We drank two large glasses of dark tea and ate freshly baked bread mixed with crunchy sand. As we ate, we chased the flies away. A tiny one found its way into Taara’s ear, buzzed, and stayed there. She tried to get it out, rubbed her ear, hit her head, but the fly kept buzzing inside her head. The breakfast was ruined. We went inside the bus and I looked into her ear with the help of the flashlight. I couldn’t see anything. The fly was buzzing inside her brain, Taara said.
We sat for a long time in the bus, trying to take the intruder out. I didn’t dare poke anything into her ear. If it was true—if a fly was inside, alive and buzzing, or even dead—we needed a doctor. I went back to the caravansary and talked to the driver, hoping a doctor would be among the passengers. He laughed and said doctors didn’t travel by bus, they took the plane and got to Zabol in two hours.
Taara came in, holding her head, hitting it, and shoving her forefinger into her ear like a mad woman. She had forgotten her veil. She was in the same brown maternity dress, made for the fifth month. Her belly was full now, a huge beach ball moving ahead of her, forcing the dress apart and setting itself free. Now all the passengers noticed. Each said something. They all had suggestions. A young man looked into Taara’s ear and said he couldn’t see anything. A woman tried. No result. “It’s buzzing! It’s buzzing!” Taara kept saying. No one finished his breakfast.
Some native women in colorful dresses—layers of silk skirts, green and yellow kerchiefs around their heads—sold knickknacks in the courtyard. Zinc bracelets, earrings, hand-made bead necklaces, charms, talismans containing beaded prayer books inside tiny velvet purses—all were spread on a carpet in front of them. When the women saw the commotion, one of the elders, whose henna-treated braids came down to her waist, approached Taara and said something. The driver said the old woman wanted to look at Taara’s ear. Taara was reluctant. I told her that since everybody else had looked into her ear, the old woman could try as well.
She took Taara to the carpeted bed and said something to the old man with the water pipe. The ancient man moved himself with much effort and mumbled something. The woman helped Taara lie down on her side. The male passengers moved away, as if this was a surgery bed and she was going to get undressed. The women circled around the bed. The native woman bent over Taara and pressed her ear against hers, trying to hear the buzzing fly. Now she put her mouth on Taara’s ear and sucked. Taara gave out a broken scream. The woman took a hairpin out from under her scarf, dipped it in the ear and took out a small fly. Like a magician, she beamed with triumph and showed the little insect to the audience. Now she laughed loudly, revealing a few long, yellow teeth.
The passengers clapped and the native women made a loud catcall, trilling their tongues. Taara hugged the old woman, thanked her, and bought the most expensive item she had in her merchandise—a necklace made of zinc coins. She wore the jingling necklace and with the help of the driver climbed the bus. When she walked and jingled in the aisle, all the passengers clapped and whistled. Women looked at her belly with affection, weaving different stories in their minds—a lost husband, a husband waiting for her in a remote station, a husband left behind to join later, a husband dead, killed, martyred. She was such an angel that no one wove a story that didn’t contain a husband. All through the long trip, fruit, juices, sodas, pastries, salted nuts, cold sandwiches, and even carefully cleaned pomegranate seeds traveled to the back of the bus for Taara, the jingling angel.
Four Directions
In small towns there is always a square with four major streets branching out, offering you a choice of the four directions. You mark your destiny depending on which road you take. Who can tell which way is the right one? Does west take you to security? East to freedom? Is north where fear hides? South where your death awaits?
When our bus reached Zabol’s square, it entered a dusty parking lot and stopped. It was five-thirty—two hours before sunset. We stepped out in a cloud of dust and stood in the middle of the lot. None of the passengers who had earlier fed us fruit and snacks said goodbye. It was New Year’s Eve and all of them rushed home to their families. No one offered us a ride and the kind driver and his assistant vanished.
We walked to the street beside the lot and waited. At any minute a taxi would arrive, we’d check into a motel, pick up the phone book, and find our uncle. But the street was vacant. There were no cars. The other side looked as if a battle had taken place there—half-ruined, soot-covered brick walls and broken windows. This must be the wrong street. We walked toward the square. Taara wore the blue veil and carried the attaché case. I walked behind her—a younger brother, or a servant carrying her heavy bag and the setar. At the square we picked the street to the west, the one with the sun sinking behind its tallest building. We stood waiting. There was no taxi. A pickup truck passed; a few leather-skinned natives with bandannas around their heads and faces sat in the back, dozing. A gust of wind blew dust into our faces. I pulled the cap down to protect my eyes. Taara wore her sunglasses. The air was getting colder by the minute.
“What have we done?” Taara murmured. “What if there are no taxis in this town?”
“Don’t panic. Remember what Baba always said, ‘Fear is the brother of death!’” I said this in good humor to cheer her up, but my voice gave me away. I was afraid too.
Taara was tired. She sat on the curb and spread her bags around her. I paced up and down the pavement, then walked back to the street where the dusty parking lot was—but our bus was gone. We should have stayed by the bus and waited for the driver to come back and help us. Mistake. Mistake. The sun that was now behind the wall of the four-story building would soon melt into the desert sand and the chill would come. Taara didn’t have a jacket. What if her baby came? I walked to a tall building on the corner. The lower part was a shoe store—closed. The top floors were vacant. Next to the dingy shoe store there was a dusty fabric shop, a dustier stationery store, a carpenter’s shop—all closed. They close early in small towns.
Taara sat awkwardly on the curb, holding her belly in her arms, rocking back and forth.
“Pain?”
“No.”
“Do you want something?”
“I want a room and a bathroom. I want to take off my damn clothes and take a shower. My ankles are swollen. My shoes feel tight. I want real food with chunks of meat. A glass of wine. A cigarette.”
“Wait. I’ll knock on all these doors.”
“No. Let’s go to the other side of the square.”
“Wait! A car is coming. Get up, Taara. Let them see your belly.” I helped her to stand up. She removed the veil and showed her big, round belly. An old American car, a once blue Dodge, now gray with powdery dust, approached. A woman rolled down the window. She was unveiled and wore make-up.
“Excuse me, where can we find a hotel around here?” I asked.
The woman stared at me as if I were from another planet. Now she glanced at Taara and fixed her eyes on the middle of her body. But the man driving was full of smile, showing his tar-stained teeth, wide gaps between them—the bad teeth of a six-year-old.
“Hotel?” he asked.
“Or a motel,” Taara said.
“There are a couple of lodging places on Shah Street, oh, sorry, Khomeini Street,” the man said, and laughed. “But I wouldn’t exactly call them motels.”
“You must be from Tehran?” the woman said.
We nodded.
“You have family here?” the man asked.
“We’ve come to look for our uncle,” I said. “We don’t have his address. But we know his name. My sister is not well—”
“I can see that!” the woman said. Now she turned to her husband and whispered, “She’s due!”
“Be our guests! It’s Norooz, after all!” the man said and smiled. “Get in. We’ll find your uncle. I know everybody here!”
We squeezed into the back seat with our luggage. The man was laughing.
“Hotel!” he said. “These caravansaries are for season
al workers and truck drivers. But don’t worry. You’re my guests.”
“I’m sure we’ll find our uncle tomorrow,” Taara said. “It’s a small town.”
“I’ll find him for you,” the man said. “What’s that back there? An instrument?”
“Oh, this is my setar,” Taara said.
“You play it? Excellent! Maybe you can play for us tonight. We have a few guests at home.”
Taara held my hand and squeezed it. The man was too friendly. He laughed all the time and drove recklessly, turning left and right in narrow, dirt alleys, raising a cloud of dust. But the woman was somber, looking out the window as if she was sulking. I could see her profile, the round circle of red rouge on her cheek, not quite blended, a thick black line around her eyes, sticky mascara. The eye that I could see was unblinking, staring out through its charcoal frame.
“We are not from here, either,” the man said. “But we live here. We have to. I mean for now.”
“People are rude and wild here,” the woman pointed out the window. There were some turbaned men walking along the dirt road with two donkeys and a camel. “It’s not easy to live here. I can never take a walk outside.”
“Just a few more months, dear!” the man patted her leg. “Be patient. We have to wait till this business ends.” Now he half-turned and said, “I’m a contractor. I’m building a barracks at the border.”
“At the border?” Taara asked.
“There!” The man pointed his index finger toward the passenger window. We were almost out of the city and the blazing sun was sinking behind the red line of the horizon. “That’s the border of Afghanistan,” he said, pointing at the thin line.
“You mean a barracks for soldiers?” Taara asked.
“When I started six months ago it was supposed to be for the soldiers of the Imperial Army, to protect the border. You know, there is a lot of drug traffic here. But now our work has almost stopped. We have to see if the Islamic Guards are coming here, or what.”
“That’s why I’m saying we shouldn’t stay any longer,” the woman said. “We can’t wait. What if this shit in Tehran lasts forever?”
“They haven’t paid me for what I’ve done, dear. I have to wait and get my money. If the big Ayatollah is in charge now, he has to pay me.”
“To hell with all of them!” the woman said bitterly.
“Here they do other illegal business too,” the man said. Now the road and the desert around us were dark. Taara squeezed my hand again. “These drug smugglers take fugitives over the border.”
“Really?” Taara asked.
“Really,” the man said. “It costs though. Thousands. They’re ripping off these fat generals. It’s dangerous too. An air force general and his family were trying to cross the border into Pakistan, a mine blew, the general went up in pieces. One of the kids was blown up too. The smugglers returned the wife and the other kid.”
“The poor general,” the woman said. “Fucking bad luck.”
“Now you know why they need my barracks?” the man half-turned again and looked at us. “They need my barracks even more than the Shah’s regime did.” He said this to the woman and patted her thigh again. “It won’t take long. They’ll send someone from Tehran with the orders to continue the work.”
“Are we going there now?” I asked. He was still driving, and except for a few huts in the middle of the sand, there was nothing left of the town.
“To the barracks? Oh, no. We’re going home. It’s a bit outside of town—a deserted area. But it’s not a bad house. Spacious, for sure. It’s one of a kind in this desert.” He said this, chuckled, and repeated it. “One of a kind!”
At Master Memaar’s
“Here! Welcome to our resort!” the woman said, and stepped out of the car. She was short and plump and wore a tight black skirt and a tight red blouse, its buttons on the verge of popping off her large bosom. Her hair, fixed with spray, was wine red and curled down below her ears. She unlocked the narrow, wooden door and we entered. The man and the woman took their shoes off in the dark corridor. We did the same. There were more than twenty pairs of shoes behind the door.
The couple led us into the first room on the left and turned on the light. The room was almost bare, but fully carpeted with a cheap hand-woven rug. In a corner, mattresses, quilts, and pillows formed a little mound, covered by a bedspread. We put down our load.
“Be comfortable, please!” the woman said. “Take that chador off!” she told Taara, “I know you’re not used to it. You just wore it for the trip, huh? The minute I saw you two, I told my husband, these are city kids. Let’s pick them up. They’ll get lost here. This is a dangerous town, I’m telling you! A few nights ago they cut a man’s throat from corner to corner, just behind the wall of the garage where you got off. I told you earlier, they’re a bunch of wild people. Nomads. Uncivilized.”
“Okay now, you don’t need to scare them,” the man said. Out of his car, he looked small and boyish, but his sideburns were gray. He had an old-fashioned, thin mustache, carefully trimmed. “Make some tea for them,” he told the woman. “I’ll go and get some dinner.”
“Buy some kebob,” the woman said. “The inn is open till nine. I’m starving!”
“You better give me a hand with these bottles in the trunk,” the man told her. “We had to drive twenty kilometers to a Jew’s house to buy some wine for Norooz,” he explained to us. “Rest now. Make yourselves comfortable. We’ll be back soon.”
The woman left the room, but the man stood in the frame of the door and said, “Oh, how absentminded we are! My wife’s name is Mehri, and everyone calls me Master Memaar, the house builder. Drop the Master please, Memaar is good enough.” He showed his cavitied teeth and left.
We stood in the middle of the room, listening to the clinking sounds of the bottles being carried inside. Then the car took off and Mehri opened and closed cabinet doors in the kitchen. Feeling weak, Taara melted onto the floor and I sat next to her and rubbed her swollen knees and ankles. She lay her head against the wall and closed her eyes.
There was a window above our heads covered on the inside by a bamboo shade. Another window, opposite us, looked out over the dirt alley. That one’s shade was rolled up. The room was chilly. Taara pulled the veil over herself and shivered. I pulled the shade’s string and looked out. There was a big backyard and a square pool, glittering with dark water. A dusty tamarind tree grew crookedly by the pool. An outhouse was at the left corner of the yard. I saw several rooms along a long porch on the right, all opening to the yard. The lights in some of the rooms were on. The building had a second story too, most of which windows glared in the dark.
“This is a big house, Taara.”
“How big?”
“Many rooms. Like an inn.”
“They said they had other guests.”
“Are they letting their rooms?”
“Wouldn’t they tell us, then?” Taara asked. “They volunteered to tell us everything.”
“You mean all these people in these rooms are their guests?”
“How do I know? Are you afraid of Master Memaar?” She opened her eyes for the first time and looked up at me.
“He’s too friendly and generous. I wonder what’s hidden under his generosity.”
“Ah, stop this, for God’s sake. You’ve become so cynical.”
Now the woman came in with a small kerosene heater and a kettle. She put the heater in the middle of the room and placed the kettle on top. The kettle began to hiss. She went out again and came back with a china teapot. After taking off the kettle’s lid and placing the pot carefully on top of the kettle, she sat cross-legged on the floor and relaxed. She had changed from her tight skirt into wide transparent pajamas.
“The tea will brew in few minutes,” she said. “Did you pull up the shade? It’s okay. But make sure to drop it when you want to change,” she told Taara. “There are men out there. They get water from the pool.”
“There is no running wate
r?” Taara asked worriedly.
“Not for them, dear. But for us, there is. The people on the other side of the yard don’t have plumbing, but we do. There is one inconvenience, though—we have to share the outhouse with them. Whenever you need to use it, go to the kitchen, fill the plastic pitcher with water and go out. Don’t use the pool water.”
“One toilet for all?” Taara asked.
“I told Memaar a million times when we first came here, ‘Build a toilet inside the house, you’re a house builder, for God’s sake!’ He kept saying we’re staying here for just a short time. Now look! Six months have passed and we’re stuck. God knows how long we’ll have to stay in this hell.”
“What do you do all day, when your husband goes to work?” Taara asked.
“Nothing!” she said. “I’m bored to death. There is a puny, dirt-covered bazaar two kilometers from here that I prefer not to go to. I catch a ride from one of the men and go all the way to Zabol to do some shopping. At least the bazaar is bigger there. Sometimes they sell neat stuff too. All smuggled. We’ll go shopping tomorrow. You can buy three yards of Indian silk for nothing! Twenty-four-karat gold earrings and bracelets for nothing. Leather bags, belts, American cigarettes. Whisky! But they’ve become cautious about that last item recently.” She sighed and said, “That’s my only fun. I go shopping some days. We can buy you some clothes tomorrow. You need to change. I don’t think you have much in that small handbag.”
“No. Not much,” Taara said. “But I need to wash first. Do you have a shower in the house?”
“We have a bathhouse at the end of the yard. It doesn’t have running water, but we take a few buckets of water with us and it’s not that hard. First thing tomorrow we’ll warm up some water for you.”
“It’s nice of you,” Taara said.
The Drum Tower Page 26