The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree

by Shokoofeh Azar

  Those, like Dad, who were standing in a corner of the yard anxious and petrified, staring at the number held in their hands, didn’t know if they would receive news of a future visit or a bag of clothes from the person cursing and speaking in a loud, boorish voice from behind the loudspeaker. More than half were sitting, beating their heads and crying. Three hours later, Dad was one of those sitting. Instead of visiting times, they had all received a bag and a yelling: “Funerals not allowed and the place of burial is unknown!” Only occasionally did anyone from among the black-clad, sobbing sitters take the opportunity to say to another, “Our children are either in Kharavan8 or the desert”.

  The house filled once again with silence. Just like the time we burned: the tars, books and me.

  This time the house’s cheery colours themselves began to brood; and there was no need for clothes of mourning. The world turned black. Black trees, black sky, black snow. Snow that suddenly began to fall in the height of summer and did not stop for one hundred and seventy-seven days. Just a month had passed since Mum’s unexpected enlightenment in the greengage tree and though she said nothing, she felt everything, sensed it, knew. It had already started to snow when Dad returned home from Tehran with hunched shoulders, and swollen, horror-stricken eyes. That morning the snow had begun to fall so persistently from pitch black clouds that no room for doubt remained for Mum and Beeta. Especially when later that morning, a giant moth appeared and flexed its wings outside Mum’s bedroom window; Beeta’s left eye was twitching; and a group of crows were kar-karing towards our house. When Beeta saw the moth, she was sure it was Sohrab’s spirit come to say goodbye, and yet, both she and Mum ignored these signs. They tried not to feel their effect, but their bodies had become leaden and all motivation was drained from them. And so, they just sat on the porch looking up at the pitch-black sky and wind-whipped snow as it soaked and blackened their skirts. Dad said nothing when he arrived in the middle of the night, frozen and wet. They asked nothing. He took the bag straight to Sohrab’s room and then took a hot shower from which he didn’t re-emerge for three hours, and then only because of the terrified screams of the villagers whose rooves had caved in under the weight of the snow.

  The black snow fell for one hundred and seventy-seven days. The rice in the paddies turned to sludge, fields of eggplants and tomatoes became mouldy, and butterfly wings stuck together and rotted. Wet birds starved and cows gave birth to dead calves. We took turns tending the fire in the stove so it wouldn’t go out because there was no more oil and the moisture had made the phosphorous match tips crumble. Every day I gathered several loads of wood from the forest in the unrelenting snowfall, carrying them to the porch and watching my family as I came and went. They were blurred and opaque. Three forlorn members of what had once been a self-assured, joyful five-member family. The walls of the house became mildewed and covered in moss; holes formed in the rusty roof. Water dripping from the ceiling into metal pots was the only music in the house as it mixed with thunder and the soft yet constant pattering of snowflakes. And yet, none spoke; not Mum, not Beeta, not Dad, and not the sparrows. The silent wet sparrows that had taken refuge from the forest on our porch.

  The weather was misleading. Everything was swallowed by moisture and cold. Our fingernails were wet so much of the time they turned black and puffy. The day we saw that the pages of the books and diaries we had bought again from secondhand bookshops on Enghelab Street had begun to stick together and the ink had run, we were grateful that at least the trunk with our ancestor’s writings and books was safe and dry in Tehran. Precisely on the fortieth night, as we all sat in silence around the wood stove and no longer paid any attention to black extremities or empty stomachs, a man with a long white beard and hair, and dressed in a long white robe, knocked on the door, walked past the hunched sparrows without them taking fright, and before we could even stand up, opened the door and sat down next to Dad in front of the wood stove. A vague smile played upon his protruding lips as he held his hands in prayer towards the fire, reciting: A prayer to you, O fire. Salutations to you, O fire. Truth is the greatest good, it is gladness. Gladness be for him who wants truth for the greatest truth. May the Creator and his created bring to you, O fire, O rays of Ahuramazda, gladness and praise. Be ablaze in this house. Be continuously ablaze in this house. Burn brightly in this house. Be forever increasing in this house. Truth is the greatest good, it is gladness. We were so intent on our silence that when having said this, the immaculate old man bowed slightly in respect as he backed away and evaporated into the night, before reaching the living-room door, we didn’t say a word; we just stared at the fire in the wood stove that had suddenly flared. From then on during all those snowy nights, the fire in our stove never went out and the old man returned every night. Each time he brought several others with him who sat beside us, all wearing the same clothes and reciting the same prayer.

  Several nights later when the group of Zoroastrians were reciting their usual fire prayer, our eyes fell on the porch where a villager, too shy to knock, stood cowering with his wife and three children. We opened the door and, as we walked back and forth from room to room to provide them with the last of our somewhat dry towels and clothes, they listened to the fire prayer we had become so accustomed to hearing and that warmed our hearts a little. From that night on, clusters of people from the village, bringing their last pots and pans, blankets and food were added to the gathering of the men in white, taking refuge in our house—the last that remained standing in Razan. Roofs had given way under the weight of the snow, cows and sheep had died or had fled to higher ground, and the remaining hens and roosters were living in the trees. Some people reported seeing them flying from tree to tree and mating with wild birds. Someone else said he had seen cows and sheep living in caves in the mountains, licking medicinal stones and drinking from hot mineral springs instead of eating grass.

  Several weeks later, with no more room to sleep and no more food to eat, the sparrows sensed danger and, spreading their wings, flew from our porch. That day five hungry young men went into the forest armed with bows, arrows and knives, returning a day later with a sheep, several rabbits and one hundred sparrows. They proceeded to light a fire on our porch where they roasted their booty and fell on it greedily.

  The people grew accustomed to the strange men in white who came every day at precisely the same time, and then disappeared again precisely an hour later. It was by unspoken agreement that everyone remained silent as they entered and listened to the prayer, and spoke loud and fast again as soon as they left. One was looking for a place to sleep, another moaning with hunger, and yet another was looking for her young son who had fallen asleep under who knows which bed or wardrobe. Everyone tried their best to not get into our personal things. But the day Beeta saw her pink ballet slippers on a child’s feet, she lost her temper, screaming that she was fed up with all the commotion and so much intrusion. Everyone bowed their heads in silence. After an hour of crying and ranting, she cursed the snooping children, black snow, the people who murdered Sohrab and me, the muddy earth, and the empty refrigerator. When she yanked her shoes off the child’s feet and returned to her room, their fast, loud chatter and their fighting over leftovers and sleeping places resumed. It was only Issa, Homeyra Khatun’s grandson, who watched everyone, including Beeta, in silence, unaware that years later he would make fiery love to her before cheating on her with Delbar, the blond-haired girl who at that very moment was sleeping just off the side, and whom he would marry and have five children with.

  Not long after, with the house collapsing under all the mayhem, I followed the white-robed men and saw them disappear around the ruins of the ancient fire temple—at the spot which locals believed to be the location of a cemetery for Zoroastrians who had fled Islamised regions centuries ago. I tugged at the robe of the old man who had first come to our house and asked, “What do you want from us?” As though waiting for this question, he answered, “Hope, joy and prosperity”.

 
All three things had long since disappeared from our home. He vanished then, and neither he nor his companions ever returned.

  The sparrows, boars, and rabbits were on the verge of extinction when, on the one hundred-and-seventy-seventh day, the sky gradually cleared, the black clouds gave way to grey, and the black, wind-whipped snow turned light and soft. By nightfall that evening it had stopped completely. Our ears, accustomed to one hundred and seventy-seven days of thunder and lightning, the patter of snowflakes, and water dripping into metal pots, now felt dulled; not wanting to trust the crowing rooster perched on a tree in the nearby forest, or the chirping of the sparrows that had suddenly burst into song and were flying in the watery sunshine.

  Like the first day of Creation, the air was pure and light. The villagers ran out into the yard and embraced one another, yelling and screaming, dancing and twirling in a Chakkeh sama.9 But no one could return to their homes in Razan. So much snow had fallen that no earth was to be seen. Again, the people waited. A month later the ground had re-emerged from under the thick layer of snow but was now a giant black swamp that completely encircled our hill and had swallowed everything. Again, the people waited. This time, every day for twenty days, a group of men set off from the hill down to the valley to test the ground upon which the sun had been shining with all its might. Finally, when the river had resumed its old path, when colour returned to the trees, when everything that had been taken from them by the black snow was restored by nature under its golden sun, and the ground under their feet could once again be trusted, the men took the hands of their wives and children and set off for the valley with their last remaining pots and pans, to restart their lives. Not one of them thanked us … that’s just how it is. Just as they give as one, so they take. Just like the earth. Like water. Like air.

  Gradually, the hens and roosters with their strange chicks, and the cows and sheep with their newborn young emerged from the forest and descended from the mountain to Razan. The sun slowly cleared the blackness and the green of the plants reappeared. The sound of flutes and song and the shepherd’s call travelled once again on the breeze to our grove every afternoon, and earth’s last poisonous, black vapour rose to the sky like the ghosts of a vagabond race, and coalesced with the clouds.

  I don’t know if it was the enlightenment in the greengage tree that made Mum a different person, the one hundred and seventy-seven days of snowfall, Sohrab’s death, or the prayers of the white-robed Zoroastrians. Suddenly, she emerged from her shell. She was full of energy, full of ambition, and without the slightest smile on her prominent, still beautiful lips, she leapt around from one side of the grove to the other, from one end of the house to the next, like a wild wagtail popping in and out of wattles, exhausting us with her orders. The black windows had to be washed. The black clothes had to be thrown away and new ones made. Then ragged blankets, sheets and mattresses had to be separated from the good ones and burned. All of the surviving handwoven carpets from Kashan and Naiin had to be brought down from the attic and out of the rooms into the yard to dry under the sun; as did all the books, issues of Ferdowsi, Sepid va Siah, Khushe and Ketab-e Jom’e, and the Ayandegan10 newspaper that had been sheltered from mice, mullahs and black snow in attic trunks.

  Ruefully separating the damp journals and spreading them out over the surface of the porch in the sun, Dad said, “At least these will be left for your children”. Poor Dad didn’t realise that, with the exception of memoryless fish, no descendants of his would remain. The walls needed repainting. The holes in the attic needed plugging with wax and sap. Someone needed to fetch the horses that had fled into the forest and bring them back. Japanese quince, forsythia, sweet viburnum and roses had to be replanted in the garden. The mildewed walls, rusty windows and rotting doors had to be repaired. Yet in all of this it was the sound that was unexpected. When the snow stopped and the house’s wooden panels began to dry, sounds slowly returned. Krrt krrt krrt … the termites that had wasted away during the snowfall had come back with a vengeance. They were everywhere: in the furniture, the doors, the windows, the kitchen cabinets, the empty bookshelves, the ceiling. By the time the krrt krrt of the termites could be heard issuing from the between the wall studs we couldn’t take it any longer, and realised that even with all the repairs, the house couldn’t be salvaged. It was thus that Dad made the biggest sacrifice of his life. We all breathed a sigh of relief and collapsed on the bare floor when he announced he was prepared to go to Tehran and borrow money from Granddad, or Great-Granddad to completely rebuild the house. But not one of us smiled: for our lips, it was too early for smiles.

  Although Dad’s words had been reassuring, our money problems were solved much more easily than expected when Effat’s ghost came to my treehouse. That very night Effat, whom I had never seen before, came and said that exactly ten steps from the centre of the ruined fire temple towards the forest, was a stone slab with a turtle carved into it. From there, twelve steps to the south was another stone resembling a chair that could be sat on. Sitting on the rock looking east to where the sun rises a tall, old tree was visible in the forest standing out from the surrounding trees. At a depth of one metre under the south side of the tree an urn of gold left by our Zoroastrian ancestors was awaiting us. When I asked why she was telling me this, she simply said, “Because it is your father who must help the villagers rebuild their houses and a school”.

  Effat hadn’t completely faded into the darkness when I entered the house and handed Mum, Dad and Beeta each a spade as I woke them up. Several hours later, in utter disbelief and with Dad already thinking about the difficulties of the sale, we had heaved an urn full of Sassanian11 gold coins and jewels out from among the ancient graves and bones and ceramic bowls, and placed it on the floor of the still-tidy living room. Picking up a gem-studded necklace, Beeta said, “Every metre of earth in this country holds an ancient treasure”.

  Dad knew that with several powerful mullahs in Tehran and Qom at the helm, the Ministry of Intelligence had confiscated all ancient treasures and quietly imprisoned or disposed of anyone who found them, whilst dividing the spoils amongst themselves. So it was that Dad had no choice but to take the risk and go to Tehran himself to sell it, with the help of Uncle Khosro and Granddad and Great Granddad. He was fortunate, however, that Granddad and his father treasured Iran’s ancient heritage so much that they were prepared to dig into their own pockets, exchanging most of it for part of the family’s estate and their life’s savings, before donating it to the national collection, amid much publicity.

  Danger persisted, however. We were all worried about the future of these antiquities at Granddad’s house, especially since they had been receiving personal offers from the mayor of Tehran who wanted to buy them. Now, because they had given him no hope, the mayor had threatened them with the law. Soon after, they received a letter from the mayor’s office announcing that the house had to be sold to the city to allow for the construction of a highway. Just the thought of it was a nightmare. We all loved that eighteen-bedroom house with its corridors and entrance gallery, and exquisite wood inlays. It was a part of our family and the country’s history. Eventually, Uncle Khosro, Dad, Grandma, Granddad and Great-Granddad got creative. Uncle Khosro called a trusted journalist whom he had known years ago. A week later and in the presence of reporters, they donated the Zoroastrian treasure to the national collection, passing it off as collection of family heirlooms. Photographers took pictures of the Achaemenid and Sassanian necklaces, bracelets, crowns and coins; journalists wrote detailed articles on them. After this, we felt it would not be so easy to steal them, even though we knew antiquity thieves were so closely linked to prominent political, economic and religious figures. It was thus that early one unextraordinary morning, when the sun was still working to dry the mud, Razan woke up to the sound of heavy trucks they had hitherto never seen. A line of lorries hauling timber and materials, two trucks of skilled construction workers and a third laden with books, all led by Dad’s car, entered the vi
llage.

  For six months, the villagers and twenty construction workers from the city, laboured under the hot sun until Razan became a place that excited the envy of even the urban builders—a place neither Dad nor the villagers ever tired of beholding. A network of streets and alleys separated large, well-built village houses, their walls painted white with natural plaster, lapis lazuli blue and ochre from the earth. The river now flowed in a stone-lined canal so it would no longer flood easily. Large chicken coops and a bathhouse perfumed with fragrant forest plants, flower-lined streets, fruit trees in the gardens and large paddies with clean, even plots of rice, attracted the stares of every newcomer. It was not surprising that a number of builders fell in love, and married enchanting Razan girls. Happy days in Razan had arrived. People worked with renewed hope and energy, relegating memories of their sons unreturned from war to the isolated trunks of their minds, as they danced in celebration for their daughters. They built a school; and made ceramics, and wove mats and kilims and cloth, just like their ancestors. In all this development, Dad didn’t once think about a road. He didn’t want any roads from the city to lead to Razan. If it had been up to him, he would have perhaps even wanted the tyre tracks left by the trucks in dirt and mud, grass and meadows, wiped away. Dad hired three of the builders who had married village girls and who were literate, to work as teachers. Now from up on our hill, Razan, with all its secrets, memories and dreams, appeared even more beautiful and prosperous. But though he watched the dizzyingly dynamic life with satisfaction, not once did a smile cross Dad’s lips. Maybe like me and the others, he was wondering why, whereas I was all around them, there had not yet been any sign of Sohrab.