I followed the setar’s melody and looked through a wide glass door. On a long couch, Taara sat, her legs stretched out before her, resting on the glass top of a coffee table. The setar rested on top of her round belly. She hit and strummed the four strings, now frowning, now closing her eyes, biting her lower lip. Her long hair cascaded down around her.
The glass door was the sliding kind and when I opened it the strong smell of coffee made me dizzy. Before I could say anything, the chubby woman came in from another door, carrying a tray in her hand.
“Oh!” She was startled. “You scared me, child! How come you changed into a boy?” she said this with a heavy accent and laughed.
Taara kept playing as if I wasn’t there. Or maybe she was away in her own head and couldn’t see me.
“I came last night, but the door was locked. I couldn’t find the entrance.”
“Ah, child! All the front doors are in Jamshid Alley, back doors in Farshid Alley. Your sister waited and waited, and finally she fell asleep.”
“Why is she playing this early? Is it okay with you?”
“Oh, it’s okay with me and Avaak. We love music. Look! Look out! This was our restaurant. We served dinner. We had live music—balalaika, accordion, mandolin. My cousins played. The Guards closed our business. Now it’s just the little deli. Before, most of our income came from the homemade vodka, wine, and cherry liqueur. No more of that! Just cheese and bread and some bologna. They don’t let us sell ham. We’re broke!”
Taara finished her piece, looked up and smiled. Her face was pale but radiant. She put her setar in the case. She didn’t even ask where I’d been all night.
“Here!” the old woman said. “My coffee is famous in this neighborhood! Sit and have some. And the cake. I baked a dozen last night. Now that’s what I do. I bake marble cakes and sell them to stores. See if you like it.”
“Yerjanik! Yerjanik!” the man called from the shop.
“Oh, excuse me, Avaak is calling me. I’ll be back. Don’t let the coffee get cold.”
“They’re angels!” Taara said. “They fed me last night. Guess what? Veal cutlet and fried potatoes and a heavenly red wine Yerjanik has made. I drank half the bottle and played for them. We partied until midnight, and then I fell asleep. Did you stay with your friends?”
I said neither yes nor no, but sipped my thick, bitter coffee and looked at the shady yard through the wide glass door. Swallows had gathered in the top branches of a pomegranate tree, chirping crazily. Large grape-shaped clusters of purple jasmine had climbed the small dome of a wooden trellis and hung over the sides, creating a flowery pyramid. Farther back, a small stone fountain gurgled against the brick wall. A narrow, silvery stream poured from a hole in the wall and rolled over the rocks that lay at the bottom of the fountain. A couple of fat, gray pigeons drank from it.
This was all I needed in my life. A room at the end of such a yard, where I could grow old and die. But we had to move on. We were too close to Drum Tower.
To the East
Taara, wearing the blue veil, enjoyed pretending to be an older woman. I pulled the black cap over my brows and walked behind her, carrying her luggage like a porter. It was dusk and the Eastline sat in the dusty garage, panting.
“Hey, boy, take the lady to the back seat,” the driver told me and tore the tickets. “The last bench has more space. Let her be comfortable.”
At last we were sitting in the back of the Eastline and the bus was leaving the garage. The street was calmer than yesterday; it would look like any street in the world if a group of black-veiled women hadn’t suddenly jumped in front of the cars, blocking their way. They carried gigantic pictures of the Great Leader and chanted through their veils, “You are my soul, Imam! You are the breaker of idols, Imam!” And “O’ God, O’ God, until the last revolt, keep our leader safe and sound!” They looked like a colony of penguins, but penguins with submachine guns slung on their shoulders. It was half an hour before they left.
“The devotees of the Holy Revolution!” a passenger said.
“Black ravens,” someone else added.
“Death squad!” a woman said louder.
Taara and I looked at each other. Apparently no one from the Party of God or its sympathizers were on this bus.
As we left the city, the sporadic shootings, distant explosions, and hysterical chants of the black ravens faded out. The tall pictures of the Great Leader and the angry graffiti on the walls, cursing the infidels, were behind us now. With the land opening ahead of us, the driver turned on his radio and a military march filled the bus. He turned it off and inserted a cassette. The thin voice of a prerevolutionary popular singer rose in the dim bus, “Even when I’m drunk, this damned pain stays with me—,” she whined. Taara’s head fell on my shoulder and her warm breath brushed my neck. I sat still and watched the night descending on the dry land until darkness was complete. We were approaching the desert and I wanted to hear the barren earth sighing. All I wished for now was silence.
Taara raised her head and muttered something in dream language. I covered her body with the blue chador and looked out the window again. The driver had turned on the lights so that people could read. All I could see in the windshield was myself: thin face, big sunken eyes, and the shadow of the black cap darkening my brows. Who are you? a tiny wind in my head asked in a small voice. I touched the tip of my cap in the mirror of the window, felt the gun in my pants pocket and looked at Taara from the corner of my eye. Her golden hair brushed my cheek. I glanced at the ball of her belly and the tiny wind repeated in my head, Who are you? What is all this about?
Taara raised her head and whispered in my ear, “Si means thirty, morgh means bird; Simorgh means thirty birds.”
“Hush—you need to sleep.”
Only to contradict me, she sat up and began to talk.
“Long ago, these thirty birds became one. The Mother Simorgh hatches one single egg every thousand years.”
“Some legends say every five hundred years,” I said.
“Does it matter?” she looked at me, annoyed. “In my dream—not a new dream—in an old dream in that tenant house, I saw her. She whispered in my ear. She told me to search for her. If I seek, I’ll find. And that was when I left.”
“Taara—”
“Listen! Listen! Don’t interrupt me. I’m not through with the dream. She had two normal wings. By normal, I mean the way Baba-Ji has described them in his book, eagle-like, huge. But she had two extra wings—curling and twisting, as if they had life of their own. They were not quite like serpents, but similar, or maybe they were streaks of rainbow—red and blue and purple. These wings were like roots reaching for the earth. With these she picked me up.”
“In your dream.”
“In my dream. But I woke up and didn’t see where she took me.”
“Probably to the top of Mount Ghaf, where she takes everybody else.”
“You’re being sarcastic, Talkhoon. I’m serious.”
“The bird is just in the books, Taara. Baba knew it too.”
“You don’t know Baba. I know him.”
“Sleep now. It’s a long night and everybody else is sleeping. It’s an eighteen-hour drive. Just three hours have passed. I don’t want you to have a bellyache in the middle of the trip.”
“I won’t. How many times do I have to tell you? I know when my baby is due.”
She was quiet and sulky for a while and didn’t sleep. The driver turned off the lights and lowered the singer’s sad song. His assistant began a conversation with him to keep him from dozing off. What reached the back of the bus was not clear.
When I saw the desert in the gray light of dawn, I touched the windowpane. The cold penetrated. A warm gush of heat rising from somewhere under the seat felt pleasant. I was sleepy, but I wanted to see the dawn, when daylight defeats darkness. I blinked several times and rubbed my eyes. Yesterday at this time I was sitting on the porch of that vacant house waiting for the long night to end. I thought
I’d lost Taara until I heard her singing. Now she sat next to me eating a piece of marble cake the Armenian woman had wrapped in a napkin for her.
After finishing the last crumb of her cake, she turned to me and said, “I left Vahid.”
“You wrote to me—”
“He was hopeless and I left him. I didn’t want my baby to know him.”
She looked at the dark window. Outside, the sky was the deepest shade of blue.
“I think I didn’t love him enough to stay, to endure.” She pulled her hair back, separated a bunch and tied it around the thick pony tale behind her neck. “What I told you about the Simorgh was true. She came to me in my dream and that was my cue. It was as if I was waiting for someone to tell me that the whole thing was hopeless and I had to leave that house. And she came and lifted me up.” She rubbed her eyes the way children do, with her fists.
“You have to seek it, then you’ll find it. The thirty birds sought her, they became her.”
“This is in Attar’s book,” I said. “Conference of the Birds—twelfth century.”
“Attar was a Sufi. Baba-Ji was a Sufi too. But he hid it from everybody. It was his big secret. I’ve become one too. But you don’t believe in divine unity,” she said. “What do you believe in, anyway?”
I didn’t have an instant answer. She waited for me for a long moment, her stare burning my cheek.
“In survival,” I said. “I try to survive.”
“This is not a belief.”
“Yes, it is. The eastern gate was there at the far end of the garden, hidden under decades of vines and weeds—thick, like a tangle of frozen ropes. I had to cut them with a kitchen knife. I had to do this in rain and sun, midnight, dawn, at any time I could find for it. I had to use my bare hands—look!” I showed her my palms.
“What are these stitches?”
“I broke the window after he caught me once.”
“There are new cuts too.”
“These are from the vines. My palms have more lines than anyone else’s,” I said. “I’ve added new lines to my destiny. Look! My lifeline is longer now, extended by a cut. My love line is distorted, scratched out.”
She held my hands and looked at them closely. “You opened that gate—”
“But he found me on the steps of the train station, took me back to the basement, brought me a black gown to wear and a white gown to wed in. The gown had multiple layers of gauze, lace, and satin. It was too long for me; he had to stitch the hems so that I could wear it and he could marry me on Sacrifice Day.”
“Stop this!”
“I used the gate again. This time I had to steal his gun and put someone in jail and release someone else.”
“You’ve told me this already. But it sounded funny, the way you said it at first. It’s not funny now. I can’t believe you did all this. How could you? I mean all alone, by yourself?”
“I didn’t think I could either. But there was no other way. No bird came to my rescue. Once or twice I looked up at the sky—nothing. Baba-Ji didn’t wake up either. I went up and pleaded with him. Khanum didn’t save me. Taara didn’t remember that I was all alone in the basement. Father didn’t stop his revolution to save his own daughter. Mother didn’t come back to life. Vafa forgot me.”
“Stop now,” she said. “I get it. I think I know what you believe in. Don’t say any more and don’t make me feel guilty either. I had to save myself, too. My story is different from yours, but I survived too. Now let’s not talk about these things. Maybe sometime when we’re settled in a room, I’ll open that black attaché and read a few things to you.”
“You wrote?”
“I’ve always written. And I’ve kept everything. Even the composition assignments I wrote at school. I wrote two dozen songs in that house—I wrote letters that I didn’t mail. For you, for Father, for Khanum, and Baba-Ji.”
“Father has something for you too,” I said. “When he came a few months ago and hid in my closet, he read this long poem and said it was for you. It’s here.”
“You brought it?”
“Of course. It’s between the pages of the Simorgh book.”
“Give it to me. Now! You should’ve given it to me the first minute you saw me.”
“My knapsack wasn’t with me.”
“Okay. Where is it?”
I had to unbutton my shirt in the dark, unzip the knapsack and take out the whole manuscript. Under the yellow night light we leafed through the pages to find the poem. A tear dropped from the end of Taara’s chin, smearing the green ink on one tiny word so that it reformed into the shape of a miniature butterfly. We found Father’s poem. Taara snatched the yellow paper and moved away from me. She read by herself, in a whisper, sniffling all through it. People were waking up. A baby cried. The driver turned on the music. The same tape. The thin-voiced singer lamented about another love affair. “I’ve been left alone, so utterly alone—”
Taara returned the poem.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“About what?”
“Father’s poem.”
“It’s good. Different from Vahid’s style. Father uses a lot of symbols. When he says the woman with hyacinth braids will arrive one day, he doesn’t mean a real woman, he means the revolution.”
“Oh, I thought he meant our mother. That’s why I didn’t get it when he said it was about the revolution.”
“I wonder why he’s dedicated this poem to me?”
“Maybe you’re the woman with hyacinth braids?”
“Nonsense. Where was he when I was growing up?”
“Maybe he dedicated the poem to you because he misses you.”
“How did he react when you said I’d run away with a man?”
“He became sad. Very.”
Taara sighed and put her hands on top of her belly and looked into vacant space.
“The revolution is an excuse,” she said. “Khanum-Jaan was not always wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Khanum was right when she said our mother’s disappearance drove him crazy.”
“Do you think Father is crazy?”
“This obsession with the revolution is crazy. He abandoned us.”
“Shouldn’t all the revolutionaries be obsessed with the revolution?”
“But this is not even his revolution! Is he a religious fanatic?”
“He supports them now. Assad saw him.”
“Nonsense. Father is a communist. Did you know this?”
“He told me. Indirectly. Assad told me too.”
“I’ve seen a lot of them. There is more than one kind: Russian, Chinese, Cuban, guerrilla fighters, bookish types, extremist, terrorist, anarchist, academician—. They came to that house. Talk, talk, talk.”
“Was Vahid one of them?”
“Oh, no. Vahid worships a rose petal, a piece of rock—”
“Father’s poem made you sad.”
“It reminded me that he exists.”
“Sometimes you wish he were dead, don’t you?”
“How do you know?”
“Because it makes it easier to mourn him. Doesn’t it? But when he is alive and not present, you don’t know how to mourn.”
“You’ve changed, Talkhoon.”
“Look at the sand, Taara, like a yellow sea. Tides are moving. It’s dawn.”
“This girl kicked me all night, you know? Right here.” She put my hand on the right side of her belly, close to her thigh.
“How do you know it’s a girl?”
“I know it. Once, in that house, I dreamed that I’d named her Soraya. But I woke up with horror. I said no, this woman, this mother of ours is too scratchy.”
“Scratchy?”
“Exactly. She’s like a book written in bad handwriting and with a messy pen, and then scratched all over. It’s impossible to get what she’s about.”
“People’s stories distorted her.”
“What she really was—”
“What s
he really was got lost.”
“That’s what I mean by scratchy. No, I don’t want to name my daughter Soraya. I would call her ‘Negaar,’ except—”
“Except she is even more scratchy.”
We laughed and waited, as if for a name to descend from the roof of the bus.
“How about Talkhoon?” she said.
“Oh, no! My name brings bad luck.”
She laughed. “How silly you are! You are even more superstitious than I am.”
“But this is not even a name. Assad made it up.”
“Nonsense. He didn’t. He lies. Baba-Ji named you because you were cute, because he loved his herb bed—his basil and tarragon. I always envied your name.”
“You did?”
“Oh, yes. It was unique. Mine was ordinary. If I used the full name—Taahereh—it sounded like an old lady’s name; if I used Taara, it sounded too common. Grandpa Vazir’s ghost named me.”
“Assad named me.”
“He didn’t.”
“He did!”
We sat for a long time and watched the yellow tides giving the illusion of movement, repeating the same shape and color. I touched the windowpane. Heat penetrated.
“Vahid will die,” she said.
At a Caravansary
We reached a courtyard covered with sand. In the middle, a mud and clay caravansary sat. Two outhouses were behind the building and the vast desert spread all around. Men and women formed lines in front of each outhouse. I had to stand in the men’s line. In the women’s line, Taara covered her face with the blue veil and laughed.
The morning sun burned. Its rays penetrated my skin like hot needles. Native men who worked in the caravansary wore turbans and puffy black pants. Their skin was dark leather, toughened under the lash of sandstorms.
There was a wooden bed outside the building, covered with a threadbare rug. An old native sat on it, smoking a water pipe. When I reached the old man’s bed, I saw a pink rose petal floating in the glass container at the base of the water pipe. The native took a deep drag, water made a gurgling sound, and the rose petal danced. A gust of wind threw dry sand at my back. Farid’s black cap was covered with a white powder. I touched the pocket on my chest and felt Farid’s wallet. I touched my pants pocket and felt Assad’s gun. I would protect my sister. I would take care of her.
The Drum Tower Page 25