The Drum Tower

by Farnoosh Moshiri

  We party every night. Tenants from the different rooms get together, drinking and smoking. Some of these people are very intelligent—they discuss art, philosophy, and politics. There was a movie director here once, a famous poet, an actress, a small girl with long black hair who talked about the French philosopher, Sartre. And my belly is rising by the minute, not letting me enjoy myself. If it wasn’t for my growing belly I’d do everything everyone does. But this baby is always present. She presses herself against the wall of my womb and stares at me through the transparent skin of my belly. When I stand in front of the mirror looking at myself, I see her, small and imprisoned, as though a hundred years old, pleading with her wide-open eyes to come out into this world. Its dark here, she says, it’s dark, let me out! I see her full image when she turns toward me, and I know that I have to save her.

  One afternoon Vahid leaves the house, and I go to the window and look out. It’s late autumn and the red maple leaves float above the ground. The street looks clean and wet, as if swept and hosed down. I smell the scent of the damp earth and feel happy. I feel happy because I think of the possibility of not being here. A few children play at the door of their house. I raise my head to the sky and see a bird, or rather the shadow of a bird. I can tell that it has four wings, two smaller, two longer, extended toward the earth. I see the shadow of its talons. They are big and strong, and could lift a person.

  I say to myself, Real or just a shadow, this is a good omen. I take the stack of money from the drawer and leave the house. I say to myself, I’ll follow the bird and go wherever she leads me. I walk. I keep looking at the sky. The street is full of people. There is a demonstration going on. Men and women walk slowly with banners, shouting, asking for freedom or food. They act as if someone will listen to them and give them what they need.

  And I find myself among them. It’s impossible to avoid. They have filled the street from corner to corner. I walk and chant what they chant, absently, looking up at the sky. The shadow of the bird hovers above me. It’s a good omen and I follow. We pass Shah Reza Avenue, College Intersection, Drum Tower. The bird doesn’t enter our garden. I know that. I know that the Simorgh would never take refuge in a war tower. Baba picked the wrong place to look for it. Baba was where the bird belonged at first, in the mountains, but came to the city to look for it in the house of the war viziers. What a mistake our grandfather made. So I feel that I have had a vision, or whatever you may call it. The bird resides on top of the Black Mountains of Azerbaijan, where Baba-Ji was born and heard the Simorgh story from his father. I buy a ticket and go to Ahar.

  Now Vahid, the gloomy house of the tenants, the actor with the dusty mirror, the parties, the smoke, the haze, the drunken girls, are all behind me. I don’t even remember very much. My belly is growing and I’m going where I think the Simorgh is.

  I’ll make this long story short, Talkhoon, and skip the door-to-door search, the narrow uphill streets, the blind alleys, the houses of Baba’s relatives now occupied by strangers, the house where he was born now a ruin. I’ll skip all this and get to the point where someone tells me about an Angha family, the only one left of the tribe, living out of town at the skirt of the mountain. This is Baba-Ji’s cousin’s house. But the man, the cousin, is dead, and his wife and son live in this shack at the foot of the Black Mountain. I take this as a good sign.

  The son is forty years old and has red and yellow hands. He dyes wool. They are poor. I pay money in advance and promise more. The man, Zafar, takes me every morning with his donkey to the mountain. (Yes, with my big belly I sit on a donkey, climbing the unpaved mountain roads!). He leaves me there in a shepherd’s shack for hours. I tell him I’m an ornithologist, looking for a rare bird. I always take my black attaché with me. When Zafar leaves, I sit on a rock in front of the shack or walk around, looking up at the sharp, snow-covered peaks, or gazing at the silvery stream running along the rocks. Cold wind hits my face and powder snow settles on me. I remember some passages of Baba’s book word by word:

  “The mysterious bird was called Phoenix by the Greeks. It also means ‘purple-red,’ ‘crimson,’ ‘date,’ ‘date palm,’ and ‘Phoenicia.’ The date palm continually renews itself. All these words suggest that the bird is associated with red and purple and comes from the East, the land of sunrise. The Simorgh is the Bird of Fire.”

  I keep going to the mountain until it gets too cold to stand the harsh winds—even with the sheepskin coat that I borrow from the old woman. At last, I give up when there is no sign of the red purple wings or even that pale shadow I’d seen in the skies of the city. My belly is growing; the old woman and her son get less hospitable and whisper behind my back in Turkish, thinking I’m another crazy Angha with a bastard child inside me. I feel that it’s time to go.

  It’s a twenty-hour bus ride to Tehran. But I’m planning to stop in Tabriz and stay in a hotel. I need a few days to gather my thoughts. Then I’ll go to Tehran and start a new life. But I have to find a place in the big city. Khanum-Jaan won’t have me in Drum Tower with my enormous belly and I can’t go back to Vahid’s house. I don’t want my daughter to know him.

  I’m writing this letter to you, Talkhoon, while the bus is traveling on a narrow road curtained on either side by ash trees. These trees are not green, Talkhoon, they’re gray. The breeze plays with the long, gray branches, waving them in the air, like some old woman’s long hair. My fellow traveler, a middle-aged man from Azerbaijan, who wears a brown fedora, explains to me that ash trees bear small, yellow fruit like olives. People of this area dry the fruit and eat it. It’s sweet and full of nutrition and it’s called senjed. I tell him that I’ve eaten senjed before at the Norooz table and he smiles with joy, as if he is the one who has created the fruit. So this way we pass between the ash trees and I write to you on the hard surface of my black attaché and my kind neighbor takes a noisy nap with his head resting on my shoulder.

  Black Uniform/White Gown

  Someone had decorated the table: a glazed blue vase, a thick, hard-covered brown book (I knew it was Baba-Ji’s Simorgh book in print), and a chestnut-colored, polished setar whose neck was much longer than a real setar’s. These were all arranged on a small table, covered with a white, laced cloth. I sat, watching them, thinking how good it would be to cut a few long branches of star jasmine and put them in this blue vase. A gust of wind blew in from an open window and brushed my face. I stretched my hand to pick up the book, but an annoying sound—a hammer hitting a nail—stopped me. I pulled my hand back. I can open this book only when there is peace and silence in the world. Absolute silence. Because I have to read it aloud. The hammer hit the nail harder and harder, repeating the same nerve-wracking bangs. It went on for so long that the bright room, the table, and I all disappeared.

  I opened my eyes and saw Assad standing on top of a chair, banging nails with a hammer. He was hanging a curtain—a dark gray fabric the color of ashes under burned coal. He was in his old threadbare house pants and yellowish undershirt that stretched across his round belly and had sweat rings under the arms. His khaki uniform hung on the back of the chair and a tall bottle of vodka stood on the desk.

  All my senses rang and my nerves vibrated as if an electric current ran through my body. He was in his house clothes and his bottle was on the table. He was going to stay for a while. I held my breath, thinking about the knives. They were still in the closet among my clothes. I could hide one under my arm the way I’d done before. Baba’s manuscript was safe in the knapsack, now as always strapped on my chest. Taara’s letter had joined the pages of the bird book. But Khanum-Jaan’s letter lay open next to me on the bed. Let Assad read the letter and know that Khanum wanted to come home. Let him remember to feed Baba.

  I closed my eyes to keep from seeing him, but then I opened them quickly, thinking that if I pretended sleep he would slip under the blanket. So I ran to the closet, picked up one of the knives, and rushed to the bathroom.

  “Woke you up, huh?” He said from the top of the ch
air. “I have to put this curtain up. All these boys are outside all the time and tomorrow a bunch of workers will come to cut the trees. We need privacy.”

  Which trees? I wanted to ask. But I couldn’t talk with this man. In the bathroom, I secured the knapsack on my chest and held the knife under my arm. Now I came out to creep into the closet and sit there like old times, but Assad blocked my way; he had a large white box in his hand.

  “This is for you, Talkhoon. Sit here, let me open it.” He had one of those wide, yellow-toothed grins.

  I stood by the bathroom door and didn’t move. He put the box on the bed, opened it, and drew out a black gown. It was something like a long raincoat. Then he took out a large black scarf.

  “This is your uniform. It’s not as pretty as the dresses you’ve always had, but from now on you have to wear it. Not only you, but all the women in this country should wear uniforms. This is the Imam’s order. You women must cover your hair and body. I’ve really come to believe in this. It makes sense. It reduces temptation and prevents lust and adultery. Later, I’ll buy you a couple more so you can wash and change.”

  Now he shoved his hand inside the box and laughed. “Did you think that was all? There is something prettier here. Very special. Let me see—aha!” He pulled out a white gown. A wedding gown. It was so long that it took him a while to take out all of the skirt and its train. Layers of lace over lace, gauze over gauze. “I want you to put this on and climb the chair. I know it’s too long for you. I’ll measure the hem and fix it. Come on, put it on.”

  I didn’t move.

  “Are you shocked? Did you think it wouldn’t happen? There is no other way, Talkhoon. It’s not good for my reputation to spend time alone with you while we’re not legally wed. We have to finish the deal. Next month, when the whole country celebrates the first Sacrifice Day after the Great Revolution, we’ll have our wedding. How about that? But we need to fix this. It’s too long for you. I took it off of a wooden manikin in a fancy department store. We occupied the store and turned it into a mosque. Come on, I want to measure the hem. Hey, I’m tired, Talkhoon. You don’t even care if I’ve slept the past thirty-six hours. I just have the morning off.”

  He approached me with the gown in his hand, but I moved back, slipped into the bathroom, and shut the door behind me. I pressed my back against it because it didn’t have a lock.

  “Now, what the fuck is this again?” he yelled. “Why are you acting like that? Open the door and come out. If you don’t want to wear this now, don’t wear it. To hell with you!” He grumbled from a distance now. “Why do you have to poison everything? Why do you ruin my mood all the time? I’m telling you I’m exhausted and I need to rest.”

  I heard him drop himself onto the chair and take something out of a paper bag. He opened the bottle of vodka.

  I stayed in the bathroom for a long time, pressing the knife against my body. When I didn’t hear him anymore, I opened the door a crack and saw him on the bed, flat on his stomach, snoring. He’d drunk some of the vodka, but hadn’t touched the food. Four long sandwiches lay on the desk. I smelled fresh salami, pickles and sliced tomatoes. I picked a sandwich, tiptoed out of the room into the corridor, and sat on the floor next to the two large burlap sacks full of old clothes. I leaned back against the laundry room’s wall and ate with appetite. From the window I could see part of the courtyard. It was Hassan’s shift again. He sat on Khanum’s folding chair, teaching Boor-boor to say, “One party, Party of God.” Three workers hit the low brick wall with stone hammers. The old flowerbed and the fountain were full of pieces of broken brick. The few pansies left in the bed had been crushed.

  Seeing the men, I remembered what Assad had said about building apartment houses. He wanted to tear up the tower, the trees, and the bushes—the climbing star jasmine—the one from which my mother plucked its tiny blossoms and put them between her breasts. He wanted to uproot Baba-Ji’s dryandra tree under which we held our breath and waited for the bird to come; my father’s rose arbor where he wrote poems on cigarette papers. He was going to flatten the garden, run a tractor over Baba-Ji’s herb bed, cut the weeping willows behind which Grandma Negaar’s ghost had hidden for half a century. Then the eastern gate would be revealed and I’d be trapped here forever.

  The bite of sandwich turned to stone and tears blurred my vision. If Assad uprooted the trees and flattened the garden, there would remain no hope.

  “One party, Party of God! Come on, you stupid aristocrat! Aren’t you a parrot?” Hassan was mad at the bird.

  Boor-boor’s emerald green feathers glistened in the bright daylight. Having been fed by different guards, and enjoying the spring sun, she looked completely recovered. Now she jerked her neck and stared at Hassan with her only eye, puzzled. But Jangi was sulky and sat by his cage, panting nervously. He didn’t like the men. The one phrase the boy insisted on teaching the parrot irritated the dog. Now he saw me, or smelled my sandwich, and came down the steps and sat in front of me. I gave him my leftovers and he ate greedily. Looking at Jangi, I remembered our only walk together, following Taara and her friend. I remembered that busy intersection where I lost my sister, or decided to lose her. I wondered how the course of events would be different if I’d brought Taara home. I realized that I had been responsible for my own entrapment and for Taara’s misery. Where was she now? In a third-rate hotel in Tabriz, gazing at her growing belly, “gathering her thoughts”? If Taara were in this house, Assad could never trap me here. Taara and I would think of a way to confront him. So was it true that I was crazy?

  At five, when Hassan’s shift ended and Morad came with his transistor radio, Hassan tapped on the window to wake Assad. A few minutes later, Assad came out and saw Jangi and me sitting together in front of the laundry room. He was wearing a clean uniform and a black bandana around his neck. His eyes were bloodshot. He hadn’t slept enough and he was in a bad mood.

  “Get up!” He said angrily. “I have people out there. Get inside and put on your uniform. If I see you one more time with bare head and bare feet, I’ll start to do what I should’ve done before. I’ll make you black and blue. Understand? And wear a pair of black pants and black socks under the uniform. No more barefoot around hear. You are a woman—do you get this? Crazy or not crazy, you have to cover yourself.”

  He limped toward the steps, using the cane to climb. He left without saying when he’d be back.

  Another Disguise

  I waited a long time for the night-shift boy to fall asleep. I knew he would. These were children after all, not grown men. This one didn’t look like a street boy. He was literate—always brought a book and read in the light of his gas lantern. Outside, there was curfew and the city lights went off at ten o’clock.

  In my dark room, I wore Assad’s dirty khaki uniform and secured the waist with a tight belt. The shirt’s stench turned my stomach, but I had no choice. This was my most dangerous flight. It was curfew outside and I had on a Revolutionary Guard’s uniform, many sizes too large for me. I lit a candle and looked at myself in the mirror to make sure my appearance was convincing. It was not. Even if the rolled-up pants legs and the baggy shirt passed notice, my hair was suspect. It was longer now, and although I’d combed it back with gel, it looked girlish. I picked up the scissors and cut my hair short. But the haircut was lousy; it looked crooked. So, with Assad’s razor, I shaved my head. My scalp bled and burned, but there was no way back—my head was half shaved and I had to finish the job. When I was done, I smeared some hand cream on my bald skin to stop the burning. In the mirror, I saw a sexless lunatic fresh from the public asylum. Searching for a long time in the crowded closet, I finally found my black woolen hat. One cold winter Daaye had woven it for me. I put it on and sat down and waited.

  The boy kept reading. I waited for so long that I thought I could kill the bastard. I could get out, attack him from behind, and stab him with the knife I’d hidden in the knapsack. I could kill the boy because he didn’t stop reading, wasting my precio
us time. The unusual quiet of the night added to my anxiety—no gunshots or distant explosions. I could hear Jangi snoring in his doghouse.

  At last, I heard a thud. The boy’s book fell on the brick floor. Then he spread his bandana and knelt on it. I thought he was going to take a nap, but he prayed instead—knelt and bent and rose, knelt again and murmured to himself. I could kill him while praying and send him to heaven where his Allah and his dead ayatollahs were. But at last he lay down on the floor, curled up like a fetus, and slept. He was exhausted.

  When I was about to leave the room, I saw the clay bear on the desk. But how could I break it without making a sound? That would wake up the boy. I should have broken it before, when the sound of the workers in the yard would have covered the bear’s explosion. Again, I hadn’t planned well. That money could make me secure for a long time.

  There was no way to take the bear, so I left Assad’s money and tiptoed upstairs to the courtyard. When I reached the boy and his lantern on the brick floor, I almost tripped over his book. One Hundred and One Prayers and More. So this was what the idiot read. Quietly, I climbed the steps and went upstairs. I had to see Baba-Ji before leaving.

  The lobby was bare. Once a large Kashan carpet had lain on the floor and a crystal chandelier with eighty candle-shaped lamps had lit the large panels of Persian miniatures. Now, along the walls the guards had piled boxes of ammunition, boots, rifles, machine guns, and handguns. The smell of men’s sweat, cigarette butts, and the residue from fired weapons hung in the thick air. I turned to the right, entered Baba-Ji’s study and turned on my flashlight. The room was empty. I moved the light’s small circle all around. Baba and his recliner were gone. My heart sank. My knees buckled and I sat on the floor.