I was on edge, belligerent with anxiety. The apprehension in the air was stifling. The approach of the American planes, the impending bombs. The American news channels I watched obsessively showed supposed crowds of people celebrating the September 11 attacks in Tehran’s streets. But when I walked along those same streets, there were no traces of celebratory crowds. What I did see was an alarming disconnect between events as they happened, and how they were spun into a new and terrifying narrative in the global media. Everything felt strangely dislodged from reality. All of it, the politics, the theater of powerful men, seemed a sham. But beyond it, beyond all the sound and the fury, beyond the gnashing of teeth and pounding of chests, there was something like a faint glimmer of light, something that begged to be seen, to be called into being.
Late, the taxi crawled painfully through the traffic. The taxi driver said, “You will never make that train.”
“We are on that train already,” I replied. “And already born and already rotting in our graves. All this at once, so don’t worry.”
At the station, we jumped out of the car and ran. The train whistled, it moaned and clattered, and the wheels ached and turned and the train began to pull away from the platform. We ran harder, our backpacks heavy. We grabbed hold of the hand rails, hoisted ourselves, each one in turn, on board. All ten of us, somehow, from all corners of the city, out of breath, flushed, managed to make that train. It carried us out of the city and into a desert, through a dark, empty night.
After the American president’s address on the television, Ramin the photographer called me. I told him I was leaving Tehran for a couple of nights to see Yazd. Then I said, “I think I need to return to Los Angeles soon after that.”
“You need to forgive me,” he said.
“I don’t know how we can be friends now,” I said.
“I don’t want to be your friend,” he said.
“We can’t be anything else.”
“On your way to Yazd, look out of the train window at midnight and think about me.”
“What should I look for?”
“Nothing.”
At midnight, I left our cabin. The tight hall was full of passengers standing by the open windows, smoking. They stood by the windows with the pretense of their cigarettes, and flirted with strangers in whispers and allowed themselves to fall in love. I found an empty window. I thought about Ramin. I looked out into the darkness and saw an endless nothing.
The town of Yazd was a dream made out of sand. Beautiful ancient buildings the same color as the earth, save the gold on the gilded domes of the mosques. Quiet, peaceful, it rose out of the ground as though nature intended the buildings, the alleyways, the domes and walls. When we arrived, the town was still asleep. We walked through the streets searching for a cab just as the azaan sounded from the minarets, calling the Muslims to prayer.
Yazd is a city populated by Zoroastrians. Though this religious group is a minority in Iran, their numbers are concentrated in this city. In the old days, the Zoroastrians took their dead to the top of a mountain, to a circular, walled enclosure that had no roof. They lay their dead beneath the naked skies on stone slabs, where the vultures cleaned the bones, and the sun bleached those clean bones dry. The Tower of Silence still stands in Yazd, at the top of a mountain. But the dead are buried in the foothills now, in neat rows beneath green grass watered by sprinkler systems.
We were sober that morning. Quiet. The gravity of it all felt a bit heavy, the time and place we stood in history. We decided to climb to the top of the Tower of Silence and we stood outside those tall walls in front of a small opening. We didn’t know if we were allowed to enter, but one by one, we stooped and snuck through anyway. There was nothing in there but stones and a blind sky overhead and the golden rays of a rising sun. Sarab started to sing in his clear, beautiful voice, “Mama, take this badge from me, I can’t use it anymore. It’s getting dark, too dark to see, feels like I’m knocking on heaven’s door.” And the rest of us sang, too, that Dylan song as eulogy for all the dead, the ones who had been laid to rest on those ancient stones, the ones who had fallen from the towers in New York, for all the dead that would soon be, once this war commenced. Then we walked a distance down the mountain toward the town, where Amir left to hire a small bus to drive us through the desert in search of Chak Chak.
While we waited, I watched a fruit seller set up for business, unloading a truck piled high with watermelon. A group of young laborers stood in the morning light, in a line, and a man in the truck threw a watermelon to the closest man to him, who threw it to the next, down the line, to the final man who piled it on wooden tables for sale. They spoke and repeated, “Ya Allah, Ya Allah,” and laughed, their breath visible, sweating in the chill of the morning air. They were so alive in their bodies. So full of life. I walked up to the table and pretended to appraise the melons. A young, handsome laborer came to the table and, with skill, rapped his knuckle against a melon, another, and picked one up and handed it to me. “This one, abji,” he said. “This one will be sweet enough for you.”
I walked back to my friends waiting in the shade, holding my heavy, ripe melon in front of me like a pregnant belly, just as Amir finally returned. We drove out into the desert. For miles and miles, in complete emptiness. Not a tree, not a building, not a blade of grass, a walking soul, a single stray dog, no other cars. Nothing. Just a one-lane highway that stretched through purgatory. Then, the mountain came into view.
“The rest, you have to walk,” the bus driver said.
At first, the footpath was rocky. I had my thirty-pound backpack on my back and my ten-pound melon in my arms, and the desert sun beating down on my head, the heat amplified beneath the fabric of my veil and hijab, with an uphill climb.
We arrived at stairs that rose through the jagged rocks, stairs made out of the mountain itself, carved into the stone. Endless stairs. I was panting, sweating, with that fruit clutched against my belly. It was an offering, I told myself, to the sahib of the temple, a gift so we wouldn’t arrive as guests, empty-handed. The first terrace appeared, and roofed pavilions that served as accommodations for pilgrims. That first terrace led to more stairs that climbed higher and opened to other terraces and courtyards, which led to more stairs that opened to more terraces that led to more stairs. We climbed beneath the noon sun, until, finally, we came to the last set of stairs.
After those last few steps, we found ourselves standing before a pair of tremendous doors made of bronze, etched with the image of some ancient king, placed in front of a grotto in the heart of that mountain. Somebody in our group, maybe Sanam, audacious like that, thought to knock on the bronze door. It creaked open and, hesitantly, an old man peered out.
“What do you want?” he asked. He was dressed in all white. White skullcap on his sparse white hair. Loose white trousers, white kaftan over that. His eyes were pale, the dreamy eyes of the elderly. His gaze seemed elsewhere. He talked to us, but he talked beyond us, too. I walked forward and held the watermelon out to him. He took it from me, looked at me, and said nothing.
“We have come as pilgrims,” Sanam said. “May we enter the temple?”
“Go away,” he said. He turned and walked away slowly toward the stairs leading down, the watermelon in his hands.
“Please,” Pouya said. “We’ve traveled a long way.”
“You are not ready,” he replied, without looking back.
“How can we become ready?” Amir called after him.
The old man returned, melonless and holding a heavy ring of keys instead. He chained and padlocked the doors to the temple as we pleaded and tried to persuade him to allow us entry. “You must first be purified,” he said. He walked away again and we followed him this time, some of us telling him about our fatigue, others trying to prove our purity. Someone even offered him money, which he swatted away irritably. He walked down the steps, unperturbed by our voices, our insistence, then turned a corner, and we found ourselves standi
ng in front of a long basin built into the wall of the mountain and lined with several golden faucets. Placed against the stone behind the basin was a long slab of mirror. I don’t think I have ever seen a truer reflection of myself than the one in that old mirror, my face sweat-stained, dirty, with a desert, endless, stretching far behind me. The desert reflected in that mirror was wide, powerful, beautiful. And I, standing before it, small and powerful and beautiful and passing.
“Water,” the old keeper said, nodding his head. Then, he walked away.
The miracles of those mountains are many. The story goes that an ancient princess, fleeing from hordes of invaders, came to this mountain, prayed to the great spirit of truth and wisdom, and a chasm opened and swallowed her before the awestruck army. In the bosom of that mountain ran a perpetual spring, which legend said was the flow of her eternal tears. Near the top of the mountain, within the grotto, there grew an old, old plane tree. Other trees grew there, too, outside of the temple, which shaded the pilgrims who came to worship. Within, a fire burned in an altar that had been tended by generations of keepers. We turned on the golden faucets to the miracle of water, clear and sweet, flowing from the tap. I washed my face, drank that water in my cupped hands, washed my arms, my neck, took off my dusty boots, my socks, hitched up my skirt and washed my tired feet. When everyone in our group was clean, we climbed back up to those closed bronze doors, to wait. After some time, the keeper came back out, walked past us without seeing us.
“We’ve been purified,” Sanam said. “May we enter now?”
The old man stopped and squinted at us. “No,” he said. “You are still not ready.”
“What do we need to do now?”
“You are not humble enough.” He unlocked the padlock, pulled away the chains, opened the door, entered the temple, then closed the door behind him. A few minutes later, he emerged, holding a basket full of small white skull caps. He handed them out to the boys, who put them on. We girls, humbled by Islam already, wore the veil of our hijab. Our heads covered, donning looks of humility, we waited outside the closed temple doors. Time passed. The old keeper waited beside us. Quietly. He looked off at the mountain. He looked at his fingernails. He pondered the gnats in a cloud of sanctimonious orgy. He hummed a little tune. And we resigned ourselves to waiting.
Finally, without explanation, the old keeper of the temple walked to the doors, took out the jangle of his keys, unlocked the padlock, pulled wide both sets of doors, then stood aside, his head bowed, as we silently filed in.
I would like to say that upon entering the temple, I was struck in the head by the lightning bolt of holy. It was beautiful, housed in that grotto. Inside hung a tremendous chandelier resplendent with crystals. Water dripped from the walls, chak chak chak. And, as promised, growing in the heart of that mountain was the thick trunk of an ancient tree, green, unlikely, miraculous, stretching out of an opening in the stone, toward the sunlight. I waited for the holiness to surge through me. But it didn’t. We sat, the ten of us. Some in prayer, some in meditation. I walked up to the altar where the flame burned and tried to lose myself to the idea of an ever-burning fire. Nothing happened. Not even a spark. The old keeper watched me, closely, with those bygone eyes of his as I circled the altar and tried to force myself toward some sublimity. Finally, epiphany-less and bored, I left the temple, alone.
Since the place seemed empty, and the heat felt unbearable, I left my boots by the temple door, removed my hijab and veil, stuffed them in my backpack beside my boots, and walked away unencumbered and barefoot on those smooth, cool stones, my shoulders naked and my hair revealed, with the breeze on my skin.
I crossed through terraces, jumped across rooftops, climbed down a number of stairs until I turned a corner and suddenly found myself standing among a crowd of thirty or so young women, all dressed in full Islamic hijab, some with the more conservative chadors, gathered and talking quietly. A handful of those girls stood beside a giant cauldron and peeled in potatoes and carrots. An old man stirred the pot. Another girl fed the flame beneath it. Another sprinkled in salt. And there I stood among them, barefoot, bare shoulders and arms, hair flowing in the breeze. They all stopped what they were doing and stared at me. I tried to calculate the speed I needed in order to run and jump from that rooftop courtyard to another terrace, find the stairs leading back to the temple and plead for sanctuary, when the old man stirring the cauldron said, “Ah, our honored guest, you have arrived just in time for the feast.”
The girls circled around me, dressed in their modest Islamic hijab, looked me up and down. Concluding accurately that I wasn’t a local, they asked me where I was from, who I was, why I had come here, of all places.
“Say it again,” they begged me.
“Los Angeles.”
“Los Angeles,” they repeated, imitating me by anglicizing the words with an almost Texan drawl. In Iran, they pronounce Los Angeles in its true Latin form, the way someone from Mexico might say it. When I named that place, said it the way we say it in LA, it seemed to these girls even more fantastic and foreign. They laid down a linen tablecloth on the stone floor and produced porcelain bowls and silver spoons.
“Our honored guest from America, you must sit at the head of our sofreh,” the old man instructed me. These girls were volunteers for an organization much like the Red Cross. They fed the hungry, clothed the poor, helped those in need. The old man was their driver and chaperone, and they had come to this temple on a day trip. They invited me to sit at the head of their makeshift feast, and one of the girls brought me a bowl of lentil stew. Another one of the more conservatively dressed girls sat down beside me. She reached under the folds of her black chador, into her breast pocket and took out a little porcelain strawberry. She unscrewed the top, winked at me and sprinkled a red powder first in her bowl, then mine. “The old man makes the stews too bland,” she whispered, as she quickly tucked the porcelain strawberry back into its secret place beside her heart, “and I like a little spice.”
The girls asked me about this other world, this America, which they had only seen in movies, and heard about in stories and read about in the news. “Tell us,” they demanded, “tell us how you live there.”
I told them about the loneliness of my childhood as a refugee. I told them about my father, who worked hard to make us a home in that new place until he became ill, then withered and died, still a young man. I told them about studying at the university, and then the debts, the work, the futility. Then, I told them that I wrote poetry.
“Oh!” they cried, and they rushed to their backpacks and returned with journals and notebooks. “Write something, write something dedicated to me!”
So I did. Thirty personalized verses, at breakneck speed, while each girl whose notebook I held told me her story as I wrote her a poem.
“My father wants me to marry a man I barely know,” one said.
“My parents won’t allow me to attend university,” another said.
“My older sister attempted suicide. She is married to a man who beats her, and no one will allow her to leave.”
“I don’t know what the future holds for me.”
I sat among them, flooded by their stories, humbled, writing frantically, listening. I wanted so badly to give them something in return. For their hospitality, yes, but for more than that. For their beauty, for their trusting and open hearts. I wanted to give them something, some piece of me. I have a picture, a single photograph, the film long lost now. Sarab came upon us, followed by Pouya. The two of them found me sitting among the girls, scantily clad, in the shade of a tree, writing and writing. Before they wandered off, Sarab took out his 35mm camera, and took a picture. In that black and white photograph, I sit among those girls with my shoulders and arms revealed, and my hair showing. I’m looking down at a notebook. They sit around me, angelic, in all their innocent and beautiful glory.
After I wrote the last verse in the last notebook, their chaperone approached me, holding out thr
ee pomegranates. “The pomegranate that grows in the arid climate of Yazd is very different from any other in the world,” he said. “It is said to be a barakat, a blessing. Take these as a gift from us.” Then the girls embraced me, one by one, and kissed my cheek. And then they were gone, all thirty of them, the cauldron, the old man, the porcelain bowls, their voices. They had struck me, struck my heart with the lightning bolt of holy, and disappeared just as suddenly.
I sat for a while in the silence of their absence, full of the weight of all their stories, before I got up and hopped from one terrace across to the rooftop of another to search for the rest of my party. The sun was already sinking, so that the mountain glowed.
And that’s when I saw him, sitting there, illuminated.
What I saw isn’t anywhere in these words that follow, because a written account of an ineffable experience is an act of folly, though being human, and hence damned to both language and fallibility, I know no other way of explaining what happened and who he was. To understand, I’m asking you to suspend your knowing of things. Let go of all things you thought to be true, like the human form, the structure of time, the dictations of space, the idea of boundaries between life and death, and all the other concrete, tangible illusions that parade before us in this moment of transitory being. If you hold onto all that tightly, clutched in your hands, and say, “This, this is reality,” then this story will seem like the accounts of a young woman driven mad by grief. But what follows happened, and all those things, the body, time, death, space, it all unraveled when that man started to speak.
He must have been in his late forties. Forty-six, maybe, the same age my father died. He wore a shirt of heavy cloth, the color dulled by either the sun or too many washings. He sat in lotus position, facing the mountain, on the ledge of the rooftop, his back to the empty, blazing desert. He had dark hair, streaks of white in it, a rag tied around his temples. He could have been a beggar, or a junkie, or a thief hiding out in this lost place, he could have been broken or holy, but in that moment, he was clear, empty, in a place of peace, so I saw neither beggar, nor sage, nor thief. What I saw was a light emanating from him and I don’t know, to this day, if it was something within him, or a trick of the desert, or a projection of my own longings, but that light drew me to him powerfully.
Home Is a Stranger Page 13