Note the new ticket prices for the following routes. Provide exact change. Use your commuter card. Keep the bus clean. Women lose themselves in their phones or in small talk. Ticket prices for private buses have been raised by the same people running public buses. People prefer public buses; they are much cheaper, but there’s a limited number of them. People have to take buses. People cannot afford to take cabs. People cannot sit in cabs stuck for hours in traffic. People do not have access to metro lines for every destination. People should stop using their cars. People cannot … People do not … People should not … People could … People should … It is six in the evening. This is a private bus. She has heard enough complaints for the day.
She adjusts the earphones in her ears under her scarf and turns the music up to block out the voices of the people and the public radio. The light turns green. Traffic moves forward. Little by little. At the fifth stop, the woman walks in and pushes her way through the crowd that jams the aisle between the seats, pulling behind her a girl who tries to keep pace. The woman and the girl find a spot to stand, squeezed in between the other fatigued passengers a few steps to the right of her seat. The next time the doors of the bus open and close, she looks out to make sure she is not missing her stop. When she looks back inside, the woman and the girl are no longer in the aisle. But they are not gone. They are sitting in the seats in front of her, facing her. The two older women have apparently left. She wonders whether the girl is the woman’s. She wonders whether the girl is one of those rented out to create a certain profile for beggars: a parent in need with a child to be pitied. To create a certain profile for givers: a soul pained by injustice, a person generous enough to reach into a purse or a center console for extra cash to hand out. She closes her eyes to the public around her, opens her ears to the melodies privately entering her body, but it is useless. She is too curious to not look at them. She opens her eyes as soon as the bus starts to leave the stop.
The woman moves in her seat. She notices she is holding another child, a baby that can’t be more than a few months old, in ragged, dust-covered swaddling clothes, in a back wrap. The baby’s cheeks, black and rosy at the same time, are the cheeks of a wanderer by force rather than by choice, carried around the streets all day long. The baby fumbles with the hair under the mother’s veil while gripping a piece of stale bread. She stares at them, stares until the woman finally looks back at her, stares only a moment longer before turning her gaze away from them and toward the window.
The traffic has come to a halt once again. She turns her head again, looks back inside. They are gone, some other woman is in her seat, an old woman in her girl’s. The doors have once again been opened. She looks toward the aisle, searching. She glimpses the little girl’s back as she’s pulled past the seats, through bodies hanging on to metal bars in the middle of the bus, almost not bodies, almost just clothes, steeped in sweat and pollution and fatigue. The girl is pulled. The doors are closed. And then … they are gone. The girl. The mother. The baby. Lost among others who try to find a way in or out through the mass of bodies in the bus. The women inside push closer and closer toward the back to open some space for the new passengers. It is rush hour. She comes out of her daze and jumps to her feet. She doesn’t want to lose them. It’s almost impossible to pass through all the jammed bodies to get to the door. She calls out to the driver to open the door before the bus gains speed. Men turn around in their section at the front, agitated, curious. She hears her voice echo back toward her through the bus.
Mouths don’t open. Lips don’t move. The shout echoes. As if each and every one of the passengers, men and women, is repeating her request. The words are passed from woman to woman to girl to man to man to old man to young man and finally to the driver. The door opens, the bus already beyond the stop, blocking the traffic behind it. The air outside is not fresh. She stumbles down the metal steps and rushes away from the bus.
Re: the right alignment of the text, if you’re curious.
This is foreign territory. Its map needs to be foreign. I want it to make you stumble. I want you to be disrupted when you arrive here, feel some discomfort, feel out of place.
The language of the city is Persian. My first language is Persian.
Persian is written from right to left. I want to hold on to its presence. Even if only as a ghost.
I want to acknowledge the Otherness of both the territory and the language to you, make them visible, and celebrate them as
I translate the city and its people into this other language of mine.
Outside the bus, in the street, she finds them. In the crowd of pedestrians, the girl following the woman, the baby moving up and down against her slightly curved back. She follows. The girl stops and looks back. As if she has sensed a shadow. The mother keeps walking. She, with a beggar veil wrapped around her shoulder that reveals her cheaply highlighted hair, she, in ragged flip-flops blackened by city soot, walks with residues of grace. Each time the girl stops and looks around, she, at a distance, pauses, only for a moment, and glances at her watch, pretending that she has nothing to do with them. She thinks to herself that she should probably hail a cab and get to her meeting. But the thought lingers only for a second. The distance between them grows. She starts walking faster. She follows them all the way down the street, through alleys that keep getting narrower, shabbier, into a square where there’s a bazaar. The tiny shops are starting to close up for the day.
They’re so small that there’s only room for some shelves packed with random goods and a makeshift counter in front, so small that the shopkeepers are forced to stand outside, in front of their treasures—broken TVS, old radio transmitters, trays of ill-matched cutlery, the remainders of old tea sets, car equipment, stereos, abandoned locks and keys. Relics of homes long disappeared.
Relics stolen and sold. The men stand in groups of two or three, drinking tea from greasy glasses, cigarettes clinging to their fingers or smoke-blackened lips. They shoot her discreet and not-so-discreet glances. The square is a men’s space. Their property. But she can handle their gaze. It is the gaze of their merchandise that feels heavy to her, heavy enough to make her aware of her own body’s movements along the walls as she approaches the three bodies she has been following. The woman stops in front of one of the larger shops. She stops in front of a newsstand in the middle of the square that sells snacks, beverages, cigarettes, and some tabloid magazines and sports newspapers.
She pretends to browse while watching the family from the corner of her eye. The woman talks to a shopkeeper. The two seem to know each other. The shopkeeper’s hand plays with his mustache as he looks her up and down: as if he wants to pierce her veil, her clothes, her skin. The girl holds the mother’s hand more tightly, clings to her, not allowing the mother to let her go. The baby is dozing off on the mother’s back, his head tipping from time to time.
The shopkeeper and the mother keep chatting. The newsstand vendor eyes her eyeing them suspiciously. The woman unwraps the baby, still asleep, and hands him to the man. The man embraces him and kisses his cheek. She picks up a chocolate bar and asks the vendor for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. The mother sits down in front of the girl, whispers something in her ear, kisses her, and puts her hand in the man’s. The girl lets her hand be taken, as if she knows this man, as if she knows this ritual. The girl becomes a statue next to the man. He doesn’t say anything to her. She doesn’t look up at him. The mother walks away without looking back. She pays hurriedly and carries on following her.
The girl gives her a reassuring look as she passes them by. The girl smiles and glances at the baby and the man. The man takes her and the baby into the shop. The mother turns a corner. She wonders what she should do if she gets hold of her. She wonders what excuse she should give the sculptor she was supposed to meet. She wonders what she needs to say, what she needs to ask. She turns the corner. She enters a dead end.
She comes face to face with the woman, who has been waiting for her. She looks at h
er with eyes that are as wild as a cat’s, as frightened as a cornered cat’s. She looks at her and says nothing.
She checks around to make sure they are alone. She takes a piece of paper and pen from her bag, scribbles something down, and places the paper on the pavement with a little stone to hold it there. Then she stands up, takes a few steps, comes closer. She reaches out and caresses her cheek, holding her hand there for what feels like a long time but is not, before walking away.
She breathes in deeply and picks up the paper. It reads, “Keep looking for the bodies.”
I imagine her standing there, holding on to the traces of the woman’s touch, the warmth in her cheek, the trembling in her body, the questions in her mind. I imagine her lost and confused but surprisingly calm. I imagine her reading the note. I imagine her reading but not really understanding. It is a long journey: from reading the words to reading the in-between of the words. I imagine her continuing her search for the bodies frozen in time, in art. I want to let her. She needs the search for the statues to go on for a while.
But I know. And I know that she, too, cannot not know, even though she doesn’t know, not really. And I want you to know as well. That there are other bodies too. Bodies that I am going to search for, while she is busy searching for her own bodies.
What is in the body that offers closure?
What is it about the body that makes families left with no body to bury or mourn continue to look for and demand the body?
Why does telling the stories of the bodies, missing or buried, seem to be the next best thing for survivors who have not been able to reclaim the bodies of their loved ones?
Can narratives tell stories the way bodies do?
What is in a story that makes it like a body?
If the story is written but not told, told but not received, received but not understood, understood but not appreciated, then is the story worth anything at all?
How does a story that needs to circulate in order to live become a body that needs to be buried in order to live?
Is the story the body, or is the body the story? Are they strangers who need to meet so that a larger story can be born and narrated?
What bodies to follow? Why these bodies?
What point of entry should I adopt for resurrecting these bodies? What angle should I take? What point of view? What voice? What form? What setting?
At what time should I enter these (hi)stories?
For what times should I tell them?
Corpse (1)
Age: 23
Gender: Male
Date Shot: 25 Khordad 1388 / 15 June 2009
Place Shot: Tehran
Date of Death: 18 Aban 1390 / 9 November 2011
Place of Death: Boston
Time of Death: Unknown
Cause of Death: Shrapnel residue in brain tissue
Date of Burial: 30 Dey 1390 / 20 January 2012
Place of Burial: Berlin
Silence. Protest. Scattered slogans.
Armed forces marching on the rooftop of a Basij base.
The protest continues.
Slogans are repeated. Shouted in louder voices.
Tear gas. Bullets. Snipers.
Blood. Bodies.
He rushes to help. He unwraps the scarf around his neck and sits down to tie it around the wound on another protester’s leg.
More bullets.
When he stands and turns to call for his friend, he is shot in the head. In the forehead.
Blood. Ground. Darkness.
He is taken to the hospital.
He is taken into surgery immediately. Hands. Tubes. Gloves. Instruments.
Pieces of shrapnel are taken out. Pieces remain in the brain.
Bandages.
He falls into a coma.
Family unaware of his location.
His parents are divorced. The father is said to be affiliated with regime forces. The father and son are said to have been distant. The mother, a housewife.
Five sisters, all older. One brother, deceased, a martyr of the Iran–Iraq War.
The family looks for him. The mother and sisters. Prison inmate lists. He is not on any of them.
The medical examiner’s office. Prison morgues. The sister checks dozens of crushed faces and dead bodies. To no avail. His body is not found.
Hospitals. Hospital officials tell the sister, in hushed voices, that corpses are removed by the police. No name. No identity. No record. No evidence.
After the surgery, he remains in a hospital as a man injured in an accident. Fears of his being found, arrested, and removed. Fears of the hospital staff being charged with cooperation with the opposition forces.
The staff wants the tubes disconnected. The doctor will not allow it. The body lies there, silent.
The family searches.
He comes out of the coma. A month or so later.
Symptoms: Memory loss. Unable to control the excretion of feces. Needs tubes. Unable to talk properly. Partially paralyzed.
He regains part of his memory. He cannot yet speak.
The doctor provides him with a pen and paper. He writes down numbers. The phone number of one of his sisters.
The family finds him.
For his safety, he is immediately discharged.
At home, he rests. As if a baby, helpless, he is cared for. Family. Doctors. Speech therapy. Physiotherapy. A second surgery. On the brain.
The family moves. For safety. For peace of mind. So that they can pay his hospital bills.
Seven to eight months later, he is partially recovered.
He still suffers amnesia. He regains some speech. He still suffers seizures.
The family arranges for him to leave the country. He is a witness. Of the silent protest. Of the silent bullets.
Destination: Turkey.
He goes to the movies, to internet cafés, speaks and laughs, falls silent from time to time, suffers headaches, does not receive needed medical attention.
Months later. Refugee status accepted. He hopes to go to Germany, where he has family. The UN offers him refugee status in the U.S. The family requests to send someone with him to care for him there. Request is denied.
Destination: Boston.
The son arrives in Boston. Alone. Penniless. Some support from other immigrants. Limited medical care for six months. No special care. Nothing after six months. He repeatedly loses sensation in his limbs, suffers seizures, and has to go to the hospital. He is not admitted. He cannot afford to pay. He is told he might not have long to live. He grows depressed.
He hopes to eventually leave the U.S., to join a sister who left Iran after the protests, after the search, after the pain, who now lives in Malaysia.
He lives eight months in Boston.
He chats regularly with the sister in Malaysia. One day she doesn’t find him on the other side of the screen.
Absence.
Silence.
He has been taken to the hospital. She finds out through his friends.
Silence.
Death.
An autopsy is performed on the body. He has had a brain hemorrhage.
The mother wishes to see the second son she has lost before he is buried. The family does not want to risk transferring the corpse back to Iran. Fear of the body being confiscated. Fear of complications for the funeral and the survivors.
The mortuary cooler in Boston is his home for countless days.
His body rests alone.
The mother cannot travel to the U.S. The mother wishes to see her son one last time. The mother wants her son to be buried where he has family. Germany.
His body decomposes.
The German government facilitates the transfer of the body. The German government issues a visa for the mother.
The body travels. The mother travels.
After about two months in the solitary confinement of a cooler in Boston, the body is buried in Berlin. Red tulips. White roses and lilies. Pale orchids.
A light-brown casket
. Family and acquaintances and activists. A black-and-white picture. Of him smiling, young and full of life.
The family remains silent until his death. Fear of his arrest. Fear of his torture. Fear of losing him once again.
Following his death, they speak.
The sister living in Malaysia speaks and tells the story. She continues to follow up on his case with human-rights organizations.
Within the borders of Iran, the family announces a fake cause of death in order to hold a ceremony.
They mourn a son killed in a made-up accident, not a son lost to bullets. They mourn and recite his name in hushed voices. He is not to be talked about. In Turkey, refugees who knew him from his time there hold a small ceremony. Wonder what his destiny would have been if his request to be sent to Germany had been accepted.
The mother speaks. A while later. The mother cries. Speaks of his wishes in life: to become a diver, to work on large ships, to take care of his mother. Of him telling her on that protest day that he was going to see a movie with friends, going to see his father later to get some money, going to stay at his aunt’s afterward. Of finding out in the small hours of the day that he didn’t go to his aunt’s. Of later learning the details of the protest. Of the search. Of the prayers and cries. Of him contacting them. After the coma. Of the thirty-six baton scars on his back. Of his bloody clothes sticking to his skin. Of him surviving only because he was an athlete. Of sending him abroad to save him from any further harm. Of his being sent to the U.S. Of the rejection of his sister’s request to travel with him. Of their connection through the internet. Of his refugee pension being too little, too late. Of her sending him money. Of his hard life, what he ate, what he wore. Of his being alone, his loneliness, his homesickness. Of his medication. Of his laughter. Of her long-distance phone card running out of minutes. Of telling him she’d buy a new card and call him later so he didn’t have to pay. Of being given the news. Of that next call never happening. Of the decision to bury him in Berlin. Of not wanting her child’s body to be displaced in Iran. Of wishing they had stayed together in Turkey for what remained of his life.
trans(re)lating house one Page 2