Beeta, who knew nothing of these events, heard an unfamiliar sound coming from the other side of the wooden door as she knocked; a sound like a slithering or scraping on the ground. It was the crazed slithering and scrapping of the jinxed plants and flowers in Homeyra Khatun’s garden, which in recent months had turned Issa mad and enchanted him. In recent months, with his mind at a standstill in mourning for his father, mother and sister, Issa had sat staring at the growing plants; and he remained prisoner of that nameless mania until the day Beeta came knocking. Issa and Homeyra Khatun—who was now so old she couldn’t even remember her own name—still lived in the house with the well jinxed by jinn urine. Although Dad and the other villagers had wanted to rebuild her house after the black snow, Homeyra Khatun had insistently refused to budge, not even allowing them to enter the courtyard. Now the shabby and collapsing adobe house, forcibly propped up and besieged by thorns, weeds and slimy mosses growing and sticking to everything fed by the well water, was struggling to breathe as it was swallowed whole. It was Homeyra Khatun’s destiny to witness her daughter’s death and to have nothing but a burial shroud to her name when she herself passed away.
When the well was jinxed, the family’s task had become cutting back the plants enveloping the walls, windows, courtyard and roof in their constant creeping and scraping. However, with the death first of Parvaneh, then Effat, and finally Qorban, Issa’s motivation decreased daily until recently, he no longer even laid a finger on the sickle. Now, he just sat and watched the insufferable crackling of the plants, the flowers, and the trees as they grew, and crept, and pulled themselves over the ground; sprouting, flowering, and bearing fruit right before his eyes. Fruits that, in all these years, neither he nor anyone else had ever eaten.
The inhabitants of Razan soon realised that Issa had contracted an unknown mania. A mania that was so new it had yet to be given a name. A manic addiction to the sounds of the plants’ agonising creeping and grating as they grew obstinately, insatiably; just to prove just how easily they could violate the laws of nature within the confines of that small courtyard.
Once, not long before, as Issa was sat on the porch where, until recently, Effat would sit combing her long hair with a wooden comb, he closed his eyes and heard how the honeysuckle vines slithered over from the garden to the courtyard, crept up the porch steps and then wrapped around his ankle, moving upward until they reached his back, arms, and neck. If Homeyra Khatun hadn’t arrived in time with the weed killer she had made out of some plants, petrol, salt and lime, within hours Issa would have become a dried-up tree, and the vines, like ivy, would have driven their roots into his body and eventually, honeysuckle blossoms would have sprouted from his ears, mouth and nose.
The sound followed him everywhere: with windows open or closed; if he sealed the cracks around the doors and windows with wax, and if he did not. This endless slithering, creeping, devouring sound was killing him. There was nothing anyone could do—not Homeyra Khatun, not the Soothsayer; until Beeta, unaware of all the madness that had come to pass in that village house, knocked several times and was about to give up when Issa eventually opened the door. A tall young man with miserable, bashful, honey-coloured eyes hidden under long, light brown hair, stood before her. Beeta got right to the point and Issa, without giving it a moment’s thought and without saying a word, nodded his head in agreement and closed the door again. From that moment, on Issa became Beeta’s employee. He became the gardener of a five-hectare grove, with the ability to interpret dragonflies.
The next morning at dawn, as the dewdrops were slowly evaporating and rising like sleeping spirits from the earth into the air, and the dragonflies were sunning themselves in the sun’s hot rays, Beeta saw Issa, sickle in hand, cutting back the grove’s long grass and weeds. After a week like this Beeta felt that, contrary to her hopes, Issa had not brought life to the grove, but seemed to have added to its heaviness and silence, and sorrow. It was thus that she told him to hire five more workers to weed under the citrus trees, loosen the soil and spread fertiliser. A day later, Beeta and Hushang awoke to the commotion of the new gardeners, three of whom were women. Happy with all the noise, Beeta went out onto the porch and thought, Women always bring passion and life. And yet, Hushang’s behaviour did not change. He still did absolutely nothing. He didn’t help with the housework or even read a book, or a build a picture frame. He still just sat on the porch looking at Razan and the bustle of new life in the grove.
Beeta voluntarily prepared food and tea for all six of the workers and spent hours with them every day. She spoke with them. She learned how to use the sickle as skilfully as they did, how to use a hatchet and how to weed. She joined in the girls’ conversations and meddled in their fates. She tried to rid herself of me as much as possible—since I was nothing more than a ghost—and Dad, who had become nothing but a moving corpse. She wanted to rid herself of thoughts of Mum and Sohrab, and even force some excitement into her daily life. She wanted to be alive and interact with the living. It was thus that one day she startled Issa as he was pruning a tree when she put her hand on his arm. Beeta had wanted to comfort Issa, as I had recently told her about his mother. However, the pressure of her touch upon his arm, and perhaps also the long look she gave him as she peered into his honey-coloured eyes seemed to be more than his emotions could manage for Issa trembled, flushed, dropped his clippers and promptly left.
This simple action was the blow that crushed my poor sister. After several days with no sign of Issa or news of him from the other workers, she contracted a fever and, delirious, realised that she was “stricken”. That is, she had fallen in love. There was no need for her to tell me. She knew that I knew everything, which perhaps angered her even more. In her first imperfect and hollow experience of this feeling that bore no resemblance to the classical love stories she had read, she wanted to suffer and berate herself in secretive solitude. She tossed and turned in her hot bed, thinking how foolish she was to lose herself to a village boy at least five years her junior. She took a spoonful of soup from the bowl on her bedside table and promised herself she would get up and stop being so childish as soon as she’d finished the bowl. But the warmth of the soup hadn’t even made it down her throat when her spoon was refilled by a hot tear. She scolded herself for touching Issa’s arm, and thought this unfamiliar feeling which, like a drop of ink in water, was growing bigger and bigger by the second, and was about to drown her like an inner morass, should have stayed hidden inside her, forever. Contemptuously she thought, Love doesn’t begin like this. Love isn’t even possible without knowing someone, and who said I was in love anyway? Then for a moment she hated herself because she’d come to the conclusion that her feelings were those of desire. When she was honest with herself, she thought, Yes, I have to admit that whatever this is, it isn’t love. It’s nothing but dirty, fleeting, foolish lust; exactly what all the poets and writers say must be distinguished from real love. Filled with disgust, she reluctantly touched the sticky discharge from her vagina. She hated herself and rebuked herself for not having become more mature given all of life’s suffering and her constant reading. Her body was turning her into a person she didn’t want to be. It felt like another’s body, and she didn’t know what to do. She was embarrassed; she realised that at the age of thirty she was only just nearing physical maturity. After that, she began playing with herself in bed. For the first time in her life she allowed herself to respond to her body’s natural desires. She locked her bedroom door, put a cassette of Richard Clayderman’s piano albums in the stereo, and fantasising about Issa’s fine hands and sunburnt face, she touched herself. With unprecedented, unabashed excitement, she removed her clothing piece by piece and let the coolness of the sheets caress her body. She writhed upon herself, kissed and bit her naked shoulders and arms, and when, for the first time in her thirty years she climaxed, it was so intense that she tore her pillow with her teeth to stifle her cry. Her whole body was covered with sweat and pulsing, and if her orgasm had last
ed any longer she thought she probably would’ve had a heart attack and died, one hand between her legs and the other clutching her firm breast. Afterwards, her whole body felt light, as though a heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders after having spent several hours in the bathroom and, while one person scrubbed all the dirt off her body, another was massaging her, and a third was caressing her with gentle hands to make her calm and supple. Her first orgasm left her confronted with a mixture of pleasant emotions and physical sensations she had never known before. She masturbated four more times that night while fantasising about Issa. The next morning, she awoke with such a sense of guilty joy that she went to the bathroom and vomited. She didn’t know why she should hate herself or be ashamed of this one-person pleasure. She didn’t know if what she’d done was normal or if she was the only person in the whole world who derived pleasure from touching her own body. As she vomited in the bathroom she realised she couldn’t recall a single instance of this with the heroes or heroines of the books she had read or the films she had seen. She thought that even if Mum were around she would never allow herself to ask her about it, much less Dad. And so after bathing, she took refuge in her bed once more and began to re-read all her tales of love and romance. She was looking for signs of how to distinguish real love from fake love, or at least to see if in all turbulent events of love stories anyone ever masturbated!
As the days went on, she found increasing solace in the fact she’d been able to distinguish between love and lust right from the beginning and hadn’t lost her physical or emotional virginity to fleeting passion. Then she searched the whole house and attic until she found and devoured books on the psychology of marriage, love, sex and dating, taking the tests in Know Yourself in Love, over and over again until she had finally chosen all the correct answers.
On the seventeenth day, while Beeta was lying on her bed giving the sunlight a smile; a smile whose only meaning could have been, Thank goodness I survived this chronic plague!; and just as she was feeling her most resistant to physical lust and false love, all fortitude was lost with the first “Miss Beeta” she heard coming from Issa’s mouth. All her strength of logic, psychological analyses and self-knowledge tests evaporated, as she carried herself on shaky legs to the window to make sure it was, in fact, he who was saying, “Please come to the fire temple. I have to talk to you!” with such confidence and abandon.
Contrary to my expectations, this time it was not Beeta who touched Issa’s arm, but rather Issa who caressed Beeta’s soft brown hair with his sun-browned hands and, turning her head towards his own, kissed her with a confidence that only village boys have towards city girls. With the first kiss all rigid perceptions, self-imposed morals and books on the psychology of love and self-awareness were set aflame, turned into smoke, burning the grass, and evaporating. They took such decisive and imperious possession of one another’s physical topography among the trees’ intertwined branches, tall bracken and elderberry stalks, that no words were wasted. It was thus that during the one year, eight months, and two weeks that they made love every day and every night, in body and in soul, neither of them took the time to say, “I love you,” or ask, “Do you love me?” Issa bent over Beeta’s delicate, downtrodden frame, with his athletic village build and pressed himself against her with such force it seemed as if he didn’t want to separate from her, even for a second. And so it was. He rarely spoke during lovemaking and if he did it was to say, “I want to plunge inside you and never come out”. Every time they made love the heat generated as they twisted together was so intense the grass around them caught fire and burned. Although the workers were surprised every day when they saw fresh circles of scorched earth, they attributed it to the abnormally hot summer and autumn. But Beeta was still unsure whether or not this disaster that had befallen her was really love. She wondered if humans were capable of falling in love with anyone who makes them happy, and although Issa was a sad, solitary person, he filled her with joy. After the burning of Dad’s tars, Bahar’s death by fire, the book burning, Sohrab’s execution, and Mum’s leaving, what other reason for joy did she have? She thought the moments of making love with Issa were reminders that life could still be lovely and beautiful despite all the shitty things it dishes out. It was still possible to lie in the fresh grass after making clandestine love, smile, and roll a cigarette out of wild grasses and blow its smoke at the butterflies and dragonflies as they watched the fat playful white clouds overhead. Naked, she rolled for long minutes in the grass, letting quiet seconds stretch and ladybirds play in her hair and tickle the tips of her toes. She let joy slowly rejuvenate her body and calm her youth. And she thought about Issa and how wonderful it was that he could interpret dragonflies. Although Issa mostly responded to Beeta’s talkativeness or questions with silence, or simply gave an affirmative smile and nodded his head, he hadn’t been able to hide his ability to interpret dragonflies.
Years of endless creeping plant tendrils which twisted and wound together like snakes, kissed the trees’ hands and feet and blossomed from the small nodes at their ends, had turned Issa’s courtyard into the perfect haven for beasts and insects; and years of staring at that enchanted garden had given him the opportunity to observe dragonfly movements to such an extent that he had become the only ever dragonfly reader.
When they were together, Issa was always distracted by dragonflies. While he was talking to Beeta or listening to her, his eyes would dart from side to side following their flight. Based on their type, colour, where they flew, how they flew, and where they landed, he predicted the day’s or week’s events. That was the reason he had trembled, dropped his clippers and fled the day that Beeta had placed a hand on his arm; for at the very moment he had noticed a red dragonfly sitting on Beeta’s shoulder. Realising that an inevitable fiery love was in store for him, he panicked and fled; and the day he saw a yellow dragonfly on his windowpane, he knew the time had come to express his love for her, and not fight it. The first time they made love it was in the presence of a congress of multi-coloured dragonflies who sat around them on flowers, bushes and trees, giving him the courage to wholeheartedly enter a romance that he would not easily be able to leave. The dragonflies that burned in their rings of fire each time they made love turned to ash, together with the grass and dandelions.
Issa knew if dragonflies hung under a tree branch or the frame of a door, or window, it would soon rain. He knew if they sat on top of a twig that rain would not come; if the first dragonfly to hover around him in the morning was dark, the weather that day would be stormy and there would be thunder and lightning; and if it was multi-coloured, a baby would be born in his neighbourhood.
Issa told Beeta to be careful not to let a white dragonfly into her room because it signified someone close to her would soon die. But when he saw the ensuing look of sorrow that spread across her face, to erase the effect of that inauspicious statement, he announced, “And if, one day, a green dragonfly lands on your bed, come and tell me quickly, because that is the sign that the time of your marriage will have arrived”. And then, both smiling at the thought of the realisation of their secret wishes, they smothered one another’s bare shoulders in kisses. But a green dragonfly never did land on Beeta’s bed, or even flutter around any part of her room, for that matter. Instead, a small blue one landed on Beeta’s head one day. Upon seeing it Issa blanched, but no matter how many times she asked him what it meant he wouldn’t answer, instead smothering her so passionately in kisses as if to bid her farewell.
Just as unexpectedly as Beeta’s romance had begun, like a half-completed dream, it faded and was torn apart in airy wisps. The day after the blue dragonfly had landed in her hair, Delbar, a village girl with light brown eyes, perky white breasts, and golden hair upon which a green dragonfly was perched, suddenly appeared in front of Issa to interpret Beeta’s blue dragonfly. Taking no note of Issa, Delbar walked past him and continued on her way. But Issa understood immediately that, like it or not, the green dragonfly on her golden
hair signalled the beginning of a new chapter in his life. All their secret lovemaking beside the Zoroastrian fire temple, their furtive meals, their clandestine dressing and undress-ing, their kisses in the rings of fire, Beeta’s beautiful poetic verses that Issa sometimes didn’t even understand, all came to an end when the blue dragonfly landed on Beeta’s head, and Issa knew he had to respect the laws of nature. So, he turned around and inspected Delbar’s appealing physique. Standing there dumbstruck by the green dragonfly flitting around her head, he forgot that at that very moment Beeta was waiting in their spot beside the fire temple to caress his straight brown hair and whisper in his ear, “See what I’ve got myself into? … See how I’ve been stricken by you?” And although Issa had never understood what she meant, he never asked, “What does ‘stricken’ mean?”
That day, Beeta sat beside the fire temple looking at the circles of scorched earth until dark. Each ring bore the memory of one or even multiple love-makings. In some parts of the yard the burnt circles were sprinkled with grass, while in others they were so scorched there was no hope that fresh blades would sprout. She wore a satisfied smile, but as the minutes passed without news from Issa, and several colourless dragonflies flew and landed on either side of her, the circles became menacing. Gradually she began hearing a buzzing in her head and then, as though preparing itself for something ominous, her mind stood still, and she saw time pause and all movement cease. During this pause, two ladybirds and three dragonflies landed on wild dog-rose bushes around her, and then left, a baby fox peeked out from the bracken and elderberry and fled when it saw her, and the crickets didn’t stop chirping. She didn’t see any of this, though. Her eyes were open, yet she couldn’t see. Issa still hadn’t come. She had to do something. She blinked, but still she was blind. The crickets continued chirping and still she was blind. She thought, What an astonishingly sudden blindness. Yet she didn’t move. She was frightened, but didn’t show it. She touched a blade of grass with her fingers, picked it, and raised it to her mouth. When her hand reached her lips, she could feel both they and her hands trembling. She strained to see something, at least the scorched patches of earth. But she had stared so long at the black circles that the blackness was expanding, getting larger and larger until it took over her mind. She allowed time to restart. Gradually her static mind recognised that time had slowly, elastically resumed its movement. She felt something move in front of her. She blinked again and could make out the head of the fox, that had returned to take another peek. Slowly she saw the blades of grass moving, and the threatening circles took shape.
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree Page 12