“Because I am a martyr.”
The police chief sat up straight in his crisp, form-fitting uniform, leaned forward, and said, “You are no martyr. You are a fanatic. And a murderer. And for that you will probably pay with your life. There are no public hangings because we are a civilized society. You will appear in court before a judge who will decide your sentence.”
The mullah cleared his throat and asked to speak to the police chief in private. His followers and the young man quietly filed out. He took out his worry beads and leaned into the desk and started flicking them as he said, “It is a busy season for you. I imagine with everything that is transpiring in the capital, it must be a great deal of pressure.”
“It is a part of the job. I am certain that things will calm down soon enough.”
“Of course. But certainly, you must feel that this is something quite different, no?”
“Haj-Agha, we have been around long enough to have seen it all, uprisings, revolts, usurpations, coups. We are prepared for it all.”
“Sometimes a small stone can cripple a giant.”
“Not if you have a tank.”
The mullah studied the picture of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi that hung above the police chief’s head, next to a framed flag—the lion at the center holding a sword, the sun behind it. He looked at the monarch and at the lion for some time, a grin forming as he said, “Let me tell you a story. A true story. It happened sometime before you and I were born, in this very town, not a stone’s throw from here.”
The Naishapur Zoo had two employees, the zookeeper, a man in his seventies, and his assistant, a man in his eighties. The only animal of note in the zoo was a ten-year-old Panthera leo persica. Ousted from his pride by three lionesses that had caught him trying to eat one of their cubs, he had grown up as a starving runt. For several years he attempted to get back into the pride’s fold but his own father, the leader, could not forgive such cowardly behavior. The lion became a nomad wandering the sand dunes of Naishapur striking fear into the hearts of the town’s inhabitants. At sunset, he often attacked the local livestock, taking a sheep here and there, but was forced back into the dunes by torch-wielding farmers.
One day, the lion walked into the home of a shepherd who had unwittingly left the door open. The lion ate a small block of opium sitting on the kitchen table and passed out on the floor. The shepherd came home that afternoon and saw a lion passed out on his kitchen floor and his opium gone. He looked to the sky and said, “Allahu Akbar.”
With the help of his farmhand, the shepherd managed to roll the lion onto a carpet and dragged him to the barn, where he set upon building a cage. Once he was done, his barn became the zoo, the shepherd became the zookeeper, and the farmhand became his faithful assistant.
It was a flush time for the zookeeper. Many of the townspeople and even some from other towns made the pilgrimage to see the lion that God had sent to Naishapur—now named Assad’Ullah, or “Lion of God.” The spectators sat and watched the beast pace back and forth, occasionally roaring at them. Children hid behind their mothers’ chadors and men tried to stare him down through the bars of the cage. The faithful assistant fed him and cleaned his cage. After a few terrifying and slightly bloody experiences, he learned that a small pinch of opium came in handy whenever the lion became aggressive.
The fanfare had soon died down. The lion had become old and decrepit from age, addiction, and confinement. He now spent most of his days lying in the corner of his cage twitching away fleas and batting at them with his tail. During feedings, he chewed listlessly on hunks of ass meat and defecated.
The zookeeper sat next to the cage, leaning his head on a bar. He looked at the animal and let out a sigh and said, “Ay, Assad’Ullah, how age has dethroned us from our glorious reign.”
The faithful assistant sat near him and looked down at the scars on his hands as he listened to the mournful monologue to the lion.
“In our days of youth and vigor, how we struck fear into the hearts of men and life into the loins of women. How with one turning of the head, our bidding was done and our will imposed. Now we are but a shell of ourselves, a shadow of our desires, shackled to our carcass. You are the king of kings, they say. You are the master of your dominion. And yet, there you were that cold cloudy day, lying in a pool of your own saliva at my feet. Ay, roozeh gar!”
This expression of lament and loss was the faithful assistant’s cue to go prepare tea while the zookeeper softly wept and hummed a tune. For his part, the lion began to audibly snore.
As they drank their tea, the zookeeper looked off to nowhere with squinted eyes. “We need to do something to bring some life back to this place,” he said, blowing on his tea.
“Perhaps we can capture some bulbuls and nightingales and sparrows, sir?” said his assistant. “I have seen such colorful birds on the orchard row. They would surely attract a crowd.”
“Birds? You want to go from a lion to birds? No. No. No. We need an event. Something exciting that will attract the townspeople again.”
“But, sir, remember the last time we had such an event?”
“Ah, yes, the Bee Wars. What a great success that was.”
“I was in the hospital for two weeks.”
“But a hero for life! Do not fear, my courageous friend. I will think of something even better than a few pesky bees.”
“God help me,” the assistant muttered under his breath.
Harnessed, mounted, packed, and drafted is how many men spend their lives, as do many animals like the ass. The ass is not admired or worshipped like his cousin the horse. Nor does he proudly gallop into battles. He doesn’t run through open meadows and go to sleep at night brushed by groomers. The ass is ridiculed, castrated, and worked day and night. And so he does not spook easily, for he has seen the worst of men already.
In town, there was an old man who owned an equally old ass. The animal was decrepit and had served its purpose. And when the zookeeper offered to buy the animal for a spectacle he called “The War of the Lion and the Ass,” the old man agreed. It took an entire day and many sugar cubes to get the ass to walk into the zoo. For a week, the faithful assistant watered and fed him in preparation for the battle. To his surprise, he became quite fond of the animal. He named him Shapur. Naming an animal that close to death was a mistake, he knew. Still, he spent his evenings in the barn speaking to the ass, sharing with him all his tales of wounds and woes.
Each night, he pointed to a scar on his body, and then told Shapur the tale of how the scar came to be. Most of the scars had been inflicted by Assad’Ullah. Shapur seemed unimpressed. “Shapur-jan, for all of my life I have lived in servitude,” said the assistant. “And yet I still hope. Is this not the worst of all things?”
He pointed to his hand and continued, “Do you see this one? It was given to me by Assad’Ullah the first time I handed him meat. My friend, we are both burdened with thankless work.”
He unbuttoned his shirt and revealed the scars on his chest from the Bee Wars, the last spectacle the zookeeper had organized, once the fervor over the lion had died down. The zookeeper had been convinced that if his faithful assistant split open a beehive with a sword, the bees would be too stunned to notice him grabbing the honeycomb. Such an act would impress the crowd of expectant spectators, each of whom had bought a ticket for three tomans.
He ordered his assistant to don a chain-mail vest and helmet like those of Ta’ziyeh performers.
“This shall be your finest moment, my friend,” he said. “I envy you this brave task.”
“Then why don’t you do it, sir? I hate to rob you of this triumph.”
“Oh, no, no, no. I need to set the scene. If it were not so, I should be honored to do it. But, alas, I must defer this great endeavor to you and take the secondary role of the narrator.”
The faithful assistant was a whisper of a man. His helmet covered his eyes, and the chain-mail vest dragged him lower and lower, toward the ground. “From the nest of the devil
comes the sweetest nectar known to man,” the zookeeper said to the crowd. “Today, before your very eyes, this brave man, with the grace of God and Imam Ali’s beloved sword, Zolfaghar, will take from the devil that which belongs to man.”
The zookeeper picked up his daf drum and began to pound out a rhythm. This was the faithful assistant’s cue to run at the hive, whack his sword through the center, and grab the honeycomb.
The faithful assistant took a deep breath, muttered a faint Bism’Allah, and with half-closed eyes charged. The hive split in half and the honeycomb crashed to the ground. He bent over to pick it up and that was the last thing he remembered.
Several days later, he awoke in the hospital with a chest so swollen that he could not see his own feet. The zookeeper sat beside him, weeping, and said, “Oh, my dear friend. How I prayed that you would awake. I have never in my life seen such bravery. You are a man among men.”
The faithful assistant had no memory of what occurred. But he later heard some whispers around town about how the bees had mistaken the hexagonal shapes of his chain mail for the comb of the beehive and had furiously tried to enter their home, blocked at every turn by his body.
To this day, his chest was covered in scars. “And yet, I still hope,” he whispered to Shapur.
News of “The War of the Lion and the Ass” reached as far as Mash’had. At least two hundred were expected. The morning of the performance, the zookeeper ran from one end of the barn to the other, screaming instructions to his faithful assistant, busy outfitting the ass with a lushly woven saddle blanket.
“What are you doing?” said the zookeeper. “I don’t think Assad’Ullah plans on riding your precious animal. Where is your costume? Why haven’t you put on your chain-mail vest yet? Where is my drum? Have you seen it? Make sure there are enough pillows in the front row for the children.”
As the zookeeper ran around in circles, the faithful assistant slowly set up the barn for the event. He put on his chain-mail vest and removed the saddle blanket, whispering in the ass’s ear, “You are in God’s hands now, my friend. May he show you more mercy than he has shown me.”
The crowds in the square swelled. Whispers floated from group to group. Some believed the ass would be killed instantaneously; others believed that he would put up a fight. A few clandestine bets were placed, the money collected by a young boy who wove through the crowd. A group of old men in the back of the crowd argued the ethics of having such a spectacle, shaking their heads and lamenting the ass’s fate.
The zookeeper had hired a few local boys to stand at the entrance and collect fees from the crowd. In exchange they were given free admission. He gathered them in a huddle and warned them, “Be courteous to all of my paying customers.”
Then he pulled down the bottom rim of his left eye with his finger, showing the pink underside of his eye to each of them. “I will be watching you,” he continued, “and counting heads once everyone is inside, so I will know if a single coin is missing.”
The crowd was making its way to the zoo from the square. Families traveled in packs down the road as the young boys weaved through, taking final bets. A jangle of voices, shuffling, and laughter could be heard as they neared the barn.
At the zookeeper’s behest, the faithful assistant covered Assad’Ullah’s cage with a large blanket, the better to dramatize the showdown of the two animals in the cage once the blanket was removed. In the meantime, he stationed the ass by the cage and pitched him a fresh bale of hay. Shapur stood there staring at him, refusing to eat. The old man’s eyes welled up. “Please don’t look at me like that,” he said. “I am a sensitive man.”
As he wiped the tears from his face, he took his place on the other side of the cage and awaited the start of the bloody spectacle.
The townspeople shuffled in and took their places, the children rushing for the front seat cushions, a few dragged into the back of the barn by their mothers. Some of the young men climbed into the hayloft and looked down on the scene with their legs dangling.
Applause erupted as the zookeeper walked out in front of the cage, beating on his daf. He looked at the audience. He stood in total silence. The applause came to a halt and, for a moment, all that could be heard was Assad’Ullah’s snoring. A wave of giggles rippled through the audience. The zookeeper looked to the faithful assistant. The assistant happily poked the lion with a rake through the back bars of the cage. The animal growled, hushing the crowd once more. “From the plains of Abadan comes a beast so terrifying that women faint at the sight,” announced the zookeeper. “Men shrivel with fear. And children cry at its snarl.”
The audience was transfixed by the old man’s thunderous voice.
“The king of the jungle. The King of Kings.”
The audience let out a collective “ah.”
Looking to the ass that stood in front of his untouched bale of hay, the zookeeper continued, “And here is Job. God’s beast of burden. Put upon, ridiculed, sacrificed.”
The audience let out a collective “oh” and the faithful assistant put his hand over his mouth to muffle his weeping.
The zookeeper ended his monologue with “Ladies and gentlemen, brace yourself for the iron hand of the oppressor as he preys on the weak. It is Nature’s law. Only God can reward the weak in the afterlife. In this one, we are all doomed.”
He began to pound on his daf and backed away from the cage, nodding to the faithful assistant to lead the ass inside.
The assistant felt his heart pounding through his scarred chest as he walked over to Shapur, took him by the lanyard around his neck, and walked him to the back of the cage, undoing the latch. Just before he took off the lanyard and ushered the animal into Assad’Ullah’s den, he caressed the back of his ears, looked into his eyes and smiled, and said, “And yet, I still hope.”
Then he closed the latch and yanked the blanket off the cage.
An eerie hush descended over the barn at the sight: a lion stirring awake on one side of the cage, an ass standing motionless and slightly bewildered on the other. The lion began pacing in figure eights, his hackles up, gauging the animal in his territory. A low rumble rose from his diaphragm. He grimaced at the scent of prey. The ass slowly turned his back to the lion and stood motionless. The crowd held its breath.
Without warning the lion lunged at the ass, roaring—just as the ass leaned onto his front haunches and kicked using his back legs with all of his might, sending the lion flying back to his side of the cage. The lion slammed into the bars, rattling the whole structure and landing with a thud. The crowd dropped its mouth collectively. The zookeeper ran to the lion and stuck his hand between the bars of the cage to touch his head. The beast let out a soft purr and then his eyes went blank. His head dropped. He was no longer there.
Someone in the crowd yelled out, “The lion is dead! Long live the ass!”
Outside the barn, the wind had pushed fallen leaves into a whirling frenzy. This was the only sound besides the chants of the crowd. Long live the ass! Long live the ass! Zendeh-baud Khar!
The doors of the cage were thrown open. The ass came trotting out with the crowd following behind, cheering and clapping as they marched out of the barn chanting, “Long live the ass! Long live the ass! Zendeh-baud Khar!”
The zookeeper sat on the ground beside the cage, holding his head in his hands. There was no one left inside the barn save the faithful assistant who stood behind him with his hand on his shoulder. The solemnity of his voice undercut by the grin on his face, he said, “Perhaps a cup of tea, sir?”
PARIS
III
Shazdehpoor stood behind a news kiosk and watched his friend Trianant across the street at the café. “The War of the Lion and the Ass” had been the first story Shazdehpoor had ever told him, at the exact same table where Trianant now sat. His friend had been so taken with it, he had wanted to know what had happened to the zookeeper and the faithful assistant.
“Well,” Shazdehpoor said. “They did get some birds, but t
he faithful assistant lost his eye in the Hawk Wars a few years later.”
Today, Shazdehpoor was more than an hour late for lunch. Trianant had already eaten and was paying his check. As Shazdehpoor watched Trianant leave, he almost waved. He did not like worrying his friend, but what could he say that would excuse his tardiness and appearance. Besides, he was exhausted. He had no words to explain that at all.
Thirty years ago, they had met when Shazdehpoor first arrived in Paris. Trianant had been his waiter. Shazdehpoor’s French was still spotty then and he had tried, in vain, to order a well-done hamburger but was given a rare steak frites. Out of propriety, he ate the bloody meat down to the last morsel, controlling his gag reflex as best he could. He had never eaten meat that wasn’t thoroughly cooked or cut into tiny portions. He even asked for a wedge of lemon for his sparkling water and used it on the steak, hoping the acid would break down some of the flesh. It did not. It only made it tangy.
Over time, Shazdehpoor took to the romance language—easily adopting the guttural “r” sound. But pronouns proved to be a bit of a challenge, because there were no such gender distinctions as “him” or “her” in the Persian language. He relished telling Trianant just how many words from French had worked their way into the Persian language, such as merci, toilettes, ascenseur, ananas, chauffage, compote, décolleté, and faux col, and how whole phrases such as “qui est?” were phonetically identical.
Trianant, for his part, liked to talk about unions, strikes, and why mandatory tipping was the only way a Frenchman could serve people. Ever since his retirement, he had invited Shazdehpoor for a weekly lunch, a ritual that Shazdehpoor endured if only to get to the pastries, each delicate hollow center filled with cream or custard, drizzled with chocolate or powdered sugar. Choux were a miracle.
To Keep the Sun Alive Page 9