Dardedel

by Manoucher Parvin

That is how bad!”

  “Since Qays was madly in love, he became insane with love!

  When Qays ran through the bazaar calling, ‘Layla! Layla!’

  People said, ‘Indeed he is a madman, a Majnun!’

  And so Qays came to be known as Majnun.

  When word of Majnun’s mad love reached Layla’s father,

  He withdrew her from the school, to protect her.

  Without Layla, Majnun lost his senses completely and

  Wandered into the wilderness where his madness only grew.

  I know just what Majnun was going through, Mitra Jaan,

  Just what Romeo and Tony went through.

  When you are in the back seat of my cab,

  So close and yet so far from my reach,

  I am Majnun in the wilderness, Majnun in New York.

  As he sang Layla’s name across the sands, I sing for you, Mitra!”

  Hafez now begins to sing the lines Tony’s sang to Maria:

  “The most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard:

  Mitra, Mitra, Mitra, Mitra …

  All the beautiful sounds of the world in a single word:

  Mitra, Mitra, Mitra, Mitra …

  Say it loud and it’s music playing,

  Say it soft and it’s almost like praying …”

  Mitra squeezes Hafez’s hand to stop him.

  “Hafez Jaan, please! The girl making bagels is laughing at you.”

  Hafez turns toward the bagel girl and blows her a kiss,

  Then continues his story: “Yes, Majnun went completely mad,

  And his father, his heart breaking, too,

  Went to Layla’s father to ask for her hand.

  But Layla’s father refused to give Layla to Majnun,

  And so Majnun wandered deeper into the wilderness,

  Deeper into his madness.

  I do not know why Romeo could not have Juliet,

  And it seems so foreign to me that Tony and Maria

  Were denied simply because one was white and one brown,

  But how tragic it was that Majnun could not have Layla,

  Simply because he loved her too much!”

  Mitra tells him quickly of Romeo and Juliet’s plight:

  “Romeo was a Montague and Juliet a Capulet,

  Two families that hated each other.

  Their love was doomed from the start—

  But tell me more about Layla: did she go as mad as Majnun?”

  Hafez shrugs, answering: “She did not go mad,

  Though she was madly in love with Majnun.

  When her father forced her to marry another man,

  She refused her husband’s bed,

  And just as Majnun spent his life wandering the wilderness,

  Layla was lost in a wilderness, too, in a cold and loveless marriage.”

  Mitra is holding Hafez’s hands tight.

  She asks, not wanting to know the answer,

  “How did it end for Layla and Majnun?”

  “They lived long and empty lives,” says Hafez,

  “Always apart, yet always in love.

  When Layla died, Majnun rushed to her grave,

  And wept until he, too, died.

  His bones were buried with Layla’s bones—a vasal in death.”

  “Romeo and Juliet died in each other’s arms,” Mitra says.

  “How do you think we will fare?”

  Hafez searches for an answer, finding only his own misery.

  “I do not want to live and die as Majnun lived and died,

  I do not want to live and die as Romeo or Tony lived and died.

  I want you now, in life, right now!

  But the law says no because you are too young,

  That loving you is rape, though you are already ripe,

  And as willing as I am willing.

  The law is the rapist, Mitra Jaan!

  It is the crazy modern laws of crazy modern men

  That are the defilers and deflowerers!

  Once our love would have been blessed by God and our families,

  Once the mullahs would have whirled in their robes with joy for us!”

  Hafez is now Majnun, by madness transformed into an empty desert.

  “And what is wrong with your mother, Mitra Jaan?

  That she does not want love for you?

  That she does not see that you are a grown woman?

  That she bribes you with free tickets to plays

  That will only fuel your longings and your agony?”

  Mitra is crying: “It is more than the crazy laws,

  More than my age or your age that divides us.

  It is more than you are a cabbie and a lover of poems.

  You are a Persian, Hafez, an Iranian, like my father.

  And while my mother loves all things Persian,

  She no longer loves the Persian who fathered me.”

  Hafez laughs as he cries, lamenting:

  “So we must carry the burden of all star-crossed lovers!

  Like Majnun and Romeo, Layla and Juliet,

  We are kept apart by family pride.

  Like Tony and Maria we are kept apart by color and culture.

  And on top of everything, we are kept apart by modern laws

  That make a mockery of nature’s design,

  That seek to stop our biological clocks, as Pirooz calls them,

  That tell men and women ready for love they are not ready for love!

  As you and I are ready for love! Mitra! I am ready for love!”

  Says Mitra: “And I am ready for love.”

  Hafez is now quivering with gloom and shame,

  For he has not confessed the other thing keeping them apart:

  That he is the old poet Hafez, on a vacation granted by God,

  That instead of the cactus counting stars he is again a living man,

  A young man in love with a young woman,

  Wanting no longer to count stars, but make love under them,

  As if he had never died and his flesh never rotted in his grave,

  As if this city were not New York but Shiraz.

  He sits there, now, squeezing Mitra’s hands,

  Begging his tongue to tell her the truth now,

  Now and now and now,

  In the hope that she will say, “Hafez Jaan,

  It is okay that you have kept this secret from me,

  Okay that God at any second may snap you away.

  For, Hafez, I love you as Layla loves Majnun,

  As Juliet loves Romeo, as Maria loves Tony,

  As my mother once loved my father, as Eve once loved Adam,

  As poets love words, as Love loves all lovers.”

  But Hafez’s tongue will not budge and

  His secret remains a monster.

  They walk hand in hand to Hafez’s cab.

  Already the sidewalks are crowded

  With people arriving for the evening shows.

  Hafez removes the parking ticket from his windshield,

  Shrugs the shrug of a modern man and drives Mitra home.

  “Come in for a while,” Mitra pleads. “The place is so big and lonely.”

  The elevator ascends to a safe and expensive world above the streets.

  The apartment is big and it is lonely.

  It also is too clean and too tidy, the furniture and rugs too new.

  They sit like careful butterflies on the white leather sofa

  And smile at each other, a silent dardedel.

  Finally Mitra asks: “Would you like some wine, Hafez?

  To help us say the things we want to say?”

  He nods.

  She brings two delicate goblets of delicate white wine.

  He sips and watches her sip.

  “Does your mother approve of wine for you, Mitra Jaan?”

  She watches him sip.

  “If my mother were here, she would not be worried

  About me drinking wine—She would be worried

  About the way
your eyes are drinking me,

  And the way my eyes are drinking you.”

  They sip in silence, allowing their eyes

  To devour as they wish, all they wish.

  Whispers Hafez: “Sweet Mitra Jaan!

  I can’t take my eyes off your alluring eyes,

  Or your supple lips, or seducing hair,

  Or your curvatures—oh, yes, your curvatures—

  And your torturing walk as you glide about with that

  Silky teasing skirt pouring excited bees into my empty hive,

  Revealing more or revealing less, saying yes then saying no,

  As you swing around to pick up this or pick up that,

  Or just sitting across from me with your naked thighs

  Resting on the soft leather, making me jealous of the soft leather,

  That was once a beast and now touches you ravenously,

  Without shame or pity for my tortured eyes to see!”

  Mitra feels her wine glass trembling against her aching lips.

  “Hafez Jaan, say no more, or I will have to torture you more.”

  Hafez reaches for the wine bottle, to refill his glass.

  But Mitra reaches it before him and slides it away,

  As a lover pulls her lips away to make the next kiss more enjoyable.

  “Mitra, Please! I am still thirsty!”

  Mitra laughs mischievously, filling his ears with erotic sensations.

  “I think God first created thirst, then everything else for the thirst!

  Don’t blame me, Hafez, I am thirsty, too—

  But don’t ask me for what!”

  Now Mitra lifts the bottle,

  As if it were made of fragile morning dew.

  “Drink another drink, Hafez, to quench your thirst,

  The thirst of thirsts.”

  She stands to fill his glass and glances into his eyes,

  To see how they glance back at her.

  Then she twirls around, a merry-go-round of silk and silken skin.

  “I can see that you like my skirt more up than more down.”

  Hafez can barely hold his glass still.

  “Why not bring a sword and slice me in half, Mitra Jaan?”

  “Patience, my love,” she says. “I will do that later—perhaps.”

  Though he wants to sip the new wine,

  Hafez must put his glass down on the table,

  For the moment of truth has come.

  “My beloved, my goddess,” he says,

  “Will you hear my confession before you cut me down?”

  Mitra enjoys being called a goddess,

  And smiles a goddess’s smile.

  “What possibly does a mortal man have to confess,

  That a goddess does not already know?”

  Hafez steadies his knees and finds the breath he needs.

  “Mitra, you will not believe me, but you must believe me,

  For the unbelievable is the truth.

  I am the real Hafez, Hafez of Shiraz, the old and dead Hafez,

  An unholy spirit, a poet trying to live as long as his poems!”

  Mitra reaches and caresses Hafez’s thick hair with her fingers,

  As if they were the delicate ivory teeth of a goddess’s comb.

  “I know you are the real Hafez, Hafez.

  I feel it in my bones and in my heart.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. For a long time.”

  “You have?”

  “And suspected it even longer.”

  “But how?”

  Mitra shrugs shyly, admitting, “At first it was just a notion,

  Then it grew so strong that I felt it must be true.

  Then that night at the slam, at the Sad Ghazal,

  You introduced me to your friend, Jalalad-Din.

  ‘A very good poet who knows the works of Rumi

  As if he wrote them himself,’ you said.

  This is New York, but not Disneyland, Hafez!

  What are the odds that a cabbie named Hafez,

  Who knows the work of the poet Hafez as well as Hafez,

  Has a friend with Rumi’s name

  Who knows the poems of Rumi as well as Rumi?

  I had no doubt after that:

  Hafez is Hafez and Rumi is Rumi.

  The only thing that puzzled me was Pirooz—who was he really?”

  Hafez is scratching his head now.

  “As far as I can tell, Pirooz is really Pirooz.

  Mitra! Why didn’t you tell me you knew?

  You don’t know how many nights of sleep this secret has cost me,

  How many bottles of wine this secret has cost me!”

  And so the secret is no longer a secret.

  They laugh and laugh, each laugh easier than the last.

  Hafez now says this: “Mitra Jaan, my love is not just

  The love of one soul for another,

  But the love of one body for another.”

  “Tell me something new,” teases Mitra, still playing the goddess.

  “I never believed your poems were all mystical as some fools do!

  Mystical love is for mystical birds nesting in mystical trees,

  And I always saw real birds in real trees when reading your poems.

  Now go on with your confession, Hafez Jaan.”

  Hafez obeys: “Night after night I’m on fire

  Burning for you, to kiss you, to be annihilated inside you.

  No one, and nothing, will stop me,

  Not in this life.

  My new life belongs to no one but you and me,

  Not the national religion that Pirooz curses,

  Not your mother who disapproves of me,

  Not kings! Not angels! Not even God!

  “If you desire fire, touch me, Mitra Jaan.

  Let me burn with you, in male and female flames,

  The flames of vasal, union, and fruition, Mitra Jaan.

  And let me disappear in your palpitations,

  And turn into dust and be blown away,

  To immortal joy, by your palpitations.”

  Mitra walks slowly to Hafez, and stands just an inch away from him,

  A curious moth unable to resist a dancing flame.

  Hafez rests his head on her drumming heart, looks up, and whispers:

  “I have waited centuries for you.

  I will wait for you no longer.

  I want to be wrong, so very wrong.

  Let us do something wrong, Mitra,

  And never, never apologize,

  For this single wrong that is better than all rights.

  And if the cloaked men say repent, we will pretend we are deaf.

  And if the laws declare you too young,

  Those laws will be the footprints of a thousand confused birds to us.

  And if people say we are worlds apart, like America and Iran,

  We will orbit both worlds like a pair of illuminating moons.”

  Hafez stands and holds Mitra gently,

  Her hair carressing his cheek like a soft pillow.

  “Mitra Jaan! Give me permission to awaken and ignite your passion.

  For surely God knows we’re destined to be reborn in each other’s fire.”

  Mitra feels ablaze, like Zoroaster’s eternal flame.

  “Stop Hafez! My inside has been aching for your passion, too,

  Through your poems, even before your resurrection!”

  Hafez is shocked to learn about such passion for his poems,

  But he has another kind of poetry on his mind:

  “Mitra Jaan, I am not mad, I am not Majnun,

  Destined just to write poems in the wilderness,

  And give them up to the winds,

  In the hope the winds will carry them to Layla.

  No, I am not Majnun, destined to go mad and stay mad,

  To wander over rock and sand, to live in caves and talk to animals.

  I just left the desert for New York, Mitra Jaan!

  I am in th
e fertile jungle of love now,

  In the home of my love now.

  Majnun persisted in his madness for many years,

  But over the years of separation Layla had become

  Only an image, an impossible dream.

  And when she died, widowed, but yet untouched,

  Majnun wept over her grave, but this was the grave of a dream.

  I am mad for you, Mitra Jaan!

  You are my dream, Mitra Jaan!

  You are my goddess, in the daylight and in the moonlight.

  With every breath I declare to you:

  I will never leave you and your love will never leave me.

  Our love story won’t repeat that of Layla and Majnun,

  Romeo and Juliet, Tony and Maria,

  All the tragic loves of all places and times.

  “God has not reincarnated me to let tragedy pounce on me,

  Not to deprive us of our vasal, Mitra Jaan.

  We are here to avenge all the unfulfilled loves.

  Our love is the Almighty’s apology to mankind.

  Our love is the Almighty’s apology to love.

  I am certain of it!”

  Hafez caresses Mitra’s glowing neck,

  Then lets his fingers find her breasts.

  “Mitra Jaan, I am a Mitraist!

  Even in ancient times when I was as young as I am now

  I worshipped Mitra.

  And even after my death some people persist I am a Mitraist.”

  And I am! Indeed I am!”

  Mitra puts her hands on his hands for the longest moment

  And then reluctantly draws them away.

  There is both sadness and sweetness in her voice.

  “Sorry Hafez, I love you but our vasal will have to wait.”

  She stands and pulls him up.

  But instead of walking him to the door,

  She walks him down a hallway, to a bedroom

  Set aside by her absent mother for guests who never visit.

  “Rest here, my love, and in the morning I’ll fix you breakfast.

  And then you will flee before my mother comes home.”

  She kisses his cheek and leaves quickly.

  Hafez throws himself on the bed and weeps and weeps,

  Such rivers of tears that even Majnun and Layla

  Together could not weep.

  12 Angels Listening at the Door

  Hafez tries to sleep but he is kept awake by crushing thoughts,

  Tumbling and bouncing through his hollow mind.

  Why is he not in Mitra’s arms? Why is he not in Mitra’s arms?

  It is not a family feud that keeps them apart tonight,

  Not ethnic differences or religious differences,

  Not ignorance or his station in life,

  Not mothers, not Rumi, not Pirooz,

  Not modern laws, not ancient gods.