Dr. Doostar, with the same forceful tone, which did not match his wrinkled complexion and crumpled body, said, “Only Sadegh Hedayat could write a novel about what I’m going to tell you.”
Dr. Farhoodi was getting ready to say something again when Dr. Doostar turned to look at him directly and said, “If you could be a little patient…”
Then, for the first time he focused his gaze on all of us as if he wanted to be sure of our presence. He said, “Please, just listen for fifteen minutes.”
We assured him we were listening to his story with all of our attention.
Dr. Doostar cleared his throat and finally started his story.
“I had just become a physician and had started a practice in a small town that was even smaller than my birthplace. I had an office and I dreamt of being famous and rich, which was my motivation for studying medicine in the first place. I even worked till late at night to treat one or two more patients so I could earn more money. I had nothing to do at home anyway. In those days, radio and television weren’t available to everyone. I didn’t have a radio. I didn’t buy newspapers either, reluctant to spend a few coins. I had nothing to do with what was going on in the world. My world was my office and my patients, who were old and young, men and women, and children, occupied my whole time. They were mostly from villages in the surrounding areas of the town, and they sometimes couldn’t afford my fee, despite the fact that my fees were low because I was a novice doctor. I wasn’t the kind of person to examine a patient without charging him or her. If that had been the case, I would have opened a free clinic. When the patients didn’t have money to pay my fee, I sent them home and told them to come back when they had money in their pockets. Those poor people went back to their homes without getting examined or treated. I thought, it’s not my business—either they get through the winter and get well by chance, or they won’t make it to the spring. I was a physician and my only income was from charging my patients. I dreamed of accumulating a large amount of wealth, and I eventually did. That’s how I was able many years later to send my only child to Canada and afford to pay for him to get his specialty in brain surgery. But let us forget about these things.
“The poor peasants mostly came back because their sickness was acute and they needed treatment. Peasants don’t usually see a doctor for a simple cold or a headache. They have to be really sick and feel pain to their bones before they even think about getting help from a doctor. Sometimes when their sickness was serious, they had to sell their poultry or their rations of flour for the cold days of winter to be able to pay for a visit. There was a government hospital which was free for everyone. So, I didn’t feel bad if I sent them there because they couldn’t pay me.
“I wasn’t a social reformer and didn’t even think about rescuing human beings. I didn’t have any illusions. My only aim was to write prescriptions that would heal my patients, of course, but make me some money in return.”
He paused briefly, then continued, “I didn’t mean to talk about such trivial issues. My story is about something else.”
We remained silent, now eager to hear the doctor’s story.
“It was a winter night, perhaps Yalda night. In those years, I didn’t care very much about celebrating Yalda and those kinds of festivities. At the time, I didn’t have any family around me to remind me about them. However, it was a long and cold night, although I had light and heat in my office, but that light was a problem for me. It was about an hour since I’d dismissed my last patient and I was counting my earnings for the day. Actually, it had been a good day for me in terms of income. The fall was always the season of prosperity; not only for peasants, who were harvesting their crops, but also for me, because it was the season of colds, fevers, and diarrhea. Well, diarrhea was generally the result of eating too much junk food and catching the flu was easy with the change in weather. And peasants remembered their own chronic pains, which they didn’t have a chance to think about during the spring and summer, the seasons of cultivation and harvesting. Now, let’s forget about these things.”
I was getting fed up with the doctor’s asides. Once or twice I wanted to excuse myself and leave the room, pretending I had to go to the washroom, but I respected him and stayed quiet. Indeed, the silence in the room was solemn and heavy. We all waited for the doctor to continue.
“Yes, I remember very well that it was a long winter night and I was reviewing my account and happy that I had a good business. Don’t laugh at me when I say business. Being a doctor is a certain kind of business. However, to make it short, when I raised my head, a young woman with a frightened expression on her face was standing in front of me. Her long, black hair was dishevelled and she was covering her breasts with her arms. Her cheeks were crimson, the front of her dress was open and her large breasts swelled beneath her arms with her panting. Then I remembered that I’d forgotten to lock my office door after seeing my last patient out. Believe me, for a few minutes I thought I was hallucinating. The woman didn’t look real. She had dark almond eyes, long, perfectly-arched eyebrows, full lips—half-open and ready for a long kiss—rosy cheeks, and long, curly hair. She looked like one of the women in the paintings in books by the great Sufi poet, Hafiz, or in Omar Khayam’s Rubaiyat. She was, I thought, what Sadegh Hedayat once described as the “eternal woman.” She completely bewitched me. Obviously, she had run a long way and the wind had tangled her hair. She was panting hard. I assumed she had fled from someone or something. It crossed my mind that a wolf or a fox had followed her.
“I was so surprised and so stunned by her appearance that I couldn’t utter a word. Yes, I remember now, she was the first to speak. Because she was still so out of breath, she stammered a little. ‘My dear doctor, please help me, please. My … my husband wants to kill me.’
“Then, I understood what was going on. Her husband, I thought, must be one of those jealous husbands and maybe someone had looked at his wife with lust in his eyes, and he had felt degraded, and then wanted to kill his wife. I wanted to say, ‘Well, my dear, this is none of my business. You should complain to the police.’ But the woman continued, ‘My husband imagines I am a snake, a snake…’
“The word ‘snake’ terrified me. She pronounced it as she were a real snake, making a hissing sound as she spoke—fesh, fesh, fesh. There was a terrible fear in her eyes.
“I don’t know if it was fear, compassion, or temptation…. Yes, I think it was temptation that forced me to get up from my desk and move toward the woman. I looked at her wide, terrified eyes and said, ‘Your husband must be insane.’
“Her eyes widened further as she said, ‘No, my dear doctor. He’s not insane. He’s a perfectly healthy man. He’s the son of the village owner and bought me with a good price from my father and wants to have children by me to keep his property.’
“I asked her, ‘Are you his legal wife or…?’
“She didn’t let me finish. She said, ‘I’m his legal wife. I am his only wife. My husband is a young man—he’s only a few years older than me. But tonight, I don’t know what happened to him. He said that I’d become a snake. He wanted to kill me with an axe, so I fled from him. I ran all the way from the village to the town. Then I noticed that there was a light in your office….’
“You see, it was the light in my office that got me into trouble. The woman bewitched me as a snake bewitches a tiny mouse. I forgot all about the oaths I’d taken as a physician and the restraints I should have exercised while examining a young woman. I had nothing left except empty words.
“I told her I’d have to examine her to determine if she was really a snake. It seemed that the woman didn’t understand what I was saying. I led her to the examination table, and she yielded to me. I made love to her and she didn’t resist, as if she had run all the way from her village to the town to come to my dingy office and go to bed with me. When I was done, I got off the examination table and turned my back to her so that she co
uld dress. I waited politely for a few moments then turned around to face her. To my horror, a large snake was coiled on the examination table where she had been only moments before. It raised its head and its tongue was like a sharp blade flicking out of its mouth.
“I don’t know how I got out of my office, but I fled as fast as I could and was lost in the winding alleys of the town. I must have fallen asleep outside of town at the foot of the town gates. When I awoke, it was morning. Without daring go back to my office or even to my own home to get a few pieces of my clothing, I took a bus to Tehran. I spent a few days in my parents’ house, but I didn’t feel well. I was plagued by visions of that woman’s face, her incredible beauty, her long, lustrous hair quickly morphing into the huge, coiled snake poised and alert on the examination table. I didn’t dare return to my town or go back to work in my office. One day as I was wandering idly in the streets, the headline in a newspaper attracted my attention: A peasant killed his wife with an axe, having imagined she had turned into a snake when he was sleeping with her.
“After reading that article, I convinced myself that what had happened to me was not real but merely a hallucination. I have never talked about it till now.”
Dr. Doostar stopped talking and gazed at us with eyes full of unanswered questions. It was as if he was asking, “Now tell me: what happened to me, was it real, or not?”
Heart’s Language
FOR ME, TRANSLATION IS LIKE emigration from one’s homeland to another one—living in a new country and assimilating into and accepting a new way of life, uprooting everything familiar to become integrated into a foreign culture. And sometimes translation is like navigating on a sea that hasn’t been charted. Translation is a captivating ordeal for me. It has been said that language is the house of the heart. When you have to move from your familiar house to another one, you can expect to confront a hard job ahead.
I have experience translating and sometimes people say, “You translate your own work, so it shouldn’t be hard for you because you have the freedom to change your sentences and rewrite them so they can be translated more easily.” Sometimes I do that, but my own language then loses its flavour and becomes bland. Farsi is a metaphorical language—full of expressions and proverbs that are integrated into literary language, making it very difficult to translate.
When I translated the first collection of my short stories, I gave them to a Canadian friend—my landlord, actually—to read and comment on. When she returned my writing, she had highlighted almost half of each page in bright pink marker. I felt ashamed of my poor knowledge of the English language. I wanted to submit my work to a publisher, with the expectation that it would be accepted for publication and that I would be recognized as a writer in this society.
My friend, who is also an instructor and teaches English as a second language to newcomers, looked at me the way that a doctor might look at a patient and said, “I’m sorry, but this is not English—”
I stared at her without making a sound, ashamed of my writing and deeply disillusioned. What should I do now? I asked myself.
She noticed my devastation and continued, “I have a suggestion.”
I tried to swallow my disappointment and allowed myself to feel hopeful. “Everything will be okay,” she said, a phrase I’ve heard on many occasions during my years of living in exile, and they had no effect on me.
But I pretended to be jubilant and asked, “What do you suggest?” And this time I really tried to feel hopeful that she could show me a magic way to perfect my English and become an expert in literary translation.
She stared at me with kindness and sympathy and said, “If you really want your writing to appear to be written by an English-speaking person, you must forget your first language and write in English—only English. You should think in English, read in English, and speak in English.”
When she noticed the stupefied look on my face, she continued with sternness, “You probably know your first language always creates a barrier that interferes with learning a second language. When you are about to speak English, you think first in Farsi and then translate into English before you utter the words out loud. So your first language is always with you and it won’t let you get familiar with the English language. Everyone who listens to you will recognize quickly that English is not your first language.”
I was offended but I encouraged myself to respond. “I don’t want anyone to imagine that English is my first language. Obviously, I am Farsi-speaking. Why should I pretend to be English-speaking? When I open my mouth to speak English it is clear that English is my second language because of my accent. I can’t change my accent…”
She interrupted me, “I know. You don’t need to tell me. I’m an English Language instructor. But still, if you want to be a writer with works published in English, as I said, you need to forget your first language.”
I didn’t want to interrupt her but her suggestion irritated me. What did she mean? Do I have forget my beloved Farsi? Stop speaking, reading, and writing in Farsi? Do I have to forget all the poems flowing in me that are in my own tongue? Is it possible? No, this wouldn’t be possible for me. I couldn’t empty myself of my mother tongue. That was simply beyond my strength. So I interrupted her, even though I knew it was rude. “That’s impossible,” I said with a deep frustration in my heart, “my mother tongue is my identity. I can’t forget it.”
She gently placed her hand on my shoulder and said, “I’m not saying that you must forget your mother tongue. I’m saying when you write in English, forget about Farsi. Try to write directly in English. Train your brain to write in English until you become fluent and proficient in this language. If you translate your own Farsi works, you will always be considered a translator and the language of your stories will never be genuine, or original.” She then mentioned a few writers whose mother tongue wasn’t English, but whose work, because it was composed in English, did not have a problem with language, diction, or expression.
“If these famous writers write in English and are successful,” I comment, “then maybe it’s because they learned to speak English when they were still a child in their own country, or they grew up in this country. For me, it was different. I was middle-aged when I immigrated to this country. English was a subject I was taught in high school and in college but my knowledge was limited to a few conversational sentences, such as: ‘What’s your name? How much does it cost?’ Or, ‘The weather is fine.’ Or ‘It’s raining.’ Once in this country, I didn’t have the opportunity to go to college to learn English well and make it an internal language for myself. Nor did I have enough money to pay someone with perfect English to translate my Farsi fiction. In my homeland, I was a writer and I wanted to be recognized as a writer in this country as well. So the only thing I could do was translate my own work. I’m sure you think it was an ambitious task and a dream beyond my capabilities. So, it seems I should forget about it.”
“You shouldn’t give up your dream so quickly,” she said. “I know that you’re a hard worker and I’ve noticed that every night your light is on until late.”
A cold sweat sent shivers down my spine. God help me, I thought. She probably wants to increase the rent. I looked at her with suspicion, suddenly doubting her motives. Perhaps because she knows I am awake till late, she will say that I consume more electricity than I am permitted.
But her tone was still soothing, and flipping through the pages I had given her without paying attention to any paragraph, she continued, “I remember an expression you repeat several times: ‘If someone really wants something, they will get it with hard work.’ So you, too, must want it.”
I was still disappointed but thankful that she didn’t mention increasing the rent. “How?” I asked.
“As I said, forget about your mother tongue,” she said sternly, like a teacher admonishing her student.
I opened my mouth to say, I can’t, it’s impossible, bu
t she didn’t let me utter one word. “You must forget about your first language. Start to think in English, to speak in English, to read in English, and write in English. You must do it very seriously and constantly.”
As I listened to her, it seemed to me I was navigating the waters of a foreign sea. I asked myself how long I would be lost on this huge ocean with no shore in sight. And, if after many years of doubting where I would land, what direction would I, could I, take?
My friend waited patiently, then asked, “What do you think?”
And I, like a person standing by the shore at the beginning of this intricate and unknown journey, said, “I’m afraid to start.”
“Why?” she asked, surprised.
“I’m afraid I will reach nowhere,” I said.
“I don’t understand what you mean,” she said.
I realized my translation of this Farsi expression was incomprehensible in the English words I used. I said, “It’s a Farsi expression and it’s hard to put it into English words exactly as it is.”
She laughed loudly and said, “You see, this is the first language’s intrigue. You have to release yourself from the first language. You have to forget Farsi expressions and find English expressions that relay the same meaning. If you translate Farsi expressions literally, word for word, they might not make sense.”
“I can’t,” I said. “It’s not easy.”
“You have to,” she said with a sense of superiority in her voice.
I stayed quiet—wondering. I was disappointed and realized she could do nothing for me. She got up to leave and repeated her words once more, “Think about it. If you want to be an English language writer, you should forget…” I didn’t hear the rest of her sentence. Too pungent for me to swallow. I had to find another way, but how? I didn’t know.
The Street of Butterflies Page 11