by Salar Abdoh
Saleh, the news said there was a major battle around where you are.
At the end of it all, the only justifiable reason for going to Erbil had been to put more money into my Iranian SIM card—something I could not do from the Eye of the Horse. After Atia’s text, I trawled through the Iranian news sites and saw that “major battle” was exactly how they were reporting the sad excuse of a fight that had taken Abu Faranci away from us.
By the time my ride dropped me back in front of our new mokeb at the quartermaster’s building at the Eye of the Horse, I knew what awaited me there: word had it that Dodonge, now truly the sole superstar of the Syrian front, had come to report about our “major battle” in Iraq and its aftermath.
I pulled my winter hat tight over my face and observed the new mokeb from the side alley. The place was like a painting: men cooking rice in the open space in the back, chopping meat, stirring lentils, unpacking bags of vermicelli; there were fires being lit, poetry being sung, prayers being sent for the afterlife; and somewhere there in that huddle of men and song there was also Dodonge with a cameraman trudging after him as he spoke to soldiers eating food and telling jokes.
I could not step through that threshold. I couldn’t do it. Instead I backed off until I was standing in the middle of the dusty road where just the other week two lost souls had taken a crack at us by pointing their RPGs toward the right target at the wrong moment. A truckload of men came barreling by, their stone faces tired. I don’t know which sater they were coming from or how long they’d been there or where they were going. In my mind I called them war flies—expendable, solid. Maybe they were heading for Syria. Or home.
Khaled’s place looked like a ruin. It hadn’t been hit. But it had gone unused and smelled foul. I was sure that since the mokeb had moved up the road, men came down here only to use the place as an outhouse. As I stepped through the door I could discern movement. I stopped and waited for my weak eyes to get used to the dim light inside.
I hadn’t noticed that the guy was already standing, staring me dead in the face—the way men do when they don’t know whether to turn savage or ask for mercy.
He didn’t have a weapon. Or maybe he did but was out of ammo and didn’t care anymore.
In a reversal of the very same situation, I recalled the Quds commando I’d met in Tehran who told me he’d jumped up abruptly with his empty weapon, making himself a perfect target and counting on the enemy shooting first and asking questions later. He hoped to get enough bullets in him to not have to experience the ordeal of a slowly cut-off head. They’d obliged him and still he’d survived. This was called luck.
Sometimes it happens.
The thin-faced man grunted something about being ta’baan, so tired that he was just resting here. I grunted back wordlessly as if to indicate I understood.
I still can’t be sure who he was and to which side he belonged. Maybe he was just a coward, or another poet who wanted some downtime away from the crassness of war. Even as I walked away I had already convinced myself I’d done a good deed that day. It’s amazing how these little fabrications can help you go on.
And I wanted to go on.
15
It was inevitable. An Abbas sequel. This was the brainchild of Saeed, who ended up collaborating on it with State TV. I didn’t begrudge him that. And the series became an even bigger hit when Dodonge, because of his so-called war expertise on the enemy in Syria-Iraq, was taken on as a “consultant” to the show. The show, however, was really a prequel—the life of Abbas before he became known. A young Abbas, in other words, showing the precociousness of his early years growing up in Basra before becoming the tragic sniper superhero of Mesopotamia.
The war for me was over—even though it continued in pockets and in fits and starts and promised to move on to other frontiers with other volunteers. I am back to writing occasional art reviews for my beloved Atia’s new magazine. I do it for her, not because I have to. It is as if all of us had somehow found our rhythm through the martyrdom of distant others. Mafiha, for one, did another tour of the major cities of Europe with his peace poems; by the time he came back, he had already made good on the tip I gave him about Miss Homa’s remaining works and scored a killing on flipping two paintings. With the profit, he now runs a gallery on the recently fashionable-again Sanai Street, where they have literary evenings and workshops on the second floor. I have an open invitation.
Atia will be a mother soon. My own mother I visited just once at the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery. I laid flowers on her grave and played five minutes of an episode of a Turkish soap through my cell phone for her. I would not visit her again.
Yet the dead howl to be remembered and the living accommodate them. Perhaps once a week I search online and see old friends—Haji Yusuf, Maysam, Cleric J—posting what now seem like ancient images of a recent war that is already threatened with oblivion. Once in a while in these posts I run across someone I have known who has been newly martyred. Maybe their vehicle went off road and hit an unexploded device; maybe they were taken down by the few remnants of the enemy who still lurk in the shadows. It’s these fresh ends that really rub one the wrong way. They grate against the reality of everyday peace and make you suspect that what you did was of absolutely no consequence. The only thing worse than losing a comrade is losing them dumbly postcombat. This is what I told Interrogator H the other day over a cup of coffee. He is back at his station and in fact never left it.
I asked him, “Why did you want me in Erbil? What did you expect to happen there?”
“The ocean is big and one tries one’s hands at everything.”
“Are you a philosopher now?”
“I always was.”
Then he asked about Proust.
He knows that I sold the earlier work Miss Homa had given me and finally enjoy a comfortable life. I sent enough money through Cleric J to provide for Proust to join the Syrian refugees en route to Europe. He was almost robbed and killed twice and nearly drowned once, but he finally made it. He now lives in Marseille and has streaks of blue in his hair. I do not know why he is in Marseille and not in one of the designated refugee camps in Germany or Austria. I told him to go to France and he obliged. That is all I know. His status is still unclear and he may be deported yet. What is he to tell the authorities in Europe? That he cannot go back to his country because they’ll think he’s a ghost, a martyr returned from the dead? For now, at least, he remains with blue streaks in his hair in the land of his beloved namesake. And he’s content with that.
I told H all of this and asked, “Are you not sometimes afraid of having to answer to your superiors for your highly unorthodox ways?”
“I interrogate culture, Saleh. They are a bit lenient with regards to my specialty. Besides, no one can touch me in relation to you. You are considered one of the Defenders of the Holy Places now. You are not an enemy of the state. You belong. Don’t forget, you also wrote the original Abbas: Sniper Legend and Fist of God.”
There was a sneer in H’s voice when he said this, as if he were telling me I smelled bad and that this was good. In return I didn’t tell him that I had taken it upon myself to supply that faraway enemy scholar with the information she wanted about the old Jewish ghetto of Tehran. After a while I even became something of an authority on the fabled Pamenar District in south Tehran, with its little alleyways and remnants of the Seven Synagogues lane. I put together a nice collection of photographs and archival material for her and sent it all from the new e-mail address. It took a month, but she finally wrote back: Thank you.
It was elegant, this simple note from her.
Nowadays, whenever there is a feast at my own synagogue across the street, I stare at those chandeliers, close my right eye, and allow my left eye to become a dazzle of colors and shooting lights. It is at times like these that I remember our ghosts up and down the breadth of these lands. And I especially remember Miss Homa, whose canvas of the dome of the sublime Goharshad Mosque stares back at me on my wall as I g
aze through my opaque vision at the sky-blue door of Haim Synagogue and those tall chandeliers inside. I will never sell this second painting. There is much speculation about where Miss Homa really is and if she is even dead and if all of this is not just some ploy to drive up her prices. One person behind these false rumors is none other than Avesta, my “cousin” who stole Miss Homa’s ideas and who has seen his own prices plummet ever since news of Miss Homa’s passing hit the market.
I keep my silence.
It’s all I need to do.
Because the business of the living is always too immensely turbulent to stop at anything for long. As early as next week, for example, one of the martyrs foundations to which Miss Homa left a number of works is holding an auction of three of her paintings. The auction, naturally, is to take place at Mafiha’s new gallery where the richest men and women of the city have been invited. On the surface, the proceeds will go to the families of the martyrs, particularly those who left behind young children. But, of course, a good half of the take will be skimmed right off top by the people who run the foundation, with another 15 to 20 percent to the auction house. This leaves only a fraction of what Miss Homa originally intended, and there is bound to be a fight over that sum too. You could say that this is inexcusable.
But no.
It is an acceptable loss—like a broken and brave Frenchman, minus his joie de vivre, finding immortality at the Eye of the Horse.
SALAR ABDOH was born in Iran and splits his time between Tehran and New York City. He is the author of the novels Tehran at Twilight, The Poet Game, and Opium; and he is the editor of Tehran Noir. He teaches in the MFA program at the City College of New York. Out of Mesopotamia is his latest novel.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by Akashic Books
©2020 by Salar Abdoh
ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-860-7
eISBN-13: 978-1-61775-891-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020935751
First printing
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