Dardedel

by Manoucher Parvin

  So the towtruck can come to our rescue.”

  “My lecture is not keeping the towtruck away,” Pirooz says wryly.

  “It is Rumi Jaan’s questions.”

  They all laugh now and Pirooz continues:

  “At some point man said,

  ‘The world is good, but not good enough for me.

  And evolution is a good turtle, but not fast enough for me!

  So I will redesign all genes, causing a revolution in evolution,

  And evolutions in the revolutions, and change the essence of all beings,

  Technology embodying my soul and my soul embodying technology.’

  So, my friends, just as Homo-erectus disappeared,

  So, too, will Homo-sapiens disappear,

  Into an unimaginable artificial environment.”

  As if a bogey man is hiding under the bed,

  All four of them quietly chant:

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

  The great techno-trinity of techno-civility!”

  They uneasily check their watches for the time,

  And uneasily check the horizon for the towtruck.

  Mitra finally asks Pirooz this: “Nature gave birth to Man,

  What will Man now give birth to?”

  Pirooz shrugs: “I’m afraid we could become robots, like ants,

  but de-socialized unlike ants.

  But clearly a future unhappy for us will happen to us

  Unless we design a happy future to happen to us.”

  Rumi rubs his woolly chin: “What pray-tell comes next?”

  Pirooz ponders the question, saying finally,

  “Techno-sapiens cannot change the laws of physics or chemistry,

  But they can manipulate them for purposes good or bad.

  So, the next thing for Techno-sapiens to do is create soft machines,

  That can think, feel, and even question their creators.

  Learning how imperfect their creator is,

  These new machines may in despair self-genocide.

  Or they may become constructive,

  And fix all the defective genes inherited from Adam and Eve.”

  Says Hafez: “I think we must inject a little soul and love

  Into this Techno-science of yours, Pirooz.”

  Rumi watches the waves creep toward the Techno-sapien in the sand.

  A full hour has passed and still the towtruck has not come.

  “If all you say is true, Pirooz, is the identity of Man in danger?”

  Pirooz is lying flat, hands behind his head,

  Fine crystals of sand coating his clothes like sugar on a donut.

  “The danger,” he says, “is not in our identity changing,

  But in what our identity is changing to.

  Evolution bemoans that life has only one mother

  But diversity has one father after another.

  The identity of everything is liquid,

  Mixing with things, with ideas, flowing in time and space.

  Even God’s identity is formed and reformed by history.

  And now genetics can change DNA, intelligence, character, and looks.

  Soon the mad-genius gods of Silicon Valley

  Will find a way to pop computer chips into our skulls

  So that taste, ideology and knowledge can be downloaded directly

  Into our willing or unwilling brains.

  The individual will no longer be a cog in a machine,

  But an electronic image in someone else’s virtual reality—

  A being incapable of dardedelling even with himself.”

  Rumi is puzzled: “What do you mean by virtual, Pirooz?

  You use it all the time, the way the smart men of my time

  Used the word virtue all the time, as if all agreed on its meaning.”

  “To me,” answers Pirooz, “virtual things

  Are possibilities lurking within the world of the actual.

  For example, Mankind is a virtual Godkind.”

  The sneaking tide pounces on shore and erases

  The sandy wheels on the Techno-sapien’s legs.

  Pirooz grabs his stick and redraws them.

  “Unfortunately, Techno-sapiens are the children of greed,

  As well as the children of man, producing technology that hurts.”

  Hafez fully agrees:” How true! Atom bombs that destroy entire cities!

  Alarm clocks that destroy a good night’s sleep!

  Why, dear Pirooz, is this so?”

  Answers Pirooz: “The story is long, but in short, it is money.

  If God skimps on your breasts, a doctor will blow them up bigger.

  If your muscles are too small, inject a little of this.

  If your belly is too big, this machine sucks out the fat.

  If your kidneys fail, find a poor man and buy one of his.

  Already people are shaking hands with someone’s else’s hand.

  How long before we will be shaking someone else’s head?

  All of this with few ethical standards, or much wisdom exercised.

  Without qualms for fairness, cost, or consequences.

  We are living longer, yes,

  But paying so much attention to our images and so little to our souls,

  We are becoming detached, deranged, and dreadfully unfulfilled.

  We soothe our troubles with Prozac,

  Which unfortunately rewires our brains.

  It prozacs us to do what we don’t want to do

  And it prozacs us not to do what we want to do.

  If we keep messing with our minds, even Mother Nature

  Will need Prozac, even God!”

  Mitra smiles bitterly: “I actually took Prozac for a while,

  When my parents felt it would help their divorce.”

  Before her emotions can find a crack in the wall built around her pain,

  She playfully chastises Pirooz for his solemn thoughts.

  “I know life is no day at the beach,

  But can’t we have just one day at the beach?”

  Pirooz apologizes: “I know your ears are as sore as my throat,

  But please let me unburden my mind just a little bit more,

  For Rumi and Hafez to know what is going on.

  The antibiotics designed to digest bad bacteria—the biotics—

  Are now being digested by super bacteria touristing about in jumbo jets,

  Digesting whatever they want and wherever they choose.

  Man, I’m afraid, will never, never master germs,

  Just as the Holy Book God will never master man,

  That super germ digesting earth as if it were a moldy peach.”

  Digesting Pirooz’s words, Rumi whispers sadly:

  “Now I see the face of evil whichever way I turn.”

  They walk up the beach and down the beach,

  Until they are standing where they started,

  By the drawing of the Techno-sapien,

  Now largely eaten by the nibbling tide.

  Says Pirooz: “One of the biggest problems of technology

  Is the digestion of quality by quantity.”

  Asks Hafez: “But all technology is not bad, is it, Pirooz?”

  “No. But it is not all good either—it depends and it all depends.”

  Says Mitra: “Even the unexamined technology is the ally of women!

  Long before man made robots of wire and tin

  He made robots of his genetically closest kin—

  His daughters, his mothers, and his wives—

  And programmed them to say nothing important

  While dutifully doing jobs that are important.

  Pirooz, the technology you deride and diminish

  Has freed women to flourish and finish

  The unfulfilled promise of human kind.

  This robot-me, yes me, is rebelling!

  Hafez Jaan, you had better know this about me:

  I will be no
one’s charming cup-bearer.

  I am not Layla waiting in her tent forever.

  Had she a telephone, she could have called Majnun and said,

  ‘Stop your wandering and your crying!

  Come and make off with me. Come and make love to me.’

  Pirooz, I agree with most all you say.

  Yet you see technology as a potentially troublesome toy,

  While I see it as a feminist tool—

  Except for weapons, super germs, and pollutants, of course—

  To free both genders from daily toil,

  So we may spend our precious days achieving the vasal

  You men think only exists inside your poems and dreams.”

  Hafez, beaming, turns to Pirooz.

  “You can see why I fell instantly in love with her!

  She is the beautiful modernity I always sought.”

  Mitra playfully spins him around, nearly drilling him into the sand.

  “Then, my love, you’d better start composing poems on the matter!

  And you, too, Mowlana! What have you written that is new?

  All art is persuasive somehow, and all artists philosopher kings.

  There can be no neutrality, no sitting on a velvet fence.

  Modern life, modern ideas, modern miseries and dangers

  Require the serious attention of souls like you.

  Who else but artists like you can awaken souls like me,

  To question and retrain our unexamined consciousness?”

  “Mitra,” Hafez declares, “Now you sound like Pirooz!”

  “No more than Pirooz sounding like Pirooz,” she says.

  They hear a rumble and see a towtruck coming,

  Exactly two hours after Pirooz was promised

  It would take just an hour or two.

  A man with grease on his nose pours two gallons of gas in the tank,

  And after a sputter or two, the taxi roars to life and begs to go home.

  “You see,” says Mitra, “I knew we were simply out of gas.”

  Says Mitra: “Sadly it was technology and not nature

  That we bathed in today—let’s go home.”

  Answers Pirooz as they walk to the cab:

  “That is the worst thing about technology.

  It drives man far and wide from the heartbeat of Mother Earth,

  And loses him repeatedly in a universe

  With infinite centers and no circumference.”

  Rumi grins and pushes Pirooz toward the taxi.

  “Do not even begin this debate, professor,

  Unless you want to walk back to Manhattan.

  My God, as you call Him,

  Has punished us enough for Hafez’s blasphemy.

  Let’s not be punished even more for yours!”

  They pile into the taxi and search for the highway home.

  No one feels like talking, freeing their ears to focus

  On the lullaby hum of the spinning tires.

  Rumi folds his arms and closes his eyes,

  Happy that their tumultuous day seems to be ending without

  Further interference by the police, technology, or Almighty God.

  He thinks of Pirooz’s drawing in the sand,

  And the tide slowly tickling it away.

  “Before your Techno-sapiens try to build

  This marvelous abacus, this computer of all computers,

  To compute the beginnings and endings of everything,

  Don’t you think they should first discover

  A machine that manufactures more wisdom?”

  Adds Hafez: “And a machine to make sure love

  Ascends beyond all other interests?”

  And Mitra says: “And a machine that parcels out

  Freedom and justice equally, regardless of labels given to people.”

  Pirooz bangs the taxi’s roof, as if it were a timpani.

  “Of course! Of course! All hope is not lost, my friends.

  Compared to what will be done, nothing is done yet,

  Neither the worst nor the best.

  But what Techno-sapiens can achieve is as wide as all existence,

  As long as all eternity, as deep as anybody’s guess.

  Will this new species deconstruct itself—Big Bang itself—

  Back into the lifeless stuff of stars?

  Or will it leap beyond inventing things and invent a new spirit,

  And reconstruct itself into the immortal stuff Rumi calls God?

  But as for me, my dearest friends,

  I will keep healing and repairing me,

  And heal and repair others as I can, and keep on loving,

  Or I will die before I die.”

  Before entering the tunnel to Manhattan,

  Hafez pats the steering wheel and says,

  “Thank you my dear metal donkey,

  We had such fun today because of you.”

  As the taxi emerges from the tunnel, Pirooz says,

  “I was too unkind to New York before,

  I missed it every minute we were away.

  Just look at the World Trade Center there,

  Those two magnificent giants kissing the stars,

  Filled with people of all races, nationalities, and faiths working together.

  They remind me of two tall cactuses I once met!

  This city of so many dishes is the supreme table

  For both the best and worst of modernity—I love it!”

  16 The Engagement Party

  No longer refugees, Hafez and Mitra bathe

  In the desirous cool of a late-summer pond.

  The crystal water twines between Mitra’s breasts, which

  Like exotic fish with pink nipples, float on the glistening ripples

  As though needing to breathe.

  Their smoldering love, rekindled to a flare by the end of their ordeal,

  By the unity of their spirits and their bodies,

  And by the innocent nudity of nature,

  Is no longer their love alone.

  It is a flaring treasure, a possibility made human for all humanity.

  The pond caresses them with its intoxicating fingers,

  And makes liquid love to their togetherness.

  In the trees wild canaries serenade them,

  And a playful wind showers them

  With rose petals and divine fragrances.

  And the quasars eye them from the farthest distances,

  Winking with the greatest curiosity, amazement, and pleasure.

  Mitra holds Hafez tightly and whispers to him:

  “We are in paradise my love,

  And I hold our child within me, between us, for me and for you,

  And for the tree of life, which with each new reaching limb

  Grows ever deeper roots.

  Our child will not be shackled by indoctrination and falsehood,

  By this dogma and that, that snare souls in their traps,

  Littering all history and all geography

  With poisons of guilt, despair and conflict.

  We will see to it that our child respect the self and self-realizes.”

  Hafez kisses her gently on each shoulder.

  “How is it that your swelling belly

  Keeps me farther away from you, yet draws me so much closer?”

  The child inside Mitra kicks and the pond trembles with joy.

  A lily floats to Hafez and he plants it in Mitra’s cupping palm.

  He hugs her with his soul and kisses her with a silent poem.

  Then he puts his hand over her belly and says:

  “Thank you, Mitra Jaan—in you I find my dream,

  In your love I find love, in your eyes I find hope,

  In your harp I hear my name.

  Your womb not only cradles my child, it also cradles me,

  And gives birth to me.

  I am reborn again and again it seems.”

  Mitra holds him tighter. “Hafez Jaan, say no more,

  Or I wil
l cry with joy.”

  Answers Hafez: “Let us cry together,

  Let our tears join the ripples,

  Which are so shamelessly playing with your nipples!”

  The rhyme makes Mitra giggle,

  And her giggle makes Hafez giggle.

  Who knows where this merriment might lead

  If they didn’t suddenly see a man waving

  From the high reeds on the opposite shore.

  Mitra sinks to her neck and scolds Hafez.

  “You said no one would find this pond.”

  Hafez rubs his frowning eyes.

  “He is not exactly no one.”

  “You know him, Hafez Jaan?”

  “He used to bring me ideas, Mitra Jaan.

  So stay put my love, I will soon be back my love.”

  Hafez wades to shore,

  Unashamed by his dripping nakedness.

  The man greets him: “Hafez! You are looking well

  For a man dead for six hundred years.”

  “Gabriel,” inquires Hafez with worry, “What are you doing here?”

  “Carrying out my assignment, of course!” says the archangel.

  Remember, I am God’s messenger.

  But Hafez, what are you doing here?”

  “I, too, am doing my assignment—being in love.

  Remember, I am Hafez!”

  Gabriel studies Hafez’s shining young body

  From naked head to naked toe.

  “I thought you were supposed to be counting stars with Rumi.”

  “I was,” says Hafez. “And I was content to do so.

  But one day a heart began beating inside my cactus skin,

  Reawakening my thirst for new possibilities.”

  Gabriel raises a single eyebrow: “And so you took matters

  Into your new palpitating heart?”

  Hafez waves at Mitra and she waves back.

  “Gabriel, I grew tired of being a cactus,

  Grew tired of counting and counting away.

  It was as weary and purposeless as the long sentence I got in heaven

  With nothing to do but watch virgins pass by,

  Virgins that remain perpetually virgins no matter what.

  If God knows it all, why should I count the stars?

  I plead for a reprieve—for me and Rumi and the patient stars!”

  The archangel grows stern, and noticeably more solid.

  “It seems you have already reprieved yourself!”

  “No, no,” the poet pleads, “the possibility

  of my resurrection was God’s will, I am sure of it,

  I took advantage of that possibility and here I am!”

  Says Gabriel: “Wise up, Hafez! Stop this silly Pirooz possibility talk.

  Who said death was a holiday? Or a honeymoon?