“Get up, mother. Get up! Don’t let me go insane. I’ll kill you, I swear!”
She still didn’t respond. Abrau let forth a bestial cry and threw dirt at her eyes.
“Just stare at me! Just stare! Why did you ever give birth to me!”
Mergan just blinked.
Abrau jumped back onto the tractor, and the machine began to roar again. It began to back up, and he waited for a moment. Then he pressed on the accelerator. It advanced. It was as if the teeth of a giant began to press into the dirt on the edge of the ditch. The crowd began to shout, screaming and swearing. But the hubbub was lost in the roar of the engine. They waved their hands; the old men waved their cloak ends. But what could they do? Mother and son were of the same cloth. Mergan was the mother of this boy, and Abrau was the son of this same mother. But at the last moment, Mirza Hassan managed to climb onto the tractor and switched the ignition off.
Abrau, looking injured, sour, and unsettled, leapt off the machine and into the ditch and threw himself onto his mother.
Had Mergan turned to stone? She didn’t even open her mouth to swear at him. Abrau dragged his mother’s body from the ditch and pulled her over to the tractor. He struggled to tie her onto the tractor with a rope. He sat cruelly in the driver’s seat, and again he started up the metal beast.
The deed was done. The crowd stood seeing what the outcome of the reunification of God’s Land meant. What was the tractor doing?! What was Abrau doing? Was the cruelty acceptable? Mirza Hassan lit a cigarette for himself and then untied Mergan from the body of the tractor.
Mergan had collapsed in a heap. Abbas had as well. Mergan took Abbas’ hand—they held each others’ hands. Morad followed the two of them. The mother and son were unified. Mergan had aged. She didn’t walk as she used to; now she matched Abbas’ broken steps. They walked like two ants. Morad walked to the same rhythm, quietly and calmly. It was as if the earth had been emptied and only these three people were walking on its tired back.
What color was the sky? And the earth? The earth was so strangely silent! Was there so much as a bird in the fields? No … the earth was empty, the sky was empty, everything empty. But Mergan faced down whatever they had put upon her.
“Don’t worry, my son. Don’t worry. You’ll live a long life yet!”
At the cusp of dusk, Mergan and Abbas reached home.
Morad stood outside the door. Then he sat against the wall and held his head in his hands. How many years had he aged today? He felt as if he had become heavy, like a mountain. He didn’t want to speak a word to anyone. He didn’t know anything; he just didn’t know anymore. He felt dizzy and at a loss for words. He didn’t feel like leaving. He didn’t feel like standing. He didn’t feel like sitting. Everything seemed meaningless. How meaningless were these new clothes on his body! The only thing he felt like doing, that his heart would want to do, was to take off the clothes. But why now? His questions remained unanswered. He rose and went into the stable, emerging only wearing his undershirt and underwear. He entered the house and tossed the new clothes onto a pile of blankets and sat in a corner.
Three people, three corners, quiet, exhausted, weary. What flame will rise again in you, oh friend, oh brother, oh mother?
The dusk set, and the air grew dark. But with a light heart, one can see in the dark. When your heart is darker than the night, what color can the night have? Let the darkness fill you, penetrate you; let the night come on. Eyes can no longer see other eyes. People no longer see others. All the better!
“Why don’t you light the lamp, Mama?”
It was Hajer’s voice. She slid into the house. All was silent again. Hajer lit the lamp. In the shadows of the lamp’s light, Morad raised his head from his knees and looked at Hajer. She paused for a second. Then she ran outside, as if she’d seen a ghost. She looked back inside, and the same eyes were still looking at her. Then she left. Morad put his head back on his knees. It was as if the silence was not meant to be broken. It was as if sound was an injustice that was imposed on people.
“Oh God … Oh God … Why have you forgotten me?”
Was this Mergan’s voice? No, she wasn’t speaking. So who was speaking? It had to be Mergan. Could it be her spirit speaking?
Hajer entered the room.
“What happened, mother …? Morad, tell me! What’s happened?”
Hajer was speaking to Morad. He raised his forehead from his knees and looked at her quietly. He couldn’t answer. He spoke to her under his breath.
“I brought you a bracelet. Hajer, I brought you a bracelet!”
Ali Genav’s voice echoed in the alley.
“Where did you go, girl! If you’re at your mother’s, you’re really going to get it!”
Hajer left quickly. Morad again set his head on his knees.
2.
Raghiyeh had lent her crutch to Abbas. It had been fashioned out of a branch from a knotted and twisted old tree. She could now walk on her own, holding herself up with one hand against a wall. She’d cough, curse, or cry as she dragged herself across the dirt like a leech. No one disturbed her, and she was unable to be much of a bother to anyone else. She no longer cursed anyone in particular. She cursed, but her target was everyone and everything. Despite her misanthropy, she’d given her crutch to Abbas. Could he have escaped being a target of her anger? After all, as they say, misery loves company.
Abbas was able to get around with Raghiyeh’s crutch. He didn’t need a crutch to help him with a limp. No, it was simply that his legs and body didn’t have the strength to bear him, and the crutch helped him remain standing. It held his weight up, just enough that he was able to walk around the empty alleys like a strange animal. The small children were terrified of him, and as soon as they heard the sound of the crutch, they ran home, shutting the doors behind them while screaming, “Shaggy! Shaggy!”
No one called Abbas by his own name any longer. In the village, both young and old now called him by this new name, so much so that he had begun to forget his own name. The name didn’t take hold all at once; it took some time to spread. First, they called him “Shaggy-haired Abbas,” then “Shaggy Abbas,” and finally “Shaggy.” Eventually, it settled on just that one word. The word seemed enough on its own, and the name “Abbas” simply disappeared!
However, Abbas had stayed the same all along: wordless, confused, weak. It was clear that there would be no going back to his days of good health; even Abbas never thought about those days any more. It seemed as if he couldn’t even remember the days before his work as a camel herder. From the way he acted, it appeared that he saw himself as the way he had become, and he had deeply accepted this new “self” as himself. It was as if he had been born as he was, with this new name. Before he began speaking again, others couldn’t tell what he thought. When he did eventually begin to speak again, he never said anything that shed any light on his state of mind. The less compassionate used him for amusement. Abbas usually ignored these people, or just distanced himself from them. Often a Good Samaritan would come along and defend him, extricating him from the difficult situation. On these occasions, Abbas would just put his head down and walk away, tapping his crutch. He liked to go looking for gambling circles; this was the only apparent vestige of his former self. He liked spending his time in these circles, because he always had a role to play. In those games, he was treated like a lifetime member of the club, even while not participating in them, and each gambler had a specific feeling about his presence. Some thought his presence brought them good luck, while others thought he brought them bad luck.
“Don’t stand behind me, white-eyed Shaggy!”
“Come sit by me, Shaggy, my friend!”
Shaggy would be pushed from place to place, but he held on. People would kick him, but he held on. They’d sometimes take his crutch and throw it aside, and he’d crawl on his hands and feet and get it; but he held on. Snide comments, jokes, attacks, insults—he endured all these, and he held on. Whatever happened, he held on. The
y couldn’t do anything about it. He was there to stay.
Moslem, Hajj Salem’s son, was no less persistent. He and Abbas had become like a knife and butter. Both loved to spend time in the gambling circles. Those who didn’t like to see Abbas hanging around would try to incite Moslem against him. Eventually Moslem would leap onto Abbas and beat him. But Abbas held his ground.
“Run, Shaggy! Moslem’s coming!”
The sight of Moslem truly made the hairs on Abbas’ back stand on end. But he wouldn’t run away. Abbas had come to depend on the gambling circles as much as he needed air to breathe.
“Come here, Shaggy; these two qerans are a gift for you. Put them somewhere in your pocket for safekeeping!”
At home, no one bothered him, and he minded his own business. He had made a place for himself out by the clay oven. He was comfortable there. With some stones and dirt, he’d managed to make a refuge for himself. He filled the holes in between the stones with bits of cloth and tin and hay. He would sit at night and look at the stars and the moon, the sky. It was then that he felt most refreshed, as if he could spend a hundred years looking up above him. And before he put his head on his pillow, he would once again count the change he had collected from people in the gambling circles.
“Twenty-two qerans today. Eighteen more qerans and I’ll have twenty tomans!”
He had no friends or companions. Abrau no longer came to the house. Mergan was busy with her own work. Abbas only glimpsed her shadow from time to time. Sometimes, a bit of bread, a cup of tea would materialize by the oven; apparently these were from Mergan. Only Raghiyeh would sometimes come out and sit by the clay oven. At times, she would speak, sometimes not; sometimes she listened, sometimes not. Sometimes she’d get a qeran or two from Abbas to go and buy herself some chewing tobacco.
If given the means, someone like Raghiyeh would likely become an opium smoker. Or at least a smoker of tobacco water pipes. But Raghiyeh couldn’t afford the cost of these luxuries. Her fear of Ali Genav was such that she would never dare to try to take some of his money for these ends. Instead she’d go to Abbas and try to get enough change to buy some chewing tobacco. Two qerans worth kept her satisfied for a week. She put one pinch under her tongue and kept it there for an entire day. The lime in the tobacco had begun to irritate and injure her gums. But the tobacco was Raghiyeh’s only pleasure, as it made her a little dizzy. Before sleeping at night, she liked to also put a pinch under her tongue just as she was going to bed.
In the midst of this, Abbas was becoming a local oddity. His coming and going, his sitting and standing, his work and rest, his refuge, his den, his crutch, his hair, his torn clothes, his silence, his speech, his face, his eyes, the way he looked at things, his bones, his crooked walk—these all had come together to comprise a person with the name of Abbas, son of Soluch, now called Shaggy. Adding to this was Abbas’ bizarre appearance, which had made him a sort of legendary character; stories of him passed from person to person.
On his own, Abbas had become “other.” His separation from his mother, and his new place by the clay oven, had made his singularity even more pronounced. No one understood why Abbas had moved to this new place all of a sudden. Why did he make his home away from Mergan? Even his mother didn’t understand. The only thing that occurred to her was that Abbas had wanted to stand on his own two feet, even if helped by his crutch. He wanted his existence to have its own color, to carry its own burden. Perhaps the ordeal had left one thing of Abbas behind; himself. A “self” with whatever face it had. And perhaps Abbas was instinctively struggling to find these scraps, these scattered shards, so as to put them back together as one. In this way, he somehow had to try to understand his own life. He had to see himself alone, without relying on others, to seek his self out, to sense and feel it. To do this, he had to emerge from beneath his mother’s wings and present himself. Until he did so, his being would always be submerged, if not simply a burden. Led on like a pony, but worse, as an invalid—which he was. Even if each finger was endowed with a different kind of skill, in the eyes of others you are only seen as a transplanted branch, as something the existence of which is dependent on something else. They say, “Your mother takes care of you, your brother pays your expenses, your sister washes your clothes.” In this, they can only make mention of you in relation to someone else. And if you speak of your “self,” it’s only in vain, as in their eyes this actual “self” doesn’t really exist!
One can’t be certain if this was what led Abbas to separate himself from the household, but it may well have been. What other hidden power could have led him to leave the house and to build a den for himself out by the clay oven?
Perhaps it’s not right to say that everything about a person is mutable.
Abbas was sitting in his usual place by the clay oven, and as was his habit, he was looking at the night sky. This habit had followed his injury, from his experience seeing that sky from the bottom of the well. From then on, he looked at the night sky in such a way that it seemed he was looking for footprints that were imprinted there. Forgotten footprints. Abbas’ solitude was broken by the sound of approaching footsteps out in the alleyway. These footsteps were not familiar—he was now most used to Raghiyeh’s soft footsteps that were always accompanied by her broken lament. There were other sounds that he heard in the alley, but Abbas mostly listened out for her footsteps, and these were not hers. The sound stopped.
“Abbas! Abbas … Are you asleep?”
He looked where the sound came from. There was a shadow against the wall. Abbas coughed to indicate that he was awake. The shadow approached him. It was Abrau; he stood facing Abbas. Abbas looked at the cigarette burning between his own fingers. Abrau stood beside the wall of the oven. Abbas couldn’t imagine what he wanted, so he waited to see what Abrau would say. But his brother remained silent. A moment later, he came over and sat down. The wide mouth of the oven separated the two brothers.
“Here! I’d heard you picked up smoking, so I brought you a pack.”
Abrau fit the pack of cigarettes into the heap of stones beside Abbas’ hand. Abbas watched his brother’s movements, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say.
Abrau continued, “I know I should have come a long time ago. Too long has passed. But I couldn’t come back here after that day. And now … I waited until night fell to stop by. It’s better in the dark. I can’t show my face around here in daylight. I really lost my mind that day. What a cursed day that was! It was as if I wasn’t myself when I did those things. I’ve not seen our mother since then. I couldn’t see her after all of that. I did try to send her some money, but she sent it back. How is she?”
Abbas tossed the butt of his cigarette into the oven, and quietly, with a muffled sound that had become his particular voice, said, “I don’t know. I don’t see much of her! She’s probably in the house right now.”
“How is she for food and water?”
“I don’t know! I split the sack of flour with her. But I don’t know more than that!”
“I really was bad on that day; it was really bad. How terrible! What son acts that way toward his own mother? But what can I do now? I’ve been sleeping out beside the tractor this entire time. But it’s getting really cold now. That dry winter cold is setting in! This evening, the Gonbadi driver shut down the tractor for the season. When he shut off the motor, he took it out and took it with him. I don’t think he’ll ever bring it back. He may just try to sell the motor in the open market, to make up for the back wages they never paid him. God’s Land is all ploughed, and we planted the pistachio saplings. But we have to wait seven years for the first fruit. And the major work of the tractor is done. All that we can do now is rent it out, which isn’t really worth it. The expenses of the tractor kept getting higher, day-by-day. Mirza Hassan might have no choice but to sell the tractor off. They’re saying that it costs more than it brings in. And you can’t work the tractor all year round …! By the way, Abbas, do you know how pistachios come to
bear?”
Abbas didn’t know. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have had the heart or interest to reply to Abrau’s question. Abrau understood this, but had no choice but to keep talking. These words had become a burden on his heart, and the only person he could unload them onto was his older brother. Abbas’ reaction wasn’t of great concern to Abrau; loneliness had taken its toll on him. He felt like an outcast, separated as he was from his home and family. This made him anxious, and so he’d come to pour his heart out to his silent brother in the depths of the night.
“I had thought that Mirza Hassan was planning to plant wheat as well as pistachios and cotton. But he didn’t sow a single seed of wheat. When someone mentioned this to him, he’d say, ‘You think I have a donkey’s brain to want to plant wheat? What on earth for? How much will I have to pay the gleaners? And who is here to glean, anyway? Once I harvest it, how much can I sell it for? How much do you think the company will pay me for it? They’ll pay less than three tomans for each man of wheat! If you do the math, you’ll see it won’t pay for even half of its costs. What sensible person would do such a thing?’ If I think about it now, I have to admit he wasn’t wrong. Planting wheat and barley these days isn’t even close to being profitable. Mirza Hassan also used to say, ‘The government is importing tons and tons of it from abroad!’ But that’s why I’m worried that the tractor won’t be put back to work. The planting land here is all in bits and scraps. This cursed tractor is made to work on digging up big tracts of land. Here, if the land is really a large plot, you’re still done before nightfall. Then you have to drive three farsakhs to go find another plot of land to lower the blades on and plough. Just getting around wastes all of your time. You start to figure out the costs of these things slowly. There were many times when we didn’t have more than one hour’s work on a person’s plot of land. How much to you think we could charge for one hour’s work? And then think of how long it took to get there and back! That’s why I’m worried this tractor might end up being passed on and sent to some other province. Somewhere like Gorgon Valley. That’s where it was before. Or who knows, maybe Neyshabur Valley. And that’s if the Gonbadi driver actually repairs the motor and returns with it! You see, he set up the water pump and drove the tractor, but now the tractor’s out of service. And Mirza Hassan’s up and disappeared. They’re looking for him from the government’s Office of Agriculture. I don’t know! What should I try to do? I can’t go back to doing odd jobs. But there’s no other tractor for me to find work on. What a fool I was to have raised my hopes as much as I did!”
Missing Soluch Page 35