When the villagers, their heads bowed, turned around to go back to the village, the Basiji, who had been the one to kill the tiger’s mate a couple of years before, fearfully ran ahead of the others. When the first night turned into morning, he was nowhere to be found. There was not even a body. They only saw his gun which had been thrown up high onto a tree branch, its barrel crushed by the tiger’s teeth and its stock gnawed through. The villagers did not quicken their steps nor did anyone mention the young Basiji ever again.
Contrary to what the people believed, however, it wasn’t the tiger that had ripped the Basiji to shreds. No one but the Basiji, himself, knew that it was the forest jinns who had punished him for breaking the laws of nature by senselessly killing the last female tiger in the Mazandaranian forest—the only female tiger that hadn’t had the chance to reproduce and thus ensure the continuation of its species, stretching back millennia. The night before, with blood dripping on the fog from the wounds in his neck, the young Basiji recalled how several years before, he had shot the pregnant animal in the neck, and how, her chest still heaving with frantic breathing, he ripped off her beautiful skin, salted it, and laid it under the hot summer sun to dry.
All of the ancient books say that jinns take an eye for an eye. So, it was no surprise when he was skinned that night by twelve forest jinns, and his skin salted and laid out to dry in the hot summer sun the following day. The young Basiji saw how those wandering jinns ripped his flesh and bones into pieces and took them to Razan where they were dumped in front of the village dogs, just as the Basiji himself had done with the flesh and bones of the pregnant tiger, before boasting about it to the other village boys. Dead, the Basiji watched as the dogs lunged at his flesh, then ripped and devoured it. An hour later just one dog, a dog that lived in their neighbourhood, expelled what he had eaten, next to the canal behind the Basiji’s house. It wasn’t long before the dog’s excrement had turned into fertiliser, from which a fresh, fragrant bush of wild chocolate mint sprouted. One day when the Basiji’s mother went to the canal behind the house as she always did, she picked several wild chocolate mint stalks, then crushed them together with garlic and a pinch of salt, and mixed it into a bowl of yoghurt. The old woman, knowing nothing of the turn of events, teared up at the thought of her son as she ate her delicious yoghurt and herbs. Looking up to the sky, she gave a deep sigh, and said, “Oh how I miss my son. May God have mercy upon him. He loved yoghurt with herbs.” From that day forward, the Basiji realised that God had forgiven that little fragment of his being over which his mother had prayed, but not the rest of him, which was still cursed by the tiger and the forest jinns—no, never!
Several days later while the grass, flowers, fungi, and dried forest leaves were being crushed underfoot by the orphan mothers; and spores, butterflies and dragonflies were fluttering in the air around their heads, the men returned to the village. The mothers were not thinking about anything. They just walked, day and night. When the luminous blue butterflies laid eggs, the bird spiders spun their webs in their hair, and the dragonflies bit their earlobes, they noticed nothing; and when they drank from the springs alongside the squirrels, foxes, and flowers, they didn’t see them. They didn’t even see the tiger, who roamed around them every night, like a protective spirit. They let the wandering forest spirits of old make noise around them at night and the forest jinns boast. They let the monsoon rains soak them, and storms of leaves surround them. They didn’t pay attention to anything because they only had eyes for their martyred sons walking ahead of them, little bells tied to their ankles. Where their sons sat, they also sat. Where their sons drank, they also drank. Far from cities, they passed villages and summer pasturing grounds; and with each village and every meadow they walked through, their numbers decreased. Perhaps among strangers the women lost both themselves and their tortuous memories. Perhaps weak and fatigued, they fell prey to jackals and carnivorous moles. Perhaps they stopped and turned into tree trunks to die in memory of their sons, standing, covered in moss and leaves and fireflies. Who knows? Perhaps they simply went with their sons up the highest tree and joined the shadows of the stars and sad forest spirits. They walked and walked and walked, until one day Roza found herself alone.
She was the only woman in the group who had been alone from the start. Sohrab had never walked along in front of her to now be settling down for the night. She had left because she wanted to lose herself. She didn’t want to sit in her newly rebuilt house and look at the freshly-painted walls, and the new furniture and carpet, and imagine how Sohrab was killed or how I suffered as I burned. She didn’t want to think about the future and what other calamities might befall Beeta and Hushang. She wanted to run away from herself, from her fate. She didn’t want to be wherever she was. She vaguely wanted to attain the state that she had experienced only once before atop the greengage tree. She wanted to see herself from above, from afar.
It was thus that she continued non-stop for days and weeks, until one ordinary and pleasantly sunny midday, in the lush green mountains far away from the world and forest and people, she finally stopped. She didn’t know where she was. Maybe she had reached Azerbaijan or Kurdistan. After months, she finally felt the heat of the sun on her skin whilst a breeze ruffled her web-covered hair that, at night, was illuminated by baby fireflies. She sat under a Persian ironwood whose leaves had been turned red, yellow and orange by autumn. She fell asleep right there and re-awoke after who knows how many days with the pressure of a hand gently shaking her shoulder. She forced her eyes open and saw a shapeless blur. It appeared to be a traveller. A traveller with a large backpack, a sunburnt face and blue eyes. He said he had spent years wandering around the mountains and forests and meadows of Asia. He didn’t ask Roza anything, not even why someone who looked so young could have such completely grey hair. He spoke of himself. He said he had been totally consumed by the forests of Iran for two years and during this time had learned Persian. He talked constantly as he erected his tent and placed skewers of potato and corn over the fire. He said he’d learned the meaning of life from the yogis in the steppes and mountains of India; and how to ride a horse and came to understand what it meant to be one with nature, from the nomads in the green meadows of Kyrgyzstan. From the people in the snow-capped Pamirs in Tajikistan he had learned how to make do with little. With dervishes in Pakistan and Iraq he had learned how to turn the eye inward, and in Iran he had discovered the vastness of the desert’s ancient silence.
After weeks and months of silence, he spoke so much that words gradually found a place in her mind and became meaningful again. Her extreme desire for silence had left her lips and tongue swollen and dry. The man’s words slowly brought her back to the world of the living. Her eyes, seemingly dried in their sockets, became moist again. After months of immobility, her eyes once again looked from side to side. She saw the man and gradually remembered herself. She got up. Horrified, she wondered that if she were still Roza, then where were Hushang, Beeta and Bahar? She looked at her feet. They were still shoeless, and her toes and heels were scratched and chapped.
She sat down and took her right foot in her hand. She was just beginning to remember the sensation of pain when the traveller sat down next to her with two metal bowls and a piece of bread. He didn’t insist on bringing out the reverberation of her vocal cords. Perhaps after weeks of silence and solitude it was enough for him just to see someone he could practise Persian with. Once Roza had licked the bottom of her bowl, she cautiously held it out to him. She wanted it filled again. He had already laid out his sleeping bag and was snoring, as she ate. With a faint spark of memory, Roza looked at the fire and then the sky. The stars were low and, as she fell asleep, she wasn’t sure if it was their light that was warming her or the fire’s last flames.
Days and weeks passed. Occasionally, Roza would stop to ask herself if it were really she, who was following this man over mountains and deserts? A man who at the earliest opportunity procured a sleeping bag, pants, boots, and a warm j
acket for her. A man who at night would smile at the tiny winking lights in Roza’s hair before saying goodnight; and in the morning, would get up earlier than she and do yoga for a long time before preparing breakfast. A man who, just like her, had no desire to count the days or know in which region of which province or country they were. A man who only wanted to be lost in the heart of nature, far from people. Just like herself.
During the first days, the man was constantly testing his Persian and was very talkative. One day, he suddenly stopped talking. He assumed silence with such calm and tranquility that Roza didn’t mind at all. Day and night, they enjoyed eating together, walking together and watching the sun rise and set, in silence; until one day, they realised they had accidentally entered Turkey. Imagining that they and inadvertently entered another country by walking through the mountains in a world where people get killed just for having a toe over one side of a border or another, they laughed so hard that tears flowed from their eyes; and a little off to the side, the traveller unzipped his pants and urinated, so that he wouldn’t wet himself. And so it was that after the long silence, laughter became the common chapter in their relationship. From that day onward, they would burst out laughing, just by exchanging glances in silly situations. They felt so free in the mountains of Turkey that one day, without even taking notice of her, the man took of his clothes and dipped into a hot spring they had found. Until then, the only man Roza had ever seen naked was Hushang, and even then, only in the pale light that shone through the window into their room. She felt distressed at this, reliving many distant memories. She looked at her hands as they stirred their lunch over the fire, and thought that until now, these hands had only been accustomed to preparing food for members of her family. She looked at her boots, her sleeping bag, her sweatshirt and jacket, realising that she had never had anything like them before. Once again, her eyes fell on the man’s body in the distance and, suddenly shamed, a warm, familiar feeling shook her whole body. Trembling, and with face flushed out of modesty, she got up and fled from their camp. That evening the traveller found her between two large, flat rocks beside the river where excessive crying, screaming and self-flagellation had left her unconscious.
During the night, Roza woke up to find herself next to the man in his tent, surrounded by the sound of the flowing river. Her body was exhausted and when she felt her cheeks, the wounds left by her nails hurt, yet she was calmed by the poetic light emitted by the fireflies in her hair under the low-slung tent. It felt as though the physical pain she had inflicted on herself had somehow alleviated the psychological pain. She felt like a balloon that had suddenly been deflated. She could feel the heat from the man’s body asleep next to her in his sleeping bag. She wondered how many months she had walked with him; she didn’t even know his name. She just knew that he was Italian and that his father had been a mountaineer who had frozen to death in the Alps, and that his frozen body had been found years later, by shepherds.
She closed her eyes and smelt something familiar. The warm, pleasant fragrance of trust. She rolled over so she could see the man’s face. When she saw the sleep-slackened lines on his face, and his long, salt-and-pepper beard that moved slightly with each breath, she realised that she had never seen a man’s face before. There was a faint smile on his lips that made Roza suddenly wonder if he was awake and just pretending to be asleep. With this thought, her whole body was enflamed with shame and she quickly sunk into her sleeping bag, the sound of his steady breathing making her body go limp with desire. She was uncertain about her faithfulness to Hushang. It had never been put to the test. She was disgusted with herself. Sinking deeper into her sleeping bag, she fell asleep, thinking of her husband.
It was still in the depths of the night when she awoke with a start. Maybe it was a cuckoo singing nearby or an owl that had woken her. She stuck her head out of the sleeping bag and looked at him. He was still sleeping like a child; he hadn’t even rolled over. She wanted to touch his salt-and-pepper beard. She summoned up the courage to touch it. His beard was soft and so long it was about the same length as her own hair. She felt her own hair. After months of walking in the sun, the wind and the rain, with spider webs and insect eggs and fireflies in it, her hair had become coarse and knotted. She got up and found some shampoo, soap and a new set of clothes among the things he had bought for her. She went down to the river; the air was warm and the water cool. When the cold from the water had filled her entire body, no matter how hard she thought, she could not recall the last time she had bathed. She let the cold, clear water wash her hair, tickle her still youthful, bare breasts, and grab at her buttocks. An unprecedented urge made her apologise to all the eggs and creatures who had nested in her hair and had been her travel companions all of those months, as she surrendered them to the river. When she emerged from the water, it was still dark. The warm sleeping bag relaxed her body. She crouched down and let the clean fragrance envelope her. No matter what she did she couldn’t fall asleep. She wondered what was wrong with her. She rolled over again and looked at the man. Her face was so close to his that she could feel his breath. For the first time the man’s shapely lips, his eyelids and long forehead appeared beautiful to her. She wanted to look at him until she fell asleep, but as if sensing her scrutiny, his eyes slowly opened.
Later, when she went over those moments again and for the hundredth time, she was embarrassed that her open eyes so close to his own, hadn’t frightened him. For many long minutes, they looked at one another. It was Roza who finally reached out and brushed her fingers against his cheek and caressed it. A completely unknown feeling took hold of her spirit and body, making them alert and bold. She didn’t want to give in to her fears, her embarrassment or her worries. For the first time ever, she felt as if she didn’t have a past. She reached out and embraced the man; and the man’s still young, hard body welcomed her. They wound together and the sweet, warm fragrance of trust, along with soft breathing that then came faster and faster, transformed the tent’s low ceiling into the beautiful expanse of the mountain night sky. They kissed and caressed each other, Roza allowing his experienced, masculine hands to explore every inch of her body, to smell, to kiss and devour. Holding tightly to one another they rolled over and over and out of the tent onto the cool grass under the ceiling of shining moon and stars. They went beyond what Roza had ever conceived of before.
They continued to kiss and explore the topography of each other’s bodies, leaving shame behind, going beyond fear and anxiety, releasing themselves from the mind, finally giving in to the wild pounding of desire and body and breaths that got faster and faster, guiding them to the body’s southern hemisphere. They slid on the grass, crushing wild pennyroyals and forget-me-nots, and then, submerged in the clear river, forgot themselves. They let the water cleanse and carry away their memories and pasts. The man plunged wildly into her and she grabbed greedily at his hardened loins. Later, when each of them remembered that wild, rebellious night in the recesses of their hearts, they couldn’t recall how many times they climaxed inside each other … three times? Ten times? So many times, that when their wet bodies, intertwined like slippery, breathless snakes, awoke at dawn, they could not yet imagine their bodies separating. Again and again, they dipped into one another, plunged in, were released, and allowed the sun to do as it does; become morning, noon, and night. And in the end, they found themselves high upon the enlightenment of love.
10
There was nobody left to enjoy the newly rebuilt house with five bedrooms, living room, parlour and open kitchen; to sit beside the flames in the large fireplace, drinking tea and flipping through a magazine or reading a book while listening to the joyful sounds of the other family members; each busy pursuing their dreams. No! This house was no longer anyone’s home … Even though the new green velvet furniture accentuated the beauty of the sunset in the parlour. Even though its large library had been refilled with books. Even though the grove with its rows of Japanese quince, yellow jasmine, and purple iris had b
ecome so beautiful that the eye never tired of beholding them.
The house was so new that it still smelt of fresh paint, and termites had yet to make their way into any of its wooden recesses. For the first time, the house was equipped with a hot-water heater they could turn on whenever they liked to wash the dishes with warm water, or stay in the shower or the porcelain bathtub as long as their hearts desired, without Mum’s constant nagging about the oil running out or worrying that the water would get cold. But alas, was there anyone left? Dad and Granddad’s newly-framed calligraphy, the antique carpets that had survived the black snow and mice, and the new satin curtains were so pleasant that they left Dad and Beeta feeling sickened in the returned state of mourning. Sickened by all of this beauty without an owner. Beauty, without a viewer. When Mum left, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for both of them.
That day, in particular, Mum had made the bed and pulled open the curtains so the sun would shine in on the carpet which created a soft reflection of coloured light. Then she went to the kitchen to put the kettle on the stove. As he did every morning, Dad had gone to pick fresh flowers from the garden and put them in the new porcelain and crystal vases. While waiting for the water to boil, Mum went into the parlour that had just been decorated with green furniture and curtains and on whose walls hung, at Dad’s insistence, pictures of their ancestors. Without opening the curtains, she sat down in an armchair facing the garden and watched Dad through the glass door as he cut roses with his gardening shears and whistled Banan’s ‘Caravan’. How peaceful and beautiful and fresh everything had become under the caress of the soft light raining into the room through the green curtains. The grove, the house and Razan had escaped the scourge of death. It seemed that one could continue living, as though it was possible to not think about Bahar and Sohrab, but accept the fact of their deaths. As Mum sat watching Dad through the door, she thought she might just decide to finally break the spell of sorrow that had been cast over the house and laugh out loud. After all, despite everything, life still goes on. The sun was still shining, Dad and Beeta were here, and through everything, the moonlit nights were so poetic and beautiful that she wanted to sink into Hushang’s masculine embrace and listen to his ragged voice singing, O sweet Elahe,/ O join in my heart’s emotions.
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree Page 10