is not a fabulous university. Not even the dean cares to pretend otherwise. I cannot help but suspect that while I am wasting time here, my real life awaits elsewhere.
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