To Keep the Sun Alive

by Rabeah Ghaffari

  From then on, he continued to listen to the patients who came and filled their prescriptions, but with each dose of medicine, he also gave them a poem. He grew in reputation and status. His shop was always filled with people. You could hear his work read aloud on the streets, performed by storytellers in the coffee shops, sung by dervishes on the roadside. And yet he never left his shop.

  One day an army from the Far East swept into the old city at twilight. By dawn the whole town had been decimated. The general of this army broke down the apothecary’s door and took him hostage. The general kept him locked up in a local caravansary, staring at him as his dragoman translated, “You are worth a great deal to this town. This is why I have not killed you like all the others. Who are you?”

  The apothecary looked up at the towering general and said, “I am an apothecary.”

  “That is all?”

  “Nothing more.”

  “Then why has a local merchant offered one thousand silver pieces for your life?”

  The apothecary thought it over for a bit, then finally said, “My worth is not measured in silver.”

  The general conferred with his henchmen and came to the conclusion that the apothecary must be worth far more. He sent the merchant with his silver away. “Now,” he turned to the apothecary, “we will wait for the gold.”

  A local shepherd stood at the entrance of the tent asking to see the general. He was given admission and entered holding a bushel of wheat. He bowed before the apothecary and the general and said, “Sir, I have come to trade this man’s life for all that I have.”

  He placed the bushel of wheat at the general’s feet. The general’s face burned red with rage as he kicked it away and shouted, “Is this some kind of mockery?”

  “No, sir. It is all I have left. You have burned down my home and fields. You have killed all of my livestock and every member of my family. All I have left is this bushel of wheat and I want to give it to you for this man’s life.”

  The apothecary looked at the general and said, “This is the measure of my worth.”

  The general flew into a rage and kicked the shepherd and his bushel of wheat out of the tent. He turned to the apothecary, lifting him by his collar out of his seat, bringing his face so close that his breath moved the man’s lashes as he said, “You mock me? I have killed thousands for less. And now I will certainly kill you.”

  The apothecary calmly said, “You can rampage across this land, kill every man, woman, and child, tear down every man-made structure and scorch the ground within its borders, but you will never kill me. You can hack my body into a thousand pieces, burn my remains, and bury the ashes deep beneath the earth—but I will live on.”

  “Who are you?” the general asked again.

  “I am a story. You cannot destroy what you cannot grasp.”

  Madjid and Akbar-Agha had reached the Shazdehpoor house. Madjid was so moved by the apothecary’s story that for a moment he forgot all that happened to him. He turned to Akbar-Agha with the same old enthusiasm he always had for his great-uncle’s tales and asked, “And what happened to the apothecary?”

  “The general stepped back, drew his sword from the scabbard, and cut off his head.”

  Madjid looked at the ground. “But the general was still the one who lost.”

  “Yes.”

  “The apothecary was Attar.”

  “He was.”

  “Come, you lost atoms, to your centre draw,” said Madjid, reciting the final stanza of The Conference of the Birds. Akbar-Agha joined in and together they finished the last lines, “And be the eternal mirror that you saw: / Rays that have wander’d into darkness wide return, / And back into your sun subside.”

  Akbar-Agha watched the changed expression of the young man. It pained him to break up this moment but he had no choice. “Madjid,” he said. “I think it is best if you leave.”

  “For good?” said Madjid.

  “For now.”

  “Where would I go?”

  “I will help you get across the border to Turkey. From there you will apply for political asylum in France. I have a colleague there who will help you. I can give you enough money to get you started but you will have to find work and get yourself into school on your own. If things change, you can come back.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “You make a life for yourself.”

  “Not without Nasreen.”

  “Let us worry first about getting you out.”

  Madjid nodded in silence, his eyes full of tears. “You were right. You tried to warn me.”

  “I was wrong, Madjid. This is your time. And people like my brother and I have stolen it from you.”

  “You didn’t do anything, Akbar-Agha.”

  “Exactly. I did nothing. And that is just as bad.”

  Madjid kept his head down and took in Akbar-Agha’s words. He motioned to the house and said, “Akbar-Agha, please come in for tea.”

  “No, no. You go see your father and get some rest.”

  “Thank you for getting me home.”

  Akbar-Agha embraced the young man and said, “Whatever they did to you diminished them. Not you.”

  All the lights were off in the Shazdehpoor house except for those in his father’s study. He walked through the door and saw his father slumped in his club chair. Shazdehpoor winced at the sight of his boy’s face—now gaunt and aged, with the faint remnant of a scar on his forehead. He walked over to his son and put his head on his chest and wept. “Don’t worry, Father,” said Madjid. “I’m all right.”

  Madjid helped his father back into his club chair, then sat on the divan to face him. On the radio, the BBC commentator announced that a full solar eclipse would take place the next day and described where its path of totality would be visible. His father said, “Every thirty-three years the solar and lunar calendars overlap.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “This will be the first time in your life that you will see the moon eclipse the sun.”

  Madjid knew what his father meant. His town had been overrun by morality police like the ones who had dragged him off to prison in the capital.

  He stood up from the divan and said, “I’m tired, Father. I think I’ll go to bed.”

  “Do you need anything? Food? Tea?”

  “No, Father. Just sleep.”

  It felt odd to be in his room. Each night that Madjid had lain on the cold floor of the prison, he had dreamt of nothing else but to be back in his room again. Yet now that he was back, all he felt was the claustrophobia of confinement. He slipped out the window and walked onto the open road and let the warm spring evening wash over him.

  Tomorrow was Ashura, the holiest day for Shi’ite Muslims, the day that marked the death of Imam Hussein and his family. But because of the overlap of the solar and lunar calendars tomorrow was also Chaharshambeh Suri, a fire-jumping ritual of Zoroastrian origin that had become a part of the Iranian culture, which always took place on the last Wednesday before the New Year. One ritual was a religious lamentation, the other a cultural celebration.

  Madjid remembered the last time he jumped the fire during Chaharshambeh Suri. His mother was still alive, though she already showed signs of the illness that would take her life. She sat and watched him jump over the fire again and again, chanting the purification rite, “My yellow is yours, your red is mine.” That particular year Madjid had prayed to the fire, lit every year to keep the sun alive, to take the sickly pallor from his mother’s face.

  Madjid also remembered the last time he attended an Ashura ritual. It was after his mother’s death. He sat among the men in the crowd watching the Ta’ziyeh play. He wept for his loss. He joined the procession of self-flagellating men and whipped himself with borrowed chains, until his back was bloody, his mind exhausted and free of grief.

  Now he headed to Nasreen’s house. He walked quietly through the garden and stood behind the willow tree in front of the tailor shop, staring at his beloved sitting at her table
by the window, weaving—an act that now seemed frivolous to him. He could see that she had pinned her hair up and stained her lips red, expectantly looking up into the darkness outside, waiting. But he felt so far from her now. She seemed almost like a painting or a photograph.

  For one brief moment he almost stepped out from behind the willow tree, but the thought of speaking to her about what he had been through seemed impossible. He turned and walked out of the garden. He needed to be alone. Past the city wall, the moonlight reflected off the sand dunes like a shadow of the sun to come. The emptiness of the land, the vastness, was at once both peaceful and painful. He sat on a mound and listened to his breath against the wind.

  A life with Nasreen, full of small fleeting pleasures but confined inside the walls of the orchard, now seemed absurd. The last words of the interrogator rang in his head: “I will watch every single move you make, and if you step, if you even think of stepping out of line, I will destroy you.” A life with Nasreen somewhere out in the world, in a foreign land, free but lost now seemed pitiable.

  The next morning, classical music blasted from his father’s radio. The first fight Madjid had ever had with his father was over music. It was during their sequester in the house, after his mother’s death. Madjid had sat in the salon listening with his father to string quartet after string quartet. He turned to his father and asked, “Why don’t you ever listen to Persian music?”

  “I like the complex melodies and thoughtful compositions of Bach and Beethoven and the other Germans,” said his father. “Persian music has too much improvisation.”

  “But those complexities and compositions exist in Persian music as well.”

  “It’s a matter of taste, I suppose.”

  Madjid had looked at his father for some time and studied his face, his dress, his salon, before he said, “You don’t like where you come from.”

  “That’s not true at all.”

  “You hate to sit on the ground. You hate our food, our music, our décor, our traditions. You are like an exile in your own country.”

  Shazdehpoor had stormed out of the salon. They’d never spoken about it again.

  Madjid now understood something he did not then. He understood why his father surrounded himself with the finery of a foreign country. It was light and capricious, weightless and inconsequential. It was everything this place was not.

  Madjid opened the door to his room and, to his surprise, found Nasreen. She was draped in a black chador, holding one of his shirts. She did not look at him nor did she move. “Four years ago, I was sitting on this bed, holding one of your shirts. I didn’t know who you were at the time. I was young and impulsive. I must confess something,” she said. “I looked through your notebook.” Only then did Nasreen look up, her face visibly shocked by the changes in his own. He leaned on his desk with his arms crossed. She moved her mouth a few times as if to speak before words arrived, then said, “I wanted to know you.”

  She turned her gaze to the window, the light hitting her face. She had been crying. Her eyes were red and swollen. “I saw you standing by my willow tree last night, looking at me. Why didn’t you come to me?”

  “I didn’t know what to say.”

  “You didn’t have to say anything.”

  She stood, the shirt still in her hands, and walked over to him, the chador falling to the floor. She kissed the faint scar over his eye. He kept his arms crossed but pressed his lips against her forehead. In the three weeks that he had been gone, Nasreen had watched the world around her change as people took sides. Friends she had had for years suddenly stopped speaking to her. She had seen a group of militant boys throw acid in the face of a girl who had dared to walk the streets uncovered. She had watched as a group of militant girls held down their friend and wiped the lipstick off her mouth with a napkin that had a razor hidden inside, the blood turning the girl’s pink lips red. “I’m so afraid,” she said. She looked up at him. “Jamsheed is one of them now.” She shook her head. “There’s nothing you can do to change it. They are killing people like animals. Please. Let’s get away. We can start a new life together. I’ll go anywhere with you. Anywhere. Please.”

  She buried her head in his neck and softly wept. He put his arms around her and tried to console her, his mind racing. “We will,” he said. “I promise.”

  He walked Nasreen to the front door and kissed her on the lips. She stepped outside then turned to face him. Not that long ago, they had walked arm in arm through the streets of Shiraz during the festival, her hair falling on her shoulders, her laugher matching his. Now she was dressed in a chador, separate from him. As she walked away, the black fabric rippled behind her. The wind carried the jasmine scent of her perfume.

  Madjid looked around his room at the clutter of books and papers. One by one, he removed the photographs from the mirror above his desk, crumpling them up and throwing them in the wastepaper basket until there was nothing left in the frame but his own reflection. His notebook was buried beneath a stack of old magazines on the top shelf of his bookcase. He had not looked at it since writing its last page. He leafed through its pages, skimming the letters to his mother, anguish rising in his chest as he looked at her photograph. A few entries later, he smiled at his doodles and drawings, his lofty and heartfelt proclamations, quiet details of a life he had lived, thus far, as consciously as he could manage, realizing as he read that there was still so much beyond his comprehension. And then he came upon the jagged image that took up an entire page. He stopped to look at the thick black parentheses, the red gash and thin black stitching. He remembered drawing it, and, even more, the day he had seen it.

  That day, Madjid was still too small to see over his brother. He had stood on his toes behind Jamsheed’s shoulder, peeking into his father’s salon. “Stop breathing on me!” said Jamsheed, who then nudged him, almost knocking him off his feet.

  “Well?” said Jamsheed. “Go in.”

  “No, no way,” Madjid said. “You go.”

  “It’s time for you to do it,” Jamsheed said as he stepped aside.

  Madjid just stood there, on the threshold. A bowl full of loose change sat on a rococo carved table beside his father’s club chair. The tomans were all round nickels engraved on one side with the lion at the center holding a sword, the sun behind it, and on the other, with the profile of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

  His older brother was against the arched door frame, arms crossed, his right leg kicked over his left. At fifteen, Jamsheed still towered over his younger brother in more ways than one.

  “He’ll know,” Madjid said. “It’s not right. We’ll get into a lot of trouble.”

  “He won’t know. I’ve watched him throw his change in that bowl from his pockets and he never counts it.” Jamsheed leaned forward, holding his cocky position. “Now, if you’re afraid to do it, I’d be happy to.”

  “I’m not afraid! It’s just . . . it’s just not right.”

  “Fine, I’ll do it,” Jamsheed said as he stepped inside.

  But Madjid grabbed his arm.

  “No. I will,” he said, walking slowly toward the bowl. He turned back. “How much do we need?”

  Jamsheed smiled and held up four fingers. Madjid carefully removed the coins, trying not to move or disturb those around them. “Let’s go,” he said, with a newfound swagger in his step.

  Jamsheed saluted him. “Whatever you say, sir!”

  The two brothers took the dirt road past the sand dunes. Madjid walked at a brisk pace, jangling the coins in his pocket. He wanted to feel good about what they were doing. He had been thinking of nothing else for weeks, ever since the night his brother had suggested the plan. Stealing money from his father to do something that he could never tell a soul about made him feel vile but he had been determined to do it anyway. Besides, there was no way out now, he assured himself.

  They reached the edge of the dunes where a few boys still milled about. For a brief moment Madjid thought of running home, but Jamsheed took the le
ad, walking straight to the group. He greeted the boys with a nod, then ushered Madjid ahead. “You first.”

  Madjid looked at him for a few moments, saying nothing, the only sound that of the coins in his pocket.

  “Give me two tomans,” said Jamsheed. “You only need two for yourself.”

  Madjid handed half the money to his brother, then slowly walked into the cool, dark cave. The sound of the boys’ whistles and cajoling soon faded. His eyes became acclimated to the lack of light, only a faint kerosene lamp. Behind it the shadow of a woman lay splayed against the wall like an ancient cave painting. He stood motionless, staring at the shadow, afraid to look at the actual person. She was small, marginally plump. She stood with her back against the wall and her legs slightly open. She wore a dusty black chador that brushed against her shins. “Come closer,” she said. “You can’t see from there.”

  The guttural depth of her voice surprised him. He inched his way closer but could not make out her face. Her head was against the wall, out of sight. She pointed to a woven basket a few feet away from her and commanded him, “Put the money there.”

  He obliged.

  “Come, boy,” she said, “I don’t have all day.”

  She pointed to a spot on the ground directly in front of her legs. He walked over and sat, cross-legged. But he looked down at the ground.

  “Up, boy,” she said. “Look up.” She opened her chador. She was naked beneath it. He stared at her breasts. They were engorged, terribly large, as though about to burst from her skin. His eyes moved down. Her belly was round and slightly swollen. She spread her legs wide open. He leaned in a little. The shape was an abstraction to him, four parentheses surrounding a dark opening. At the bottom, where the parentheses met, were fresh stitches, with dried, glistening blood surrounding the wound. He looked at her, trying to make out the face behind the veil, and asked, “Are you hurt?”