The villagers, whose heartstrings had snapped with each strum of “Raisers of martyrs” and the thought of their children who had not returned from war, upon the mention of books looked unconsciously towards our house; the very house whose inhabitants had been drawn to Razan along invisible paths in 1979 on a misty morning seeped in ancient sanctuary and serenity.
Our newly-built house on the only hill overlooking the village, that always attracted the stares of newcomers, was not spared their gaze or perhaps it was the very reason they had come. Just as they had done before, they entered our grove and house unannounced. But we had heard their megaphone and just had time to shoo Sohrab into the forest with two bags of political books. Minutes later their muddy boots were dirtying antique handwoven carpets. Without so much as a glance through the remaining books, they dumped them all into sacks and hauled them away. It wasn’t until they were back in their jeep that, again without even looking at Dad, the mullah said, “Be at the square in an hour”.
With the exception of Mum, who was not willing to put on a headscarf to leave the grove, all of us were in Razan’s square an hour later standing alongside the villagers and looking at the mullah who stood in the back of the jeep, wheezing and screaming into his, superfluous, megaphone, “Misguided books! Books against God and against the Quran! Books against the Revolution!” Wrenching Dad’s books out of the sacks several at a time, he threw them to the ground and continued, “The Great Leader of the Revolution has ordered a cultural revolution! We must not allow satanic books to poison the minds of our simple-hearted people!” Then, together with the other Revolutionary Guards, he hurled the books by the armful into the middle of the square. One Guard who was younger than the rest, nonchalantly brought a gallon of petrol from the vehicle and emptied it over them. The Guards stood, guns cocked, surrounding the books and facing us, the people. I looked at Dad who had turned red in the face, the sound of his grinding teeth hurting my ears, and I looked at Beeta, squeezing Dad’s hand and biting her nails. As the young Guard, whose moustache hadn’t even begun to sprout, dumped petrol over the books, a collective sigh rose up from the villagers who, though knowing neither how to read nor write, had heard the books’ innocent lamentations. Worried, everyone turned to look at Dad who had been the object of their trust and affection from the moment he had arrived.
As the mullah shouted unnecessarily into his megaphone, perhaps in an effort to make the lizards in distant forests swell with his anger and hate, he stared at Dad and said, “We have produced martyrs … We had a revolution … We swore on the Quran that we would protect the pure blood of the martyrs and would not allow the enemy to penetrate our houses … or the Devil to infiltrate the minds of the simple-hearted. In the name of the Great Leader of the Revolution I will set these perverse books alight to serve as a reminder that, just as was said at the inception of Islam, we need no book other than the Holy Quran to guide and deliver us from devils!”
And so, with a slow sweep of the arm that remained forever etched in my memory, he took out a match, lit it, and tossed it onto the pile of books. With a quiet huff … ff … ff the flames rippled over the pages, catching first the old books with the brown paper whose smell I loved so much. I vividly remember how Danko’s Burning Heart was engulfed in flames that then licked at Luce’s skirt who, desperately trying to protect herself from the fire in the pages of Romain Rolland’s book, held Pierre tightly to her breast. I watched as the fire spread to the intertwined lovers Pierre and Natasha, Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, Abelard and Heloise, Tristan and Isolde, Salaman and Absal, Vis and Ramin, Vamegh and Azra, Zohreh and Manuchehr, Shirin and Farhad, Leyli and Majnun, Arthur and Gemma, the Rose and the Little Prince, before they had the chance to smell or kiss each other again, or whisper, “I love you” one last time.
Oh! … Remedios the beauty and her white bedsheets, the fragile yellow wings of Mauricio Babilonia’s8 butterflies and the constant groaning of Huckleberry Finn’s paddles in his wooden boat merging with the flames, burning, and disappearing as if they had never existed. It seemed as if human beings had never needed love or truth, never needed history or wisdom, never needed adventure or knowledge. It seemed as though humans didn’t want anything … Maybe they just wanted silence; a refuge from the hoards who wouldn’t even leave the inhabitants of Mazandaran’s distant forests in peace—a place they say resisted the Arabs’ swords in the early days of Islam for two hundred years … Maybe all that we humans needed was a cosy corner safe from the violence and oppression and ignorance of others. Just like Dad, whose grinding teeth were still ripping away at the veins of my soul. The flames surged, lighting up the bearded faces of the mullah and the three Guards standing closest to the fire, to warm themselves. Nobody said anything. Not the mullah. Not even the people; and not Dad. The flames engulfed the hard and soft bound books with such a huuufff … ff … ff that it held all eyes riveted.
Will Durant’s eleven-volume The Story of Civilization, the five books of Philosophy by Plato, Juvaini’s History of a World Conqueror, The History of Beyhaqi and Tabari, the I Ching, and The Idiot were burning together with One Hundred Years of Solitude, Nina, Rebecca, White Fang and How the Steel was Tempered. I heard lone Rebecca’s cries and Colonel Aureliano Buendia’s protests saying to Ursula with disgust, “Even in all of my tyranny, never did I do this”. I saw The Gadfly’s Arthur Breton marching again and again against the priest and the church regime, not giving up his struggle despite the conflagration. Animal Farm was burning: the cows, donkeys, pigs, dogs and horses braying and squealing; the odour of their roasting flesh filling all of Razan. But the mullah and his three companions felt nothing.
The Old Man and the Sea, The Little Black Fish, Talkhun, Ulduz and the Crows, East Wind: West Wind, The Iliad and Odyssey, Antigone, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hamlet, The Divine Comedy, The Waste Land, The Red and the Black, Zorba the Greek, Mahabharata, Gulistan, the Masnavi, Hafez, Hallaj, Crime and Punishment, The Stranger, The Prince, The Blind Owl, The Castle, The Last Temptation of Christ. All those voices, those books, each of which was part of the body and soul of our five-member family: our arms, our hearts, our hair, our dreams, our eyes, our mouths. With the burning of Dad’s tars—which had been our ears, mind and soul—then of me, and now the books, we had also lost our limbs and voice.
We couldn’t bear the wailing of Shakespeare and Rumi, Hafez and Confucius, Zoroaster, Buddha and Khayyam, any longer, so we set off towards the house. En route from the village square, towards the alley and up the slope to our grove, I saw with my own eyes how clumps of Dad’s hair had turned grey. For seven days after that, no one in the house said a word. Standing on the porch as the fire and smoke from the books filled the valley, and the breeze spread far and wide the burnt smell of The Feather by Matheson, even Mum was crying. Meanwhile, Sohrab was keeping watch from atop a distant tree. The house had abruptly become devoid of cheer. It became silent. Empty. Hollow.
After a week of silence, it was Dad who entered the living room with an arm full of four blank hundred-page notebooks and black, blue and red Bic pens. He told us that we needed to begin writing. We looked at him as if he’d lost his mind but out of respect, we took the notebooks and stared at him, as he explained, “Write. Write all you remember. The characters in novels, their loves, wars, peace; their adventures, hates, betrayals … Write down anything you remember from the books.” And so we did. From morning to night for forty days; all any of us did, was write. Days passed and we sat in a silent depression, our pens pressed against our foreheads trying to think where and from which books to begin. Gradually characters came to life; adventures, loves. With the resurrection of characters and authors, poets and philosophers, mystics, composers, and painters, voices and tunes, murmurs, whispers and laughter slowly made their way back into to the house. Once again, our home was filled with a bit of poetry and light. Music and verses of hope returned. Beeta remembered some Rumi and excitedly recited:
Not of righteousness nor ruined drunkards are we
Neither here nor there to say where are we
Like Hallaj 9 not afraid of the gallows are we
Crazed in knowledge of love, Gods are we.
Sohrab remembered some parts of Animal Farm and wrote, All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Then Mum recalled a quote from Scarlett O’Hara and said, “After all, tomorrow is another day”. And Dad wrote a passage by Charles Baudelaire: One should always be drunk … But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.
Although from that day until Sohrab’s surprise arrest, a window of joy and hope had opened in the house, we knew how delusory Dad’s wish to record those great works in cheap, four-hundred-page notebooks was. Day and night, our heads bent over the paper, writing outlines of novels, histories of ancient Iran, mystical and philosophical ideas, and verses from great poets, we watched as a sense of hopelessness seeped into the very cells of our being. With each word committed to paper we understood that, contrary to what Dad believed, culture, knowledge, and art retreat in the face of violence, the sword and fire—and for years after, remain barren and mute. Perhaps it was just like those two hundred years that became known as the Two Centuries of Silence.10
* * *
1Hossein is an Arabic Muslim name, particularly Shi’a, whereas Bahram is Persian-Iranian. Here Bahram took a Muslim name to fall in line with the revolutionary mood.
2A singer of epic poetry and passionate war songs that inspired many young men to enlist.
3In Arabic, blood of God.
4The last of the Shi’a Imams whom Shi’a Muslims believe to be in our midst but who will only reveal himself during the Last Days.
5The twelve Shi’a Imams plus the Prophet Mohammad and his daughter, Fatima. In Shi’a belief, these fourteen individuals are immaculate and without sin because they were sent by God.
6A religious space where taz’ieh plays are performed, a type of passion play re-enacting the deaths of Hassan and Hossein at Karbala.
7In Mazandaran, a religious place located next to mosques or hossainiyas (a hall for Shi’a commemoration ceremonies), usually dedicated to Abu Fazl.
8In One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez.
9A 9th-century poet and philosopher who was tortured and hanged by religious authorities for his mystic beliefs.
10A reference to a scholarly book by the same name written by Abdolhossein Zarrinkoub, that relates the events and circumstances of the region after the Arab conquest of Persia in the 7th century AD.
9
The mothers thought, If we die they call our lone, defenceless children orphans, but when our children die, nobody calls us lone, defenceless mothers. It was thus that they began calling themselves ‘orphan mothers’. Mothers who had been orphaned by their children.
Just as the hapless arrival of the Martyr Foundation employees was beginning to fade from its memory, Razan’s seemingly calm and beautiful heart suddenly stood still when it found itself the sudden home to a large graveyard. A graveyard the breadth of memories, hopes, and dreams; a graveyard the length of the past, present, and future. In the days and months after the storm of black snow and the end of the war, there was no news from veteran soldiers and nobody came from the provincial capital or Tehran to help the inhabitants of Razan, or even remembered their existence. If Effat’s ghost hadn’t come to my treehouse and to their rescue with the Zoroastrian bequest, Razan would still be no more than ruins. The war was over and those who came back from the front were vying for jobs and their share of the spoils. They didn’t have time to think of villages, especially a village so remote it didn’t even appear on a map of the country; where only gadabout birds and lovelorn people ended up. Among congratulatory news of new posts, inauguration ceremonies, purchases and sales, and the demolition and construction of urban properties, the only news Razan received was of the killed, the lost, and the prisoners of war.
It was during this time that one day, a man with sad eyes and a large backpack entered the village. He thrust his two big fists into the pack, handed the rusted plaques to the Second Soothsayer, and just as he had come without saying hello, so too, he made to leave again, without saying goodbye. But abruptly, the Soothsayer, who remembered him from years before, asked him why he was going through all the trouble of delivering the plaques. The owner of those sad eyes, who didn’t think anyone in the area would still remember him, said, “The story is longer than you have patience for,” and he continued on his way. The Soothsayer followed him, however, with slow, steady steps, and handed the stranger a hand-rolled cigarette saying, “Now your eyes are just as sad as the one you killed”. The stranger stopped. He wasn’t surprised to hear it. He smoked the cigarette calmly, then crushed the butt underfoot. With the Soothsayer still beside him, he took a step forward. Then turning around, he said, “Sometimes an inheritance is passed not from father to son, but from one fool to the next”.
The people didn’t know what to do with the rusted plaques. They had just finished celebrating the construction of their new houses and the marriages of their daughters. Perhaps it was true what they said: that every marriage is followed by mourning. Their young sons had been taken from them, and in return, they had received a piece of iron. And so they set off for a large expanse of land with the last object they had by which to remember their sons. Each of the mothers dug a hole and placed a piece of clothing, a shoe, a cloth or wooden doll inside, covered it with earth, and, together with the small gold bells that were traditionally tied around children’s ankles so they wouldn’t get lost, wrapped the plaques around a sapling and planted it over the grave. Years later, among the pink and white silk thread blossoms of the pink siris and their intoxicating perfume, the plaques and bells would help the mothers remember Razan’s young men; ding-a-ling, ding-a-ling … we are still running around you with wandering feet. None of the mothers realised it would never come to that, nor that one day in the not so distant future, they would join their sons.
It was the youngest great grandchild of the village leader whose five-year-old eyes first fell on Roza as she crossed the village square, her head uncovered, and wearing a floral house dress that fell just below her knees. She walked without seeing anyone. The villagers were frightened. Some thought Sohrab’s death had made her crazy. Others thought she was sleepwalking because her steps were slow and steady and she looked nowhere but straight ahead.
When the old men saw Roza walking to the edge of the village without a headscarf and wearing a floral dress, they thought it best not to interfere and so continued sipping their tea in the coffee house. There was nothing at the end of the village road. No village, no house. Just forest. An endless forest that merged with deep, humid woodlands said to be places of no return. Roza hadn’t gone far from the village square when the only young man of the village to come under the influence of Hossein and his gang’s talk of Islam during the war and considered himself a Basiji, thought to go after her to remind her that in an Islamic country she had no right to go about looking like that in front of strange men. The young Basiji had taken no more than a few steps when he saw one of the orphan mothers take off after Roza. The woman knew neither where nor why she was going. She only knew she had to go; that it was something she had wanted to do for a long time. A power kept her from looking around or back at the house where, until not so long before, she had lived a poor life, together with her now-martyred son. They were just leaving the village square when the rest of the orphan mothers, one by one, eagerly followed. The villagers were confused. Their husbands ran after them, hoping to save them from their madness but, without even the faintest of smiles on their lips, the orphan mothers continued in the direction of the deep Mazandaranian forest. This is the place, they say, where luminous blue butterflies that have never seen light, illuminate the way for the lost; the place that was still occupied by innocent, ancient forest spirits.
The vill
age men quickly set off after them but, after three days and three nights of walking in the humid, mossy forest they had found no trace of the women. The men split into several groups, but not one person found even a single footprint. It seemed as though all the orphan mothers had become the moss clinging to the tress in the ancient Hyrcanian forest, or the luminous blue butterflies that fluttered ahead of the men the whole way—as if trying to distract them from their search with the blue-gold dust they sprinkled on the searchers’ heads and shoulders. It felt as though they had become the cool morning breeze that caressed the men’s faces and arms through the morning mist to wake them up and continue their quest in the forest, whose trees were so high and canopy so dense that no sunlight penetrated to the forest floor. Gradually the ground turned swampy and the men sunk deeper with each step. Leeches latched onto their arms and legs, and legless lizards slithered between their feet, as though tickled by the flow of cold water.
After three days of walking non-stop and at dawn on the fourth day, the mist parted in front of the villagers’ tired, hungry eyes in time for them to look with horror upon the last surviving Mazandaran tiger of the Hyrcanian forest. The giant young beast with sorrowful eyes looked at them as if he understood their pain. With the only gun he had been given by Hossein and his gang to defend Islam and the Revolution against an attack from the People’s Mujaheddin, the Basiji boy took aim. The Soothsayer quickly stopped him before the trigger could be depressed and instead, approached the tiger quietly and respectfully. To the astonishment of the weary men, both seemed to confer and then disappear into the trees. An hour later, the Soothsayer returned and said that the tiger had come to express his condolences for the loss of their wives and to warn them that they could not venture further into his dark, silent realm. Just as he had stopped searching for his mate years ago, so too, would their continued search be in vain.
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree Page 9