He babbled for a long time and his friends stamped their booted feet upstairs and sang anthems. Now he spread his wide bandana—a checkered scarf—on the floor and took all kinds of food out of the paper bag: French bread, salami, cooked sausage, olive salad, pickles, Swiss cheese, and finally a chilled bottle of vodka. He had shopped at an Armenian deli.
“We party tonight, Talkhoon. You and me! You see? I could spend my time upstairs with my Brothers, but I told them I had to go to my family. They don’t know my family is down here. No one knows anything about you, except for Mustafa, and I trust him. I’ve forbidden them to open the doors to the porch and the courtyard. Now let’s have a picnic. I can see that you’ve cleaned up the room. Another good sign! Come on!”
He knew I wouldn’t sit with him, so he made a colorful dish on a paper plate and put it on my bed. I was too hungry to resist and I began to eat while he drank his vodka. Now he turned his head toward the desk and noticed that the old, angry mullah was staring at him. He rose up and laid the picture face down.
“This is my last night, Imam,” he addressed the picture. “I swear to Allah and to your dear life, I’m going to quit. This bottle is my last and I’m going to kill one hundred Satan worshipers to make up for this.”
Now, his mouth full, he described the events he had been involved in. He said he was one of the men who sat on the hood of the Imam’s car, guarding it from possible assassins. He said he burned ten American flags, one effigy of the American president, and one effigy of the damned Shah. By the time he finished all the bread, meat, and olive salad, his tall vodka bottle was half empty and his face was crimson. He stood up, took off his shirt, mumbled something about mud, and cursed. He loosened his belt and let his pants fall down to below his belly button. The blue head and the open wings of his Simorgh showed. I pressed my right arm against my body, feeling the knife. I could see how his rough side was coming out. He picked up Khanum-Jaan’s black marble box and sat cross-legged on the floor.
“If I don’t find the damned will tonight, I’ll never find it,” he told himself. He fished in the box and took the stacks of letters out. He removed the rubber band from the last stack and opened the first envelope. “March 20 . . . No, it was later, much later.” He looked at me and asked, “When did Papa Vazir’s ghost ruin the old fart’s fucking furniture? Huh? What month was it?” He searched some more. “When did your sister run away, huh? I can’t remember. Do you want to talk, or do I have to get up and slap you? When was it? It was spring. Okay. Taara’s fucking final exams. All right. So the engagement party was supposed to be in May. May, May—” He opened several envelopes, took out the letters, scattered them around himself and sat amidst them, confused. He breathed heavily, sipped from the bottle and wiped his sweaty forehead with his hairy arm. He had to hold the letters far from his eyes to see the words.
“My fucking glasses are upstairs. I can’t see well. May. Okay. May the twelfth. This is after the mess. It’s a long letter. Two pages. It must be the letter she wrote when she locked herself up and didn’t come out for a while. Let’s read it. But I can’t see well. I didn’t sleep last night. My eyes are watery. Read this, girl, please!” he pleaded, and held the letter out to me.
I looked at Boor-boor who didn’t have the box to chew on and was nibbling on the Great Leader’s picture.
“No? Okay, we’ll get to this later. We’ll get to your silence and disobedience later. One hundred men in this neighborhood are under my command. Do you hear me? They call me Brother Sheeri now. That’s my new name. Sheer, meaning lion. Assad, meaning lion. Brother Assad Sheeri. Double lion! It scares the shit out of them. Don’t you think I can open your fucking mouth? But later. I need the will before they start making laws in this country. Let me see—if I only had my glasses—it says, ‘Papa—’ no dear, no nothing. Just ‘Papa,’ this must be it. It sounds sulky.”
Papa, the door bell rings every minute, Daaye and Assad return the three-tiered cream cake, the one hundred red roses, the caskets of wine, the rented china and silver— Taara’s engagement is cancelled. I’m here in my room, sitting in the dark, no window to allow the last ray of daylight to fall on this paper. Darkness will do.
“She’s trying to make her Papa feel sorry for her. The old fart!”
I always knew that Taara was your favorite. You came to me in my dream the first night of her life and told me to name her Taahereh—the pure. So I knew that I should protect her. But what did I do, instead? I tried to sell her. Even before she turned eighteen. I tried to force her to marry a man she didn’t love.
“Can you believe this shit? This is the old fart talking about love.”
Assad continued reading, and as he read, his voice relaxed and became Khanum-Jaan’s voice when she was sad and mournful:
But what did you expect me to do, Papa? The house, your Drum Tower, your ancestral fort was falling on our heads. The General was close to the Shah and could pull us up again. Taara would shine among the people she belonged to; we would feel happy and secure. Love would come later. But what if it didn’t? But how would I know? I, who had never experienced love in marriage? So I didn’t know what love was and you became angry with me. You raged at my callousness, at my petty calculations, at my blind, rash decision—selling your flower so cheap. Because you thought Taara must not be sold; she needed something beyond money—what you gave to my mother, Negaar— and while flying above Drum Tower, you dipped the tip of your ivory cane in the roof’s softened tar and ruined my property . . .
“You hear this, Talkhoon? This woman is a lunatic! Do you know who vandalized the house? The Satan worshipers, or the infidels—either Vafa’s gang, or a Marxist group. They’ve done this to other mansions too. Now listen to this:”
But did you think for a second, Papa, that you yourself were far from being perfect? You who passed judgment on me and punished me even after your death were far from being innocent. Who helped you, Papa? Who kept your name clean? Who buried the girl at the foot of the tower, and your sins with her? You were not here anymore to see, to witness how I single-handedly took care of the whole damnable job. How I alone, with my weak arms, dragged her blue body out of the water storage, slung it on my shoulder, carried it all the way to the tower, and buried it with my own hands. Her hair, her unnatural hair, wrapped around my neck like wet moss and it’s been choking me ever since.
“You hear all this? Who is she talking about?”
All for you, Papa. For your reputation. What rumors would people spread if the constables drew the girl’s corpse out of the filthy water? A fourteen-year-old servant girl, drowning herself in the water storage a day after the birth of her child. Would your name survive the scandal? And then I had to lie. First to Daaye, telling her that her daughter had run away, and then a fairy tale about my husband bringing his illegitimate son from the mountains! This poor, imbecile professor of mine, this naive bookworm! I told him that the little girl had fooled around and had a bastard child and he agreed to be your son’s father. He said he didn’t mind—the boy needed to be secure. He said he wasn’t a public figure to be afraid for his reputation. He even liked my story—an affair with a village girl, on top of the mountain, right before his marriage, bringing a baby to his bride’s house. He laughed and admired my imagination.
Then I had to raise this boy—your son, Papa—because I couldn’t bury him alive with the body of his mother. I didn’t have the heart.
Assad stopped here, lost his voice, and cursed under his lips. “Damn old hen, she is the one who should’ve written books, not Baba. But what nonsense—”
He sat still, with heavy eyelids, fighting sleep. He didn’t talk anymore; he murmured and whispered incoherent fragments. His mind was so fatigued that he couldn’t make sense of what he had just read. The answer was within his reach, but he couldn’t grab it. He kept repeating, “Drowned herself in the water storage . . . even before Soraya . . . way before. Fourteen years old . . . Khanum raised her bastard son. Her father’s son . . .”<
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Now suddenly he dropped the box and got to his feet, swaying. He held to the wall and tried to look at me, but he seemed not to see me. He looked past my head at the vacant wall and shouted, “I’m him! That baby! I’m Grandpa Vazir’s son—a fucking blue blood—Khanum’s brother! But a bastard!” His horselaugh echoed in the quiet night.
“I’m the heir! I’m the sole heir to whatever is left! Drum Tower, the lands—. The lands? Where are my Papa’s lands? Where has the old hen hidden my father’s lands? I want the fucking will. I want the old bitch’s will.”
He sat on the floor again and spread the letters around. He groaned, brought the papers close to his eyes, and threw them away. Now he stood up, swaying again, grasped the bed and approached me. He grabbed my arm and dragged me to the floor.
“Come on! Find the will for me. Why are you just sitting here doing nothing? Don’t you know what’s happened? Don’t you know who I am? I’m not Assad the servant, Baba’s illegitimate son. I’m the descendent of war ministers—Grandpa Vazir’s only son! Do you get me? His only male heir! And I want my fucking lands! Come and find my lands, Talkhoon! I’m dying. Can’t you see? Have mercy! Do you know what I’ve gone through the past two days and nights? Do you think it was easy to do a revolution?”
He sat me on the floor among the leftover food and piles of letters. I pressed the knife under my right arm to hold it secure. If it fell, Assad would stab me.
“Go ahead! What are you waiting for? Use all your fancy Catholic school education and read all these fucking letters and find my will.”
I was motionless. My right arm pressed against my chest.
He slapped me and shouted, “Either you start sorting these letters, or I’ll whip your little ass with my leather belt!”
I bent on the floor and picked up a bound stack.
“Leave the fucking old ones alone. Look at the last letters, the ones that are all over the floor. Pick them up one by one and read them. Look in the envelopes for a piece of paper with a letterhead and a big stamp under or above. You know what I mean, don’t you? Who went to school, you or me?”
He fell on my bed and lay on his back. He covered his face with his hairy arms and moaned. The bird on his lower belly expanded and its wings grew larger each time he inhaled. Before I picked up the first letter he was snoring and the blue bird on his fat belly quivered as if carved in jelly.
For a while I looked at the letters. My grandmother’s sentences ran in front of my eyes, “You were in my dreams last night . . .,” or “You were furious when you lifted the top of the oak table . . .” “We bought your little Taara a diamond ring . . .” “I dreamed, I dreamed!”
I stacked the letters and picked up some more, hearing Boor-boor biting on the cardboard picture of the Great Leader. She was quick and agile, the way she cracked sunflower seeds. I was grateful that Assad had passed out. He’d sleep like a stone for at least five hours. He had missed two nights of sleep, done a revolution, and found out about his origins after drinking two thirds of a bottle of vodka.
I soon found the will. It was attached to the deed of the house. It was a typed letter on thick, yellowish paper—brief, less than one page, and stamped with the sign of the sun and lion of the monarchy.
. . . all my properties, consisting of a house—Number One, Shah-Reza Avenue, College Intersection, known as ‘Drum Tower’—an ancestral half crown, a seal and a sword kept in a safe deposit box at the Royal Bank, go to my sisters, Puran-dokht and Turan-dokht Vaziri.
An attached document showed that in 1340 AH, 1961 AD, Drum Tower’s ownership had been fully transferred to Khanum-Gol Vaziri. Grandmother had bought her sisters’ shares—fifteen million rials in cash.
Khanum-Jaan didn’t have land as Assad had imagined, but of what she had— a decaying house, a half crown, and a dull sword—her three sons, four granddaughters, still-breathing husband, a half-brother (Assad), and a faithful maid/nurse, wouldn’t get anything. We were all disinherited.
Unveiling the Gate
All night, in the light from a flashlight secured on a branch of a tree, with my bare hands—the black velvet gloves shredded in minutes—I cut the tangle of vines on the old wooden gate. My palms bled, but I didn’t stop. When the sky turned light, I had finished the job and I saw a long, rusty, metal rod that bolted the gate. It was heavy and I couldn’t slide it out. I would have to work on it later.
With a sense of joy I’d never felt before, I ran along the wet path. When I reached the willows around the pool, I stopped and listened. The garden was silent except for a few sleepy birds, waking, stretching their wings, chirping here and there. I glanced at the water storage on the other side of the pool, its black mouth wide open behind the trees. Now I remembered that last night Assad had murmured my mother’s name when he read about his young mother’s suicide in the pool of the water storage. I thought hard, but couldn’t remember anything more.
The courtyard vibrated with the loud sound of a radio. This was Baba-Ji’s transistor radio sitting on the edge of the upstairs porch. So the Brothers had gone into his room; any minute they’d come down to the courtyard and find mine. The volume was at maximum and would wake all the neighbors. It was a military march, interrupted every few seconds by a man who recited an epic poem in a declamatory tone. I knew this poem by heart. Baba had read it for us a million times: Let my body perish without my motherland!
In my room, Assad lay on his side, hands between his legs, snoring. If he didn’t wake up, if he missed the rest of his revolution, he’d become furious. So I began making loud noises—dropping bottles and brushes in the sink and banging the doors. The guards would soon come down to find him. I cleared last night’s trash, the leftover food and the vodka bottle, and made more noise. I lay Khanum-Jaan’s will and the deed of the house on top of the half-chewed, black marble box on the desk so that he could see them. But he didn’t wake up. He was going to sleep until noon, his crew would leave without him, and I wouldn’t be able to go back to the gate and work on the bolt.
Now an idea came to mind. I lifted the sleepy parrot—who’d eaten all of the turban and the upper face of the Great Leader and had now curled into a green ball—and placed her next to Assad’s face on the pillow. The old bird looked at Assad with one eye, then turned her head toward me in confusion. She shook her wings and looked around for something to busy her idle beak. There was nothing, so she began biting Assad’s beard. Assad scratched his beard and moved a little. Boor-boor bit him again. Finally he opened his eyes, stared at the parrot absently, and jumped. He glanced at his watch, then looked around. His gaze passed over me and fixed on the morning light pouring from the window. He realized how late it was, cursed under his moustache and rushed to the bathroom.
Pulling up his pants in haste, he rushed from the toilet to the desk, picked up his handgun and car keys, but didn’t notice the documents on top of the marble box. He rested one foot after the other on my clean sheet, pulled on his muddy boots and wrapped his bandana around his neck. Then he picked up his machine gun and ivory cane and rushed toward the door. But before exiting, he stopped, turned to me and said, “I’ll bring some food for lunch. Get some sleep, you look like a ghost!” He left, half his brain still asleep, not remembering last night.
In the courtyard he bumped into Brother Mustafa who was heading down.
“Didn’t I tell you not to open the porch door?” Assad yelled.
“We were looking for you, Brother. The liberals, infidels and Satan worshipers are all gathering in the former Shah Square today—”
“Now it’s called Imam Square, idiot. So what?”
“It’s getting late. We have to disrupt their demonstration, scatter them, and, if necessary, shoot them before they start to deceive people.”
“Who is in command here? Huh?”
“But, Brother—”
“Go upstairs, get the boys, and don’t talk anymore. And from now on, if anyone steps on this porch, I’ll take care of him myself. Tell everybody thi
s is an order! Take this fucking radio inside, too. Can’t you tell it’s babbling liberal junk?”
Arise! Arise!
Click, click, click—the metal heels of Khanum-Jaan’s golden slippers echoed on the asphalt. I’m here, here, here, I announced and walked in the narrow alleys. It was early afternoon and the back streets were vacant, untouched by the revolution. A vender on a bicycle passed by, calling, “Cucumbers! Fresh, slim cucumbers!”
I passed brick houses with barred windows sheltering lonely housewives, their children at school, their husbands at work, themselves somewhere in the dim corners of the house, chopping onions and daydreaming. Some of the kitchen windows were open, giving out the aroma of leftover food, cold grease from unwashed frying pans and the odor of rotten vegetables sitting in overflowing trashcans. In these narrow back alleys life was as stagnant as it had always been. These houses were untouched by the storm.
An old lady like me could feel safe here. Click, click, click—I walked without haste, passing the row of houses. A small girl was home today. She sat on the last step of her house, drawing something with pink chalk on the pavement. I slowed down to watch her. Her mother opened the door a crack and handed her a bowl of green plums. She munched one and spat the seed out. Now she drew two stick figures on the pavement, drew a flag for each and spoke to them in a murmur. When I reached her, she raised her head and looked at me—at my black blouse (covering a heavy manuscript secured in a knapsack against my chest), at my bluish white hair frizzing out of a black scarf, at my face (too smooth for an old woman), and finally at my golden slippers, three centimeters of iron heels clicking noisily on the asphalt. This girl was only a child; she believed I was old.
The Drum Tower Page 16