Uncle Kia’s wife and her daughters in native clothes looked as fake as guests at a costume party. The twins constantly cried and their mother threatened them. She wouldn’t buy them this or that or she’d take this or that from them. The woman had forgotten that there were no shops around to buy or not buy and the children didn’t have much left to lose.
Mr. Sadiq, the SAVAK agent, unable to hide himself in the vast desert, stood behind a horse, smoking. Uncle Kia calmed himself by asking questions of Samandar, who patiently played the role of Taara’s husband. Mehri had come with us. She told me she wanted to watch the show—this was the first time they would take a big group across.
The shepherd ran around serving hot tea, apologizing for his poor shelter. We heard sheep and goats bleating, but we didn’t see them. They were in a fenced yard behind the hut. The sky was moonless, a smugglers’ sky, but the stars were low, as if falling on us. The desert extended all around, slept in the dark, breathing calmly and giving out the scent of cold earth. A gust of wind swept invisible dust into our faces. I felt sand between my teeth.
Mehri came out of the hut and called me in. Taara wanted to talk to me. The shepherd’s wife sat on the floor, rubbing Taara’s back.
“Let me be alone with my brother,” Taara said.
Mehri motioned to the native woman to follow her out. Uncle’s wife and her daughters were squeezed into a corner, asleep.
“Talkhoon.”
“What is it?”
“I’m ruining everything. The whole goddamn thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s coming.”
“The baby?”
“Yes. And there is no way to stop her.” She hugged her belly and bent. “I’m all wet. And it hurts.”
“Bad?”
“Bad.”
“Taara, don’t panic—”
“It’s not panic, it’s pain. The damn thing chose this very moment to come.”
“Don’t curse her, Taara.”
“Damn, damn, damn!” she screamed and burst into sobs. She lay down on her side, grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard. Her nails bit into my flesh. Tears ran down her face and she bit her lips to avoid screaming. Finally she sat up as if thunder struck and hollered, “Someone call a doctor! Please!”
The men became quiet at once. Even the horses, goats, and sheep were silent. I left the hut to see what they would decide. Mehri suggested that one of the men should drive to town and bring a midwife here. No one could handle this, she said.
“Bring a midwife here?” Memaar asked angrily. “Have you lost your mind?” He yelled at his woman as if the whole thing was her fault.
“She has to go back to Zabol,” Safdar said.
“I’ll drive her,” Samandar suggested.
“You’re not driving anyone.” Safdar raised his voice to his younger brother: “There is work to do here!”
Uncle’s wife came out of the hut with a blanket hanging on her back. “What about us? We have to leave the country now! Before sunrise!” She looked at her husband and said, “What if they send soldiers from Tehran to arrest us?” Then she told Safdar, “We have to leave, sir!”
“You stay out of this, lady!” Safdar said angrily.
“Get inside! Get inside before the girls whine!” Uncle told his wife.
“Mehri can take the boy and his sister back to Zabol with the jeep,” Memaar said.
“Are you crazy?” Mehri screamed. “You want to send me into the desert with a woman who is about to burst? Do I know anything about childbirth? And besides, it’s more than an hour’s drive. She’s in labor now. You get me? Now!”
“What do you want us to do? Huh?” Memaar yelled back at Mehri. “Get arrested because she’s in labor? Let it come in the desert. You’ll be with her. Women know how to deal with each other.” He said this and dismissed his woman with a crazy wave of his hand.
For a while everybody quarreled and talked at the same time, one suggesting something and another rejecting it. Then Ebrahim, one of the messengers, arrived on a horse and reported that the soldiers in the barracks were all inside, overdosed on opium—this was the best time to move. Safdar asked for his horse. A native brought a red horse with a blanket on its back. The sleepy horse had socks on, his eyelids looked heavy and his large nostrils quivered. Safdar removed the blanket, stroked the horse’s back, and scratched its skin with his callused fingers. He held the horse’s head in his arms and rubbed his own face against it. It was strange to see Safdar being affectionate toward the animal.
“We’ll take the two men and the family,” he said to no one in particular. “The brother and sister will stay.”
“This is the best way to do it,” Memaar said. “We’ll take the first group, then we’ll see what happens.”
“I’ll stay with Farid and his sister,” Mr. Amaani said.
“I think you better go now, Mr. Amaani,” Memaar said. “We don’t even know if—”
“I’ve agreed on one trip,” Safdar said coldly, mounting the horse.
“But we’ve paid!” I burst in.
Uncle looked at me suspiciously. We’d told him we were going for free.
“We’ll talk about it when we come back,” Memaar said. I caught him winking at Safdar. “Go, Safdar Khan! Don’t waste time. I’ll go to the barracks and start to work on top of the tower. When you cross the ditch, fire one bullet in the air.”
“I will,” Safdar said.
“Let’s go, Mr. Amaani!”
“I’ll stay with the kid. His sister is in pain. They need a man here.”
“Mr. Amaani!” Memaar said impatiently. “Don’t make a mistake—”
“I’ll go with the second group.”
“There is no second group,” Memaar said in a hushed voice.
“There ought to be. They’ve paid.”
“Okay, you want to stay, stay! I won’t insist,” Memaar said, and turned his back to Mr. Amaani.
Safdar on his red horse looked taller. With his long arms, he lifted the twins like a pair of rabbits and put them on his saddle—one in front, one behind. He told the one behind him to hold on tight while they were riding. He told Uncle, his wife, and Mr. Sadiq to walk in a single file behind Samandar and not let him get out of their sight. They should put their feet in Samandar’s footsteps; the ground was a minefield. Uncle’s wife uttered an “Ah—” and wiped her tears. The girls, who had been cooperative for the past few minutes, seeing their mother’s tears, burst into loud sobs and wanted to get down. Uncle urged Safdar to take care of his girls.
“I’m not going to gallop, sir. I’ll be right in front of you to show you the route. You’ll see your girls all the way.”
Uncle went in the hut and kissed Taara’s forehead in haste. She moaned like a wounded animal and didn’t even open her eyes. Now Uncle kissed my cheeks and said, “Pray for your poor uncle! Pray for all of us!” His voice quivered. In native clothes, Uncle Kia was stripped of his importance. Now he was neither a counselor to a minister nor a hunter. He resembled an old villager, a house servant who worked in the minister’s house, unnoticed. Uncle’s wife, without her make-up and European clothes, in baggy native pajama pants, looked sexless. She was too scared to say goodbye.
Just before the party left, Samandar rushed inside, knelt next to Taara, and held her hand.
“You’re leaving us here, huh?” Taara said, moaning.
“I’ll come back and take you, Taara,” Samandar said. “I promise!”
“Your brother won’t make the trip again,” Taara said.
“I will. I know the way. I’ll take you and stay with you. We’ll go to India. I’ll be your baby’s father.”
“Don’t say you’ll do things that you won’t.”
“I swear on my honor—”
“Ouch! Hurts!”
“Be strong! I’ll be back. In less than two hours.”
Mehri and the shepherd’s wife sat on a blanket next to the stone oven having a picnic. Their breakfast was
hot tea, fresh goat’s milk, and bread just out of the oven. Taara took a nap, but I didn’t move from her side. Mr. Amaani came into the hut and sat next to me.
“You shouldn’t have stayed because of us.”
“I thought that would make them take another trip.”
“What if they don’t? Safdar said he won’t go twice.”
“He has to. We’ve paid.”
Now we heard Mehri laughing with the shepherd’s wife. It wasn’t long ago that she’d called the natives “wild,” and “uncivilized.” Now she chatted with the Baluchi woman the way she chatted with us. Mr. Amaani and I sat silently, and through the hut’s open door watched the dawn. The desert dunes, gray in half-light, were like a frozen sea. The air was indigo now, and the sun was rising, but hidden from us.
“They must be close to the ditch,” Mr. Amaani said and left the hut.
I followed him out. We both wanted to see the tower of the barracks and Master Memaar on the top. Mehri poured some tea for us and showed her man on top of the tower. He was the size of a toy soldier. The native woman insisted that I should try some goat’s milk and fresh bread. I said I’d rather sit inside with my sister. Now she and Mehri talked in the native language and laughed at me.
“Talkhoon!” Taara hollered.
Mehri looked at me, puzzled. She didn’t know my real name.
I ignored her and rushed inside.
The bone-breaking pain had invaded Taara’s body. It was coming every five minutes. The shepherd who had galloped on his fat donkey to the neighboring village half an hour ago came back with an old woman behind him. The woman, he said, was a midwife, an ancient, one-hundred-year-old creature, stooped and wrinkled from head to foot. Her toothless jaws were set forward and she chewed constantly without having anything in her mouth. I looked at her dark, callused hands, the hands that in a minute would touch the most delicate skin in the world.
In the intervals between pains, Taara murmured in delirium, demanding the Simorgh story.
“She was on top of Mount Ghaf,” I said absently, watching the old woman boiling water on a pile of wood.
“You mean the Simorgh?” Taara asked.
“The Simorgh.”
“Say it well, Talkhoon. Say it the way Baba-Ji used to say it.”
“She was on top of Mount Ghaf, the tallest mountain in the world, far, far away.”
“Then what?”
“And the world was in chaos. Nothing stood in its place. There was wind everywhere, blowing hard and cruel. If you lay something down to rest, the wind picked it up. If you screamed from anger or pain, the wind covered your voice—”
“You’re making this up, Talkhoon. But I like it. Go on.”
“No one could hear anyone else’s voice. Everyone was in the same place, but deaf to one another’s screams. And this was all the wind’s work.”
“And the Simorgh?”
“She was on top of Mount Ghaf, the tallest mountain in the world. She didn’t know what was going on. She was there and she wouldn’t come down.”
“Why?”
“Why? Who knows? Maybe she demanded love. Absolute love. Undivided. But no one could give it to her.”
“How could they?”
“Good point. How could they? With the wind and the muffled screams and everything in the air, never settling, and people at the end of their nerves—who could even think about loving the bird?”
“Loving the bird!” Taara smirked. “Strange!”
“Who would think about giving absolute love and devotion to a bird who had four wings?”
“Two of them hard and two feathery, touching the soft tops of the hills as she flew—”
“Yes. And she was up there on Ghaf, and wouldn’t fly to the cities.”
“Until—”
“Until, one day—”
“Help!” Taara screamed. Her nails dug into my hands again, and her wild shout echoed in the desert.
The ancient woman slowly approached, as if nothing urgent was at stake. She sat on the cold floor at Taara’s feet, and gently opened her legs. The shepherd’s wife and Mehri brought the pot of boiling water and began cutting our blue veil into squares, then soaking them in hot water. Taara screamed again and clawed my hand. Now everything blurred and I lost my wits and became all animal senses.
I heard the winds of the desert and thought they were in my head. I heard the goats bleating, the donkey braying and the shepherd’s dog, now awake from a long sleep, barking and howling. I smelled blood, sweat and dust. I heard an ancient language I didn’t know. We had moved back into biblical times. The earth had flooded and Noah was calling all the animals of the world into his ark. The old woman ordered something in Noah’s language. Mehri said, “She says push! Push as hard as you can.” I closed my eyes to keep from seeing the old woman pull out the baby. All I could do was give my hand to Taara to tear to pieces. My right hand with its many stitches in its palm was now bruised and scratched on its back too.
The baby cried out three times and the goats outside bleated, as if in response. The donkey brayed, reacting to the goats, and the dog barked back. The old woman stood, held the baby upside down and laughed, showing the empty cave of her mouth. It was a red-skinned boy. The shepherd’s wife and the old woman trilled their tongues and hit their lips with their hands to let their voices quiver.
“This is the way they celebrate a boy’s birth!” Mehri said.
The shepherd’s wife picked up a tambourine from somewhere, banged on it and bounced up and down, dancing. Her zinc jewelry jingled as she hopped and kicked the dust. The ancient woman danced in her crooked way, making that quivering sound with her tongue. Mehri laughed and, like a belly dancer, wriggled her shoulders and butt. This unexpected birth, birth of a male child, had made the women happy.
“Bring the flour and butter,” Mehri told the shepherd’s wife. “Let’s make a hot kaachi for our little mother.”
In less than five minutes the bittersweet smell of burnt flour and sugar filled the hut, then a bullet cracked in distance.
“They’re across!” Mr. Amaani said.
Taara closed her eyes and fell asleep.
Taara’s Dream
The brothers arrived in mid-afternoon, covered head to foot with white sand. Safdar went behind the hut to feed his horse. Samandar sat down next to me in a small patch of shade by the hut’s clay wall. He stared at the yellow dunes—a hot ocean under the blazing sun.
“The baby was born?”
“Yes.”
“Sleeping?”
“Both of them.”
“Look, Farid, I want to talk to you—”
“You can’t take us,” I said.
“You’ll go, but not with me.” He sighed. “I convinced my brother to take you, Taara, and Mr. Amaani first thing tomorrow. He wouldn’t agree. He kept saying the contract was for one trip.”
“Then how did you convince him?”
“When I told him about my plans—moving to India with Taara—he got mad. He said he needed me here. I couldn’t just leave in the middle of the operation. He said I had to wait till the business was over, then I’d be free.”
“So you can’t—?”
“No. I argued with him, but he doesn’t understand. He’s forty years old and hasn’t married. All his life in the desert. When I insisted, he laughed at me. He said he thought I was just flirting with a pregnant girl. When I said I was serious, he laughed even more—he was angry.”
“Then he made a deal with you, huh?”
“He said, if I obey him and stay here, he’ll take you. If I go with you, he won’t give me my share. Where in the world can I go with empty pockets?” He looked at me as if waiting for an answer. “I’ll make some more money and join you and Taara.”
“Then why are you so upset?”
“He has another condition.” He paused. “He wants the deed to your house.”
“Drum Tower?”
“Is this what it’s called?”
“Yes.�
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“He says your uncle paid for one trip. Now that there’s a second trip, you need to pay more. He’ll accept the deed. He knows you don’t have cash with you.”
“He sent you to bargain for him.”
“There is no bargaining, Farid. Everything is fixed.”
“Are you really a mechanic in the city, or are you a smuggler too?”
“Do I look like a smuggler, or talk like one? I have a shop in a good neighborhood in Tehran, repairing Mercedes Benz.”
“Why only Mercedes?”
“Because I have access to the parts.”
“Across the border?”
“What are you talking about? Now you don’t trust me anymore, huh?”
“Go on. You have your little shop, then . . .?”
“Safdar called me a few weeks ago and said he needed my help here. He said I’d make some quick money. Who’d reject that offer?”
“You came and the very first night you fell in love with a pregnant girl.”
“You’re laughing at me, too. You’re sarcastic. You make me feel like a cheater or something. I really fell for her. Who would fall for a pregnant woman? Huh? So it’s love. She is so special. Her music, her long, red hair—”
“Red?”
“It’s reddish. Haven’t you noticed? Like real gold. Gold is not yellow, it’s red. Farid, my heart jumps in my chest when I talk about Taara. But I can’t say no to my brother. Do you know anything about our culture?”
“No.”
“An older brother is like God. He can kill the younger brother.”
“So, he’ll go all the way to India and kill you.”
“You don’t get me. It’s hard for me to explain. I have to obey. You understand? But after this business, I’ll be a free man again. I know the way; I’ll join you in Afghanistan. Wait for me. Then we’ll all go to India together.”
“Well, go and tell all this to Taara.”
“I can’t. She’s sleeping. I don’t want to upset her. Besides, I have to go now. I have to rush to Memaar’s house and receive some more guests. Please tell Taara to wait for me on the other side. I’ll join you soon. With a lot of money!”
The Drum Tower Page 31