Dardedel

by Manoucher Parvin

  His beard white as a baby cloud, his eyes bright like the first dawn.

  Pirooz is surprised but not surprised.

  “Mowlana,” he asks, “whatever happened to your terrible cold?”

  15 Rise Of The Techno-Sapiens

  The cab takes off in a hurry,

  Hafez driving, Mitra squeezing his arm,

  Pirooz and Rumi bouncing in the back seat.

  One eye on the road, one filling the rearview mirror,

  Hafez asks, “Am I really free? Is my trial really over?”

  Answers Rumi proudly: “I not only disguised myself as the judge,

  But disguised all the paperwork against you as confetti.”

  “But even confetti can be pieced together again,”

  Worries Pirooz as he watches out the back window

  For police cars and helicopters, for the whole pursuing world.

  Answers Rumi: “Not the confetti this spirit makes, Pirooz Jaan!”

  And so they flee Flanders Bay, zig-zagging the backroads,

  The cab one tiny yellow bee lost in an endless meadow of blooms.

  “Should we head back to the city now?” Hafez asks his companions.

  “Assuming, of course, I can find the right road?”

  Pirooz answers him with this long soliloquy:

  “Do we really want to rush to the city—to simmer in the melting pot,

  To boil in the boiling pot, or be sewed into uneasy quilts?

  I say we let the big city be.

  I say we let that Big Apple glaze alone in the blue bus-fume smog,

  To cough and choke and miss us,

  And wonder if we are missing her in return!

  I say we let the big city be.

  “Let the Wall Street crapshooters, the Broadway dancers,

  The Fifth Avenue jewelers and boutiquaries,

  The bankers and lawyers and celebrities,

  The Harlem jazzbos and Latino nurses,

  The Canal Street vendors and Korean fruit sellers,

  The accented cabbies and big-bellied Italian cops,

  The street politicians and city hall preachers,

  Let them all chew and chew on that apple of all unchewable apples.

  I say we let the big city be.

  “Let the hookers, the pimps, the drug wheeler-dealers,

  The beggars, lunatics, and five-finger thieves,

  The hungry artists, the tone-deaf subway virtuosos,

  The skinny waiters, the stray dogs selling their fleas,

  The alligators growing fat from penthouse sewerage,

  Let them all be crushed in the giant garlic crusher of indifference.

  I say we let the big city be.

  “Let the derring-do developers nibble away at the last weedy lots.

  Let the tub-thumpers and trend-setters

  Devour the many mumbo-jumbo cultures,

  And poop them back out into the fancy designer bedpans

  That the six-figure swells can’t live without.

  Let the nobodies scramble for status.

  Let the hidden eyes of homeless kids remain hidden even from God.

  Let the blond girls shop and the ghetto gangs bang bang.

  Let problems smolder and hostilities fester and blow.

  Now tell me, Hafez Jaan, and the rest of you jaans,

  Do you really want to rush back to the big garlic crusher,

  To be crushed at this very shining moment of our relief?

  Or shall we let the big city be?”

  It is Mitra who answers: “You’re right, Pirooz! Let’s go to the beach!”

  Hafez squeezes the wheel nervously.

  “The beach again, Mitra Jaan?

  The beach has gotten us into such trouble already.”

  She kisses him loud on the cheek, saying,

  “This time we’ll have Rumi and Pirooz to make us behave.”

  Wonders Hafez: “And who is going to make them behave?”

  She kisses him again, even louder yet.

  “Me, me—I will make them!

  So quit making objections and start looking for directions!

  We all need an afternoon by the sea, to touch the openness together

  And together feel our togetherness.

  We need the waves, the winds, and the sun’s bountiful beams,

  Bewitching us to think of love and a wedding.”

  “Not another wedding,” Rumi implores.

  “Oh yes!” says Mitra, “a wedding of the whales!

  A bride covered in watery lace, a nervous groom in pursuit,

  A splashing good procession of family and friends.

  My parents used to bring me to the Long Island shore,

  To picnic and pose for pictures with the whales.

  I used to imagine their frolicking as a wedding in the waves.”

  “It is too bad we don’t have a picnic,” says Pirooz.

  “Some sandwiches or something.”

  “Or a bottle of whisky,” adds Hafez.

  Rumi scolds him: “The last thing we need is getting drunk.”

  “Not whisky to get drunk,” says Hafez,

  “Just to sip a bit, to make us sparkle inside,

  So we can understand the sparkling sea outside,

  And toast the end of our troubles on every side

  And fly to the up side!

  Just a little whisky so we can raise our little glasses,

  And sing to each other, ‘Salaamati! Salaamati! Salaamati!’

  (To your heath! To your health! To your health!)

  Now Hafez sings, as if he already has had a few sips:

  “Wine is good but whisky is the winner.

  Love of God is good but love of Mitra is gooder.

  Didn’t Mitra happen in God’s mind before she happened in my mind?

  So my love for Mitra is also my love for God’s mind.

  And God on the eighth day tasted some whisky in his mind,

  And said to Himself, ‘This is pretty good stuff!’

  So He willed the possibility for whisky

  Before anyone on earth could make or even think of whisky.

  “Yes, that is the way it is with God.

  He tests all things in his mind before creating their possibility.

  Me. Mitra. Love. All were once possibility, only possibility.

  Garlic crushers. Whisky. Sin. Also once possibility.

  God even tested the possibility of Himself before Creating Himself!”

  Hafez’s singing is soon joined by the singing of the seagulls.

  They roll down their windows and taste the salty wind.

  Then suddenly the cab coughs and quivers to a stop.

  Rumi jokes: “God has just imagined a broken car

  And sent us its possibility on a lightening bolt.

  See where your blasphemy has gotten us, Hafez Jaan?”

  “Blasphemy?” squeaks Hafez. “I was just teasing God back a bit.”

  Rumi laughs: “And now God is teasing us just a bit.”

  Pirooz rebuts: “No, No! This is not God teasing us,

  This is technology—the new god—that is teasing us.”

  Mitra is impatient to reach the beach. “Please just fix the car, Hafez,

  Before Rumi and Pirooz suck you into another endless debate!”

  Hafez looks at her as if she was someone who did not know him.

  “Me fix the car, Mitra Jaan? That is like asking a dead man

  To dig his own grave and then cover himself up.

  I am not a mechanic, Mitra Jaan!

  I drive my cab, watch Pirooz’s TV, talk on Pirooz’s phone,

  Switch on this and switch off that, switch switch and switch.

  But don’t ask me what makes the switches work for me.

  When it comes to the magic of modernity I am as broken as this car.”

  Mitra looks to Rumi. “How about you, Mowlana?

  Can you change yourself into a mechanic?”

  Rumi is nervous
with uncertainty.

  “If you want me to look like a mechanic, I will conjure one up.

  But don’t expect that mechanic to mend the car.

  You’ll remember when I was a brown boy flying a kite that kite crashed.”

  So Mitra twists toward Pirooz. “Can you fix it, professor?”

  She knows the second she asks that she shouldn’t have asked,

  For he immediately does what he does best—talks and talks.

  Talks Pirooz: “Modern man is addicted to technology.

  It is a fatal addiction, like that of pink lungs for oxygen.

  Without gauges and gadgets, wheels, turbines, and computers,

  Modernity, and all humanity, must lie down and die.”

  After a pause to gulp some air,

  Pirooz squeaks excitedly like an adolescent boy:

  “And I’m not saying anything about tapwater, gas, and electricity!

  The great techno-trinity of techno-civility!”

  Those words—and the way he says them—make the others laugh.

  Pirooz laughs, too—then laughs more as he continues:

  “An opium addict has no idea how the opium actually works.

  And ordinary folks have no clue how a machine works.

  Computers do go blank.

  Ships sink, planes crash, cars sputter and stop when needed most.”

  Hafez pops the hood and all four stare at the hot naked engine

  —its tubes and wires and all the magical thingamabobs—

  As if their collective gaze might miraculously bring it to life.

  Pirooz, wearing a mischievous smile, says:

  “How I wish I could pile everything my hands cannot fix,

  And all the things my mind cannot grasp,

  And every question my lectures cannot explain,

  Into a big garlic crusher and throw the switch—

  Which, of course, given my luck, would not switch!”

  Offers Rumi: “Our handicrafts are defective because we are defective.”

  Pirooz, jiggling all the wires he can reach, answers thus:

  “Yes, your God’s handicrafts are the most defective of all.

  The human genome, for example,

  Contains thousands of disease-causing imperfections.

  Do you suppose your God made man’s genes in the image of his own?”

  Rumi joins him in jiggling the wires.

  “My God? Please don’t make me responsible for God, Pirooz.

  I’m not even sure if God has genes, let alone defective ones.”

  Mitra, losing all hope in these squeaking, do-nothing Persians,

  Shakes her head and suggests: “Maybe the car is simply out of gas.”

  Says Hafez: “Do you take me for a fool, my illegal wife?

  The first thing I did was check the gas gauge—the tank is half full.”

  “Perhaps the gauge is broken,” Mitra says.

  “Don’t be silly,” says Hafez.

  But Pirooz agrees with her: “Gauges are undependable

  Since the people who make them are undependable.

  But whether it’s the gauge or these wires and tubes,

  We are still a long way from home!

  So, what do we do with these unwilling wheels?”

  Mitra, shaking her head, pulls the cellphone from her purse,

  Saying as she hands it to Pirooz, “Either pray or call a garage.”

  So Pirooz calls the operator, who connects him to a garage.

  For twenty minutes the invisible god on the other end

  Inundates him with all sorts of silly questions,

  Pushing the professor nearly to madness.

  Finally the god promises a towtruck in an hour or two.

  Pirooz hands the phone back to Mitra,

  Grumbling and making faces at the frustration he feels:

  “The voice demanded all my numbers—my phone, VISA, address, age.

  It stopped short, thank God, of asking for the date of my death!

  Friends, we still have one soul, but it is seen as two persons:

  The biological person we know and the electronic blip others know.

  Our pants are electronically down! Way, way down!”

  “Then I hope the electronic police aren’t around,” jokes Hafez.

  “Well,” Mitra tells them, “We wanted to go to the beach,

  And here we are at the beach,

  Beached like four unhappy boats for an hour or two.

  So let’s enjoy the afternoon.”

  So they head for the shore, finding a magnificent ribbon of sand.

  The sight of so many near-naked people makes Hafez crack:

  “Why aren’t the national religion cops here, making arrests?”

  They take off their shoes and walk arm-in-arm,

  Enjoying the naked waves making love to their naked ankles.

  Soon their blue mood disappears into the happy blue of the sky.

  Hafez sweeps Mitra into his arms, and swings her,

  Singing to her one of Rumi’s sweet songs:

  “Love is the mother of everything.

  Love is the mother of everything.”

  They find a stand and buy four big Pepsi-Colas.

  Mitra watches Hafez sip and asks:

  “Do you wish it was a bottle of whisky instead?”

  Answers Hafez: “You are my whisky. I am drunk with you.”

  Says the Mowlana as they sit on the sand:

  “Pirooz, if you are still as puzzled by technology

  As Hafez and I are puzzled by technology,

  Has time not changed man at all?”

  Pirooz focuses on the sneaking tide as it erases their footprints.

  Finally he says: “You and I may have human DNA,

  But we are in effect different species, I’m afraid.”

  Demands Hafez: “Different species? What do you mean?”

  Pirooz fishes for a stick of driftwood

  And on the sand draws a monstrous being,

  With huge wings, and huge fins,

  And wires sprouting from its huge radar ears.

  The being’s entire body is covered with eyes,

  Small eyes and big eyes,

  Some looking like telescopes, some looking like microscopes.

  Instead of legs, the being has wheels.

  A weird-looking gadget hangs from its groin

  And its many rubbery arms and hands

  Stretch and grab for everything in sight.

  The top of its skull is cracked open like an egg,

  And rising from its protruding lobes is a laptop computer.

  “This,” explains Pirooz, “is the Techno-sapien, the new species.

  Bacteria inside us, gadgets outside us, and our improved monkey DNA,

  Have united into a new being with a sharp mind but a blunted heart,

  Banishing Mother Nature to a refugee camp in faraway Oblivion.”

  His voice is suddenly devoured by the boom of a streaking jet,

  Cutting the blue sky in half with a shiny white line.

  He lifts his stick and points to the plane.

  “Techno-sapiens fly higher and faster than any bug or bird,

  And dive deeper and swim more swiftly than any squid or fish.

  They run quicker and pounce more ferociously than any cat.

  Techno-sapiens can still hear the birth cry of the universe,

  The Big Bang,

  And see what no eagle can see, the invisible viruses nearby,

  Inexistent stars dusted and lost in space and time.

  No longer content with the real space they inhabit,

  Techno-sapiens have invented a new habitat called Cyberspace,

  Where they can work and play and make love,

  Duplicating their pleasures, doubling their misery,

  With a double-click of a Techno-mouse.

  Use cyber as a prefix, and ism as a suffix,

  And keyboard any word you want in between, />
  And behold the new vocabulary! Behold the new reality!

  Cyber-capitalism, Cyber-eroticism, Cyber-anything-you-wishism!

  “In the cyberhood the world is one neighborhood.

  Open a cyberwindow and the moon is at your fingertips,

  Comets zoom past your nose like happy Chevrolets.

  The world of gears and gauges and gizmos is ending.

  The world of assembly line-tending is ending.

  The world of bits and bytes and digitized data,

  Of uploading and downloading,

  Is overloading our minds and congesting our senses.

  The flow of info in cyberspace is linked to the flow of goods in realspace.

  Buy a candy bar in Brooklyn and the electronic ripple makes

  The mouth of a bean-counter in Bangkok salivate!

  Darwin’s bio-evolution is evolving into e-volution:

  E-mail, e-commerce, e-trade, everything e-maginable.

  The telephone and TV—as amazing as you think they are—

  Are simply pre-history to the new e-history.

  Your world is gone, mine is going, and Mitra’s is emerging.”

  Pirooz, pausing for fresh air and fresh thoughts,

  Shakes the Pepsi-Cola bottle and watches

  The gas bubbles swirl like happy Dervishes.

  “Rumi Jaan, you wanted to know what the brain is?

  What technoscience is? And how and why the two

  Reside side by side inside the swelling skull of Techno-sapiens?

  Here is my answer to your question of questions:

  The brain is a creative machine that rewires and revamps itself,

  Day by day, experience by experience.

  Technology is a new limb, a virtual limb,

  Reaching for and grasping things once thought impossible.

  A brain invents a new technology and the new technology

  Seduces other brains to come around and get along!

  It forces even that God of yours to come around and get along!

  Once your God could snap His fingers

  And somebody sick was somebody dead.

  Now technology makes God wait and wait, sometimes for years,

  For the soul it wants in Heaven or Hell right now!”

  Rumi laughs: “Pirooz, will you please stop calling that

  Mystical beauty up there my God? He is also your God!”

  Rumi’s eyebrows now sink low over his eyes, and he adds,

  “Professor, I hope your technology is not the Devil in disguise.”

  It is Pirooz’s turn to laugh: “If your God is also my God,

  Then my technology is also your technology!”

  “Pirooz, please!” Mitra begs, “Finish your lecture