by Rose Fox
She had also noticed the sparkling pale green transparent stone and planned to remove it from the sleeping woman’s finger. But she would wait until the last moment before the two were to disembark and disappear with the booty.
Abigail sensed them staring and opened her eyes, but the two sat across from her with their eyes closed and she straightened up and peered through the murky window. A giant pipe ran parallel to the train and made them feel they were traveling backward and she followed it for a distance of many kilometers until she closed her eyes and fell asleep again.
They reached the station where the woman was supposed to get off the train. She pressed the elbow of her daughter, who got up quietly and, trying not to wake the sleeping woman, she touched Abigail’s hand. She opened eyes without changing her position and saw that the girl was standing close to her and touched her hand. Abigail laughed, understanding that the child was excited by the sparkling jewel on her finger and dozed off again. A few minutes later, the woman pressed against her legs and brushed up against her dress. Abigail understood their intention and folded her hands and stared at them.
The woman sat down again and decided to try a different tactic. She clicked her tongue in admiration and spoke to Abigail.
“What a beautiful ring. How much do you want for it?”
Abigail smiled without answering, but the woman added:
“I’m not joking, how much money do you want for it?”
Abigail shook her head in refusal. She went back to looking through the dirty window, signaling that as far as she was concerned the matter was closed and she went back to studying the pipeline running parallel to the train. She knew it was the main oil pipeline that was many kilometers long and that earned this country a handsome profit.
“Next stop, Shemakha,” was announced.
The carriages stopped and the doors opened wide and right then, the woman bent down and pulled the ring off Abigail’s finger and ran out into the crowded mass of people pouring onto the platform. Apparently the girl had gotten off ahead of her as part of their plan. Abigail quickly rose from her seat, pushed people as she pressed through the vast crowds, searching around but the woman had disappeared.
Karma came out and Abigail yelled to him:
“Look for the girl and the woman, who sat facing us, they stole my ring!”
Suddenly, she saw the girl in the crowd and she made her way to her slowly, so as not to frighten her and laid her hand lightly on her shoulder. She pointed to a man carrying a heavy crate, held on his shoulder with a broad strap, who was shouting:
“Ice cream! Ice cream!”
Abigail called to the man and asked the child to select the color and flavor, as she scanned the crowds for the mother. They were standing between two giant tree trunks, to which fluttering torn pages were attached with strings.
Karma came up to them, panting for breath,
“So,” he said. “What now?”
“I can’t believe she abandoned her child. Perhaps she’s not her mother.” She said. “Let’s wait for her for a few minutes.”
Right then, she caught a figure in the corner of her eye that almost approached them, then, turned around on the spot to get away. With two strides, Abigail reached her and grabbed her arm.
“Let go of my arm or I’ll shout for the guards right now,” the woman hissed.
“No problem, but if I let you go now, I will take your daughter with me.”
“That’s fine with me!” She answered quickly. “Her name is Uma. She’s six year’s old and the daughter of my crazy sister. I don’t mind if you take her.”
“Is that so? Very well,” Abigail said.
She pinched the woman till she screamed and said to her:
“I am prepared to buy my ring back from you. How much do you want?”
“Ah, now you’re talking, only stop hurting me!”
“Very well, why not?” Abigail agreed but when she released the woman’s hand, she trod hard on her foot and blurted out:
“Oh, sorry.”
The woman lifted her hurt leg and Abigail asked innocently:
“Why don’t you call a policeman? Are you frightened I will complain that you stole my ring?”
“Give me five hundred thousand Rials,” she said quickly when she understood she would not be able to get out of Abigail’s grasp.
“Pay her one hundred thousand rials,” Abigail told Karma, as she held on to the thief’s arm.
“I won’t return the ring for such a miserable sum,” the woman exclaimed and Abigail could not resist laughing.
Karma took out the money and handed it to the woman. The little girl approached from Abigail’s rear, threw away the ice-cream cone, then grabbed the notes out of Karma’s hand, before she ran away and disappeared among the people roaming around the passenger-filled station. Abigail yelled and raised her arm to hit the woman, who immediately declared:
“Here, take it back, only add something for me.”
The woman began to fish around in her clothes slowly and Abigail was sure that she was looking for the chance to get away and not return the ring she had stolen, perhaps even flee like the child.
“Listen here! If you don’t give me the ring right now, I will pull your hijab off your head, tear your blouse and send you bare-headed and half-naked amongst all these people. I will also shout that you stole my money.”
Within seconds, the woman held on to the ring, threw it on the filthy ground then lifted her foot to step on it but, Karma bent down and grabbed it.
“God, you are so corrupt,” Abigail hissed and let go of her hand.
When the woman had disappeared, Karma and Abigail exchanged glances and sighed. Abigail said:
”Welcome to Azerbaijan,” and she slipped the ring back on her finger, noticing how the color turned dark that very second.
When they left a crowded area of the station, Abigail sought out a cab while Karma looked out at the high mountains that surrounded them. He wondered at the beauty of the scenery around them as compared to the human ugliness they had met up with today. The air was filled with the odor of frying and the calls of peddlers:
“Oh, the aroma is tempting. Let’s buy something to eat, I’m starving.”
Behind them, a stall offered kibbeh hamusa, filled with meat and potatoes. Abigail pointed to the kibbeh filled with potato. The courteous vendor stuffed the kibbeh into pitas and served them wrapped in paper. The stood eating in silence and then returned to the taxi rank.
“Can we get a ride with you to Shemakha?” Abigail asked the driver.
“We are in Shemakha,” he replied, “where exactly do you want to go?”
Abigail made an effort to recall the name of the street that had slipped her mind momentarily and the driver waited till she looked at her visa and said;
“22 Azar Street.”
Something about the driver reminded Karma of Robin, the cab driver, who had driven both of them when Abigail was injured when they fled from the ‘Imam Mosque.’ He noted that Abigail was also examining the driver and the car.
At first they drove in silence and Karma took in the passing scenery through the cab windows.
“Are you newcomers?” the driver asked as he stared at Abigail through the rear-view mirror in front of him.
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean by ‘sort of’?”
“I’ve owned the house for two years, but we have only now decided to occupy it,” she replied with a smile and the two dimples in her cheeks, deepened. Her gaze met with the driver’s eyes in the mirror and she asked,
“Does that make us newcomers?”
“That really is ‘sort of,'” the driver replied as he thought what a beautiful woman she was.
“Who do you know there?”
“Oh, Karim and Alice.” She responded at once, wondering at her good luck that she had someone to mention.
The driver was impressed: “Is that so? The Kodor couple? If I remember correctly, he is an Ambassador
to the Middle East.” He reached for a newspaper lying between the seats.
“I have the front page of the newspaper. Would you like to read it?” He picked it up and passed it back to Abigail.
“Oh, the “Yeni Muswat:” Abigail read the name of the newspaper and laid it alongside her.
“What’s your name?”
“Eliav,” he responded, Ilam Eliav, and yours?”
“I’m Karma, and this is Naima, my wife.”
Abigail smiled to herself since this was the first time she had been referred to by the term “my wife” and she had not yet absorbed it. She paged through the paper and murmured aloud:
“I wonder how much an apartment in Baku costs nowadays?”
“Oh, Baku is really very expensive. Baku is a very different world.” Eliav said.
“An apartment there can cost twenty to thirty million Rials. But you have no idea how luxurious those apartments are, they’re really like palaces,” he enthused.
“And here, near the mountains?” Karma asked and glanced back, at Abigail. The driver blurted out a contemptuous remark:
“Here, near the Caucasus, an apartment can cost about two or three million Rials, but it would far less grand.”
“Maybe not as luxurious, but what about the view?”
You’re right about that, there’s no comparison. Most of us live with that view and we are satisfied with what we have.”
“Don’t tell stories,” Abigail objected, “you’re not really contented. For example, what about the division of the country into three regions, and I mean the Ardabil Province, the east and the west of the country.”
Ow, I see that you are really well-informed, right? I won’t deny that I dream and pray that I will see unification before I die,” he claimed with a tremor in his voice, “and I wish it would come about.”
“What or who does it depend on?” Karma inquired.
“Listen here, as long as we have the Iranians standing over us – who knows.”
“Ah, are you afraid of them?”
“It’s not that we are afraid of them, but rather, that this country is still…” he hesitated for a moment.
“You know, I don’t think it’s a wise move to go against Iran, nevertheless, I would do anything, with God’s help, to achieve unification.”
All the while, Abigail paged through the newspaper and did not interrupt the men’s conversation on the front seats of the cab.
“Where are you from, originally?”
“I’m a Kurd.”
“You don’t mean to say! Where are you from?”
“From the Turkish region, I’d like to tell you that the Kurds also yearn for unification.”
“Now, really, there’s no comparison! You don’t have a country and you never will have one,”
At this point Abigail intervened, as she continued flipping through the newspaper:
“You forget that the Kurds are dispersed in the mountains and miserable villages and have nothing to sell, right? And here, in Azerbaijan, you have oil, oil, and more oil. Long Live the little difference!”
The driver burst into loud laughter and curled his mustache with pleasure as he continued in the same vein:
“That’s right because there is money involved, a great deal of money and once again, even more money.”
“If that’s the case, why aren’t you sitting counting your money instead of driving a cab?”
The driver laughed bitterly,
“Hey, hello, my oil wells dried out. At home, there are thirteen mouths to feed and…”
“Do you have eleven children?”
“No, my wife’s parents live with us as well as my sister with two of her children.”
“In short, an exemplary bunch and are you the only breadwinner?”
“Sort of.”
“There’s no ‘sort of,' remember?”
“Ah, my brother-in-law works sometimes, he earns a few cents here and there, so for lack of choice, I go out with this cab.”
“So, I understand that the money doesn’t exactly roll in the streets here,” Karma stated.
“It depends on who you are.”
“Really, who are you?
“Have you visited Baku? Have you seen what’s going on there? I would say that money does roll in the streets there! Mercedes, Rolls-Royce, Jaguar, gold faucets in the houses – it’s a different world!”
“So why don’t you move there?”
“Because we weren’t born into the right family. All that wealth goes to families owning oil wells. The rest of us are secure in the knowledge that we were born poor and will also die poor.”
When Karma and Abigail fell asleep, the driver took the liberty of staring long and hard at the face of the sleeping passenger in the seat behind him. He whistled and murmured a silent prayer to the martyrs, Ali and Imam Hussein. The driver glanced at Karma to check he hadn’t noticed him admiring his beautiful wife.
The road wound through the high mountains, came closer and moved away from boulders and wooded slopes and in front of them were the white, eternally snow-covered mountain peaks. The wind grew stronger outside and the branches of the trees blew wildly and shook the overhead electric cables like the strings of a giant harp. When they touched one another, they set off sparks that fell to the ground, leaving lines of white smoke.
Abigail opened her eyes and caught the driver staring at her. She pretended not to notice and when he looked at her again, she had covered her face with the veil that lay beside her cheek and the driver immediately turned his gaze back to the road.
Karma also woke up and noticed the sparks flying all over. He pointed to them with concern and Eliav explained that a storm was coming up and electricity outages in the region had already begun.
“Electricity outages? Are they common?”
“Yes, very common. I hope you have enough candles at home and matches, of course.”
When the first houses in the region came into view, Abigail attempted to recognize the way to her house and a few minutes later, the driver stopped at a house on the lower slopes of the mountain. Abigail screwed up her eyes, unable to recognize anything. It was so different from what she recalled and she hoped that the driver had erred.
Karma paid the driver and Abigail moved away from them, as she went to the building and looked at it. She had difficulty recognizing the place and could not even find the entrance.
“Are you sure this is the house? Did it look like this when you bought it?”
“Absolutely not. For example, I remember we went in and out through a large entrance and now it has just disappeared.”
“Come here, there seems to be a gap between the branches. Perhaps the entrance was here.”
He held the branches that were entangled with one another and shook them to separate them. Abigail pulled out keys that had a sharp blade attached to them and cut the branches, letting them fall to the ground. Taking a big step over them, they entered the yard and stood among the wild plants and dry grass. Most of the trees were bare of leaves and stood like skeletal branches for creepers and vines to wind around.
“I remember that I decided to buy this house just because of the yard,” she said sorrowfully,” but the garden wasn’t like this.”
Karma went ahead and Abigail heard the front door creak as he disappeared into the building.
“How did you get in?” she called out to him.
“The door was open.”
Abigail hurried in after him and the moment she entered she was struck by an awful smell and the appearance of the place shocked her.
They could see that many uninvited visitors had frequented the place in their absence and Abigail raised her hand to her cheek in shock. She walked around slowly, viewing the rooms and the kitchen. She looked at the dirt and the torn newspapers lying all around and understood that her house had served as a free hotel and stopover for drifters. From all the rubbish, it was not difficult to guess that meals had been eaten here. Everything was filthy
and disgusting and she sat down on the rickety sofa that was missing its cushions, staring helplessly around.
“Tonight we can spread our clothes on the beds and use them as sheets,” she yelled to Karma, who was checking out the rooms.
“You’re not going to want to look at the bathroom,” she heard his muffled voice coming from there.
“Tell me, what color are the floor tiles here?” He yelled and peeked out of the toilet.
“To tell the truth, I really don’t recall. Tomorrow, we’ll roll up our sleeves, clean up and see how everything looks underneath this layer of dirt.”
“Hey, we should also check if the windows have panes of glass or are boarded up with wooden planks,” he suggested. Abigail ran her finger over the dining table and wrote Karma’s name in the layer of dust.
“By the way, how much did you pay for this house?”
“Two million,” She replied and sighed with disappointment.
“Tomorrow, after the clean-up, we’ll know if it was worth it,”
He said, “Come, its late and I’m dead tired.”
They strode to one of the rooms, where there was a wide bed. Abigail spread two galabiyas on the mattress, straightened and stretched them over it and muttered wearily.
“Tomorrow we’ll change rooms because this room isn’t a suitable bedroom,” and she climbed on the bed with her knees. Even before she laid her aching body on one of her gowns, she had already fallen asleep.
Abigail woke up, shivering with cold, and got up to look for something to cover herself with. She remembered where the light switch was located and pushed it up, but nothing happened. She sighed and groped her way to their bags and when she came upon Karma’s backpack, she hesitated whether to open it and look inside but decided not to.
Had Abigail known what she was likely to discover in her husband’s luggage, possibly everything would have changed between them and their relationship would have proceeded entirely differently. She found her backpack and pulled a towel out of it, covered her shoulders and back, lay down and tried to sleep, but the dreadful cold penetrated her bones.
Abigail rose and stood at the window and listened to the wind swirling through the trees in the yard. Karma sneezed and woke up. He saw Abigail standing with her back to him, looking outside.