The Walking

by Laleh Khadivi

  Find your way to the bedroom.

  Lay the body down on the bed.

  Let them visit you in dreams.

  Fly-Fly

  The boardinghouse is full of maps, and on his first morning Saladin walks from one to the next and looks at the shapes of countries, the great waters, the way Los Angeles hangs off America. He knows he has to be at work soon, he knows too that the rug seller will not be upset with him if he is late.

  The last time Saladin studied a map was on the island. There were a few small ones and one large one, almost entirely blue with only a few specks of land. They were taped up to the wall of the airplane hangar, and Saladin and Ali stood before them as the mechanic explained their location by circling around a small green dot with his oily fingernail and repeating the fact of the island to them, again and again.

  Ilha. Azores. Ilha dos Azores.

  The man seemed to be carved of copper. His eyes, his hands and face, the skin of his arms and even his tight, curly hair were a deep shade of orange.

  The man shook his head and started again with the finger and the circles and the slow words.

  Ilha. Azores. Eu.

  He pointed to himself and nodded yes vigorously.

  Sí. Me.

  He pointed to the brothers and the other men from the ship that gathered behind them.

  No. Você. You. No no no no. Clandestino. Policía. Home. Go. Go. Ciao-ciao. O—

  He gestured to the plane behind them.

  Fly-fly.

  To the men from the cargo ship, the island was an insult, a cruel joke, a curse. After the night of their near death they waited for the container to land on what felt like solid ground and immediately climbed up the ladder and out into a sunny world for which they had no name. Behind them there were docks and ships and endless water, and they moved away quickly, running down an asphalt road that turned to dust after the first few meters. They kept on it, and when people passed, Saladin thought to ask where was it they had come to and where they should go, but he did not know what language to speak, the people were so unfamiliar. Their skin was deep or medium or light brown, and they wore cheap, clean clothes and large straw hats. They did not raise their eyes to offer a greeting or even recognize this flock that smelled of vomit and piss and fear. The children that passed all stared at the men, and a few of the infants let out long, shrill wails.

  They walked one kilometer, maybe two, and Saladin felt panic start to pass among them. The men muttered to themselves and shouted at each other in English and other languages.

  Where is this? What shit have I eaten to end up here?

  Saladin looked at Ali beside him, and Ali looked around him like a tourist in the movies, hands in pockets, carefree, as if it made no difference that they survived or that they might be lost or that his younger brother, responsible for this mess, wanted some reassurance.

  Ali. Do you know where this is?

  Ali looked away, up at the sun and down at his shadow, and pretended he did not hear.

  A small Datsun truck pulled up behind their slow-moving group, and a man leaned his head out the window and asked, Turkey? Iran? Afghanistan?

  Saladin and the Turkish twins and a few others ran to the open window and shouted, Yesyesyes.

  The man was pale with dark black curls and he instructed them in a slow English.

  Follow me. Follow behind the truck.

  He drove in front and led them down a dirt path and then another and then down a road of soft green grass to a clearing with a long, cracked cement runway and an airplane hangar with no door.

  The men followed the truck to a river, where the driver waited while they stripped off their clothes and washed. Saladin had never seen such trees before, sky-high, with enormous leaves and ropy branches that netted together at the top. Everywhere he looked the green canopies twinkled with tiny white and red and yellow birds, and all around his feet insects with black and green and red speckled backs jumped about. Ali didn’t seem to notice any of it and joined the others as they washed their bodies and then their clothes and then spread out naked on the hot rocks and slept. When Saladin tried to swim, the pain was too great and he looked down to find his body covered in the bruises and dark green welts of someone who had been trampled in some great exodus. He looked at the bodies of the other men, of his brother, and but for their hair and size and age, the damage to their bodies was sometimes more and sometimes less.

  The driver took them to the hangar, where they found a few tables and chairs, a dozen or more small metal cots, tools, engine parts, and empty barrels of oil. There were two unmatched propellers and a large, rusted plane without seats or windows or wings that seemed, aside from its condition, as if it could carry a hundred men into the sky. The gathered men stood in front of the broken machine and thanked their gods. Their shoulders dropped and one or two of them even smiled.

  The driver leaned out the window of his truck and spoke.

  They come in the morning. One every morning. For a price. A cost. Sometimes America, sometimes England. Maybe Canada. Talk with the pilots. They have a price for you. Bem.

  Those who could left quickly. They produced secreted chains of gold, Swiss watches, cuff links, paper money, and agreed upon a distance that matched the value of their offerings. Saladin sat on the grass beside the runway and watched the windowless beasts peel themselves off the ground by what seemed like the force of sound alone. The wind from their takeoff soothed him, and every time they launched, a little part of his insides lifted too, just as he had planned. He had watched that lift in birds since he was a boy, the way the wind took them just beneath the wings, the way, if they let it, the wind did all the work. In his life of wanting—to leave the mountain town; to walk into the world of the screen; to be an American and live out the life of a new hero with an old name—he never wanted anything more than a place on these planes with their cool and clean getaway.

  When the men from Saladin’s boatload had paid and flown, other men came, from other boatloads, still covered in a thin film of horror from the night or nights just passed. They found places to sit and sleep, and those who could not stood studiously before the mechanic who circled the tiny green dot on the map and pronounced again and again.

  ILHA. I-L-H-A. Azores.

  The mechanic would go on to explain, in some mix of English and other tongues Saladin had never heard, that they could not stay. The island was full of policía who made sure no men were on boats or planes. They searched the hangars and the docks with, the mechanic made the shape with his greasy hand, pistolas, and they sent each man back to his first home. After a few days Saladin and Ali were the only men left, and no matter how Saladin searched himself and his brother, he could not find an item of value between them. They listened to the mechanic talk and ate the food left by the boy who cooked for the pilots and took turns sleeping on the blanket they shared. New men came and went, the mechanic warned them all of pistolas and policía and the hangar held and let go of their lives as easily as it kept and released the fragrant island wind.

  On the third day Ali, against the warnings of the mechanic, left the hangar. Saladin ran to catch him.

  Where are you going?

  For a walk.

  For what?

  For nothing. Just a walk. I told you, it relaxes me.

  The island, with its mud streets and barefoot children, held no interest for Saladin. It had the same quiet dullness of the mountain town, and he could not understand why his brother found comfort in places where everything had already happened and there was nothing new left to do. He knew Ali did not follow the dreams his mother had set out before them, but Saladin knew too that his brother was a man of ambition, ambition to honor what their father had stained, ambition to become a truer version of the old man. Why Ali could not find this honor in America bothered Saladin, and he dismissed his brother’s moods and sarcasm as symptoms of some bigger confusion, some passing sickness born of the constant movement and uncertain direction of these last few
days and weeks.

  Saladin paced the hangar and focused his attention on the pilots who stayed in or near their planes, where the desperate refugees approached them with goods or promises or simple begging. The pilots spoke in English and sometimes in French, and once, from a pilot in the jacket of the Shah’s air force, in Farsi. They always took the offering when the offering was good and rejected small sums, tarnished jewelry, useless trinkets. Regardless of what was given or how enormous the plane, the pilots refused to fly any more than three or four men at a time. Saladin eavesdropped on conversations, spoke with men who had been granted permission or denied and walked the floor of the hangar for days, hopeful and without despair.

  Each night Ali’s mood improved. He returned from his walks with handfuls of loamy dirt, seashells that held the sound of the ocean, colorful dead birds—all of which he laid out before Saladin, astonished at his own finds.

  Can you believe this? We had nothing like it in the mountain town. Imagine Baba’s face when he sees this painted bird, all of his pigeons were gray gray gray.

  A fever shone in his brother’s eyes and he was unable to look at anything—Saladin, the other men, the ceiling of the hangar—for too long. Saladin watched Ali’s fast gestures and nervous blinks and said nothing when he erupted in nonsensical talk.

  What do you think the plums in Agha Mostaffa’s orchard will taste like this fall? Who do you think they missed more? Me or you? I can’t wait to eat Khanoum Mitra’s rice again. How long since we had good rice … ?

  The island was hot and Ali’s walks were long and Saladin suggested his brother drink a little more water.

  Ali, soon we will be gone.

  How do you know that, Saladin jaan? We cannot seem to go forward from here. It is best to start planning a way back, don’t you think?

  After a few days the brothers stopped speaking. They spent the mornings and afternoons apart and shared a space on the floor but no conversation. When the latest group of men arrived, with their rancid smell, slumped bodies and hollow, roving eyes, Ali left the hangar without more than one look. Even the mechanic kept his distance from this flock, which seemed to have strayed just out of death’s reach. But Saladin kept close, watched them sleep on the cement floor and pointed them in the direction of the river when they woke. They bathed like specters, and Saladin learned all he needed to know from the gashes on their knees and blistered feet, the burn marks and long red signatures of rods or whips. Most of them were so dirty that even after they bathed their hair still stood on end. There were relations in this group, fathers and sons, cousins, brothers and what seemed like a few friends. When they returned to the hangar, they spread themselves out and slept again. A light-eyed father and his light-eyed son sat next to Saladin, and the father spoke to him in Farsi, as if it were the only language on earth.

  Forgive us for taking up your space. We are tired. Very tired.

  Please, sit. It is not my space.

  Yes. Well.

  The father sat down and crossed his legs, and his son, a boy of four or five, sat in between them and the four eyes looked up at Saladin.

  What is ours anymore?

  The son looked up at Saladin, and the father slowly began to take off his shoes. The leather was cracked at the bend near the toes, and one shoe had no heel.

  The situation is bad. Most likely worse than when you left. We are all victims. Every last one of us, just barely alive enough to leave. Do you see that man there? Brother of the owner of the Golestan hotel, you know, the big one in Tehran … A month after the revolution his brother was called out into the streets in front of the hotel and shot by the guardsmen, boys really. His crime? Giving rooms to British and Americans. And that man there? In the checkered shirt? A Jew, son of a jeweler, apparently an athlete of some fame. A wrestler or something. They raided his house in the Jewish neighborhood of Shiraz. The servant tried to protect his children, but the gendarmes shot him, in front of all his children. What is left of the family is in Karachi now. I don’t know where he is going. I don’t think he does either.

  The man stopped and looked directly at Saladin.

  Where are you going?

  Amreeka. California. Hollywood. With my brother.

  To family?

  Yes. We are going to meet our uncle. He is waiting for us there.

  Saladin did not pause before he spoke and the words came easily, like truth.

  The man took the child up into his arms. The child’s eyes were drowsy and a large red welt was on his forehead.

  Good. Family. I think family is all we have. These days especially.

  The father kissed his boy, rested his chin on his small head of brown hair and shut his own heavy eyes like a man who slept only when his son was quiet and dreaming, no more, no less.

  That night a dream clutched Saladin with such ferocity that he woke in a sweat and without breath. He sat up in shock and could not, for some reason, stand the sight of his brother asleep next to him. He looked at the calm face, the neatly aligned bones, the handsome dimple in the chin, and saw in them their father and pieces of himself and the dream flickered back to life in his head. The jungle around them was filled with women. Grown women with the faces of girls jumped from branches and climbed up trunks and rested in the high leafy canopies. Saladin and his brother were old, much closer to death than to birth, and they still lived in the hangar and they still did not speak. Afraid to miss a plane, Saladin stood at the entry of the hangar, bent and weak boned and bald, and pleaded with the women, Please, please come in. The women refused him and waited for Ali, wrinkled and jaunty with a full head of hair, as he walked out into the jungle and took a nymph by the shoulders or waist as she pushed down his pants and took him inside her, and Saladin was left to watch and want this love he had never, in his dreams or life, had. He kicked his brother awake.

  Ali. Ali!

  Ali stretched luxuriously as if he had been having the same dream.

  Wake up! Let’s go for one of your walks.

  What?

  A walk. I want to go on the walk with you. You say it is a beautiful place. Show me. Wake up. Show me.

  They walked out away from the runway and into the jungle on a steep, narrow mountain path. At every rustle Saladin searched for a woman but saw only small, hairless animals and a few birds. Beside him Ali moved slowly, stopping to pick up stones or flowers or examine the patterns on the backs of giant bugs.

  This world is much bigger than I ever thought.

  Ali remarked before a resting butterfly with pink-and-black wings.

  All this life, together, at the same time. Our sisters back home are still combing their hair, maybe still crying for us. The foreman in Istanbul is still printing newspapers, the girl in Cagliari is with a million men tonight. Who knows … I thought all that ever happened in the world happened in the mountain town.

  Ali never spoke like this, and Saladin let the dream fade and let himself listen to his brother.

  I have been thinking about Babak.

  Not once have they said his name. Saladin knew it when the men were lined up and knew it when Babak squirmed beneath him, still alive, blindfold falling off. He has known it all these walking days, but not once had either brother mentioned him, said the word out loud.

  Sometimes I feel as if Babak is right beside us. Right here, Saladin jaan, in the space between me and you.

  The butterfly flew in small graceful arcs around Ali’s head, and at certain angles the sun shone through the wings to reveal intricate dusty patterns.

  I can feel him, the ghost of him. It follows us everywhere, lost as we are lost. Sometimes I think it is because he is unburied. Because he is still on the valley floor and his spirit is restless.

  Ali, what are you talking about? We have come too far … In Los Angeles …

  We should go back. Bury him. Be with our people. Even Baba stayed. He could have lived his life as a traitor in Tehran or Esfahan, took a higher post even, less ridicule, but even he choose to come back t
o the town he was born in. What difference does it make that he came back in the uniform of the Shah? At least he stayed. Only the very truest cowards leave.

  The blood rushed to Saladin’s head and then cleared and left him with a precise clarity of thought.

  If Baba had not come back to Kermanshah, if he had gone far away, to Mashhad or Qom or Tehran, we would not be in this mess! It would have made a big difference. You must think survival cowardly. If you can live in America, as a man, without a gun, does that mean you are a coward? If your son can live without fighting about blood, is that cowardly?

  Ali put out his finger and the butterfly landed on it, pulsed with the rhythm of a running man come to rest.

  There is always a way home.

  Ali held the butterfly up between their faces.

  It is just like Khanoum Alevi taught us in biology class, how the animals and insects migrate, away and back.

  They came to a town of six or seven streets and walked through morning activities that carried on as if they weren’t there. Women in sandals stirred large iron pots over fires, and men rested, half asleep, in slung beds of thin netting. Children ran to grab Ali’s hand and held it and smiled up at him as if they already knew there was no common tongue between them and the tall, happy stranger. A man in a military uniform and white sash stood in the open window of what looked like a café. He drank slowly from a tiny ceramic cup, and when the brothers passed, he looked long at Saladin and nodded once to Ali. Ali met the glance and nodded back.

  Do you want to see their water, their big ocean?

  Ali asked. He was in a good mood, smiling at the faces they met and walking with an extra bend in his step. Once in a while he whistled a few notes from the Beatles song “Help!”

  No. Ali, who was that man?

  What man?

  Just as Saladin started to ask why he knew a man in military uniform and why a man in military uniform knew him, a big-bellied airplane flew low over their heads in the direction of the hangar. Saladin forgot his question, his brother, the morning’s frustrating talk, and started his run back.