Madonna in a Fur Coat

by Sabahattin Ali

He was, in the end, the sort of man who causes us to ask ourselves, “What does he live for? What does he find in life? What logic compels him to keep breathing? What philosophy drives him as he wanders the earth?” But we ask in vain if we fail to look beyond the surface — if we forget that beneath each surface lurks another realm, in which a caged mind whirls alone.

And they weren’t bad people at all. Rather, they had nothing, absolutely nothing, inside. All their impertinences came from that. It was the yawning void inside them that drove them to deride, scorn, and ridicule others, for this was their only source of satisfaction, their only way of knowing who they were.

If I have to do things that seem to me to be unnecessary and unsatisfying, I end up hating myself…But what I hate most is women always having to be passive…Why? Why are we always the ones running away and you are the ones chasing after us? Why is it always that we surrender and you take the spoils? Why is it that even in the way you beg, there is dominance, and pity in the way we refuse?