“Look what you’ve done to yourself! How can you wear your wedding slippers now? Wearing canvas shoes to travel on foot? Where is your common sense?” He knocked on my head. “You’re crazier than ever, Talkhoon!”
When the storm passed, the driver saw the main road and the van roared again. I knew the road was long and the day was endless, so I tried not to think about the time. I freed the old winds in my head and let them shriek. Assad nagged, Boor-boor cried, and the hot wind whistled. The van stopped in front of a caravansary. Was this the same caravansary in which a little homeless fly sought shelter in Taara’s ear? Did Taara wear her jingling necklace today, the one she bought from an old woman here? Did she wear it under her clothes so as not to let it jingle while she was on the horse? What was she doing now? Breast-feeding the baby in an identical caravansary on the other side of the border? Was she wondering where I was? Was Safdar telling her that I’d soon join her, I was just a little slow? Did she believe it? Did Safdar desire her? Did he want her for himself? Had he wanted her for himself from the first day, and was that why he’d dismissed his brother?
Assad left the van’s back door open so that the light would pour inside. He squatted in front of me with a spoon and tried to force me to eat. I neither ate nor uttered a word. The van moved again and I saw the desert and the long road that extended like a white snake. I saw a mirage—silvery water, a fresh mountain stream, glowing a short distance away, within reach and not within reach. I kept hearing the swish of other cars passing, until the heat became unbearable and the knapsack on my chest became wet with sweat. I was thirsty, but I didn’t say a word.
Assad took his shirt off and loosened his belt. The top part of his blue bird showed—an angry head, long, curved beak, thick neck with layers of skin. All blue. The wings were inside his pants. He fanned himself with an old newspaper, wiped his face with his bandana. Cursed.
I napped. Dreamed while not quite asleep. Dreamed of the grocer’s courtyard, the tamarind tree, the stone fountain at the very end of the yard by the wet wall, the narrow rivulet of water pouring down from a hole in the wall. Shade, clear water, and the hum of an air conditioner somewhere in the distance, cooling a dim room with a narrow bed. A snow-white sheet. The pillow—soft and puffy, like a piece of cloud. The whole room, shady and cool and the window open, letting in the breeze. A woman calls, “Talkhoon! I’ve made some lemonade
for you!” Ice clicks in the tall glass. A small boy runs in the yard. The woman calls, “Come inside! Talkhoon is working. Don’t make noise!” A monkey bounces from branch to branch. The smells of sandalwood, curry, and red pepper rise in the air. On top of the wall a peacock opens its wings—shimmering green, gold and silver, a crown on its head. The peacock cries and flies away. Music ripples like clean water in a spring. Taara plays her setar; the boy claps and giggles. I see all this. Hear all this. Smell it all. Asleep and not asleep.
Assad opened a trunk and pulled out the wedding dress.
“You remember this? I’m going to use my time here. It’s a long drive. There is one skirt left to stitch.”
Like an old, plump woman, he sits cross-legged with his sewing glasses on the tip of his nose. He stitches and chats, nags and gossips. His khaki uniform, his beard, his sunburnt face, his military appearance are all in contrast with his womanly manner and gossipy voice.
The van bumps up and down, but he keeps stitching and chatting.
“Khanum has gone mad. She’s blind and mad. Her sisters have to watch her day and night because she leaves the house. One day they found her walking barefoot in a busy street, stopping people to tell them her dreams. Poor old hen. Big sister. The fucking liar. The bitch. One of these days she’ll go where our dear papa is. Hell!”
Now he sings. Keeps repeating this phrase from a wedding song: “The bride is out of the bath, bring the groom, bring the groom.”
“I’ll give you a warm bath. I’ll soak you in soapy water. I’ll pour rose water in the tub. I’ll wash you—bring the groom, bring the groom—” He whistles the rest.
“I won’t delay this time. We’ll wed when we get home. Tonight! I’ve told Mustafa to put chairs in the garden, to decorate Baba’s dryandra tree with those little bulbs we used for Taara’s engagement party. The dryandra tree is standing there alone. I didn’t let them cut it. For your sake, my little herb. I know how much you love that tree. I told Mustafa to put our chairs under it. I told him to order some food.”
The van bumps up and down. He wipes his sweat with his sleeve, stitches, stitches. The desert is gone. Slogans in red paint stain the tall gray walls of the factories like thick blood: “Death to the East and the West! Long live the Holy Jihad!” We’re getting close to Tehran.
“Once, when I went to clean up your grandfather, he opened his eyes. I swear to God, I was scared to death. The old man was staring at me. His eyes were wide open. So I decided to keep him. Besides, no hospital will take him. A war has broken out in the Gulf. Hospitals are full. Who will take an old man in a coma? I’ll keep him. If he opened his eyes, then he may wake up too. I’ll let him live in that little room. Khanum’s old closet. I’ll buy him a little desk. Maybe he’ll write another book. Let him write!”
He whistles, stitches, and hums. Now he says, “I’ll put him in his old wheelchair and bring him down to our wedding. The boys have fixed the elevator. We’ll bring Baba down in the ghosts’ elevator.”
Chaos
He dresses me in lace and satin and tells me to smile. He whitens my face with powder and smears green on my eyelids. He draws a pair of long eyebrows for me and frames my eyes with thick black lines. All the while he looks at a colorful magazine on the desk and follows directions. Like a fussy hairdresser, he pulls the strands of my hair to one side, then to the other. He combs them all back, now brings them all over my forehead. He steps back, looks at me in the mirror and smiles. He wants me to smile too. When I stare at him with hollow eyes, he sighs. He drops a gauze mosquito net on my head and hides my painted face behind it. He kneels down and puts a pair of white silk stockings on my legs; he does this gently so as not to tear the silk. He takes a pair of white shoes out of a box.
He whistles. Sings the wedding song.
He lifts me up and stares at me. He calls me his bride and sings for me. “Flower has come out of the bath—bring the groom! Torches and candles are burning—bring the groom!” He makes me climb up on the chair, turns me around, and studies me. My fingernails catch his attention. They’re like boys’ nails. He sits me down again, places my hands on his lap and paints my fingernails with shimmering red enamel. He blows on them to dry them. When I’m perfectly done, he sprays perfume all over me, puff, puff, puff— He claps his hands and whistles a long whistle.
There are the sounds of explosions outside, many of them—one after another, then all at once. Missiles whistle in the air, fall somewhere, boring deep holes, swallowing people. But he is deaf and blind to the screams and shouts, to the sound of boots stamping on the pavement behind the walls. The sound of rifle butts hitting Drum Tower’s gate. He is deaf and blind tonight because he wants his wedding to happen.
He leads me toward the only tree in the barracks—the solitary dryandra tree by the brick tower. Small twinkling bulbs wink on the leaves. Two chairs sit side by side under the tree and many in a circle on the muddy ground. His Revolutionary Guards are coming to our wedding, he says. An ayatollah is going to recite the prayer. But rifle butts hit the eastern gate, and missiles tear through the air like shooting stars.
Before we reach the chairs, a gun goes off behind our backs. It’s loud and near. He stops, turns back and sees a man in black, then many more. Their faces are masked; they carry black flags. They handcuff him and aim their submachine guns at him. They take him to the end of the barracks, to the brick wall. He hollers, curses, and says who he is and where this place is.
“This is Revolutionary Committee Number One! I’m Brother Assad Sheeri, head of the Committee! I’m the Great Leader’s Devotee. I�
��m a Revolutionary Guard!”
But they treat him as if he is no one. They take him to the wall as if he is a traitor to the Great Leader, a Communist, an infidel!
Now more people pour into the barracks. People of the streets enter as if Drum Tower is a public park. They are running around in confusion, as though mad. The dark night is fully lighted by the green and blue and gold of the shooting stars whizzing through the air like something otherworldly, magical. The stars fall, dig fiery holes, and swallow men, animals and other objects. People run in, crying, cursing, holding their hands over their heads to protect themselves. Babies cry in their mothers’ arms.
“So, where is the shelter?”
“They said the barracks had a basement.”
“Where is the basement?”
People run, fall and step over each other. They’ve gone mad. They lift up the wedding chairs and hold them above their heads like umbrellas.
I run back to my room and grab my knapsack. I run out toward the tower and step on the ground that has the hidden roots of a garden. The roots pulsate and grow under my feet. I run for my life, but I trip over a body and fall in a puddle. My long dress is stained with filth. I run barefoot and tear the layers of muddy gauze and lace off my skin. I reach the tower and climb as fast as when I was a small child. One hundred thirty-five steps. I stand in the balcony of the tower with the four arched openings on its four sides. I press the bird manuscript to my chest and watch the people fighting in the treeless garden. Soldiers, guards, Black Flaggers, civilians all fighting, each against all. A group of native Baluch enter the barracks. They are on horses. They have scimitars in their hands. Safdar’s whispering men. Safdar himself, on his red horse, holds the deed to Drum Tower in the air, waving it. He claims the barracks. A tank enters. People panic and open the way for the monster to roll on. Its hatch opens and a black flag pops out.
I see Khanum-Jaan, as transparent as her mother, Grandma Negaar, running inside the bare garden, her white hair long and disheveled. She screams, “I dreamed, I dreamed—my almond room is upstairs, on the second floor, next to Papa Vazir’s study!” Crazy and blind, she climbs the steps and enters the house. I see her opening a window on the second floor, screaming to the world, “I found my room! I found it!”
The shooting stars travel through the air and fall. From a distance, I hear men, women, and children crying.
Now the Black Flaggers pour out of the tank and stand in a line facing Assad and his men who are blindfolded against the wall. A rattle rises, the sound of thousands of iron walls collapsing. Assad, Mustafa, Hassan, and all the urchin boy-guards of Revolutionary Committee Number One fall in the dust. They’re all in their khaki uniforms, except Assad who is wearing his groom’s suit, rose water glittering on his beard. He dies in a pair of shiny black shoes, the tune of the wedding song circling in his confused head, “The bride is out of the bath, bring the groom! Bring the groom!”
I keep tearing the layers of gauze and lace and satin off my body. Tap, tap, tap, tap—this comes from the sky. A thick column of light circles the city, lighting the barren garden, then leaving us in the dark. I open the small storage room and take out the biggest drum. I face north and bang on the drum. I face south, east, and west. Bang, bang, bang, bang. I keep drumming. I bang the war drum, I bang the time drum, the drum of history—the drum of revolution and death.
Khanum-Jaan’s face is framed in the arched window of her almond room. She screams, “Fire! Fire!”
Boor-boor shrieks somewhere, flaps her old wings and cries, “One party, Party of God! One Leader, chosen by God!” The parrot talks for the first time.
Jangi barks, bites a Black Flagger’s thigh. The masked man goes mad and shoots the dog. A rocket falls on the wall behind the tower. The earth swallows the wall and the corpses of the Revolutionary Guards. A Black Flagger calls, “Allah-O-Akbar! God is Great!” People in unison repeat, “Allah-O-Akbar!”
I face all four directions, one after another, banging on the ancient drum. I tear off the last layer of the wedding gown and wear the knapsack on my bare chest. I stand in the wind and feel the heat of the rising flames on my skin. Fire stretches up from the roof of Drum Tower. Khanum-jaan screams, “I dreamed. I dreamed. I dreamed—”
Now, slowly, Baba-Ji descends the stone steps of the balcony. His deliberate pace works against the mad, spinning motion of the battlefield. He walks toward the dryandra tree. He slides his right hand inside his blue pajama shirt and takes out a long sapphire feather. He strikes a match and burns, not a barb, but the whole feather. It flames like a torch. Baba-Ji looks up at the sky and laughs.
As if this has calmed everyone, they all stop screaming, shooting, and stabbing. The battlefield stops spinning, the rockets stop flashing. All the winds settle. Silence falls. Baba looks up. We all look up. Above our heads, a huge bird opens its wide silver wings. I listen to hear the sound of flapping, but instead I hear a roar. The bird’s wings are iron hard. She splits the cloud of dust and smoke and descends as if to smash into the earth. The metallic wings reflect the red and yellow of the flames that stretch up from the roof of Drum Tower. The bird descends, too close to the earth, its body too large for human eyes to grasp. A hole opens in its underbelly as if an egg is about to drop. People lay down, arms crossed over their bare heads. No one breathes, except for Baba-Ji, who laughs with joy and claps his hands.
“The Bird of Knowledge! The Simorgh!”
A Black Flagger raises his voice above the old man’s, calling to his god, “Allah-O-Akbar!”
People echo in unison.
The Drum Tower Page 33