by Ali Hosseini
“Wait, Behruz! Where are you going? Stay for dinner.”
I walk back and stand under the window. “Sorry, Bibi, I have to go. Thank you for taking care of Maman, and I’m sorry for everything. Sorry for all the problems. I’ll send Musa to see you. I’ll see if I can arrange it so you and Maman can go to Shiraz.”
“Good. It will be better for her,” she says, and I leave quickly, walking back the same dusty path toward the Naranjestan. It’s that time of day when evening is approaching and your vision enters into a state of doubt since whatever you see may not be what it appears to be. The villagers have a name for this time of the day, calling it the hour of the goorg-o-mish—wolf-sheep—after the sheep appearing in the distance that could actually be a wolf.
Seventeen
AT NIGHT I HEAR THE JACKALS hunting for prey. It starts with one high-pitched wail, then another follows and another, their contagious enthusiasm speeding across the barren fields. Some nights I have heard them in the Naranjestan and even near the house. They must smell my bloody urine in the orchard and are aware that I am weakening and anticipating my collapse.
I was awake all night, pacing back and forth between the house and the pump house. I felt like walking away but didn’t dare to brave the desert night. The dark was intense and the stars very low. Ruzbeh would have loved it and said it was a good night to catch a star. He would have told me to stand on my toes and stretch out my arm. “You must feel it,” he would insist. “Feel it in your heart, raise your arm high and close your fist quickly, then bring it down and see if you’ve caught one.”
The jackals were hollering in the distance and once I thought I heard a cry, someone crying, “Noooooooooooooo.” Or was it in my imagination? It was sudden and piercing like a cry giving way to a silence so heavy as if the whole existence had stopped before the explosion of stones toward a white-shrouded figure buried to the waist in the center of the square.
Who can explain why savagery is so entangled with this land? Or how cruelty and violence can reinvent themselves time after time so that they have no end? Centuries ago, old Zoroaster walked these lands and told us of the struggle between light and darkness, encouraging us to practice kindness and good deeds so that light would be victorious over darkness. Was nothing learned from him?
Is it possible that Shireen’s gentleness won over the wrath of the stones? Musa said he heard that she managed to pull herself out of the pit and so must be forgiven since, according to Islamic law, she is considered innocent. But if this is really what happened and Shireen is alive, where is she and what has happened to her? And why haven’t I heard anything from Kemal?—Kemal, who always brags of his connections in the city and brings news of what is happening there. Why hasn’t he brought me any news of her?
I paced with Shireen’s image in my mind. I missed her and wanted her next to me, even though I knew I didn’t have the right to think that way. I wanted her, even though I didn’t deserve her.
O sweet heaven, if she has survived, what kind of condition can she be in? Are her bones broken? Does she need help?
I paced until night picked up its dark veil and went away and everything was as it had been—the thirsty orchard, the silent pump house, and the village in the distance awakening to the sound of roosters and dogs. I stood at the edge of the well in the early-morning sun, my shadow broken where it went inside the well and emerged to stretch out toward fields as far as my eyes could follow it.
At my usual place beside the dry streambed, I can see Musa at the end of the fields, driving his herds out to graze. Yesterday when he came back from the city, it was too late to ask him about his trip and whether he had seen his brother.
Kemal arrives with his son and daughter behind him on the motorcycle. He waves and goes toward the pump house. I want to ask him if he found out anything about Shireen or Ruzbeh but don’t. I know that if he had any news, he would come straight to me. In the past few days he’s been engaged in his work, forgetting about everything else. It makes me wonder whether all his kindness was aimed only at getting the orchard. He hasn’t sat with me the way he used to or brought me anything to drink. All his efforts and thoughts have been on the pump.
I hear him calling to his children, “Amir, Golboo—don’t go too far and don’t go near the well.”
I watch them running around the pump house and through the lemon trees and can’t help worrying when they are here. A few days ago I kicked a piece of dry earth and a bunch of scorpions rushed out, small shiny creatures with a sickly yellow color, their tails coiled up and their legs moving quickly. They ran in all directions. One rushed toward me, either deliberately or out of confusion. I was shaken and felt paralyzed, but it changed direction and moved away. Later I kept thinking about Musa’s story of the prince who had been stung by a scorpion in spite of being kept in a glass palace. I must tell Kemal to caution the children.
I want to call to them. “Hey, little ones—come here. Come here and sit with me. Come and I’ll tell you a tale, the tale of this Naranjestan. Now it is dry and dying, but when I was your age, it was green and fruitful, and I used to run all around just like you.” But what is the use of their knowing that? Let them see the Naranjestan the way it is now. Why should I turn their minds to a past they have no conception of? They’ll remember it as it is now unless their father is able to bring water out of the well. Then in the spring they will see the Naranjestan in front of them as green as I see it in my memory.
Sunset is approaching and Kemal is still working on the pump. His wife came around noontime to bring us lunch and make tea. The children came close only when they brought me rice and kabab, handing it to me and running away before I got a chance to say a word.
What a long day it’s been. And how tired I am. I feel as if I’ve been waiting all my life for the day the pump starts and the water begins to flow. I see Kemal getting ready to start the motor, the old Lister diesel engine, whose origin dates to the development of the early steam engine.
It’s said that the idea for the steam engine came to James Watt when he saw an early pressure cooker made by Denis Papin, who thought of it while watching the lid of a cooking pot rattling from the force of the steam. Here in this land we have for centuries watched the lid of the kettle dance when water is heated for tea, and no one ever had such a thought. What of our inventions has changed people’s lives for the better? Here we are, a people of copiers and counterfeiters, who copy from the West and don’t even copy well. Even our religion was introduced to us. We are a people of the past, always blabbering that we had the first empire in the world, that we had great kings and ruled from India to the Mediterranean and Egypt. But what about now? What about our place in modern history? I remember my days in America when I roamed the libraries, finding all sorts of books about pre-Islamic Persia, books on Persia as a cradle of civilization, the ancient Aryans, and the clash of Greeks and Persians, and then those on Muhammad and the expansion of Islam, but what do we have now? The universities nonfunctioning, the oil industry a bombed-out ruin, and civil law abandoned.
Kemal fixes the handle to the motor’s shaft. My heart starts to beat faster. I stand up to see better. I want to call out, “Make it work, Kemal! Put your sweat and blood into it and make the motor run!” He spits on the palm of his hand, bends down, and wraps his fingers around the handle. As he turns it, his body makes a circular motion and his breathing mixes with the huff-huff of the motor. Then suddenly the motor starts to chug with a top-top sound and sends a fountain of black smoke into the clear sky. My eyes turn to the pool. A heavy muffled sound echoes in the mouth of the pipe. Musa runs out and puts the palm of his hand on the mouth of the pipe, covering it and then lifting his palm slightly and letting the air be sucked in as if giving it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Kemal looks across toward Musa and increases the flow of the fuel. The motor wails louder and sends more smoke into the sky. The vacuumlike sound grows louder as Musa covers and uncovers the mouth of the pipe. Kemal increases
and decreases the flow of the fuel to the motor. Then all at once the sound recedes inside the pipe as if it is rushing to the heart of the earth and a sudden shine of water jumps out, at first in broken gulps, then flowing continuously.
“Aab!”—water! Musa yells toward Kemal.
Kemal runs to the pool, the children behind him. He puts his hand under the pipe as if he can’t believe it is really water pouring out. The children and Musa do the same, holding their hands under the water and staring at it. It looks like they are prepared to stay there forever so that it won’t cease to flow. All of them move around the pool as if performing a ritual water dance.
Seeing the water and listening to its sound as it pours into the pool makes me excited and happy. But I stay where I am by the dry streambed awaiting the flow of the water, and it does not take long until I hear a hissing sound and then see the water crawling closer, pushing dirt and debris ahead of it. When it reaches me, I start to walk alongside the flow. A breeze starts to blow through the trees, and the branches sway as if they are bowing to the arrival of water. I imagine the tree roots are beginning to sense the murmuring of the passing water. As the water stretches out, its cloudiness clears and it becomes a mirror for the orchard and the sky.
Eighteen
I WALK ALONG WITH THE WATER through the Naranjestan and toward the open fields, which at this time of year should be plowed and ready to be sown with winter wheat. Behind I can hear the top-top of the motor and the laughter of Musa and Kemal and the children beside the pool. I watch for a few minutes and then am drawn back to the water. The flow has picked up speed as if in a hurry to get to the end of the fields and push back the desert. It extends well ahead of me now. As I walk farther, the voices fade but I can still hear the sound of the motor. When I reach the end of the Naranjestan, following the stream, I see something moving. When I get closer, I can make out the shape of a person sitting beside the stream. It looks like a man. In a few minutes I reach him. His head is bent down and he is watching the water splashing around his bare feet.
I pick up my pace. “Ruzbeh,” I cry out. “Is that you? Please stay where you are. Stay there!”
My voice scratches my throat as if I hadn’t spoken for years. I reach him and stop. My heart racing, “Oh dear God,” I say with tears in my eyes.
“Ruzbeh-jan. Ruzbeh—it’s me, Behruz.”
He doesn’t move or look up. Like a child with a shiny new toy, he is playing with the water, bringing it up, cupped in his hands, and letting it pour out through his fingers while he whispers something I can’t make out. I move closer slowly, worried that I will scare him away.
He looks at me briefly. He’s thin and has a long beard. I know he recognizes me and think he might get up and go away, but he turns back to the water. I approach slowly and sit down beside him. I can see my reflection beside his in the water—Ruzbeh and Behruz, two gaunt figures with tousled hair.
I put my arm around his shoulder.
“Ruzbeh,” I say, breaking down in tears. “Where did you go? Where have you been?” I hold him tighter and he returns my embrace. “Dear brother. I’ve been looking for you. Oh, dear Ruzbeh, I love you. I’ve missed you so much. Please don’t go away again.”
He raises his head. The scar on his forehead, a faint line the color of the desert, makes my heart ache. He points toward the fields and the irrigation ditches.
“I’ve been looking for you. I’m so happy I found you.” I kiss him again. “Tell me, are you okay? How are you?”
He looks at me as if searching his memory. His eyes—those eyes that I know so well—have a watery look to them. When he was excited or was hiding something, I always could see it in his eyes. I have no idea if he knows about Shireen or will be willing even to talk to me. I stand up and wipe my eyes. Ruzbeh goes on murmuring as if singing a lullaby, calling to Shireen to come and sit beside him.
I watch him looking at Shireen, talking to Shireen, and can almost see her in her red dress, wading in the water and tossing her head as she talks. I wait for a while, my cheeks streaked with tears. I kneel beside him and put my hand under his chin, bringing his head up so I can look into his eyes. I see that he knows it’s me. Our eyes cloud with memories. We were always like this, knowing each other’s feelings without saying a word.
“Ruzbeh-jan—get up, let’s go back. You can’t stay out here anymore. Let’s go back to the Naranjestan. Everything is taken care of. Musa and Kemal are there and will take care of you.”
For a moment his eyes drift in the direction I’m pointing, and then he turns away. Cupping my hands, I fill them with water. He lets me wash his face. I can feel the lump of broken bone in his forehead. It’s the first time I’ve touched his injury. I sit watching the water for a while before washing his feet. Then I wash myself. I put his boots beside him and ask him to put them on. He does, still murmuring to himself.
I know he is like this when he doesn’t take his medicine. He has severe headaches and his depression deepens, and all he can do is walk aimlessly. I wonder whether it was the sound of the motor pump that drew him here.
I help him to put his jacket on and shake the dust off him.
“Let’s go to the Naranjestan. Enough wandering. You must be tired. I am—very tired. The water is coming from there. Kemal fixed the pump.” We turn to go back.
“You haven’t been taking your medicine, have you?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“We’ll fix that. I am sure Maman has some. She was always good at keeping some extra for you.”
He nods absentmindedly.
“We’ll go and see Maman tomorrow. She’s waiting for you. She needs you with her. I went to visit her today.”
“Tell me, Ruzbeh,” I ask after a while. “Before you went away, at least you came back once in a while. Someone always knew where you were, but this time, no one knew.”
He pauses as if trying to gather his thoughts. “I wanted to come to the Naranjestan,” he says at last, “but I couldn’t.”
“Did you go to Maman and Bibi or to the house in Shiraz?”
“I wanted to, but I couldn’t”
“Why?”
“There’s nothing left.”
I know he must be talking about Shireen. I don’t say a word. Can I say it’s my fault what happened? Or was it his doing as well, the way he ran away from her and left her alone? We walk in silence.
Finally he says, “I heard Shireen disappeared. I know it was my fault.”
“No. It wasn’t your fault,” I say, my voice choking. “We’ll find her. Do you know where she is?”
He doesn’t answer.
“I’m sorry, Ruzbeh. You don’t need to worry now. I should have tried harder to find you. I’ll take care of you.” Tears come to my eyes at seeing him this way.
As we walk side by side through the lemon grove I remember the innocent days when we used to run around here and can’t stop thinking that as an adult I should have been more responsible, I should’ve taken better care of him and Shireen. I was self-absorbed and didn’t think about the consequences of our actions at a time when the consequences were so grave and the price of being foolish so high.
I feel an emptiness inside me. When I look around there is a murmuring in the air as if the trees, the water, the breeze, all are telling me that something is missing.
I stop short.
“Please forgive me, Ruzbeh. I can’t come with you. There is something important I have to do. I have to go to the city. I have to go and look for Shireen.”
A faint smile appears on his lips. He nods.
“Promise me that you will go to the farmhouse. Things have changed there. Musa and Kemal are there now. The old man has been taking care of me. He’ll take care of you too. Tell him I’ve gone to the city. You need to go and get your pills from Maman. She’ll be very pleased to see you. She needs to see you. Bibi as well. I want you to stay there. Musa will help you. Will you promise me?”
He nods.
I draw h
im to me and hug him hard, feeling the warmth of his body. I touch his skin. I kiss him, kiss his eyes, and hug him again, wanting to give him my last bit of warmth—my last bit of energy, wanting to give him all the life that is left in me.
I start to walk away but go only a few steps and turn to hug him again. It feels so much like the day, almost eight years ago, when I left for America. I hold him tight, wanting to repair the rupture between us.
He smiles and then starts walking toward the farmhouse, still murmuring to Shireen as if she were there beside him. I wish I could promise him that I will find her, that I will bring her back.
I watch him, a thin shadow, walk through the old lemon trees toward Musa and the others. I wait until I’m sure Musa sees him, then turn around and start out across the desert, still hearing the words of the lullaby Ruzbeh was singing.
Nineteen
THE DESERT SKY IS BRIGHT with stars. Cold saturates the night and I keep walking, not knowing exactly where I am, just hoping that I’m going in the right direction and will soon be on the road by the mountainside that leads to Shiraz. Maybe I should have gone back with Ruzbeh and asked Kemal to take me into the city, but I didn’t want him or the old man to stop me from going. All this has nothing to do with them, and I didn’t want to put them in any danger.
The sudden shriek of jackals startles me. I stop for a moment, thinking that they have seen me and are close by. I start to run—I don’t know how far or in what direction—until I hear the sound of music ahead. I think I’m hearing things, but when I reach the top of the hill I can see a fire burning below and the dark shapes of people moving near the flames. A woman is singing, accompanied by the jingle-jangle of a tambourine. I realize they are Gypsies, maybe the same family I saw one evening when they came to the lemon grove to draw water from the well.