by Salar Abdoh
This was an impossible situation. Several times I looked up and those eyes on the other side of the fire would not stop staring at me. I finished my tea quickly and stood up.
Baig Jaan turned to me. “Where so fast?”
“I have to find the woman’s dog. Dead or alive, I have to find it.”
Baig Jaan sighed. “Go to Farahzadi then. Over there, there’s a fellow called Jasem. They call him Jasem Lovedog. He’s an Arab from the south. He’s not a bad sort. He’s more like us, really. Around here any dog that goes missing ends up at Jasem’s. I’ve even sold him a few dogs myself. Tell him Baig Jaan sent you.”
I started to leave. Mullah Qader still hadn’t taken his eyes off me. He’d grown old, but he hadn’t lost that fearsome look and he was still huge. I felt faint and could barely hear Baig Jaan telling the new crew that my name was Asef and that they used to call me Asef the Corpse Lover back in Afghanistan.
Out on the street I kept turning back to see if the mullah was after me. On Iranzamin Boulevard, kids were busy in their cars doing what they always did this time of night. A little farther up, a teenage girl stood in the middle of the road wailing. She kept screaming at the young driver of a Hummer who sat there smoking hash with his friends and smiling at her. “You ran over my dog!” she screamed. “You murderer! I’ll kill you!” The Hummer started up all of a sudden and growled off. A crowd joined the girl in the middle of the road. She wouldn’t stop wailing. Before long police showed up, and like a fool I just stood there until they came right up to me.
“You an Afghan?”
“Yes, officer.”
“Got your alien papers?”
“Yes, officer.”
“Forget your damn papers. Go over there and throw the dead dog in the trash. Hurry up!”
The cops pushed the people away so I could collect the dead animal. The girl screamed for her dog but the cops held her off. In fact, the dog didn’t look unlike Poopi. Maybe I could bury it in the yard and tell the Mrs. I’d found him but he was dead. Wasn’t that what I’d done for the Taliban? Supposedly given their commander back to them? I cursed myself. When oh when are you going to stop stealing the dead, Asef? What if you bury this dog for the Mrs. and then the real Poopi suddenly shows up? This is why you can never return to Afghanistan. The Taliban will kill you for selling them a fake. I’d heard that after killing the boy, Mullah Qader simply disappeared. He was never a commander again. I guess the shame for him was too much. He took his revenge on the kid and now he was here for me. Tonight, oh Asef . . . tonight is your reckoning night.
I took the dog and carried it a ways before I dumped it. It had begun snowing again. I waited for a taxi to take me to Farahzadi and to Jasem Lovedog. Several cabbies slowed down, but as soon as they saw my face and suspected I was an Afghan they’d speed up again and leave me there in the snow. I guess they figured I’d cut their throats or something. They forget not a building would get finished in this city and not a restaurant could stay open if it weren’t for us doing the dirty work. Lazy fucking Iranians! You’d think we’d stolen their mothers’ inheritances.
The cold was in my bones now. I had no idea what to do. My options were nonexistent. On one side I had Mullah Qader who was out here to finish me; on the other I had the Mrs. who’d finish me if I didn’t find her Poopi. I stood there feeling sorry for myself and getting covered in snow until a cab finally stopped. By the time I got off in Farahzadi the layer of snow had blanketed everything. Afghan workers stood in front of kebab houses directing customers this way and that. The scent and sweat of roasting meat was in the air. I felt him. I felt Mullah Qader’s shadow behind me, though I knew that was ridiculous and he hadn’t followed me up here. Now I recognized a fellow Afghan and asked him if he knew Jasem Lovedog’s whereabouts.
Jasem lived in the back of one of the kebab houses. You could hear the barking of at least a dozen dogs in there. I rang the buzzer and a deep voice asked who it was. He didn’t wait for me to answer but opened the door. Immediately three enormous dogs showed their teeth. Jasem himself looked to be in his midforties. He had disheveled hair and had a sleepy face.
“What do you want?”
“I’m looking for my Mrs.’ dog.”
“You’re an Afghan?”
I nodded. He motioned me to come in. There was hardly any room in there. Dogs of every size and color climbed on top of each other and the smell of the place was not quite as bad as a three-day-old corpse in summertime, but close. Jasem sat me by the heater and handed me a cup of tea.
He asked, “How long have you been here? In Iran, I mean.”
“I came just before the Americans attacked Afghanistan.”
“What did you do over there?”
He had a friendly, familiar face. I felt at ease with him, despite all those dogs. I told him the truth: “I hauled dead bodies. I stole them. They had different names for me . . . Asef the Corpse Thief was one of them.”
“You’re like me, displaced by war.”
“But there hasn’t been a war in Iran for a long time.”
“A war may end but the shrapnel stays, my brother. I’m an Arab from the south. I was twelve, maybe thirteen when the war started. We were living in Ahvaz then. When the Iraqis attacked, we had to come to Tehran. Refugees. Me, you—we’re all a bunch of refugees living under these racist Iranians.”
“At least this is still your own country.”
He laughed. “In the beginning they used to call me Jasem the Arab around here. But after a while I changed my name to Jasem Lovedog. It stuck. They don’t like us Arabs here. They like us even less than they like you. Even though I carry the passport of this damn country, they still despise me. So I figured, these rich motherfuckers out in Shahrak-e-Gharb, they love their dogs. If I become Jasem Lovedog they’ll love me too. Tell me, your Mrs. loves her dog a lot?”
“She kicked me out of the house a few times saying I didn’t respect her dog enough. Each time I stood behind her door and wagged my tail until she let me back in. She has two others, but they’re big guard dogs. The three of us, me and the guard dogs, we live in a little shack away from the main house. A thin wall separates us.”
“I told you, they love their dogs here. If you want to survive, keep wagging your tail for them. But if you want to really live, that’s another thing; then you have to leave this country.”
He got up and opened the door to another room and a whole bunch of Poopi lookalikes came running.
I noticed Poopi right away.
“How did you know it would be one of these?” I asked.
I know the type your Mrs. is and the type of dog she likes to keep her company. I steal them and sell them back. ”
“But why steal them?”
“Why? Because I want to survive.”
“My Mrs. will give you a good reward.”
“Fuck her reward. You keep it. Keep it and tell her you gave it to me.”
I bowed and shook his hand. “You’re a good man.” I took Poopi and squeezed him under my coat. He recognized me right away and didn’t put up a fight or bark. Jasem was about to close the door behind me. I put a hand up: “I have one question.”
“Ask.”
“If you were in a war and could have killed someone but didn’t . . . and now the war’s over for you, but this guy has come to hunt you down—what are you supposed to do?”
“You have to finish a war on the battlefield. If you don’t finish it, then that war’s not over. You still have to fight.”
* * *
I walked from Farahzadi to the Phase One area of Shahrak-e-Gharb with Poopi underneath my coat. I was shivering from cold and from fear. Mullah Qader had come to finish his war, and this white snow had changed the landscape completely.
I came through the back gate, quickly untied Juli and Rex, and let them run the yard. I’d never been more glad to share a hovel with these two giant dogs. If Mullah Qader was here, I would have known it by now. But he’d show up sooner or later. He hadn’t
traveled all the way to Tehran to build houses for Iranians or water their damn gardens. He’d come for me. He’d come because of his shame. I went over to the main house, fed Poopi, and let him loose. He jumped on the Mrs.’ bed and immediately began licking her pillow.
It was past two in the morning now. There was no way I could fall asleep. It was like salt had been sprinkled in my eyes. I set my chair in the garden and built a fire. It was bitterly cold. As cold as some of those winter nights in the mountains of Afghanistan. Rex and Juli sat beside me, alert. They sensed something wasn’t quite right. Like me, they were waiting. It got colder and the wind picked up, squealing through those trees like it was the end of the world. Because it really was the end of the world. But no more running away for me. This was the last stop. One of us had to finish it tonight. Deep down I knew it was me who was finished. So I waited and thought and thought: Why didn’t the mujahideen kill him right away back then? Were they waiting to exchange him for a prisoner as valuable as he was?
But then when he escaped they spread the word that he’d been raped by the boy and been brought into their camp wearing a burqa. They’d even taken pictures of him like that. This meant the mullah’s time as a Taliban commander was finished. He may have escaped, but he had lost face in the worst way a man can lose face in this world. They said they’d shot him trying to escape, which was a lie. But I used the opportunity to sell another body back to his own people and took off for Iran. Mullah Qader became the wild man of the mountains. He had nowhere to go. A week after I delivered the body, as is customary his family gave away the mullah’s young wife to his brother. You poor fucked-up-the-ass bastard, Mullah Qader! You got buggered with a shovel, you lost your wife, you lost your command, you lost everything. And what did you gain in return? You had to satisfy yourself with killing that young boy.
And I was next.
There was a thump by the back gate, like a ball hitting the ground. Rex and Juli ran barking toward the sound. In a minute the barking turned to moans and whimpers. Still the same Mullah Qader, a guy who could take on two man-killer dogs.
The pick I was holding in my hand felt like a ton of lead all of a sudden and I started shaking. After a while I couldn’t hear Juli at all anymore. But Rex was still moaning somewhere back there in the dark. Then I noticed the dog dragging itself toward me and bleeding from several places. She’d be dead soon. I could see the two spots where the axe had gotten him. Apparently he had killed the kid with an axe too. Maybe the same axe! I bent down and ran my hand over Rex’s half-alive body. Blood everywhere.
I stood up and held onto the pick for all I was worth. Its handle looked a lot like the one I’d had to shove up Mullah Qader’s ass. I heard the sound of his footsteps. Before long we were facing each other. The dogs had torn his clothes, but he was still frightening and intimidating and holding his axe like it was an extension of his body.
Rex was panting desperately now. These were his last moments, I thought. I could barely breathe. I watched the Mullah watching me.
I said, “Mullah, that wasn’t my war. It was yours. I was just a corpse fixer. That’s all.”
“War is war. It doesn’t know a soldier from a corpse thief.”
“So you’ve come to finish your war now?”
“A war has to be finished somewhere. That place happens to be here, and now.”
My hand went limp on the pick. I took a peek at Rex. The unlucky animal was dying for nothing. Just like me who was about to die for nothing. Like a lot of people who die for nothing. The truth is that so many people come into this world to die over nothing. Like that kid who the mullah finally killed. Even the mullah himself—what had he been fighting for all those years? I bet he didn’t even know.
I said, “Look, I was never at war with anyone.”
“I don’t care about that. I used to be a great commander. I’m not here to negotiate with you.”
I saw his grip go hard on the axe. Rex shifted a bit next to my foot. The mullah took another step toward me and in that moment Rex, God bless him, gathered every ounce of life left in him and jumped the mullah.
The axe pounded clean and deep into Rex’s head. My own grip went stiff on the pick. I saw Mullah Qader struggling to pull the axe out of Rex’s head and without realizing quite what I was doing, I made my move. I hit him as hard as I could right on top of his skull. Blood went spewing every which way and the mullah, the great Mullah Qader, fell dead right next to Rex, my savior.
I stood over the dead man and dead dog until first light, freezing but unable to move. I don’t know how those hours passed or what went through my head. I can’t recall. At some point I heard Poopi’s barking and finally shook myself out of that numbness and went over to the main house and gave the dog his breakfast. There was blood all over my clothes. I washed up a little and regarded myself in the mirror. Still the same. Still Asef the Corpse Thief. Nothing had changed about me all these years. I had to get moving. I had to get rid of the mullah’s body. The first thing I had to do was buy a couple of big dogs from Jasem Lovedog. The Mrs. wouldn’t know the difference. She barely knew what the big dogs had looked like.
I went back into the garden, picked up the mullah’s axe, and started chopping him up. It was not easy work. He was frozen solid and I had to put up more fire to thaw him a bit. But I went at this with a ferocity I’d never known I possessed until Mullah Qader’s biggest pieces were his ears.
Next I fetched the mosque-sized soup pot that the Mrs. sometimes used to feed the poor. The poor in this neighborhood of course only meant the Afghan laborers. I got a good fire going and started depositing the mullah in the pot one chunk at a time. I added some snow and before long Mullah Qader was cooking nicely in there. While that went on, I buried Rex and Juli.
The dogs I ended up buying from Jasem Lovedog had themselves a feast of Mullah Qader meat over the next several days. Even Poopi had a go at the mullah whenever I tied up the big dogs and brought him outside for his walk.
Now it was just me and the dogs. The Mrs. cut her trip short when I told her on the phone I’d found her Poopi. She was going to give me a raise, she said. So Poopi and I waited for her return. And I was sure Poopi was eager to get back to gifting the Mrs. her orgasms.
Everything had turned out fine, after all.
And poor old Asef is all right now.
LARIYAN’S DAY IN THE SUN
BY AIDA MORADI AHANI
Qeytarieh
It begins like this: my gallery staff had left, so I bolted the place shut and stood on Shariati Avenue to light up a cigarette. Little did I know then that this long-suffering street would soon be in the world’s headlines, and that I would have something to do with those headlines.
Another one of my stores, Piano Royal, was a little ways down the road. I headed in that direction. It was raining hard and I was thinking of the thirty-three-year-old bottle of red wine that I’d had in my mind to open for the past few weeks. Yes, it was time to give myself a present. I intended to jump in the old Dodge Challenger, head home, spread myself comfortably on the terrace, and let Avitall Gerstetter’s lovely voice transport me to Jerusalem while I undid another cork that spoke of a life of waiting—thirty-three years of it, to be exact.
The last of the piano store employees was waiting for me. I brushed past him and the rows of pianos looking like raised graves standing at attention before us.
“You haven’t been waiting long for me, have you?”
“No, boss.”
“What about the order for that other upright piano?”
“Taken care of, boss.”
“Don’t be late tomorrow.”
He said another “No, boss” and was gone. For a few minutes I leaned into my laptop’s screen trying to figure out the latest import duties I had to dole out. Before long I heard an ugly banging on piano keys. I could tell it came from the grand that sat in the middle row of the store. I waited to hear if it would continue before I told whoever it was to come back the next day if th
ey were interested in a piano.
A familiar voice: “Eshaq Lariyan. Past thirty-three years I’ve seen every kind of malady in you except deafness.”
He was used to calling men by their first and last names. A habit he’d no doubt picked up thirty-three years ago when he was an interrogator at the Towhid Detention Center. I recalled those interrogation tables and the ever-present lamps overhead and this man staring into your face telling you he knew exactly who you were and what you did and now that the Islamic Revolution had won the day he was not going to let up on you. Yes, this was the man I knew then and I knew now.
Except everything had changed since that time. The Towhid Detention Center had become a museum. And I was no longer that junior antique smuggler who had sold his soul to this guy fresh out of Tehran University’s School of Law. He with his thin beard back then and a headful of giddy thoughts about revolution. He had gone into the Sepah, a colonel now with more than thirty years of active duty behind him. Thirty years and a collection of shrapnel in his body as gifts from the Iran-Iraq War.
I stood up and watched him lean into the grand and regard me in his expensive, cream-colored winter coat that was far too warm for this weather.
“So, you went and bought the building next to the gas station too? Don’t tell me you want to open a Jewish ghetto right here on Shariati Avenue, Eshaq Lariyan!”
“It’s too soon for that,” I said, walking across the room to the window.
Men are readable creatures. Let them say a few words to you and you know where they’re heading. Not so with Colonel Said Isaar. Decades of experience with him had proved this time and again. I stood by the store window and watched him through the glass long enough to grow bored. Then my eyes fell on some dried mud on my shoes and I felt a terrible irritation take hold of me.
Until he finally spoke again: “It’s possible I can promise this is the last time I have business with you.”
“You are not a man to make empty promises. I’m all ears.”
“But remember, I only said it’s possible that I can promise.”