The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree

by Shokoofeh Azar

  Early in the morning before daybreak I would sit next to buds and watch the birth of a drop of dew. The reflection of the sunrise would appear within it, then the dew would evaporate, and I would hear the bud’s soft sigh, uttered in a small space, in a lapse between the commotion of people and nature. I would touch the freshly-opened petals with my fingertips; with all my sense of touch, I would feel them as petals; I would smell them and allow their fragrance to spread through me.

  Gradually I learnt to close my eyes and concentrate all of my six senses into my sense of smell, to better hear the flowers’ sigh. Then I learned to distinguish the sigh of a rosebud from that of a fig blossom. The opening rosebud emits a sigh like the gentle kiss of a shy beloved on her lover’s lips, sweaty with love’s intensity; but the blooming of a fig blossom is like a beloved’s kiss given in the air to her distant lover. Like gossamer lips tenderly blowing a kiss into space.

  During this time, I also learnt that the most beautiful things are those that are least well-known among humans; like the Japanese quince which is rarely seen in gardens but has a flower of Japanese beauty and grace, and miniature curves. The kiss of a Japanese quince as it blooms is the most bashful of all. Just like the kiss of a barely pubescent girl with a peach-coloured kimono who kisses her own thin, white arm, hidden from the eyes of others as she dreams about the lover she has never had, the touch she has never known, and the kiss she has never tasted. The kiss of a Japanese quince is the kiss of a virgin on her own immaculate virginity.

  It was thus that I let the years of solitude touch me, resisting the temptation to visit Beeta, Dad, or Mum; instead, gazing at the grove and Razan in the leaden, soporific stillness. Razan, with its ancient secrets—a village whose beginning is unknown, or at least its oldest resident.

  Although it seemed the memories of Razan’s older generation were bound and knotted together with the sabzeh sprouts2 and thus bequeathed to the river every year with the haft-sin of Nowruz,3 everyone was so pre-occupied with remembering what they called ‘Razan’s holy fire’, that the memory of this was still vivid. At that time, everyone agreed that Homeyra Khatun’s house was the oldest in the village and, although no one knew who was older than who, Issa and Effat’s grandmother, Homeyra Khatun, imagined herself to be the oldest person in the village, while the village leader maintained he was the oldest; and at least five other people had the same claim. All of them thought themselves to be about one hundred and twenty-five. Before the teachers from the Literacy Corps set foot in Razan in the time of the Shah, nobody there knew about paper money, calendars, clocks, ID cards, or marriage certificates. They didn’t even know that in a distant city there were people who travelled, not with horses and mules, but with wheeled contraptions made of metal; who didn’t cultivate their food, but bought it from shops.

  In those years Razan was still so untouched that after three full days of getting lost and turning circles in their jeeps in the forest, hills, and dirt roads, the Literacy Corps was, eventually, forced to capture some half-wild horses to guide them to Razan along animal paths in the forest. When the first teachers set foot there in 1964, the people didn’t know what knives and forks were, or what things such electricity or television could be. People had heard from their parents that the First Soothsayer’s ancestor had been the only literate person in the village and had always carried around a book that he had called the History of Razan. It was for that reason, with the birth of a child, whatever book had been passed down in the family, be it the Shahnameh, Hafez, the Avesta, the Masnavi, One Thousand and One Nights, or Amir Arsalan Namdar, it would be taken to him to record the date of the child’s birth on the inside cover.

  Many long years had passed since then, and because of the Literacy Corps, some village children were eventually literate enough to read the birthdates of their forefathers in the ancestral books. It was then that they discovered that the First Soothsayer’s great ancestor appeared not only to have had limited literacy himself, but of the three hundred and sixty-five days of every year, he only knew how to write one. When the, now literate, children of the village got together and compared all the ancestral books kept by their illiterate families to find the birthdates of their forefathers and grandparents, all of them were confronted with a single date: 12.12.1212.4 With the revelation that several generations had been duped, an outrage erupted in the village that left the First Soothsayer blamed for everything, as though he had been responsible for his ancestor’s doings.

  At first the village children and then their families, and finally the Literacy Corps teachers, started speculating about the mysterious date. The teachers consulted the few history books they had brought with them, but found nothing. Then the village elders gathered to discuss various propositions, but in the end, all were left frustrated and despairing. Their forefathers had been fooled for more than a hundred years and even worse, had given the First Soothsayer’s ancestor more respect than he deserved because they had considered him to be the village’s memory and written history. Then the village grandmothers and grandfathers recalled that the First Soothsayer’s ancestor had had a manuscript book. After all the inconclusive research and speculation about 12.12.1212, they then raided the abandoned, run-down house that had belonged to the First Soothsayer’s ancestor and searched the whole structure, even scouring the thorns and grasses and bushes that filled it; but found nothing. True, these revelations had led the people to despair, but from that day forward, Razan’s history became important for everyone. Everyone wanted to know who their forefathers were, and whether they were related to the Zoroastrian ghosts in the area; why they had come here, what they had done; and the mystery of why the illiterate villagers still owned so many books. Could it be that their ancestors had been able to read and write?

  The villagers turned their cupboards and dank attics inside out, pulling out two-hundred-year-old carved wooden trunks, but they found nothing except moth-eaten cloth, old mothballs, and the skeletons of lizards and mice. They gave the only unspoiled books to their now-literate children to search for any trace of their literate forefathers; but again, this led nowhere. And so, cupboard doors were closed again, attics were locked once more after a good cleaning and the setting of fresh mouse traps; and wooden trunks were stowed away in basements to, again, be relegated to history and forgotten with the rise of the sun after a month of frenzied effort to uncover the history of their ancestors. Gradually they consoled themselves by saying, “What’s the use of history, anyway?” And anyway, they still had the “present”, the most important thing anyone could have. One villager said, “The past is for the dead”. Another said, “We’ll write our own history from now on”. And, yet a third said, “If they had been respectable people, they surely would have passed some valuables down to us”. It was thus that the people considered themselves, finally, absolved from any fault or ambiguity. They were exuberant, as though it were the first day of Creation and they were creating or experiencing everything for the very first time; as though suddenly, they were freed from the weight of their grandfathers’ counsel and their grandmothers’ moralising tales and a thousand years of glorious history. A glory, even the tiniest trace of which, was no longer to be found.

  And so, early on that morning when the villagers made the unannounced decision to free themselves of the vices of their ancestors’ legacy, the sun rose as never before. Radiant and fresh and clear, it hoisted itself above the low-lying fog and, rising from the plants like spirits imprisoned in the earth, vapour climbed into the sky to forever join the clouds. Suddenly, the air was fresh. Just like the first day of Creation when the earth was empty and shapeless and the Spirit of God commanded, “Let there be light!” as it moved upon a dark mass of vapour. And it became light, and God was pleased with the light, and He separated it from the darkness.

  Foxes and jackals ran in oblivious bliss through the thick fog away from the chicken coops and rice paddies, taking refuge in their dens to dream all day about their nocturnal hunt for chicke
ns and geese. As it did every morning, the cuckoo continued his eternal quest for his lover, loudly asking all creatures, “Coo? Coo? Coo? Coo?”5 The village felt as if it had been reborn, everything fresh and new as if it had been transported back a hundred years; lovers were so bashful they couldn’t exchange simple messages with their beloved, or even gaze long into each other’s eyes. The world had again become so trustworthy that a single glance transported them to the precipice of madness and love. A single drunken glance from one who had spent a night in worshipful wakefulness was enough for the girl who saw it to know she was prepared to wait for that look for the rest of her life. Dowries became simple again like hundreds and thousands of years ago, no girl asked for mahr6 or bridewealth, and no man enquired about dowries or virginity. In discovering there was no history, the people had returned to the Age of Innocence, wild greengage blossoms glistened and were fragrant just like an early morning in the Garden of Eden. The river ran clear and full of fish, and the people were in awe of the interpretations of the dreams that seemed to have suddenly swept over them.

  One villager dreamed that a woman with a burning torch came to see her, introducing herself as her ancestor and, pointing to the hill that had been part of our family grove for years, said she lived there and had come to wash her white robes in the villager’s courtyard, for a funeral. No matter how much the villager asked, “Whose funeral? And why ‘white’?” the woman replied dolefully, “If you’re clever, perhaps one day you’ll understand”. The next day when the villager got up and went to wash her face in the well, as she did every morning, she saw white robes hanging on the line, fluttering in the wind. One man dreamed that an eighty-eight-year plague came and destroyed all of Razan, including the distant meadows and forests. It blackened the earth—making it sterile—and burnt the trees. A five-year-old child dreamed the family books were burnt in the square while a man in a black turban danced around the fire, laughing.

  At first the dreams were full of warning and menace, then they gradually became pleasant. They became good dreams. They seemed to be informing of the past and the future, while at the same time awash with needs and desires in the present. People who had been afraid to dream, now wanted to so that the First Soothsayer could tell them what they meant. Before long, however, the dreams themselves had become so realistic, so like daily life, that interpreting them became meaningless. With the deletion of history and the onslaught of pleasurable dreams, the villagers gradually forgot about food and work; and became frail plants that fed on oxygen. The frailer their bodies became, the more their minds grew—so much so that the images within collided and merged. After a time, they met one another in their dreams, ate together in their dreams, fell in love, and made love in their dreams.

  Things continued like this for days and weeks until one day, the First Soothsayer had a lucid dream in which he called everyone together and ordered them to wake up and return to their daily lives. But the people, who had never disregarded his instructions while awake, even recently with the honesty of his ancestor called into question, now ignored him completely. They couldn’t break away from their dream life, a carefree life, free of suffering and responsibility. In the dreams, no one caused suffering to anyone else, and they weren’t as hungry as they had been in their lives before the dreams began. They lived their desires while dreaming. If two people were in love with the same person, in their dreams they each lived happy lives with their lover without the presence of the other. If someone was poor, in their dreams they lived in a large house with crystal chandeliers, mirrored walls, and bathed every afternoon in a river of milk and honey; if someone couldn’t get pregnant, in their dreams they were living happily together with their husband and children.

  The First Soothsayer had wearied of the dreams that had suddenly inundated him and others, and had no choice but first to wake himself. Once he had managed to wake up, with magic, ancient incantations, and the help of supernatural forces in his dreams, he found the village in a static stupor. Time was standing still. He went to the door of every house and knocked to rouse its inhabitants; to tell them that if things continued as such, they would all soon turn into dry, hollow plants that would splinter at the slightest touch. Yet no one stirred. No one at all.

  Fighting to stay awake, the First Soothsayer went to the deserted house of his ancestor in the hope of finding a solution. He had been there in recent months, together with the villagers, to search for the History of Razan; but instinct told him that this time he would be able to find something, a recess, a clue, a solution. And so it was. After searching for three days and nights in the dirt and grime, beneath overgrown grasses and among legless lizard skeletons and skins, he found the book under a wooden board, in a metal box, in the basement. However, reading it wasn’t as easy as he’d imagined. It was written in abjad numerals7 and shajara8 and jomal.9

  During the day as he checked on Razan’s sleeping residents, separating the dead from the living and burying them, he began to learn shajara and abjad numerals. Eventually, after six weeks he was able to read the book and realised how mistaken the villagers had been about his ancestor.

  As he deciphered the book, the Soothsayer realised that the great man, that great scholar of science and knowledge, knew the secrets of the plants and rocks. He could read the mystical scripts of centuries past, identify the invisible paths of the stars, and predict someone’s fate upon seeing the palm of their hand. He was a man who had died multiple deaths, had been brought back to life, and in the world, he had meandered between life and death. Thus he neither feared death, nor was excited by life. He interpreted honest dreams, could see someone’s previous lives by looking into their eyes, and reminded them of their duties in their current life. He was always alone but never spoke of loneliness. He was free but did not contemplate freedom. His life was bound by all those things that others didn’t know but were prepared to give half their lives to understand. In his book he wrote: Although it is commonly said that I am from Razan, I alone know that I simply appeared one day in the forest and when I stand in front of a mirror and look at the lines on my face and in my eyes, I can’t see where I was before. However, not trusting the fine, almost invisible lines of the iris of his eyes, he was sure he had lived many lives to have had access to such knowledge. Knowledge, higher than any other. Knowledge, that even in the distant past had long been forgotten, leaving not even so much as a name. Knowledge, far beyond simiyya10 and limiyya11 and alchemy, and other occult sciences that now featured in every young boy’s tongue-twister.

  Reading quickly and with mounting excitement, the Soothsayer was so astounded by his ancestor’s memoirs and knowledge that he forgot about Razan and its sleeping inhabitants until he reached several lines he couldn’t fathom. The great scholar of sciences and knowledge had written about how the inhabitants of Razan had fallen into an enchanted sleep after forgetting the history of their village, and how, after breaking the charm, he had promised to write a history for future generations. He identified 12.12.1212 as the date the enchanted slumber was lifted. The date on which, thanks to him, the people were reborn. So, it wasn’t for nothing that he had considered it the date of birth of every newborn. It was the date of awakening for the people of Razan.

  Though consumed by the book, the Soothsayer thought his first duty would be to rescue the villagers from the enchanted sleep; and so he had no choice but to resist the temptation to continue reading, and instead head into the depths of the forest, with the book as his guide. He reached a large circular clearing. For three days and nights he sat in the centre of the circle and fasted; and as he resisted the temptation to eat or sleep, he scourged the dusty recesses of his mind to, as the book instructed, remember. It was written: In the mind of the seeker, the correct spot, from the unworthy is concealed. It was written: The true seeker of Bushasp, the demon of deep sleep, is he who knows by word of mouth. He can find him with his acumen. It was thus that after three days and nights of fasting and trance, he followed the flight path o
f the first firefly. He walked for days and nights in rain, fog, and moonlight until he was consumed by silence in an unknown part of the forest. He saw a plunging valley that was in half-darkness at high noon. No birds sang, no breeze rustled the trees; not even a snake slithered through the dried leaves covering the ground. Everything had sunk into a lethargic stasis. He remembered that the book had referred to a ‘River of Oblivion’. Straining his ears, he heard a single sound. It was the gentle, torpor- inducing flow of the River of Oblivion, one sip of which would wipe one’s memory forever. The River of Oblivion that flowed past the abode of the sleeping demon. As he continued, he was filled with transparent fear. How frightening could the demon be and why was there no indication in the book of weapons with which to defend oneself? He continued with trepidation until he reached a cave where the intoxicating opium poppy and haoma12 plants were growing. As he entered the cave, he saw an enormous old demon who had fallen into a deep sleep, two small horns were protruding from its forehead and his head was resting between his two large, white wings. His beard and hair were so long they reached his shins and he was lying on a black fur pelt. The closer the Soothsayer got to the creature and the more he looked at him, the less he feared. Finally, he was forced to admit that not all demons are evil. After twenty-four hours of waiting for the demon to wake up and drinking several cups of anti-sleeping potion that he had prepared according to the book’s instructions, while he waited, he looked at the small fountain of oblivion water in the centre of the room. Oh, how he wanted to drink from it! But remembering the book’s instructions he suppressed the temptation. Then, looking at the walls of the cave, he saw clear but muddled, enigmatic images of human dreams blending, then separating. In one of them, he found a recurring dream of his own in which he was kissing a pretty- faced girl he had wanted to kiss for years.