Who said that what’s possible is also admissible?
God granted you a leave from death to refresh your spirit,
So you could resume counting stars contentedly,
Not so you could deny His wish and play Adam and Eve again.”
“But Gabriel,” cries Hafez, “Star counting is so boring!”
The archangel’s hazy eyes flash like clouds before a storm.
“God prefers the word peaceful.”
Answers Hafez: “Death with its abundant love is boring,
And life without abundant love is boring.
Gabriel Jaan, I beg you, tell God enough of boring things!”
“Hafez Jaan, I repeat: speak not like that rebellious Pirooz!
Speak not of what God must do!”
Then Gabriel smiles, and finds the stump of a tree,
And settles on it like an anxious fog.
“Hafez Jaan,” he says. “You have always been a good friend to me.
Do you mind if we dardedel a bit?”
Hafez is aching to rejoin Mitra.
He wants to forget about his deal with God.
“Of course we can dardedel, Gabriel Jaan.
But I pray it is not a long one—my love is waiting for me.”
Gabriel nods and begins: “To tell you frankly, I am bored myself.
In the old days I used to advise prophets and saviors,
To herald the coming of great truths,
To put into action the most incredible events!
Now I am a TV set, a radio, a magazine sold on the street.
Now I shout what deodorant to buy and
Which hamburger has the thicker slice of cheese!”
Hafez sympathizes with him: “You also sound like Pirooz.
But it is not your fault, nor even God’s I suppose.
If your messages are all for profit, small and cynical,
It is because man has grown small and skeptical.
But find happiness where you can, Gabriel Jaan—
You still have me and my love to keep you busy!”
Gabriel ponders the poet’s words,
Then shakes them off as if they were fleas.
“What am I to tell God when God wakes up, Hafez?
Are you going to resume counting stars or not?”
Hafez shakes his fist defiantly: “I am finished with counting!
I know now that counting the stars one by one is goose chasing,
Just as repeating an unprovable who-is-who prayer
Five times a day is, as Pirooz says, self-brainwashing.
I long to learn modern science and love modern Mitra.
Gabriel, do not get me wrong: I do not want to be wrong.
I am not complaining about God’s choices for me being wrong.
But I was clearly born in times filled with wrong,
Where I had to learn too much stuff that was wrong,
And suffer from rules that were wrong and from loves that were wrong.
I want to make up for these wrongs,
To make myself free from all these wrongs.”
Says Gabriel: “It sounds reasonable to me—but then I may be wrong.”
Hafez watches Mitra waving for him to return.
But he cannot return, not just yet.
“Gabriel, blow your heavenly horn!
Let everyone here or in the hereafter know,
That by the authority of love and truth and justice,
I am going to stay in this world, and do some good in this world.
Why, why, angel of angels, am I Hafez in this world,
If God does not want me in this world?”
Gabriel sees that Hafez is adamant, that his mission has failed.
He whispers: “God bless you, Hafez Jaan.”
“And God bless you, Gabriel Jaan.”
They smile sadly at each other,
And just as quickly as Gabriel did appear, Gabriel has disappeared.
Hafez turns and starts back into the pond,
And with the suddenly cold water sucking at his knees,
Sees that Mitra, too, has disappeared.
He screams her name, “Mitra! Mitra! Mitra!”
And his echoes scream in a vast emptiness,
In a chilled emptiness, in a tragic emptiness,
As if the universe were only a frozen emptiness.
The screaming Hafez wakes up dreaming Hafez.
He sits and finds himself on Pirooz’s sofa.
“Mitra, Mitra, Mitra,” he whispers.
The three Persians say hello to the morning
With a traditional Persian breakfast:
Eggs, feta cheese, lentils, and bread,
Pistachios, melon, and a mountain of fruit.
Pirooz pours them tea from a samovar, which in the Sunday sun
Looks like a corpulent soldier strutting his brass.
“I had a dream last night,” Hafez confides,
“A harrowing dream in which Gabriel appeared.”
While Rumi and Pirooz eat and sip, he recounts every word,
Every image, every color, every sound, every smell.
When he is finished there are tears in his eyes,
Repeating and repeating, “And Mitra was gone, and Mitra was gone.”
Rumi stands up slowly, and whirls round the table,
His head hanging, as if searching for something on the ground.
His pale voice barely reaches the ears of his companions.
“The meaning is clear, Hafez Jaan.
God wants us back in the desert.
He disapproves of our human skins and the new lives we live.
He is unhappy that his uncounted stars are waiting and waiting.
Pirooz is saved from suicide—we must go back, we must go back.”
Hafez, too, is pale. “But this is absurd! I am not done here!”
“Love of God overcomes absurdity,” says Rumi in return.
“We must go back to the desert, before God recalls us to death.”
Pirooz speaks up: “Rumi Jaan, with all due respect I beg to differ.
Dreams are about the here, not the hereafter.”
Rumi sits down and pops the shell of a fat green pistachio.
He chews it slowly, as if it’s his last.
“Yes, of course, but in this case the dreamer is from the hereafter.”
Hafez is defiant: “I have read all of Pirooz’s books,
Frontward and backward, including various theories of dreams,
Before Freud and after Freud.
None claim that God communicates in nightmares.”
Rumi glowers at him: “Out with reasons and theories, both of you.
God’s will requires no substantiation or justification.”
Says Pirooz, feeling insulted,
“Science is not heresy, not for picking and choosing.
Theories unfalsified apply to all cases with no exception.
The Holy Books are silent on so many subjects,
And fail to prove the things they claim true.
But science, sweet science, though still young and developing,
Is the only means to knowing.”
Hafez slaps his hands on the table.
“Yes! It is better to know through science
Than to believe in old superstitions passed on as God’s word.”
Rumi is upset with his old friend:
“The beliefs that served you through sixty years of life,
And through centuries of death, are now merely superstition?”
“No,” protests Hafez. “I simply refused Gabriel’s request in my dream,
And he departed, wishing me well.
Gabriel knows, and God knows, that I will be a father soon.”
He pauses now, and lights the room
With the diamonds sparkling in his eager eyes.
“Is my wish to live in the modern world a sin?
Is my wish to love Mitra a sin?
Is my wish to raise my child a
sin?
Is my wish to wish a sin?
Believe what you will, Rumi Jaan,
And scold me as you will, Rumi Jaan,
But Gabriel’s words in my dream
Were words created by my dream.”
Rumi sadly reaches for Hafez’s hands. “I hope that I am wrong.”
Pirooz intervenes: “Mowlana, you need not pray to be wrong.
You are wrong—simply wrong.”
Hafez, filled with enthusiasm, reaches for the samovar,
Pouring more tea for everyone.
“Then it is settled—my dream was just a dream,
And, if anything at all, just my subconscious putting away
My last lingering doubts and fears.
My jaans and all jaans, I have some exciting news to tell you!
News I had meant to tell you when Mitra was here.
Mitra’s mother has forgiven me, and forgiven Mitra,
And has given her blessing for us to marry for real!
No more seaside ceremonies
Conducted by shellfish, my worried old fakir!
You should have seen Mitra cry! Such tears of happiness!
Tears that could bring any parched land to joy and fruitfulness!”
“That is wonderful news,” says Pirooz. “Isn’t it Rumi?”
The Mowlana nods sadly.
“And that is not all my good news,” Hafez tells his friends.
“Thanks to you, Pirooz, for promoting me as a genius,
Columbia permitted me to take that test they call the GRE.
I did so well, they made me take it again,
Just to make sure I’m as smart as I am!
It looks like I will be soon studying physics with the graduate faculty.
Imagine it, Pirooz! Soon I will be lecturing you on the universe!”
Pirooz hugs him hard. “I will be your best student, Hafez.”
Hafez continues: “And after our baby is born
Mitra will join me at Columbia,
And together we will learn everything there is to learn.”
He is out of his chair now,
Dancing in his stocking feet on the slippery oak floor.
“God could not be more generous or compassionate to me.
Worry all you will, Rumi Jaan,
But if God had really wished me to be a cactus again,
Why would He spawn in me the possibility of all this happiness?”
Pirooz is tired of so much God-this and so much God-that.
He replies: “Hafez, Rumi, listen to my tale of discontent.
I took myself out of Iran but could not take Iran out of myself.
So I came to the desert to die, and you saved me,
And sent me back to New York to make it a home in exile.
Though I remain an accented man,
Because of your love I now understand my accent better.
Now I want to return the favor and save the two of you from exile—
Exile not only from Iran, but exile from history.
If you don’t free yourselves from the past,
From the foolishness of it, and the senselessness of it,
Then, my two beloved spirits, you will not be free for the future.
And the future will not be free for you!
God is a word with so many meanings and emotions.
Unable to explain the why of what is seen,
Man developed faith in what is unseen,
And gave this great Unseen credit for everything
And the blame for nothing.
So stop God this and God that, for God’s sake, stop it!”
Rumi and Hafez glance at each other and keep God’s silence.
Pirooz hurries to the kitchen, and returns with a bottle of wine.
“Who cares if God exists or not—as long as wine exists.
The past is the graveyard of many gods
And the future is the graveyard of this God.
Rumi Jaan, let’s you and I drink until we are as intoxicated as Hafez,
And then I will take you both to Radio City Music Hall,
Where the Rockettes will sparkle at you with their long bare legs,
Which the dogma of your time commanded to be covered.
Ahhhhh! Such beautiful long, rocketing legs,
Mushrooming from the precipitation of history,
Sprouting from the bondage of history,
Dynamiting from the dogmas of history!
Let’s break the locks within us,
And open the gates within us,
And hasten backward to the resurrection of prehistoric liberty!
Or hasten forward to the postfuture, ultimate liberty!”
The next day Hafez feels himself shaking and opens his eyes.
Bending over the sofa is Pirooz, smiling with his entire face.
Hafez yawns and stretches.
“What, pray-tell, makes you so happy that I must not sleep?”
Pirooz takes his arms and pulls him to his feet.
The morning sun is just sneaking over the window sills.
“It is not one thing, Hafez Jaan, it is four things!”
“Four things?” muses Hafez.
“Then I am lucky you didn’t wake me up four times.
What are these four things, Pirooz?”
Pirooz eagerly rattles them off:
“First, one of the orphans I’ve been teaching chess
Has just become state champion in his age group—
There is a tiny article in this morning’s Daily News.
Secondly, my pilot’s license has just arrived in the mail—
I am free to solo, a happy robin untethered from his mother.
Thirdly, there is your love for Mitra, fourthly, Mitra’s love for you.”
Hafez, still groggy, nevertheless gives him a hug.
“And I am happy at least four times that you have
Included our happiness in yours.
Now, may I go back to sleep?”
“No, you may not,” says Pirooz. “I have a pre-wedding gift for you.”
Two hours later the gift is unwrapped.
It is an unbounded gift, turquoise blue, hugging a joyous sun.
Pirooz’s gift is the sky itself, an exhilarating flight in a tiny airplane,
High above the Hudson and the Long Island Sound,
Around and around Manhattan more than a dozen times.
The beautiful woman who taught Pirooz to fly
Has flown herself to a new job in California.
And while he is disappointed that she is gone,
He is not disappointed by the things she taught him.
Asks Pirooz as he confidently grasps the throttle:
“Did you ever dream, Hafez Jaan, that someday you’d fly?
Taste the clouds and kiss the resisting gravity?”
“Yes, but it was only a dream,” Hafez whispers in wonderment.
“This modern world of yours is truly the most magical place.”
“Hafez, promise me you won’t be late tonight,” Mitra begs,
Wishing the telephone was Hafez himself.
Answers Hafez: “What kind of man
Would be late for his own engagement party?”
“The kind who carries every fare he can,” she complains,
“But does not take care to see me every day.”
Hafez’s love for Mitra chuckles from his hungry lips.
He, too, wishes the phone was not the phone.
“You see me almost every day at least once,
And if it is not for as long as we both wish,
It is because we need every penny
For that baby growing in your belly.”
Mitra begs: “Just don’t be late, Hafez Jaan.”
“I will be so early you will think I’m actually late from yesterday.”
And so Hafez begins his day,
Meandering Manhattan’s maddening streets one more day,
Fare after fare
after fare after fare, having fun knowing
That tonight he will have even more fun.
He gives a ride to a rich man,
Whose huge fake mustache falls off while he’s crawling inside.
Hafez thinks at first this impostor is Rumi,
Keeping an eye on him on such an important day,
But the man soon confesses that he is trying to disguise himself,
Trying to visit his mistress, Julia,
For a day of sunny ecstasy, to make up
For the frustrating nights he freezes in bed,
Next to the snoring Roberta, his everlasting icicle wife.
He gives a ride to a couple eloping to Europe,
With two Persian cats, a parakeet, and a toy panda bear.
“I wish you the best,” he says,
“But I fear you will spend the rest of your lives in customs,
While police check your pets for fleas,
And disembowel your bear searching for stolen jewels.”
He gives a ride to a Baptist preacher on vacation from Baton Rouge.
The preacher isn’t sure where he wants to go,
Yet he puts thirty dollars on the meter while
Telling Hafez how to get to heaven.
Hafez teases his passenger, saying with an earnest face,
“You make the hereafter seem so inviting,
That I think I will find an onrushing bus
And take the both of us there right now!”
The preacher quickly recognizes his stop.
He gives a ride to a nun without a habit,
And a wayward Rabbi without a yarmulke, now selling shoes,
So deeply in love, they don’t stop kissing
All the way downtown to City Hall.
“We are getting married,” says the nun.
“Hallelujah,” says Hafez, “So am I!”
He gives a ride to a nearsighted author,
Who carries a fat messy manuscript on his neat bony lap.
“It is a book,” says the author, “about those who killed Kennedy,
And all the others killed so that the real killers could stay free.
No publisher dares publish it, of course,
Because they fear my theory might be true.”
Sympathetically Hafez tells him, “My dear fellow traveler,
Self-censorship, self-deception, and self-annihilation
Are ancient diseases—a long time ago I once had all three.”
He gives a ride to a man with a green fedora,
Who says, “Take me wherever you wish to go.”
Hafez, perplexed, says “I want to go everywhere, sir.”
“Then take me to the place,” says the man,
“Where you want to go most.”
“Ahhhh,” says Hafez, “I am already there.”
“Then I’ll get out here,” says the man tipping his fedora.
Dardedel Page 20