The language unknown. She wonders whether she should sit down and join in.
Someone puts a hand on her shoulder. She turns around. Her friend looks at her and points to the large television a few steps away. “I have been long gone but I am caged here forever,” read the words endlessly repeating on the screen. She pauses. She stares. He invites her out to the courtyard for a cigarette. She follows him from the room. The old man coughs. The singing continues.
A woman standing like a statue asks if she has an envelope. She nods yes. The woman asks if she wants another envelope.
She shakes her head no and walks downstairs.
“We’re reasonable human beings …, not spirits out of a manual of magic realism, not postcards for foreign consumption and abject masquerade. In other words, we’re beings who have the historic chance of opting for freedom, and also—paradoxically—life” (Bolaño 2011).
As she passes the chest in the hallway, she notices an old off-white engagement dress hanging inside staring at her. She smells the scent of bodies aroused. She smells rosewater. She walks out. On the balcony, the tree-trunk seats are all occupied. She walks down the stairs toward the small garden and trees. A lemon tree. A sour cherry tree. Rosebushes. Her friends are hanging around and chatting. An old woman holds up a basket for a man picking sour cherries on top of a ladder. The woman wears the engagement dress, torn to shreds. The man is naked except for military boots and a turban. There are no sour cherries on the tree. The scent of lemon rising through the soil’s pores. Rosebuds climbing up the tree. Birds hanged by their necks, dancing in between the branches as if caressed by the fingers of an imaginary wind. A few people sitting on the tiled stairs, passing around black-and-white photographs, murmuring, laughing out loud. She notices another staircase. She counts thirteen steps. Farther down. Into a basement. She leaves her friends and descends the stairs.
“Bring your bodies to our bodies and together we will become new bodies” (Borzutzky 2015).
of flag and of hope
What makes a narrator? A fair narrator?
How many narrators should there be? Could there be?
How can I be a narrator? A fair narrator?
How can I channel the voices of the dead, of the living?
How can I bear the brutality, the intimacy, the immediacy, of a moment, of a place?
How can I be a medium while lost in the search, in the labyrinthine hell of humanity and history?
Am I writing these lives to give voice to them, or to give myself a voice and a body?
Is this an attempt to go from numbness to feeling? From dried eyes to tears?
What if we can’t cry? What if we don’t?
Have the dead surrendered? Have we? Have I?
Who is listening?
Who cares?
Why do they care? Why do they listen? What will they do with these stories?
Does my speaking pose a threat to me as the speaker? To the subjects, living and dead?
Does reading these stories pose a threat to the readers?
What are the risks?
How to narrate what some in power want forgotten? What others in power want remembered only for their own agendas?
Will the narratives serve the bodies and the memories?
Will they serve the living, the surviving?
What if they harm them?
Can the writing and reading of these lives and deaths create a community of mourners? Can the mourners breathe life back into the dead and the living? Into me? Into you? What would this look like?
What about the genes that carry the trauma: on and on and on?
Will the trauma ever stop being inherited?
Will humans ever change? Will the chain of evil ever be broken?
black of mourning
A ceremony. A ritual. On the night before completion, presentation, defense.
An altar. Turquoise. The manuscript. Images. Of the homeland. The land of the living and the dead. The black-and-white girl staring back. Family lineage. Mutilated women of the desert. Poetry the nation goes to for divination. Soil of the land. The dessert of the dead. Bracelets. Incense. Candles. Mirror. Prayers. Water. The hoopoe.
A wake. A vigil. A reading. Of the living. A recitation. Of the dead. All of them. All of it. An embodiment. All night long. Out loud. To be spoken. To be heard. Permission asked. Of the living and the dead. Voices. Tears. All together in flight. Ululation. Union. The passage. Granted. Only then, the reflection in the water.
bodies falling
bodies lying
bodies carried
bodies buried
“I can’t help but think, forever, about absorption. About what it means to be absorbed. About how a community, a city, a country, a nation, absorbs, or refuses to absorb, its bodies, its ghosts, its citizens” (Borzutzky 2015).
“A writing of absorption. A writing of envelopment. Of dissolution, evaporation. / Because everywhere there are people with no voice who cannot be absorbed. / Because there are things like this, because there are unabsorbed bodies, writing continues to take place” (Borzutzky 2015).
The door is half-open. A dim light is on. Shadows move around inside. She opens the door. Sneaks in. Small figurines sit around a table, drinking and smoking and talking and dancing and laughing and crying and coming, all on the narrow wooden bed that is their stage, and their shadows grow larger and larger on the wall. Underneath the bed, she notices several white shrouds, wrapped as if around corpses or statues or bundles of discarded clothing or objects. A heap of soil piled close by, as if dug out of a trench or a grave. A compass lying to one side of the patch of soil. She stands there at the door and watches for a while. She hears them but does not understand them. A sign next to the light switch reads, “Lost Beings. Welcome to the party.” The sound of a fountain rises from the soil. The soil remains dry and cracked. A voice from a hidden loudspeaker asks, where are you going? I am staying. We are all staying. Where are you? We are all here. I am here. Let me take you. Come. Come. Breathe. Get lost with me. In me. Stay. Come.
The party goes on. The party ignores her presence. The water begins to flow. The shrouds begin to rearrange themselves under the bed. The soil disappears. The voice continues to speak, where are you? Where are you? She hears her friends calling her name.
She stands there, frozen, watching the figurines.
“Some say you have no right to talk about the dead. So I talk of them as living, their bodies standing in the street’s bend” (Scenters-Zapico 2015).
Her friend puts a hand on her shoulder, guides her out of the basement. She runs her hand through her hair and adjusts her scarf. Her hair is covered with soil. He offers her a half-smoked cigarette. She takes it. Others join them. Another friend offers her a joint. She takes it. She hears a scream in the basement. The birds hanged by their necks begin to sing in the tree branches. The lights go off in the basement. She wants to go back. Her friends tell her it’s time to leave. Her friends pull her along. Out through the courtyard, through the hallway, through the door with the metal bars.
I am glad her friends are there to look out for her, guide her back from the basement, lead her away. She’ll need them as we near the end. Or the beginning.
“Sleep and dreams occur in the plane of the imagination (hadrat al-khayal) and must be subject to interpretation” (El Shakry 2018, discussing Ibn Arabi).
“The dilemma is ‘whether to believe or to interpret one’s dream’” (Jean-Michel Hirt, according to El Shakry 2018).
“Dreams, like texts, had both manifest (zahir) and latent (batin) meanings. The latent meanings of dreams could be understood with the help of signs (ayat) and allusions (isharat)” (El Shakry 2018).
Corpse (11)
Age: 61
Gender: Male
Occupation: Infectious diseases specialist, head of the infectious diseases clinic at Imam Khomeini Hospital, associate professor at the University of Tehran
Date of Death: 30 Shahrivar 1389 / 21 Septembe
r 2010
Place of Death: Keshavarz Boulevard, Tehran
Time of Death: Between 8:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Cause of Death: Assassination
Date of Burial: 3 Mehr 1389 / 25 September 2010
Place of Burial: Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery, Tehran
He leaves his office after work.
Tomorrow he’s leaving the country to visit his youngest son, who lives in the U.S.
As he is getting into his car, he is shot at by four men on two motorbikes.
Two bullets. One hits the door of his car. The other pierces the side of his torso.
He dies next to his car, in front of his office.
The bullet shells are never found.
His personal belongings, including his wedding ring, disappear when his body is transferred to the medical examiner’s office. They are never returned to his family.
He doesn’t make it to his son.
The son gets a phone call. He learns of a delay, of an accident, and finally of the truth.
The doctor had examined the bodies of some of the torture victims from the infamous Kahrizak Detention Center.
He was under pressure to state that the tortured prisoners had died of meningitis. He refused, his sons say.
He had also examined former prisoners who suffered from urinary and genital infections. He was ordered to state that their infections were caused by meningitis. He refused.
He spoke once to foreign media about the prisoners’ infections.
He gradually became burdened and depressed.
He spoke once or twice to his sons about the rape and torture of the prisoners.
Eyewitnesses say the shooters hung around in the neighborhood for a while, waiting for the doctor to leave his office.
Eyewitnesses speak of a cab that blocked the doctor’s car.
The shooters did not wear masks or helmets.
The shooters used silencers.
Eyewitnesses provide facial composites to the police.
The sketches are never referred to or analyzed.
According to some reports, an eyewitness who went to the police station to offer a facial composite was turned away.
The family demands an investigation.
The family demands that images from traffic cameras be studied.
They never are.
The family is told the cameras were malfunctioning at the time.
The family contacts the health minister regarding the case. The minister promises to follow up on the case with the Ministry of Information.
The police chief denies any connection between the assassination and the doctor’s examination of the bodies from the infamous detention center, which was ultimately shut down. The family is informed that the assassination was carried out for personal motives.
None of the doctor’s colleagues believe this scenario. No evidence is found of the doctor having had any personal issues with anyone. The sons speak of the father’s warm relationship with his students, of his love for his patients, of the patients’ love and respect for the father, of the father’s generosity, of the time he lent a large sum of money to a patient in need. When his death is announced on the university’s website, many former patients and students show respect and offer condolences in the comments section.
Immediately after the shooting, dozens of police officers and government officials arrive on the scene. It’s as if this had been organized beforehand. The sons wonder about this. The officials film the scene of the incident. The films are never referred to.
The father’s office is sealed off for several months. The family is not allowed access to his belongings. They are not informed whether any evidence is found there, whether anything is confiscated.
Images from the CCTVS for the office and the neighboring drugstore are collected. They are never analyzed.
The family is told the police and judiciary offices have terminated the investigation. They are told the case has been resolved, closed, and archived. Despite the family’s multiple inquiries, they are never informed of the results of the investigation. The sons believe the manner in which the assassination was carried out proves the shooters were backed by men in power. The sons believe men in power feared their father would reveal the secrets of the prison once he was out of the country.
The sons believe their father died because he did not agree to lie.
Due to the complications of the case and visa concerns, the son living in the U.S. is not able to attend the father’s funeral.
The doctor is the second doctor involved with the examination of victims from the detention center who has died under suspicious circumstances.
The doctor is survived by his wife, his sons, and a daughter.
corpse (57)
Corpse (12)
Age: 22
Gender: Male
Occupation: Laborer
Date of Death: 15 Mordad 1388 / 6 August 2009
Place of Death: Tehran
Time of Death: Unknown
Cause of Death: Blunt-force injuries
Date of Burial: 17 Mordad 1388 / 8 August 2009
Place of Burial: Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery, Tehran
He is not political. But he participates in the protests after the election.
One night he does not come home. The mother stays awake, worried.
The family starts to search. To no avail.
They receive a call seven days later.
Someone informs them of his arrest. No further information.
The family continues to search. To no avail.
A few days later two plainclothes agents show up at their house. Search the house. The son’s belongings. They inform them of his arrest. Provide no further information.
A few days later the family spots his name on the list of prisoners held at Evin Prison. They go to court. They are informed their son can be released on bail. The father provides the bail.
He was transferred to Evin just two days prior to his release. The family never finds out about his whereabouts before Evin.
He has grown burdened and silent.
Bruises on his face. Bruises around his waist. Severe pain in his sides and kidneys.
He does not recount what happened to him. Does not want to worry the family.
He speaks only of being blindfolded. Of being forced to confess. Of beatings. Of one potato and one piece of bread for dinner every night.
He screams. During nightmares.
He fears everyone and everything. Fears being watched and followed.
His two sisters try to cheer him up.
His mother kisses his cheeks.
His mother reminds him that she warned him. Not to go. Not to get involved.
He says everyone was going. He says he was just one of many.
Ten days after his release, he goes out.
The family receives a call, giving them news.
He fainted in the street. Became unconscious. Was transferred to a hospital by strangers. The family rushes to the hospital.
He has fallen into a coma.
Both his kidneys have failed. He undergoes dialysis.
His lungs are infected.
His two sisters become his nurses.
A doctor mentions to the father that the condition of the kidneys is caused by severe beatings.
Twenty-four days after he is hospitalized, he dies. The hospital registers the cause of death as unknown.
The family is asked if they have any complaints.
The family remains silent for fear of not receiving the body. They say not now. They say they will follow up later, when they’re in better condition.
The family receives the body two days after the death.
The family buries the son in the upper level of their elder son’s grave.
After the seventh day of mourning, the family files a complaint. They are told the case is already closed. The family hires a lawyer. They receive no answers.
The family registers their son’s name wit
h the committee the defeated camp has set up to identify the victims of protest violence. Their son becomes one of the many on the list. Twenty days after his death.
A national TV reporter goes to the grave. Shows the name of the elder son as proof that the son the family speaks of having lost has actually died many years ago. He films the small temporary sign with the name of the younger son. He says the sign is not the kind provided by the cemetery, that the family has made it themselves, that it is a lie.
The family receives calls from family and friends, questioning, wondering, wanting to know the truth. The family has to convince them of their son’s death. A blog belonging to a person with the same name is updated. The author writes that he is surprised by the news of the death, his own death. The author is interviewed. He announces that he is alive, that the news of his death was a sham.
News agencies aligned with the regime repeat the suspicions, raising questions about the death.
The mother speaks of the son’s friends having filmed his body being washed and prepared for burial in the morgue.
The father fears for his son’s body. He fears it will be exhumed and sequestered to cover up the death. He sits at the grave from dawn to dusk, when he is forced to leave the cemetery for the night. This is his routine for several days.
The bail deed remains with the court even after the son’s death.
The lawyer files a complaint against the national TV. The complaint is disregarded.
The lawyer tries to file a complaint against the blogger. The court in charge of cyber crimes rejects the complaint.
The mother wonders how the blogger can question the life and death of another just because they share a name. Whether they truly share a name.
trans(re)lating house one Page 12