The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree

by Shokoofeh Azar

  The others burst out laughing and came forward more boldly. They touched and squeezed her hair, her shoulders, her buttocks and breasts; laughing with yellow, tar-stained teeth and moustaches. Nobody was shouting, “Kill the mermaid!” anymore. Gradually their hands became greedier, more aggressive. Beeta screamed and wept and tried to push their eager hands away. Finally, one of the youths grabbed both of her wrists and held them down on either side of her, forcing her to the ground where he lay on top of her.

  Beeta screamed. She wailed. She yelled and pleaded for help. But her voice was incomprehensible to them. Laughing, the men said, “Her voice is like a dolphin. Cool! Are you filming? Take a video!”

  The man who was lying on top of Beeta took her breasts in his mouth, sucking and biting greedily, but then suddenly spitting it out, saying with disgust, “Yuuck … she smells like slime and algae!” But he didn’t leave her alone. He rubbed his face and chest into Beeta’s firm, naked breasts and thrust his pelvis into her. He tried to find her mouth with his own to kiss her, suck her, but she fought constantly, turning her head from side to side, screaming and pleading.

  When, giving up, the man angrily pulled himself off her, he said, “She doesn’t have a hole!” The other men said with surprise, “What? How is that possible? How the fuck do they have babies?”

  Someone else said, “Check again. You’ll find it.” Several other men came to help and Beeta, whose face and beautiful long black mer-hair was now matted with sand and mud, was turned this way and that as they groped under her buttocks and savagely stuck their fingers in her delicate fish-like skin. They didn’t find a hole but her body had been wounded by the pressure of their fingers and nails. She bled. Screamed. Begged. The young man got up angrily and, zipping up his pants, kicked her hard in the side saying, “So what good are they?” Then, turning to the Guard with the gun, he yelled, “What are you waiting for?! Kill her!”

  The young man who opposed her execution shook his head, sadly, as he filmed. He wanted to stop them, or at least say something, but looking at each of these locals he was reminded that he didn’t stand a chance. He knew all of them, and they him. To several of them he owed money, he worked for another, and he wanted to ask for the hand of yet another’s daughter. One was his mother’s brother, and another an uncle on his father’s side through marriage. In these small places where it seems people had lived together for thousands of years, everyone was somehow related. Secrets travelled by word of mouth and one person’s whispers were all the talk at another’s party. Taking a good look at each of their faces through the camera on his phone—all relatives near or far— he thought, for all of their external differences, their fights, divisions, gossip, and thinking themselves better than others, they were in fact a single spirit in several bodies. He thought of himself. He turned the camera towards himself. And who was he then? One of their children, the future father of some others of them. These thoughts saddened him and his hand trembled, but he did not stop filming.

  He turned the camera until it was on the face of the Guard. He zoomed in. The Guard was looking hesitantly at each of the men. He remembered that this man had been his religion teacher in high school, and was his aunt’s husband’s neighbour. No one said anything, but a twinkle of consent and approval shone in all their eyes. Several people were smiling. In the end, someone shouted, “So what are you waiting for!” The others seemed to come out of a kind of collective daze and started to yell as one, “Kill her! Kill the mermaid!”

  Just a few seconds later, the shot rang out; at that very moment, a seed of hope had germinated in the heart of the young man. He had had the idle, useless feeling that some otherworldly help would come to rescue her; but just several seconds later, he watched incredulously as Beeta, the beautiful mermaid, was killed with a forty-five calibre Colt pistol in front of dozens of witnesses. The Guard who did it, smiled victoriously as he looked into the faces of each of the men and then put the gun, still smoking from the barrel, back into its holster on his belt. Beeta’s red blood flowed onto the hands and feet of the fishermen, and the orange and rice vendors. Some of those still filming sadly shook their heads, stopped filming, and left, whispering. Getting onto their motorcycles or into their cars, they hit the accelerator and sped away, hoping to beat the others in the competition of being the first to post their videos on Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.

  Two or three people who were standing there brought shovels from their cars and dug a hole right there in the sand and mud, and pushed Beeta into it with their feet, cursing as they did. “Slut! It wasn’t for nothing she was killed! She must have done something!”

  Several people who hadn’t stopped filming, including the young man who was opposed to killing her, turned off their phones after getting detailed shots of the bullet hole in her chest and her blood on the sand that stretched to the sea and mixed with the salty Caspian waters, and, shaking their heads sadly, left.

  Those who remained, covered her grave with sand, shells and scallops so it would appear there was no body buried there at all. As the sun set, the last people walking along the shore went home to tell their wives the exciting story of what had happened, unaware that they had been informed several hours earlier by a little boy who had observed the whole thing.

  They, the women, had gathered together and spoken about the tragedy. They despaired for hours. They cursed and condemned their husbands, their brothers and their fathers. But as darkness began to fall, each of them remembered the food on their stoves; remembered their children’s still unfinished homework; remembered that if they weren’t home on time, their husbands would be angry and yell at them; remembered the tablecloth that had to be already spread when their husbands arrived; that they had to pretend they knew nothing of what had happened so their husbands would have the chance to talk to them, confide in them, and feel again a closeness and intimacy that had long since disappeared from the relationship. Then they would drink a hot tea and go to bed together.

  18

  Dad did return to Razan but not when I asked him to. He waited for the mayor to come in person with the bulldozers to threaten and bribe them. Seeing that nothing had changed, the mayor gave in to the inevitable and asked Granddad, “Why are you willing to see the house destroyed, but not let me have it?” Granddad simply said, “Because you are destruction itself”. Furious, the mayor gave the demolition order, and the workers who all blindly followed orders, looted the whole house first, right before their incredulous eyes, loading even the smallest objects into their private cars and trucks, and carting it away. Granddad, Grandma, and Great Granddad, whose collective age was several hundred years, sat on the porch and watched as each and every carpet, rug, painting, statue, book, chandelier, old hinge, piece of painted china, historical crystal, copper and ceramic vessel containing a thousand memories, was stolen. They saw how the workers handled their books, and carelessly broke some old vases, frames and dishes as they carried them away. They saw how they trampled the carpets, and crushed the dog-rose trellis that had bloomed in that garden for two hundred years, under the wheels of their cars. They saw everything, and said nothing. Destruction was total, and they did not have enough life left in them to change anything. Once the house had been emptied of every last object, the workers attacked the old carved windows and doors, removing them from the walls. Then, the last worker flagrantly lifted Dad and the rest from the chairs they were sitting in and took the chairs, too. There was just one thing they didn’t allow to be stolen: the old trunk from their great ancestor Zakria Razi. Then, as planned, Dad, Granddad, Grandma, and Great Granddad embraced and kissed one another and, under the stunned gaze of the workers and mayor, Granddad, Grandma, and Great Granddad went into the inner veranda, took each other’s wrinkled hands and sat down on the cement floor.

  Dad didn’t wait to see how the loaders demolished the house onto the heads of his mother, father, and grandfather, burying them alive in their own home. He put the old trunk into the car and wept all the way to R
azan.

  19

  It was thus that even our great ancestor Zakariya Razi’s prediction turned out to be wrong, and Beeta didn’t live long enough to guard over the trunk and ancient books. How many times can someone receive that final shot? It was the fourth time that life put Dad out of his misery. Beeta’s brutal death was the last. With her death, the time for Mum and Dad to die had also arrived. I led them to where Beeta was buried. We pulled her out of the sand during the night, brought her to the grove, and among tears and lamenting, we dug a grave for her under an old oak tree. When we dug her grave and put her beautiful, delicate body with that amazing tail, long hair and scales that still shone in the first early morning rays in it, we placed her ballet slippers in her hands, and beside her, the thousand-and-one-hundred-year-old family trunk containing two of Zakariya Razi’s books, The Prophets’ Fraudulent Tricks and The Violation of Religion. We covered it with earth and waited for the snow.

  Seconds later, when snow began to fall, Sohrab and Beeta revealed themselves, enveloped in shining white flakes. We all hugged each other and smiled. We stood there and watched as the snow covered the whole grove. It covered the grave; the memories; the houses. We stood and watched as the snow covered all that had happened.

  For the first time in years, all five of us were together, now. We held hands, and for a moment, we saw with open eyes the fate of the five-hectare grove centuries into the future. We saw the house hidden and in ruins among ferns, trees and grasses; the fish in the pool becoming so numerous they began eating each other; we saw that, for centuries, no one else built a wooden treehouse in the largest oak in the grove; and no one ever again reached enlightenment in the greengage tree. Nobody again was at all excited to see the crumbling fire temple or ancient Zoroastrian bones; and centuries later, when the grave of Beeta, the dejected mermaid, was discovered, journalists pounced and newspapers wrote that mermaids really had once existed. They could never understand, however, why she had a pair of pink ballet slippers in her hands and an ancient trunk with two handwritten books by Zakariya Razi, at her side.

  It was time. Under the soft and steady snowfall, out of respect for a lifetime of Mum and Dad’s futile struggle and suffering, the trees, grasses, ferns and honeysuckle vines twisted together, their stems pressed close, grew until the whole grove was concealed from outsiders under a green ceiling. We three siblings held hands just like the happy time when we were children, and accompanied Mum and Dad into their bedroom where they were going to die, though their death took much longer than any of us expected.

  Mum and Dad kissed us calmly and serenely, then lay down next to each other on the bed, holding hands, eyes closed. Before dying, Mum said, “Soon we’ll see you on the other side”.

  When, an hour later, they still hadn’t died, smiling, Dad opened his eyes and said, “Death is slowly taking its course. You three get on with your own things.” Then they both slipped quietly into a coma.

  We left them and sat together in another room to wait. But waiting wasn’t easy. Death still filled all of us with naive fear and anxiety, and so we began reminiscing. We spoke about what we would do if we were alive, and what we would be doing if we had been born in another time or place. Beeta said she would surely have become a ballerina and fallen in love with an artist, and married. Sohrab said he would have become a journalist, constantly travelling from country to country to get stories. I said that I would have liked to become a writer. Yet despite the fantasies, the fear of death still made its way between the lines of our words and memories and dreams, forcing itself on us. Beeta suddenly began to cry and said, “Mum and Dad deserved more than this. How did they manage the pain of seeing each of us die?”

  Sohrab lit a cigarette and said, “Their lives can be summed up in two sentences: they fell in love with each other. They wanted to build a beautiful life, but instead of a happy future for their children, they saw death, confusion and suffering, and then died.” I said, “I’m happy none of us had children! This isn’t a safe world to bring children into.”

  Our anxiety increased by the moment, and the anger we felt as we talked about memories—each one worse than the one before—did not dissipate. One, two, three days passed, and our anguish did not disappear. It felt as though all our pain and suffering were collapsing down on top of us. Then, at sunset on the third day, a tired, dusty stranger with sad eyes and a large sack over his shoulder, fought his way to the house through the bushes and trees and tangled vines of the grove. Entering the house without a greeting and, as if he owned it, he went directly into Mum and Dad’s bedroom and then commanded loudly, “Come in here!” The three of us went. The sad-eyed stranger with prematurely grey hair said, “I have come with a message from your parents. They say they can’t die until you’ve stopped your moaning and crying.”

  “How can we know you are telling the truth?” I said. With a calm expression, the man turned towards Mum and Dad who were still in a coma and commanded, “Sit up!” Then, moving as if not of their own volition, Mum and Dad’s bodies sat up, their necks crooked. The man watched the three of us and when he saw we were convinced, he let the two lie down again.

  He accompanied us out onto the porch and said, “They will die freely and meet you thirty minutes after your anger and anguish has ended”. Then he left, just as he had come, disappearing among the trees and bushes.

  It was thus that, in the middle of a cold winter night one year of God’s many years, Mum and Dad died and joined us as we sat around a fire in the courtyard. At daybreak the next morning, when the last of the fire’s embers were extinguished, Mum got up and walked towards the forest in silence; and not knowing where we were going, we followed. We walked and walked until we reached a greengage tree and stopped. Its branches were still laden with greengage plums. We picked a few and ate them. It was the last flavour that we were to take with us from this world. “Strange that I’d never seen this tree before,” I mused. “That’s because it’s a tree, just like any other,” Mum replied as she began to climb. The four of us followed. The tree wasn’t very large and it seemed unlikely it could hold the weight of all five of us; but it wasn’t long before we realised that it became taller and stronger as we climbed. After several metres, we stopped and so, too, did the tree’s growth. When we continued to climb, so did the tree. We climbed and climbed until we passed the clouds and could see Planet Earth below us. For a moment, we stopped, and so did the tree. We looked down. Down at Earth with all its forests, its oceans, mountains and clouds; with all its countries, borders, people, loves, hates, murders and pillaging. We looked at each other and realised how easy it was for us to let go now. We continued our ascent until we reached the very top of the tree. Mum, who was furthest up, turned and looked at each of us, then smiled, and was suddenly absorbed into the bark, and disappeared. Next Dad, then Sohrab, Beeta, and then finally me. That’s it.