The Age of Orphans

by Laleh Khadivi

  Do you not rise for the soldiers of the shah? Where is your respect, woman?

  Reza opens his gloved palm and takes a flat hand to the woman’s face in a slap sturdy enough to dislodge the babe, who lets go a cry, crystalline and pure, which sears the silence of the town.

  The shadow in Reza stands still.

  The cadets turn from their raid to find Reza with his mouth wrapped around one breast and his hands clutching at the other and the woman lying on her back, empty eyed, as the soldier drinks and drinks. Reza cannot help himself. The cadets cannot help themselves, famished as boys are famished, and they are upon her, tossing the infant aside to squirm and howl in outrage at the brazen theft. In Reza the shadow self and soldier self dance in delight as the desire to love oneself and hate oneself is now well fed and Reza is allowed to punish and caress all at once. He sucks and slaps and thinks with certainty that he is Reza Pejman Khourdi, and he is the son of a yet undefined nation of Iran, and the babe’s scream is music and he does today and will tomorrow seek out its sound.

  The Seventeen of us

  When we heard Ahang scream we sent away the youngest, girls and boys, to the hiding places as planned because we feared such, as Commander Simko and Commander Dizli warned: the shah’s men are beasts and they will eat even your tiniest child.

  I was not chosen, thank God.

  I have a blind eye and it has brought me nothing but misery my whole life. It spews pus and tears all the time and when the shah soldier took one look at it he spat in my face and then moved me to the side with the tip of his gun, and I could see, with my one good eye, all the imperfects around the square relax. And I heard them sigh too. I did. Lailya with her wooden leg; Arnick, whose mouth is always open and drooling after the horse kick; and Haleh, whose face still holds the mark from the hot coals she tripped on as a girl. The old ladies relaxed too, though a few of them were still taken.

  Cursed our whole lives as imperfects, undesired, who would have thought there would be a morning of good fortune for us? But it is true and fated, and I heard the small sighs and whispers of Ay Khoda in gratitude as we were cast aside, spared.

  That day we prayed for the perfect girls—the ones for whom life’s bounty opened readily: choice cuts of meat, the most heroic husbands, the smiles every day as they walked down the street—we prayed for them as they have never prayed for us.

  Ay Khoda, how you turn the face of fate . . .

  In the end there were four of them and seventeen of us. They left behind the old or broken women and shouted at us in their shah soldier language to walk. And we walked to the end of the village where the streets and houses stop and the mountains start. There the rocks open in small passageways that we used to hide in as girls to kiss one another or to kiss boys and laugh at the feeling of a tongue in a mouth. We go there now as women to hammer the orange rock and crush its stone to make the fine powders for our red and yellow dye. The crevasses are sharp and narrow and the shah soldiers did not know their way and ordered us to squeeze in the narrowest space with the sharpest walls, and there were four of them and seventeen of us and our husbands had long since disappeared, yet I felt no fear. They grabbed our breasts and squeezed them like I squeeze the tits of ninnies and lifted our skirts to look and laugh at what they found beneath. They touched our hair and lips with the gestures of little boys. One followed the actions of the other, copying whatever the other did, as none had been with a woman before, I am sure.

  And I was first. I am the prettiest girl too. My eyes are a deep blue and my skin is clear and white. Black hair runs down my back like ink. I have taken care to keep my lips soft with oil and my hands scrubbed with the pumice stone so when my promised returns from hiding I am clean for him.

  The soldiers looked at me and one of them sat on top of me and made a big show of lifting my skirt while the others shouted, Boro baba, boro baba, beebenem. I turned my head and my mouth dried like the dust all around. He unbuttoned his pants and pulled out his part, the same part as my father and the same part as my brother and the same part my bastard son will have; and he pushed it in me. It was soft at first and I felt nothing and did not scream. When it turned hard and tore open my insides I did not scream. The women around me watched also and did not scream but I could feel their prayers like a dozen little hands holding my soul up and out of my body, where she would be safe. The first soldier slapped me when he pushed and pushed and I became his receptacle.

  Agha, come now, let me show you how it is done.

  And the short soldier with hair on his lip took his turn and tried to stuff himself in my mouth and at the sour softness of it I threw up all the nune and paneer I had eaten for breakfast. I took a hit for the disrespect but I did not scream.

  The third soldier did the same as the first and then he did it again and turned me on my stomach to do it again with a force that broke open the back of me and here I let out a small cry (and my soul, ya Ali, she rose a bit higher), and all the soldiers clapped for my shout as if it was their first victory.

  The last soldier threw me on my back so that I could see his face; I knew his face; he has a familiar face, our Kurd face. He sat on top of me and tried to push his soft self in and stayed soft and pushed again and again, as if to pretend, and the other boys yelled and clapped and I said to his face: I know. Still he stayed soft; I felt him folded up against me in the mix of blood and seed that made a mess there. Then he reached for his rifle and with one smooth move pushed it far up inside of me.

  And my soul rose.

  And the women prayed but this time their hands pulled me down, for my soul had risen too far. They prayed their quiet prayers and dragged my soul back into me and I screamed loud enough to shake the talus from the cliffs, loud enough to crush the orange color out from the rock, and the soldier on top of me clapped and yelled Hurrah and Aufareen! like a village boy with his first kite in the sky.

  Mothers and Guns

  Reza is atop the young Kurdish girl who makes no noise. He is not fucking her as he should and the boys behind him know it and laugh.

  A little harder. The Kurd in you has to come o-u-t.

  He is clumsy with the zip of his pants and his knees bruise against the hard ground as he rocks back and forth as he has seen the other soldiers do. Reza even churns his face into a grimace and pants like a dog. He feels nothing but the hot sun on his back.

  It is his first woman.

  It is his first woman and he cannot stiffen or thrust and Reza tries to tuck his failure away and perform like the rest but he is soft and knows nothing of women and has no desire for any part of them that is not breast or lap or soft song. He cannot fuck his first Kurd, who smells like his maman and gazes far and away with blue eyes that belonged to his baba. But the cadets rile him to take her take her take her and no matter how he tries, with slaps and curses, to elicit a sound from her that proves he’s inside her, fucking and marking, staking and claiming, she is silent. Come on, Khourdi! Take her like only a Kurd can! The shame is hot on his back and though he tries, he cannot turn his body into a weapon of any effect and so takes his rifle and pushes the long iron barrel into the space he cannot fill. In a spasm the Kurd woman arches her back and chest to the sky and opens her mouth, first to silence and finally to the scream, and it is a noise free of despair, anger or pain; a clean sound, sharp as a blade that cuts the air of the orange canyon into shards.

  And the soldiers laugh and cheer at the sound.

  Aufareen, Khourdi!

  A rifle! That will show them to send their men away!

  Imagine that, fucking a Kurd girl, as if his own mother birthed him with the parts of a gun. Imagine!

  They clap and whistle and Reza is far from his moment of pride, a smile, a bow, a salute to take the credit that is his due, and can only clutch at his head with both hands. Of all the familiarities in Saqqez—the faces, arbors full of mulberries, the mother tongue and smell of sage—nothing suffocates his heart like the blanket of her scream. The cadets smack him on the
back and gather their rifles and walk out of the mountain crevice. They leave the women behind, the afternoon and its actions, to echo like a memory deep in the heart of the Zagros. The village is empty. All life—fire, hens, bazaar sounds and mangy dogs—has disappeared, and Reza walks foolishly door to door to find the mother and her newborn, desperate for the milk, the comfort after the crime. But they are gone and Reza has no recourse, no way to straighten himself in the aftermath; his legs are made of liquid and his vision is blurred with sweat and his ears bleed and bleed.

  Every glance at the bloody barrel of the gun is a scream.

  The sight of the empty coffeehouse: ten screams.

  The madrassa: a hundred screams.

  The blue tile fountain in the center of the meiydan: a thousand clean screams.

  The shadow of his Kurdish self is no longer silent. It screams the song of sirens, sung by women that he left behind—his maman, aunts and girl cousins, the woman from the afternoon, the girl herself—who rush forth now in deafening daggers of sound to punish and scold their miscreant son with their fanatical wails. The cadets walk down to the garrison but he cannot follow. His ears bleed and his heart hurts and he tries to hide himself in the pen, bury himself under the hay and pray for silence. The merry cadets call.

  Hurry, Khourdi! Come quick. We have to tell the captains about your victory with the Kurd women . . . and we all wagered that you’d break in the face of your people. But no! You are stronger! What a story . . . come on, Khourdi, get out of that pen, today’s hero doesn’t hide!

  Telegram Dispatch

  From:

  Captain Gholam Ali Ansari

  Owraman Mountain Range

  Northern Zagros Division

  City of Saqqez

  Fall 1935

  Sincerely,

  It will reach the servants of His Majesty, the Royal Saturn-like King of Kings, may our souls be sacrificed for him, and it will have the honor of being presented to the sun-exalted threshold of the court of Pahlavi that we, the Fourteenth Battalion of the Royal Army of King Reza Shah, Most Beneficent, are successful in our pursuits of Kurdish rebels Simko and Dizli as they are escaped from the town of Saqqez and thus unfortunate and unable to enjoy the warm breezes of His Imperial Kindness. The town is now much pacified as its men have fled permanently, across the mountains into Iraq, and left behind their women and children, who now possess endless gratitude for Your Kingly Favor and are every moment more eager to enter among the security-revering and tranquility-worshipping citizens of our burgeoning nation, Iran (as I have heard we are officially named now, per the suggestion of the German Chancellor to His Most Imperial Majesty). Let it be known that the city of Saqqez exhibits only appreciation at our efforts and they hold countless ceremonies in our honor and swear loyalty to Your Royal Presence as they look forward to our continued presence with the corresponding possibilities of a school of the Persian language, a road connecting their small hamlet to the Great Capital Tehran and other such amenities. They are full blooded in their enthusiasm to renounce all Kurdish identities and belong exclusively, as servants of course, to Your Majesty’s Imperial Pahlavi Court. For now and all the glorious centuries to follow, may Allah bless Him and the Kingly Sons to follow.

  The garrison now takes leave of the city of Saqqez (cleaned of Kurdish khan and baygzadehs) to return to the barracks of Nevabad and await Your Majesty’s further instructions and directives.

  As one final note, mentioned in the utmost humility, I would like to distinguish before His Majesty a singular cadet of our division who shows particular promise in his service to the ends of Your Majesty’s usufruct of the Kurdish regions. His name is Reza Pejman Khourdi (a son of your own) and he takes to disciplining the most deviant elements with good judgment and proper use of force as it is in keeping with His Majesty’s most Noble Intentions to subdue clans, khans and tribes.

  Let me offer His Majesty but two examples of cadet Khourdi’s dexterity. One afternoon a boy from the town, innocent to all of us, caught the cadet’s harsh attentions. After some investigation, Cadet Khourdi maintained that the boy was known to carry messages from Saqqez to the men hidden in the mountains. He promptly dealt with the delinquent and set a valuable example to any other enterprising young lads. At a later date, Khourdi sensed a transgression among certain women in the village and ensured that they too received punishment. He claimed they harbored secret plans left behind by commanders Simko and Dizli that pertained to future insurgent actions against Your Royal Highness. Though there is no evidence of these plans, after Cadet Khourdi delivered said punishments, the residents of Saqqez maintained an attitude increasingly generous and open, regularly of fering us their grains, fruits, breads, tea and cheese.

  The cadet I mention is himself a Kurd, an early tribal conscript orphaned on the battlefields of Kermanshah. He makes no claim to comprehend his previous language or culture but clearly possesses a keen understanding of the specific sensibilities unique to the Kurds and thus was able to identify transgressions and resistances invisible to us (the civilized and high-ranking resident commanders from Tehran, Shiraz, Esfahan and Mashhad, who have no nose for such things). I believe that these particular sensitivities will prove useful in Your Most Imperial Majesty’s Campaign to Tame the Tribes and thus Create Modern Iran. Therefore I recommend Reza Pejman Khourdi for temporary stationing in Tehran; further military indoctrination; possible marriage with a Tehrani woman of some education and modernity; an eventual assignment in the Kurdish region near his home of Kermanshah, where he will understand and discipline his own. In this way we become our nation bringing those from the outside in.

  I hope this letter most gently penetrates the Kingly Mind and is joined with satisfaction and contentment at the state of our young, yet mighty, nation, as your heritage befits us centuries of magnitude and wealth.

  With utmost Loyalty,

  Deference and Devotion,

  Captain G.A.A.

  Book III

  Tehran, Iran—1938

  The Morning Maze

  Allahu akbar . . . the brash muezzin call pierces like the morning’s light through ears and into the dreams of heads still tossed in sleep . . . I praise the perfection of God, the Forever Existing . . . the camion drops the soldiers in the city streets like rabbits in a warren, and so they scatter . . . without possessions Reza moves easily through the maze, wrapped tightly in his soldier suit and soldier boots . . . the looks are at him . . . Sarbaz! Over here!We’ve got the finest quarters in the city! A samovar in every room . . . and past him . . . covered women keep their heads cast down, uncovered women do the same . . . The Desired. The Existing. The Single and the Supreme . . . everywhere the dynamite demise of an ancient city . . . for the sake of the new, old homes explode into crumbles of rubble and boys play in the mess as if in castles, fortresses, dens and caves . . . they tie cuts of cloth to a stick to be stuck in the highest point to mean a flag, to mean theirs, to mean a child’s country . . . Reza has never seen so many doors, doorway after doorway hiding a puppetry beyond . . . a rice vendor moves heavy sacks with the stretch and bend of his crooked back . . . a girl of authority and suspicion holds to the iron latticework to stare out and down . . . three men sit around a table with a pipe, two toss dice, one stares and smokes . . . Allahu akbar . . . last night’s garbage piles on the curb: chicken bones, burnt rice, sodden tea leaves, clumps of tobacco, bloodied rags . . . refuse conquered by street urchins who search, then flies, then ants, then heat itself . . . the city devours itself, all beneath the sullen orange haze that coats Reza . . . Sarbaz! Here we have the finest rooms, thickest motaqs, a girl to bring you chai, the sweetest sherbet to quench your desert thirst . . . Reza moves past . . . Go then, has the shah taught you arrogance as well? You won’t find a better room in all of Tehran . . . a coin of spit lands at Reza’s feet and first the meniscus shines and then catches dust, to brown like everything else . . . a beggar, legless . . . Agha, please. I’ve never had two feet or even two ankles, God cursed me
to live like this . . . Reza glances down into the lines on the beggar’s open palm to see the maps of some foregone misfortune . . . The Perfect. The Exultant. Allahu akbar! . . . in an alley coppersmiths hammer their wares loudly, deaf to one another and to the world . . . the city is for him, to him, yet he can only see it in fragments . . . The Most Merciful, the Most Glorious . . . a dead body floats down the street, wrapped in white gauze, the faces of the pallbearers as somber as moneylenders who deal in daemons . . . horse shoes clop about the stone, their sorry eyes buried under the weight of concrete, copper, iron and brick . . . here and there a lamppost stands idle, the gray cresset dull and empty . . . Sarbaz! Are you a Kurd? My grandfather, God bless his soul, was a Kurd too. Please, come into my home, brother, your pleasure is my highest order. We have taraq, kebabs, the softest dancing girls . . . somewhere a window open . . . an eye opened then closed . . . mouths open and close . . . fish, street dog, unctuous old man alike . . . legs and assholes and cunts opened . . . the wound opens . . . a knocking . . . entering . . . entered . . . taking and taken . . . a city of history in and history out . . . time forward and forever past and until then and we’ll see . . . Allahu akbar. Let Him be the one God. The only God with none like Him, nor any disobedient, nor any deputy or equal or offspring. His Perfection be extolled . . . odor emanates, not of the city, but of Reza himself, from deep in the damp enclosure of the wool Cossack uniform his pores open and spill forth . . . he is only a day arrived and permeable . . . he is the garbage . . . the dust . . . the child’s cry and the mother’s sacred slap . . . the city wraps around him and he is: transparent, diaphanous, nameless and new and so: free . . . Here! Sarbaz! The loveliest ladies await you here, in here . . . Reza moves through an opening . . . between two large wooden doors . . . there is a hyatt with a fountain, the emblem of a cross atop the arched door frame . . . Reza takes of the sweetened tea and the honey pastry . . . Just in from the desert? . . . a sweaty palm encloses his and the scent of rosewater floods over him . . . In that case let me arrange for Marjam . . . the damp and musty room. . . the madam’s cough as she closes the door . . . street din amplified through a window high in the wall . . . she: not a face but a mask with crushed-petal-stained lips and charcoal-covered eyes . . . not a face, he takes her hand and pushes it down into his pants . . . a grip not fierce or gentle . . . holds him and does not . . . not a face but a mouth warm, a tongue warmer . . . wet . . . not a motaq but an elevated bed . . . Allahu akbar . . . he feels himself stiffen as there are no mountains or canyons or Kurd eyes to watch over and into him . . . the first thrust, not an embrace but an angry thrust . . . the texture of himself: desirous, durable, unabashed as she is not a face . . . a mask . . . the texture of her enclave: silken smooth, not the warren of streets or the haze of morning or the rapid fire of rifles . . . up and into, again, up and into . . . the thrust, the laugh . . . the sweat pours forth . . . her haunches in his hand . . . her laugh, not resistant but supple in the face of it and laughing . . . Agha, why are all the soldier boys so mad? Doesn’t the shah take care of your little things? . . . his fist on her face . . . the crush of himself into the soft pillow inside her . . . and it is done: she of the no face lies naked and faceless and he of the shah dresses for the shah in heavy wool and straps and spurs . . . places coins into the old lady’s hand . . . one and one and one and is chided . . . You say, “Thank you, madam,” is what you say . . . the city sweeps around him . . . a window closes . . . the sun arcs across the alley . . . the sky present only in cracks between rooftops, and then present only as a covering, a wash of haze over the shine of a cosmos muted and erased . . . sweat covers him all over in a thick mucus of rebirth . . . Reza walks clean and without history . . . his first sexed self, a city self: a good man, the modern man of nation and king, landless and lost, complete with deeds done and forgotten . . . Allahu akbar. The Exultant. The Supreme.