This paper uses that which might be called ‘blackness’ rather than ‘blackness’ as a concession that the exploring of this politic, rooted certainly in a proximity to some imagined darkness, must come before its naming. An examination of that which might be called ‘blackness’ in the Middle East is incomplete without a diligent engagement of the question of gender. This paper interrogates this question via an exploration of the figure of the Arap Baci/Kizi, or Arab Nurse/Arab House Girl. Though a faceless Arab Baci/Kizi can be located within Ottoman Turkish folkloric tradition, Arap Baci/Kizi takes physical shape within contemporary Turkish television—both film and commercial—as a fat man often wearing black body paint and always clad in a willowy wig and headscarf playing the part of the domestic servant. That Arap Baci/Kizi [loosely] translates to Arab Nurse/Arab House Girl but is consistently played by an oft black body painted, wig-wearing fat man necessarily signifies an inextricable relationship between gender, desirability, labor and that which might be called ‘blackness’ present within the Turkish imagination. This paper offers a close reading of the Arap Baci/Kizi of a 2015 Turkish television show known as Zeyrek ?le Çeyrek along with the Arap Baci/Kizi of a contemporary Turkish cleaning supply commercial to bring presence to the nuanced orientations to gender and that which might be called ‘blackness’ present within the Turkish imagination. Through its analysis of these visual texts, it argues that the deployment of Arap Baci/Kizi within Turkish popular culture parallels the greater framework of power through which Turkish subjects are produced. Ultimately this paper illuminates a Turkish cartography wherein corporeal proximity to an imagined darkness renders subjects legible only as grotesque caricatures. This project, by closely examining the distinct contemporary resonances of the figure of the Arap Baci/Kizi within Turkish popular culture sheds new light on the confluence of color, gender, and the corporeal within Ottoman studies.