The Drum Tower

by Farnoosh Moshiri

  She dreamed this way at least two or three times a day. Click, click, click—she came down to the porch sometimes and I heard her dreaming aloud over my head. The evening breeze took her words to the garden, or if the day was still, the images sank into my basement room.

  All through the summer, at dusk, Assad swept the courtyard, spread a small rug on the brick floor behind my window, and prayed. He said he prayed in the yard because he wanted to be close to God and to me.

  Some nights I heard his slippers and woke and sat alert, but he wasn’t coming to my room. He was either carrying things in a burlap sack on his shoulder, or toting heavy boxes in his arms, limping in the dark. This happened more frequently and I was used to seeing him with all kinds of loads now.

  Doctor Shafa prescribed new pills for me and so I lost count of my dreamless nights and no winds blew in my foggy head. The cuts on my hands healed but many crisscross lines remained—the scars that would stay with me the rest of my life. The spider, or another spider, wove a new web between the two walls of my room, but the insect and its net didn’t mean anything to me. The spider was a spider and a web, a web; there was no meaning behind them. The first autumn winds blew behind the new windowpanes and, after a long time, Boor-boor screamed, announcing the new season. She demanded a secure cage. Jangi bayed like a wolf every night, smelling the fresh snow that sat on the peaks of the distant mountains.

  But as long as Khanum-Jaan was home, I couldn’t go up to visit Baba-Ji. I hadn’t seen my grandfather since before my failed flight. Last year at this time he was awake, working at a slow but steady pace. Taara and I spent most of our time in his room, copying his manuscript. Last year at this time Uncle Vafa hadn’t married yet, Father hadn’t come to hide in the pantry room, Taara hadn’t left, Assad hadn’t sent Daaye away. We were happy sometimes—we laughed once in a while. Now the change of season, the winter’s sweet smell, brought memories of the last year back.

  I sat in my room alert. I meant to hide if Assad approached. At times, I watched the spider and her mechanical dance, or stared at the web-like stitches on my hands. I thought how this year seemed like a lifetime. I measured the time, as if time were measurable.

  At night, most nights, there were the sounds of gunshots in the streets and, lately, the rattle of machine guns. Once or twice the windowpanes shook because of the bombs that went off nearby. I sat still and tried to hear my father’s footsteps upstairs and Khanum’s scream of joy. He came on such a night last year.

  One morning, Assad came down and told me that the terrorists had bombed a government building nearby. He said that Uncle Vafa and his wife had disappeared. They had gone underground.

  The next morning he brought my breakfast down, shouting, “News, news!” His white apron made him look like a fat peasant cook. “I have news for you, Talkhoon. They’re arresting your uncle’s gang. Today they executed ten terrorists; maybe Vafa was among them.”

  I knew that Khanum silently grieved for her sons, Vafa and Sina, and I knew she missed Taara, no matter how hard she cursed her ungrateful soul. Uncle Kia visited his mother every Thursday afternoon. They sat together in Baba-Ji’s room (the only room with some furniture), sipped dark tea and whispered. I imagined Khanum sighing, crying, and Uncle Kia advising her, feeding her his own version of the political situation, scaring her with his stories of Moslem rebels and left-wing guerrillas.

  All through the autumn Assad went to the mosque every day and practiced target shooting and learned bomb making; he came back in the evening to cook and make his last prayer of the day in the courtyard behind my window. In the month of Moharram, the month of mourning, he wore a black shirt every day and let his beard grow full. He talked less, prayed more, and adopted a somber mood.

  Khanum-Jaan didn’t receive visitors anymore. She asked why the aunties, who were better off, didn’t invite people over to their place. She wrote her father compulsively and her fifth stack of letters became thicker than the rest.

  So I sat in my room all day, looking at the one-eyed, cageless parrot that was chained to my window, her head hidden in her feathers. Was anything going to happen? Was anything going to break the chain of monotonous days and nights that slowly, but inevitably, carried me toward my end? I’d given up on finding the sapphire feather, and I knew that even if I had it and burned a barb, nothing would happen if nothing was supposed to happen. The spider wove her massive web because she was a spider. Her job was simple; mine was not. She was free; I was not.

  But I always knew that when nothing was happening, something was about to happen. This was the pattern of life. Jangi pressed his face against my window, his wet eyes begging for food. I gave him most of my meals and he became my sole companion.

  Now I began to take long walks in the garden and Jangi followed me like a shadow. I strolled in every corner, the spots I’d never seen before. The decayed garden was wet every morning, with dew or light rain. I stepped on moist yellow leaves and found my way through tangled twigs to the dark, virgin corners. I still feared the ghost of Great Grandma Negaar, but what could the ghost of a weak, paralyzed woman do to me? So I went to the dark spots, places that even Jangi didn’t want to go, and I didn’t murmur, Ghosts don’t exist, or Fear is the brother of death.

  On one of these long walks I learned that Drum Tower had another gate on the eastern end of the garden. The sun and rain of many decades had rotted the wood, and twigs and the leaves of dried ivy had hidden it from my eyes.

  Did I think about escaping? I thought about it obsessively, but didn’t know how to do it. I knew that sooner or later, in their unannounced battle, Assad would defeat Khanum and she would agree to leave the house and join her sisters. Assad constantly scared her by recounting the shootings and bombings that were happening in the streets, and Uncle Kia, not knowing what a service he did for Assad, frightened her even more. Maybe one of these days she would simply die—of grief, of defeat, of bankruptcy, of dreaming awake. She would die of immense unhappiness, of loss.

  I knew that one day Assad would arrange our marriage. A night would come that he would take me upstairs to my grandparents’ bedroom and throw me on the bed and rip his pants open. Then I’d imagine myself, shabby-looking, beaten and half crazy, with twelve butt-naked children hanging on me, working in the hot kitchen to fill the urchins’ bottomless bellies. I’d imagine Assad as the grocer and the slumlord, selling overpriced groceries to poor people and forcing the tenants of his numerous apartments to pay more rent.

  I walked in the garden, pictured the future, and listened to the squeak, squeak of Great Grandma Negaar’s wheelchair following me. She was trapped in this garden too. I walked toward the brick tower, but I never climbed the steps to the top. I knew that no bird had nested there, that no Simorgh had left a sapphire feather. All the songs and legends of the Bird of Knowledge, all the names of the birds of all the nations of the world were lost to me. All I knew about Grandfather’s Simorgh book was forgotten. Since Baba-Ji’s fall into silence, chaos and confusion had reigned. So I walked around the tower and thought about the Simorgh without being able to remember what the bird was.

  All through the fall, hard winds blew in my head.

  Father in the Closet

  On a cold and cloudy morning—one of the first mornings of winter—Assad brought my breakfast and some kerosene to light my small heater. He said he was taking Khanum-Jaan to the eye doctor. She had finally agreed to get glasses—now she couldn’t see what was close to her, either. He said he would convince her to stay at her sisters’ for a few days until her glasses were ready. He left, and a few minutes later I heard the Cadillac pulling out. I rushed outside, peeked from behind the wall and saw the back of Grandmother’s head. Her hair was all white. She had stopped dyeing it.

  When they left, panic came. Assad would convince Khanum-Jaan to stay with her sisters and I’d be left alone in Drum Tower with him. I had to escape. So I rushed upstairs to see my grandfather, say farewell, and leave. But as I reached the dim vestibule,
there was the crack of thunder shaking the walls. Somewhere on the second floor or the third, doors opened and closed. Now I heard the harsh rain whipping the top branches of the trees. I had to leave in this wild weather and plunge myself into the flood that would carry me to an unknown place. But as I approached the double oaken door, the house trembled and staggered, the tall door opened by itself, and the wind gusted, sweeping someone inside. It was Father, wrapped in fog like the jinni of the magic lantern.

  He asked me to hide him and I did. I took him to my room and showed him the closet. He said the secret police were chasing him. He said that nobody except me should know he was here. If anyone came down, I should stay silent.

  Did Father know that this was the way I lived? Staying silent?

  He squeezed his wet body inside the narrow closet among my childhood clothes and I sat on my bed, guarding the door. Outside, pistols exploded with dry sounds and rain turned into gentle snow. After a long while, Father pushed the closet door open and talked.

  “I had nowhere to go. This is the worst place I could hide. But I was around here when the shooting began. Fortunately no one is home. Why didn’t you go to school? Where is Taara?”

  I didn’t answer his first question, but I said, “Taara is gone.”

  “Where?”

  “With a man.”

  “Married?”

  “No.”

  “Ran away?”

  “Yes.”

  He was quiet for a long time and I couldn’t see his face. He was in a dark box, like a priest listening to a confession, and I was on the other side, like the sinner. I’d seen this at Mariam Catholic School and I’d always wished I could be the one in the box, listening to people’s secrets. Now the one in the box, the Father, began.

  “Who is the man?”

  “Vahid.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to her setar?”

  “She took it with her.”

  He was quiet again. Taara—his favorite, his talented bard.

  “How is my mother?”

  “Went to the eye doctor.”

  “Oh, yes, her eyes. I always told her—years ago I told her to get a pair of glasses. She neglected it. And Father?”

  “Sleeping.”

  “Now? He doesn’t work anymore?”

  “No.”

  “Who could imagine the day that my father wouldn’t write anymore?” He said in a whisper to himself. “His hands must be shaking. They were shaking badly last year.”

  “Not anymore,” I said.

  Outside, the bullets whistled and someone shrieked. Then it was silence, such an absolute silence that we could hear the soft snow landing.

  “They’re arresting everybody. They’re desperate—that’s why they stop people in the streets and check their cards. I arrived last night. A mistake. I could’ve stayed in Baluchistan, where your uncle is—your mother’s brother. He is a brave man. He has lived with a native Baluchi tribe for twenty years. I was with him in the desert, trying to organize the tribesmen. Then I lost contact with my friends in Tehran. I came to see what’s happening. I didn’t know they were arresting people. I should’ve stayed with your uncle.” He paused for a long time, then asked, “How is Vafa?”

  “Disappeared,” I said.

  “I knew it! They’re underground. Foolish boy! Revolution and religion are two sides of the same coin. They’ll never meet. Do you understand these things, Talkhoon? Do they teach you about the revolution at school, or make a taboo out of the word? But I’ve seen students sliding flyers under the doors.

  “You see, religion means no change, stagnant water, water left to stink. Dogma. Revolution means change, transformation, flowing water, air, freedom. The justice Vafa is seeking remains in the pages of his holy book—if it’s even written there—but my revolution has happened in the world and has changed people’s lives.”

  He continued lecturing from the closet and I sat on the bed, watched the snow, and listened. He asked me if I would like to hear a poem he’d written about the revolution. I said I would. He read it with a voice rising from the depths of the darkness. The phrases were sad and I didn’t understand them well, nor could I link one to the other, but the train of words and the pauses in between reminded me of the rhythm of my life last year—Baba-Ji falling asleep and I throwing myself out of the tower; Grandmother refusing to speak to me and I keeping silent ever since; Taara leaving and I letting her go; I making it to the train station, but Assad bringing me back.

  I didn’t hear anything in my father’s poem saying that the revolution was coming or was going to change the world. Maybe I missed those parts, maybe his voice and the train of the words took me with them, took me somewhere else that belonged only to me. Maybe I heard the poem the way I wanted.

  Now he asked about everyone except me. He didn’t wonder anymore why I was home or why my room was in the basement and in such chaos.

  Did he love me at all? Or did he know I was not his child? (How could he not know, when everyone else knew?) Wasn’t even this little attention he paid to me a favor? I was not related to him—was I? Who was I to him, if I wasn’t his child? Did he love my mother so much that he loved her bastard child? Was he really majnoon—love crazy? He didn’t seem to be. All he cared about was his revolution, and now he was explaining it. He was saying that it was happening, slowly, but eventually it would pick up pace. He said this house was not safe for us and he promised to take all of us to an apartment. He said if he survived today, next time he’d come and take us with him.

  In the afternoon he said he was hungry. He sent me upstairs to bring him food and to look around to see if his mother or Assad had some cash somewhere. He needed money for a taxi to go to his friends’ house. I brought him some food—cold meat, bread and yogurt, but I couldn’t find any money and I didn’t have any. He asked me to lend him the gold chain—my last year’s New Year present. He could pawn it across the street and get some money. I said it was lost. He became upset. I could tell this from the cold tone of his voice.

  Assad and Khanum didn’t come. I was sure they were at the aunties’ where Assad would try to convince Khanum to stay for a while. Father would leave and Assad would come back to marry me. Father had wasted my day. I could have been far away from Drum Tower by now.

  Early in the evening, when a layer of fresh snow covered the courtyard’s brick floor and dusk painted everything dark blue, Father came out of the closet to leave. He said he had to walk all the way to the end of the city, so he’d better start now. His voice was cold and remote—he was sulking about the gold chain, as if that were the only thing that could save his life, as if I were responsible for his eventual arrest. He said he was going upstairs to see if he could find money or something he could sell. I told him that the house was empty. He was shocked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everything is gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?” he said angrily.

  “Just a few things left.”

  “What did my mother do with everything?”

  “She didn’t do anything.”

  “Then what happened? Can’t you make longer sentences, Talkhoon?”

  “They disappeared. Kept disappearing. Now they’ve all disappeared.”

  “I don’t understand. Three floors full of antiques disappeared?”

  “See for yourself.”

  He went up and came back in ten minutes, shaking his head in regret. He had taken a bottle of chilled vodka from Assad’s icebox. He shoved it inside his shabby overcoat.

  “Mother must have sold them. She must have needed money desperately. I saw Baba sleeping in his study, but didn’t wake him up. It would be a shock for the old man to see me. But too much sleeping is worrisome. He might be depressed. He was always a little depressed. And now Vafa is in danger. Not to speak of me. And I know that Kia is not much help. The bastard! If I had his money and position, I’d do something for my old parents. Now I ha
ve to go, Talkhoon. Give this poem to Taara. Tell her this is my birthday present for her. Tell her to read the poem carefully and try to make music for it. Tell her to practice her setar.” He handed me a white sheet of paper, folded in four. Then he murmured again, “I can’t believe she’s gone. Did you ever see the . . . the boy?”

  “He’s a man.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He wears a white rain coat,” I said. “Smokes.”

  For the first time Father looked at me carefully, as if suspecting that something was wrong with me. But he didn’t have time to stay and find out.

  “You’ve lost weight again. You look like a skeleton. Girls your age—how old are you now? Almost seventeen, huh? Girls your age are arming themselves. They’re getting ready for the revolution. Haven’t you heard anything, Talkhoon? At school?” Then, in a sudden rush of something like affection, he took my hands in his big hands but didn’t hold them long enough to feel the roughness of the stitches, the lines that would stay with me forever. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

  I didn’t tell him that this was exactly what I did all the time—took care of myself. He left. I didn’t follow him to the gate. I watched him from the window. He had on the same old suit and the same crooked shoes he had worn the last time I saw him. A shabby, once black, now gray overcoat had been added. His hair, once salt and pepper, was all white, like the snow on the ground. He left like a vagabond, without a penny in his pocket, hugging a stolen bottle of vodka.

  I felt sorry for him and blamed myself for selling the gold chain to escape to a fairytale land in search of my nonexistent mother. As the evening turned into a white night, my remorse changed to rage and then guilt. Why couldn’t I help my father? He was walking in the dark, cold streets, with police on every corner. I wept and forgot about Assad’s eventual arrival. Outside the sky was light gray, reflecting the snow that glowed on the courtyard’s floor. Night never came. I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I ran barefoot to the cold garden, toward the tower. I climbed the steps and stood on the roof. The snow was thicker here; my feet were ankle deep in it, freezing. I raised my head and looked at the ashen sky. Something told me that the Simorgh was an irrelevant notion, not worth thinking about. Baba-Ji was crazy. He was a scholar who had become obsessed with the subject of his research and made his family obsessed too. He ruined our lives, wasted our time. It was the revolution I should have sought—the real happening, the thing that was being made in the streets, and I was ignorant of it.