The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree

by Shokoofeh Azar

  It was thus that, during the day she would lie in the water in the sun, and at night she would sleep bathed in starlight, dreaming of the sea. She would play with the fish and shells, and lose herself for hours in the beauty of the waterlilies, while the rest of the day, she readily endured lethargy and languor. She allowed herself to feel the long pauses between minutes, and quietly follow every minute movement of the clouds from the beginning of the break of dawn to the end of dusk. Once she told me of the extraordinary poetic bliss of feeling blue sky drops on her skin and seeing with her own eyes how a prism of light on the lining of a cloud had turned a crow into a rainbow. Another time, lost in a white cloud in the middle of the blue sky, she said the best thing about Razan’s sky is that the clouds’ virginity hadn’t yet been raped by aeroplanes.

  In our mania for reading we could still get excited by and devour a book that hadn’t caught our attention before. To keep Beeta entertained, we searched the house’s nooks and crannies for forgotten works. Trying to keep them as dry as possible, she read them eagerly. After a while she asked me to read them to her. It was clear that the shapes of letters and words were slowly losing meaning for her, but she was happy that she could still hear and understand and could still speak, as before.

  During those days, we discovered and read Nausea and The Metamorphosis together—books that were followed by days of discussion. Beeta laughed, and was relieved that she hadn’t turned into a disgusting giant beetle, like poor Gregor Samsa. These two books brought us closer together again. Perhaps now that Beeta was transforming into an aquatic creature so as to experience and live life with a freedom that had been impossible as a human, she was better able to understand my experience as a ghost. Perhaps she could better understand that despite the laws of matter, ghosts still existed and our existence continued with equal intensity.

  Nausea showed us what complex political, religious, and philosophical intermediaries the world has—a world we wanted to comprehend directly; The Metamorphosis showed two bereft girls that humankind today is not what classic literature had taught us.

  We read The Unbearable Lightness of Being with such rapture that before we had realised what had happened, night had fallen, and Scenes from a Marriage made us cry over our naive belief in the purity of lovemaking. Eventually, Dad joined us, too, and together we explored Lovers, Moderato Cantabile, The House of Sleeping Beauties, Ragtime, The Tatar Steppe, The Catcher in the Rye, and The Remains of the Day, then discussed them for days. One day, with no other books left, we began Hervé Bazin’s Viper in the Fist that had been found—forgotten—behind a bookcase. Never could we have imagined the masterpiece that lay in store. Things weren’t always good, though. One stormy day, as Dad tried to climb up to the top of the bathroom wall, he slipped on the steps in the wind and rain and fell to the floor, spilling all the food. Beeta heaved herself up to lean over the edge of the wall to help, but she too slipped and landed next to Dad on the floor, tearing her delicate skin, and bleeding.

  With sheets of rain pouring down onto their bleeding bodies, and blood mixing with the eggplant stew so laboriously prepared, seeping through the mud into the ground, Beeta sobbed and took Dad into her arms, begging his forgiveness for having been so selfish that she hadn’t been prepared to suppress her dreams. But that very day Dad made up his mind. Despite what remained of our happiness, he could no longer bear seeing Beeta’s life wasting away. Several days later, he suggested that it would be best for her to prepare herself to go and live in the sea. Beeta insisted the song of the sea could moisten her from a distance and there was no need to actually go and live in it. But we all knew she was just saying that for our sakes.

  Beeta’s new stage of life had come upon her faster and more unexpectedly than she had imagined; and though she was resigned and receptive to all the changes, never for a moment did the sense of guilt leave her.

  She constantly fretted about what Dad would do without her. She thought perhaps it would have been better to have refrained from giving in to her fantasies and dreams, to never have left Razan for Tehran, or to never have come back. That way at least she would have remained human and Dad would always have been able to hope she would one day return. But now she was never going to come back. She wondered if it would be better to ask our ancestor to turn her back into her original form, and so for three days she called to him in her heart, but he didn’t appear. It was thus that when, finally, the night had arrived, having dressed her in a manto and headscarf, hidden her tail under a blanket, and placed a bucket of water at her side so she could take a fresh breath if she needed, we reached a cosy spot on a dark beach, and bid her farewell.

  All three of us were silent and anxious. Dad kissed her slimy cheek and said comfortingly, “Have you noticed how beautiful freedom has made you? I like this beauty of yours.” Then he took a rose-shaped necklace from his pocket that had belonged to Mum and fastened it around Beeta’s neck, and said, “We wanted to give this to you for your wedding”. Sitting on the damp sand and playing with the water, Beeta hesitated a bit. The sea was silver under the moonlight and stars. After a little while, she said quietly, “If you find Sohrab’s grave one day, kiss it for me”. Then all three of us cried and held one another in a tight embrace, smothering each another in kisses. I removed her headscarf and manto and threw them aside. Beeta entered the sea until she was half-submerged. Once she was neck-deep in water she removed her tank top and threw it to me, laughing. She had no idea what a splendid sight she was, from the shore; the moon and stars reflecting in the water around her, with her long wavy hair covering her breasts, and her beautiful tail making gentle ripples around her. In her excitement to plunge into the sea, the Caspian Sea, and to do so with such utter freedom, she did a somersault underwater and re-emerged bursting with laughter. Her beautiful laughter made us laugh too. She waved goodbye, but then couldn’t bear it, and came back to the shore, and hugged us tightly. She whispered in my ear, “If Issa ever comes looking for me, tell him I’m back in Tehran”. We looked at each other with tear-filled eyes and I thought, despite all the modern romances we had read, she was still in love with Issa, the classic way.

  Beeta swam further out, again. The sound of the waves filled the silence between us. Dad wanted to turn away and leave, but he couldn’t. He ran into the water and held her tightly to his chest, sobbing onto her scale-covered shoulder. Beeta was his last living child … the person who still connected him to life. He inhaled the scent of her hair and kissed it, and this time without looking at her, he turned away; at the same time, enveloped by dark Caspian waves, without a thought to what had become of the trunk our ancestor had wanted her to protect, she swam away a distance, dipping her head in the water so that her salty tears mixed with the sea.

  After that, Dad went to meet her on the shore every week with me occasionally in tow, and one day when Beeta asked me about Issa, I lied and said he’d come looking for her once. A tear rolled down her cheek. I didn’t know if it was a tear of joy or anguish. On later visits, other merpeople came as well; lantern in hand, their women with beautiful breasts and long, seductive hair, and their men with stalwart features and kind expressions. Dad was happy to see Beeta had made friends and had been accepted in her new environment. The Caspian merpeople sometimes came up onto the shore to sit beside us and talk. Under our careful and curious observations, we saw Beeta gradually changing. She not only stopped asking about Issa, but she even mentioned Mum and Sohrab less. Every time we met her, she seemed more joyful and carefree, even playful, than she had been the time before. We attributed this to the pleasure of freedom in her new environment; the pleasure of finally being able to do what she wanted—to swim freely. But the day one of the mermaids spoke with Dad, we realised the differences between their world and ours weren’t just on the surface.

  The mermaid asked Dad, who hadn’t shaved for a while and whose beard was now as grey as his hair, “Why are you always sad?” When Dad didn’t answer, she continued, “In our world, nobody comes
into life to stay forever, and our fish-like minds don’t allow us to think of the past. If you live like this, you never become sad.” Once she had said this, she threw herself playfully into the water and disappeared into the sea, along with Beeta and the rest of the merpeople. And so the more dependent Dad became on seeing Beeta and enjoying her sense of freedom and merrymaking, the fewer the visits became. Not because Beeta was busy with other things, but because she had developed a fish-like forgetfulness.

  The day came when Beeta approached the shore but didn’t get out of the water. Instead, she watched us suspiciously from behind a large rock. She dived underwater and then re-emerged, again hiding behind the rock and sneaking peeks at us. Finally, I jumped into the water. When I reached her I said, “What’s wrong with you?”

  Anxiously she asked, “Who are you?” When I introduced myself and told her the necklace she was wearing had been Mum’s, she thought a bit, and finally breaking into a smile, said, “I knew I had to come here for something but no matter how hard I thought I couldn’t tell who you were”.

  The next time Dad and I went to the beach, Beeta didn’t show up although we sat waiting until dawn before returning home, in silence. Realising that Beeta was living pure, mermaid-like moments in the present—what mystics dream of—Dad never set foot again on that deserted Caspian beach.

  That next day, Dad walked through the house, completely broken-hearted, then climbed up to the balcony to peer down on the small fish in the bathroom. As the following morning dawned, Dad went out under the tiny drops of rain, and began digging. I was watching him from my treehouse. At first I thought he’d been gripped by a new mania and wanted to bury himself alive, but when I saw that the pit he was digging grew bigger and bigger, I felt relieved. He dug every day. Occasionally he would eat something and smoke his pipe, but he didn’t talk to me at all. There was no need to say anything. I was nothing more than a wandering, rootless ghost, and now, no longer the only absent member of our once five-member family, my presence was more bothersome than comforting. Now there were other dead he wanted to think about.

  By the end of the fifth day, he had dug a pool large enough for all his grandchildren to swim freely. It took an additional three days to lay the stone and grout the entire bottom. Finally, he covered all of this with plastic table clothes he had patched together. He put the hose into the pool and filled it with water. Two days later, he used a butterfly net to transfer the fish one by one into the pool. When I came to stand beside him I counted; there were forty-seven. He dumped several large tubs-full of chopped vegetables and fruit into the water, said a loud goodbye, and then forever freed his mind of them. Afterwards, he paid the workers their wages and permanently dismissed them, too. In the end, he came to me and said, “It’s time to leave. You leave too. Go to Sohrab. Get as far away from here as possible. Go. Go higher.” Once he’d said this, he picked up his suitcase, locked the house doors, got in his silver Buick Skylight, and disappeared in the twists and turns of the road of the grove leading to the city. But before leaving, he stuck his head out the car window and said one last thing, “And if you don’t go, remember, I don’t want you coming to see me. Beeta was right. We have to forge our own path and learn to live with the living.”

  * * *

  1In folk belief, a creature that seeks to hurt women who have just given birth if they are left alone.

  2A mythical bird that lives on Qaaf mountain. When this bird desires a mate, it lays an egg and flaps its wings over the egg with such vigour that, in the heat it has generated and its excitement of reaching its mate, the bird catches fire, burns and turns to ash. The egg is fertilised by the ash and its offspring is born. There can only ever be one Anqa at a time.

  3The name of a mythical Iranian owl, Ashu Zusht was created by the gods to oppose Ahriman. When he recites from the holy book the demons are frightened.

  4A night hag that, according to popular Iranian belief, tries to suffocate people in their sleep.

  5A giant bird in Iranian mythology that destroys Iran’s enemies.

  6According to Iranian myth the First Cow is holy and pre-eternal. It was killed by Mithra so as to make the earth fertile through the flow of its blood.

  7An Iranian mythical creature that sat on the side of the road and sought to test the bravery of passers-by by frightening them. If a man were successful, the mardazma would become his friend; if the man failed he would be killed.

  8A mythical bird that lives atop Qaaf mountain and communicates with wind and light.

  9A mythical Iranian creature with the head of a lion, body of a bird, and ears of a horse. Its duty was to guard the treasure of the gods.

  10A giant bird that has its nest on the Tree of Life, which contains the seeds of all the earth’s plants. The Simourgh knows the secret of existence.

  11A demon who seeks to destroy the earth and life.

  14

  Ahh … The time had finally come … For the first time in my life I was all alone. I sat in my treehouse and thought about history and fate. I read books and thought about novels I’d dreamed of writing, while alive. I contemplated dreams I used to have but which now I could barely even remember. In addition to this, I enjoyed myself. I swam and played with Dad’s grandchildren; climbed trees and ate greengage plums. I planted walnut, peach and greengage saplings around the grove and allowed trees to take over, so that all was hidden from sight under their canopy. I spent time with birds and lizards; and dragonflies, without trying to interpret them. Divination is just man’s feeble attempt to comprehend an incomprehensible world.

  With Dad gone, ghosts gradually started coming to visit. Unaware that I liked it—had absolutely been waiting for it— they came to tell me Razan’s history so the current situation would be easier to bear. But when Dad told me to join Sohrab, it was never a question that I wouldn’t listen to him. Now I was waiting, with all the time in the world. I wanted to stay until the return so I could answer the questions that would come. I knew there would be a return; and there would be questions about Beeta and Dad. I knew there would be a return and a visit to Sohrab’s room to look through his papers and books where she would pick up The Wayfarer by Sohrab Sepehri and read it again, for the thousandth time. And so it was. Years later, when she hopped over the iron gate at the entrance to the grove with a speed and nimbleness that bore no resemblance to the woman she had been years before, I said to myself, “This woman is remarkable!” Signs of her age were visible in her hair, already grey from before, and her face was creased by wrinkles both large and small, but she broke the lock on the door and entered the house with such self-assurance, I thought, voilà the youngest living member of our family: Roza, my mother.

  The days passed with monotonous regularity. Together with the other ghosts, I watched the people of Razan from up in my treehouse and thought, we dead were all consistently happy, while each of the living is variously unhappy. It is not their unhappiness that is extraordinarily alluring and amazing for the dead, but rather the great variety unhappinesses. Thousands of books could be written about this. Generations could discuss it millions of times over. I watched time from above as people repeated their days in ceaseless movement. The most futile thing in the world is counting. If I didn’t feel this way, perhaps I would count the risings and setting of the sun and moon; the number of sunny, cloudy and foggy days; the months and the seasons; and record them in my diary, just to kill time. Or maybe I would count the number of children born in the village during this time, or the baby foxes, jackals, rabbits and hedgehogs that had been born in these last few years: how many had mated, bore young, and had died, right around my treehouse. Or maybe I would have passed the time by counting the days of my solitude, but I knew it was just chasing after the wind, as was said in the Book of Ecclesiastes.1 Instead of counting objects and days and hours, if people would simply rub their palms together just once, and comprehend that mysterious skin-to-skin contact with all of their senses of touch, their understanding of the world would be be
tter. Or if just once they were to watch and understand the blooming of a flower or birth of a lamb, using their whole sense of sight and hearing and smell, perhaps humans would come to the conclusion that in all the days and nights of their lives, only the minutes in which they are presently immersed are worth calculating. During those years of solitude and long periods of sleeplessness, I realised that I was obsessed with the moment a flower bursts into bloom.