I, Who Did Not Die

by Zahed Haftlang

  My house looked the same except for one of the courtyard walls, which looked like it had been hit by a shell and patched back up. I was about to knock on the door when a middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair opened it.

  “Yes?”

  Even though it was obviously not Maman, I waited for this stranger to snap back into my mother. When my brain woke up again, I stammered, “Uh. Um. Sorry. I am looking for the Haftlang family.”

  “They moved away after their son was killed in the war,” she said.

  I blinked. She blinked. A look of concern crossed over her face and she started to close the door. I reached up and grabbed the door before she closed it all the way.

  “But I didn’t die.”

  Her jaw dropped and her hand reached up, reflexively, to cover her mouth.

  “Praise God,” she said, pulling my face toward her to kiss my cheeks. She took my hands, which were in casts, and led me inside. Everything looked exactly the same, dishes and pots stacked where we’d left them, even the position of the pillows in the sitting room was unchanged, and all of a sudden I was thirteen again, and a lump lodged in my throat, as if the ghost of my father was reaching out of the shadows to squeeze my neck. It was too claustrophobic and I couldn’t accept the woman’s hospitality because I had to get out. When she returned from the kitchen with a glass of water, I was already at the door. I waved, said “Thank you,” and ran out the door and to Mostafa’s house, but it was deserted. There was nothing left to do but get back in the military vehicle that was waiting for me.

  “My family is gone,” I told the driver.

  I stayed in the military dorms while officers helped me search for my family. But before they could locate them, they found a clue. My neck prickled as two soldiers walked me toward a special sectioned-off area of the Masjed Soleyman cemetery reserved for war martyrs, where the headstones were larger and cleaner and surrounded by a lush green lawn. They stopped me before a granite slab with a framed photo propped up against it. I leaned in closer and saw that it was my elementary-school photo. Chiseled into the gravestone was a quote from Imam Khomeini, “The martyr is the heart of history.” Beneath that, the words MARTYR ZAHED HAFTLANG. Beneath that, my birthdate. And finally, the day I died: July 19, 1988, in Sumar.

  I howled at the universe and smashed the photo of me against the stone. My family didn’t know what had happened to me, so why did they decide I was dead? Did they wish it were true? They were tired of me and didn’t want me back? After all I had suffered, how could my family, my country, so summarily dismiss me?

  My outburst drew the attention of two gravediggers who approached and demanded to know what I was doing.

  “What the hell do you think you are doing breaking the picture frame of a martyr? Where is your conscience? They served your country, and you are mistreating their grave?”

  “I’m still alive!” I shouted.

  The two men surveyed the photo and then studied me. I laughed at them like a mad scientist.

  “You made a grave for someone who is not dead! Who did you bury?”

  The workers dropped the frame and hustled back to the cemetery office. Either they believed the superstition that martyr ghosts came to visit their own graves or they realized they were in deep shit for making such a mistake and they wanted to go destroy the records. I pawed at the earth with my casts, vainly trying to find out who was underground. The Sepah officer who had driven me to the cemetery gently placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “Son, it’s time to go.”

  I stayed in the military dormitory for another three weeks until officers tracked down my family two provinces to the east, in the city of Isfahan. The army contacted my family ahead of time and told them there had been a terrible misunderstanding, and that I was in fact alive and coming home. I traveled to my parents in high style, in a military helicopter that touched down at the military base there. By then the story of me coming back from the dead had trickled through the community, and by the time the chopper wobbled down there was a huge crowd waiting to greet me. I spotted my parents and all nine siblings, but also neighbors and family friends and government officials and a bunch of local imams.

  I stepped out, and I must have been a sight, with my bandaged hands and my face still swollen from Mira Sahib’s attack. My mother ran to me first but stopped short, suddenly uncertain.

  “Zahed?”

  “Yes, Maman, it’s me.”

  She tilted her head away from me and looked at me sideways.

  “How do I know for sure?” she asked.

  “Because I have a scar on my butt from where that dog bit me when I was a kid.”

  “Let me see,” she said.

  I turned around and let her pull back the waistband of my pants to inspect. I let her do this in front of everybody, because she was my mother, and mothers have certain rights.

  “It’s really you!”

  We hugged fiercely, relief coursing between us.

  “Why did you think I died?”

  “They gave us your arm. They said that’s all that was left.”

  I held up my arms.

  “Which one? Left or right?”

  She laughed, and it was glorious to see that she hadn’t buried me out of spite after all. She was truly happy to see me.

  “Really, Zahed, when are you going to stop with your antics?” she asked.

  My father clutched his heart like he was about to pass out. I walked to him and grabbed him by the elbow to help steady him.

  “Baba.”

  “Son.”

  He nodded as if to say he would talk with me later, once I was done greeting the huge crowd that had come to celebrate my reincarnation. Over the next weeks I was a celebrity. I received visitors at the family home around the clock, extended family and neighbors and people I didn’t even know, all eager to lay eyes on the not-dead martyr. I was some sort of religious miracle, and even the local mullahs had taken a collection in the mosques to help me get back on my feet. Because I didn’t have a bank account, Baba put the cash, about ten thousand dollars, in his own savings account for safekeeping.

  Meanwhile, Maman, taking note of my sudden popularity, got busy searching for a suitable bride for me, and set her sights on the sister of a man who was engaged to one of my sisters. I had absolutely no interest in getting married, especially to a stranger, but Maman would not be deterred. Since her chosen bride was still in high school, I was able to slow her down somewhat by suggesting we wait until the girl finished her studies.

  I had more pressing matters on my mind. Of all the dying wishes I had received as a medic, there was one in particular that was gnawing at me. A dying soldier had asked me to please visit his twin daughters in an orphanage, and in his last breath, told me the address and names of his girls. What struck me was that he didn’t ask me to adopt his children, or to find another family for them, as if he knew that would be asking too much. He simply asked if I would visit the girls from time to time, and the pitifulness of his request broke my heart. I decided I would take the money the mullahs gave me and open bank accounts for the sisters. I found Baba outside washing his car, but when I asked him for my money back, he refused.

  “I’m protecting you from yourself. You will throw this money away,” he said, as if that was the last word on the matter.

  “It’s not your decision,” I said.

  Baba kept moving the rag over the hood of the car in tighter and faster circles.

  “You have brain damage from the war.”

  Baba spoke to me with the confidence of one who is conning a thirteen-year-old. He was talking to who he remembered I was, not who I had become. A stillness came over me, as I took all the brutality that I had witnessed since I ran away and distilled it into one command.

  “I am only going to say this one more time. You will write me a check for that money. Now.”

  He turned and faced me. Then he reached for a shovel.

  “You do not want to do that,” I said.


  Baba held the shovel tight to his chest. “You should not come home if all you want to do is argue with me,” he said.

  “I am not arguing. I am telling.”

  We stood at an impasse, until he wilted under the heat of my stare. He must have seen how dead my eyes were, and known that I no longer feared him. He put the shovel down and lumbered into the house. I looked over his shoulder as he wrote a check—for a couple thousand less than I had given him. As if I wouldn’t notice. But I was tired of fighting with him, and it was time to cut my losses.

  “Keep the rest,” I said. “You’ve had to feed a lot of visitors in the last two weeks.”

  Baba kept his back to me. His weary spine was curved like an egg.

  “I’m leaving,” I said.

  “Get the hell out.”

  SIXTEEN

  RELEASE

  Dear Alyaa: I’m sorry. I had every intention of keeping my promise and making you my wife. I had no idea that a few weeks were going to turn into sixteen-something years. I am an old man now, forty-six. Our son, sweet Amjad of the powerful legs, is a teenager. Soon he will be eighteen—please don’t let him get conscripted into the army. I hope that you both have moved out of Iraq so his life won’t end up like mine. Although it breaks my heart to even think that you have married another, I wouldn’t hold it against you if you did. Because above all, I want you to be happy, and I want you to be taken care of. Please, please be in a peaceful country, like Iceland. I dream of you warm by a fire with a cup of tea in your hands and a golden retriever curled up at your slippers. I see Amjad in a wool sweater with snowflakes on it, heading out the door to his classes at a university. Know that I love you both, and that when I am free, I will come for you. Until then, I will write you this letter, over and over, in my mind.

  I was in my fifth prison. It was another military holding facility in Tehran, called Parandak. Because I was such a VIP in the Iranian prison system, apparently, I now enjoyed more comforts—there was electricity in our room, and a toilet, and we were given plenty of food. We did have to go to religion classes, but the teachers refrained from insulting us. The nicest perk was my mattress. I almost couldn’t fall asleep at first because that much softness was jarring, like the pleasure overload you get from being tickled just a second too long, but in the two months I’d been sleeping with cushioned support, I must say I’d adjusted to it quite nicely. Really, I didn’t have any immediate complaints, just one lingering one—that they’d kept me locked up a full decade beyond the end of the war. If I thought too much about that, I’d go insane. It’s the anger and sorrow that will kill you in a place like this. I’d seen men completely lose their marbles, babbling incessantly to an audience of zero, having arguments with people only they could see. Every day I practiced bending my mind away from its propensity to be outraged, instead turning it into a stream flowing around a boulder. Don’t think for a minute that I was too weak to stand up for myself. I stayed calm for me. Because one day when I was free, I didn’t want to be carrying a bitter old man on piggyback. I was preserving my middle-aged mind so that I could make the most out of the years I would have left. Dear Professor Lee, I am being the water.

  I was meditating on gratitude for my mattress one night when soldiers burst into our room, blowing whistles and demanding all prisoners assemble in the courtyard. I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and felt under my bed for my slippers, wondering why they could possibly need to move us yet again to another prison. One of the lieutenants waved at me to hurry.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Shhh,” he said, thrusting some papers in my hand. He led me before the crowd and asked me to read the paper. I looked down and saw a handwritten list of names. No Red Cross letterhead, nothing. Just someone’s scribbles. Seemed most likely this was a transfer list to another prison, but there was always the possibility it could be an execution list.

  “Tell them that if they hear their names called, they must gather their things and return to the courtyard,” the lieutenant said. I translated.

  Then I began calling out names. Those who heard their names gasped and put their hands to their hearts in fear. Some protested, saying they were too sick, or too weak, to go anywhere. One man, an amputee on crutches, shouted that they would have to kill him first, because he wasn’t going to budge. I read thirty names, about one-quarter of the way through the list, then stopped.

  “My name’s on here,” I said.

  “Yes,” the lieutenant said, looking away from me as he spoke. “And when you finish reading the list, you, too, gather your things and join the rest.”

  “But I’m the translator. You need me here.”

  The lieutenant acted as if he hadn’t heard me, but I knew he had. The last time I had been singled out from the prison population, it had been to send me to the squalid caves of Sang Bast. This couldn’t be good. I finished calling the names on the list, then returned to my cell and rolled up my sliver of soap, my plastic teacup, and my plate in my two blankets and joined the rows of men sitting cross-legged in the courtyard, their hands on their heads as instructed. The men whispered questions to me under their breath, as if I actually had answers.

  “Arshad, what do you think is going to happen to us?”

  “I don’t know,” I said out of the corner of my mouth. We had to sit like that for several hours, as the blood drained out of our arms, until three buses arrived. Again, the blindfolds. They tied our hands in front of us and forced our heads down so we wouldn’t be visible from the bus windows. My head banged into the seat in front of me as the Iranian driver, I swear, gunned it over every pothole. Then I heard the Iranian guard riding with us start chatting with the driver, and I lifted my head to eavesdrop. After the usual pleasantries about families and careers, the driver asked the soldier what would become of the prisoners once he reached the border.

  “I think they are going to send them to their families.”

  “You might want to lower your voice,” the driver said. “One of them knows Farsi.”

  Did I just hear what I think I heard? My mouth suddenly went dry and my brain felt like it was tossing inside a washing machine. I strained to hear more, but the Iranians were whispering to each other now. My heart thumped like I was running uphill, and I gasped for air, suddenly realizing I had been holding my breath for the last thirty seconds. I envisioned Alyaa, my mother, and all my siblings, like it was just yesterday. I was panting now, and I couldn’t stop. I nudged the prisoner next to me.

  “I heard something,” I said.

  We bent down lower in our seats, so our foreheads were resting on our knees.

  “The guard said we are going home to our families.”

  I heard my neighbor inhale sharply, and felt his body start to tremble.

  “I hope this isn’t your idea of a joke,” he said. “You heard this? In Farsi?”

  “Why do you think I’m hyperventilating?”

  The men seated behind us overheard our conversation and quickly passed it on. I heard a sound, like the muffled hoot of an owl, growing louder as the message crackled like static electricity throughout the bus. I immediately regretted telling my neighbor. These poor men would not be able to handle it if I had heard wrong. The guard had said “I think.” He didn’t sound totally certain.

  “Hey! Quiet down!” the Iranian guard shouted from the front of the bus. We stopped chattering but kept bouncing in our seats as we felt the bus turn off the highway into a honking city with stop signs and roundabouts. When our ten-hour ride came to an end, the guards took us off the bus, one by one, and removed our blindfolds. The sunlight was blinding at first, but when the black spots finally disappeared from my vision, I saw that we were standing at the back entrance to an enormous white mosque. They led us inside, where shafts of light beamed on a banquet table spilling over with tangerines, pomegranates, dried apricots, and dates, plus a huge bowl of yogurt and a shiny tea samovar. The Persian carpets felt like velvet underfoot as we padded over to the table to feast
. In between hungry bites, the men pelted me with questions, and I had no answers, just that scrap of maybe-information I had overheard. I tried approaching several soldiers inside the mosque, but each one put up his palm, telling me to come no closer.

  I stepped outside, under escort, to smoke a cigarette. My babysitter seemed friendlier, so I tried again.

  “What city are we in?”

  “Ahvaz.”

  I knew that name! Ahvaz was the first Iranian city I’d been stationed in, right before being sent to fight in Khorramshahr. Ahvaz was near the border! I tried to bring the cigarette to my lips again, but my hands were shaking too much.

  “Is this the border?”

  “Yes.”

  I faced the soldier, imploring him with my eyes.

  “Why did they bring us here?” I asked.

  The cigarette had fallen from my fingers, and he snuffed it out with his boot.

  “I don’t know; I’m just a soldier,” he replied.

  Four more soldiers approached and ordered me to go back inside the mosque with the others. We gathered in rows before a decorated military man, a general or a colonel of some kind, who called me to his side to interpret: “We apologize for keeping you here for such a long time. Iran and Iraq have signed an accord, and the war is over. We are both Muslim countries, committed to peace. We are going to take you back to your families. We ask only one thing of you—when you are home, tell Saddam Hussein to free our prisoners of war. If he does that, we will release more of your people.”

  I only got through the first part of his message, because by the time I told the men they were going home, their shouts completely drowned out the guy’s request that we press for the release of Iranian POWs. I embraced the men I’d been living with for seventeen years as if I hadn’t seen them for that long. I alternated between weeping and laughing—weeping at the thought of walking away from all my brothers whom I’d shared every moment with for so long, and the thought of seeing my family again. Our complexions glowed and our faces ached from grinning. It was November 1998, a decade after the war had ended, and by some twist of fate that I will never know, I was going home.