Don’t merely keep food from the passions hidden,
But refuse all thoughts on things forbidden.
It was dark. Once more Mirza Hoseinali entered the crowd of people. Like a lost child he walked aimlessly in the dusty, crowded streets. In the light of the streetlamps he looked at faces. All of them were dull and sad. His head felt empty, and there was a pressure in his heart which had grown unbearable. These people whom he had considered base, bound to their stomachs and lusts, gathering money, he now knew to be wiser and better than he, and he wished to be one of them. But he said to himself, “Who knows?” Maybe there was someone among them even worse off than he. Could he judge from appearances? Wouldn’t a beggar on the street become happier with just one coin than the richest person? Meanwhile all the money in the world couldn’t do anything to alleviate Mirza Hoseinali’s pain. This time all the frightening nightmares which usually came to him were stronger and quicker in their attack. It occurred to him that his life had passed uselessly. Frenzied, confused memories of thirty years passed before him. He felt himself to be the most unfortunate and useless of creatures. Periods of his life appeared to him from behind dark clouds. Some episodes would shine out suddenly, then they would disappear. All of it was monotonous, tiring, and heart-rending. Sometimes a brief, vain happiness appeared like lightning flashing from a cloud. Everything seemed mean and useless to him: what a worthless struggle! What an absurd chase! He muttered to himself and bit his lips. His youth had been wasted in seclusion and darkness, without pleasure, without happiness, without love, weary of himself and others. How many people sometimes feel themselves more lost, more homeless than a bird which cries in the darkness of the night? He could no longer believe anything. This meeting of his with Sheikh Abelfazl had cost him dearly, because it had turned all his thoughts inside out. He was tired and thirsty, and a devil or a dragon had awakened in him which continually wounded and poisoned him. Now a car passed him, and in its lights his angry face, trembling lips and open, expressionless eyes were frighteningly illuminated. He was gazing into space, with a half-open mouth, as if he were laughing at something out of reach. He felt a pressure at the base of his skull which extended to his forehead and temples and caused wrinkles to appear between his eyebrows.
Mirza Hoseinali had felt pain beyond human endurance. He was acquainted with hopeless hours, with distress and misfortune, and he knew a kind of philosophical pain which doesn’t exist for the mass of people. But now he felt himself immeasurably lost and alone. Life for him had become nothing but a mockery and a lie. He recited to himself, “What do I have to show for life? Nothing!”
This line from a poem drove him mad. Pale moonlight shone from behind the clouds, but he passed in the shadows. This moon, which previously had been so enchanting and mysterious for him and with whom he had communed during long hours outside the city gate, now seemed a cold, heartless and meaningless brightness. It angered him. He remembered the warm days, the long hours of study. He remembered his youth. While other boys his age were busy with pleasure, he would spend the summer days dripping with sweat, studying Arabic grammar with other students. Then they would go to take part in discussions with their theology teacher, Sheikh Mohammad Taqi. Squatting in full gathered trousers, a bowl of ice water in front of him, he fanned himself, and if they made a mistake in one vowel sign of an Arabic word, he shouted and the veins of his neck stood out, as if the world were ending.
Now the streets were empty and the shops were closed. When he entered Allah-o-Duleh Street the sound of music aroused him. Over a blue door in the glow of an electric light he read the name “Maxim”. Without hesitating he pushed back the curtain in the doorway, entered, and sat down at a table.
Since Mirza Hoseinali wasn’t used to bars, having never set foot inside such places, he looked around in amazement. Cigarette smoke mingled with the smell of fried meat and cabbage. A short man with a heavy moustache and rolled-up sleeves stood behind the bar working out sums on an abacus. A row of bottles was arranged next to him. A bit further away, a fat woman was playing the piano, while a thin man beside her played the violin. Drunken customers with strange faces, some from Russia and the Caucasus, sat at the tables. Meanwhile, a rather pretty woman with a foreign accent came up to his table and said with a smile, “Won’t you buy me a glass of wine, darling?”
“Certainly.”
Without hesitation the woman called a waiter and ordered an alcoholic drink he had never heard of. The waiter placed a bottle of wine and two glasses in front of them. The woman poured the wine and offered it to him. Mirza Hoseinali reluctantly drank the first glass. His body grew warm, his thoughts mixed up. The woman plied him with glass after glass of alcohol. A mournful wailing came from the violin. Mirza Hoseinali felt free and peculiarly happy inside. He remembered all the praise and glorification of wine he had read in Sufi poetry. In the pitiless brightness of the light he saw crow’s feet around the eyes of the woman seated next to him. After all his self-restraint, now his lot had become a yellow, sour-tasting wine and a heavily made-up, used, rough-haired woman. But he liked it that way. He felt he wanted to lower himself so that he could better destroy and ruin the being he had become through so much pain. He wanted to plunge from the purest, brightest thoughts into the darkest pleasure. He wanted to become a laughing stock, have people jeer at him. He wanted to find a route of escape for himself through madness. In this hour he knew himself capable of every kind of insanity. He murmured to himself:
During this time of poverty
Have pleasure, feast, and revelry.
The philosopher’s stone of existence
Can turn a beggar to a Croesus.
Opposite him, the Russian woman laughed. Everything Mirza Hoseinali had read in Sufi poetry in praise of wine appeared before his eyes. He felt it all; he could read all the mysteries and secrets in the face of the woman who was sitting opposite him. At this time he was happy, because he had attained what he had wished for. Through the delicate mist of the wine he saw what he could never have imagined, what Sheikh Abelfazl couldn’t even dream, what other people couldn’t even conceive. Another world, full of secrets, became apparent to him. He understood that those who had forbidden this world had taken all their words and comparisons and allusions from it.
When Mirza Hoseinali got up to pay the bill he couldn’t stand on his feet. He took out his wallet, gave it to the woman, and with his arm around her they went out of Maxim’s. In the droshky, Mirza Hoseinali laid his head on the woman’s breast. He breathed the smell of her powder. The world was whirling before his eyes. The lights were dancing. The woman sang a mournful song in her Russian accent.
The droshky stopped at Mirza Hoseinali’s house. He entered the house with the woman, but he didn’t go to the bed of straw where he usually slept. He took her to the white mattress which was spread in his library.
Two days passed, and Mirza Hoseinali didn’t go to his work at school. On the third day was written in the newspaper: “Mister Mirza Hoseinali, a young, hardworking teacher, has committed suicide for unknown reasons.”
Buried Alive
(from Buried Alive)
(translated by Deborah Miller Mostaghel)
I’m short of breath, tears pour from my eyes, my mouth tastes sour. I’m dizzy, my heartbeat is laboured, I’m exhausted, beaten, my body is loosened up. I have fallen without volition on the bed. My arms are punctured from injections. My bed smells of sweat and fever. I look at the clock on the small table beside the bed. It’s Sunday, ten o’clock. I look at the ceiling of the room, from the middle of which hangs a light bulb. I look around the room. The wallpaper has a pink and red flower design. At intervals two blackbirds sit opposite each other on a branch. One of them has opened his beak as if he is talking to the other. This picture infuriates me, I don’t know why, but whichever direction I turn, it’s before my eyes. The table is covered with bottles, wicks, and boxes of medicine. The smell of burnt a
lcohol, the smell of a sickroom, has pervaded the air. I want to get up and open the window, but an overwhelming laziness has nailed me to the bed. I want to smoke a cigarette, but I have no desire for it. It hasn’t been ten minutes since I shaved my beard, which had grown long. I came and fell in bed. When I looked in the mirror I saw that I’d become very wasted and thin. I walked with difficulty. The room is a mess. I’m alone.
A thousand kinds of astonishing thoughts whirl and circle in my brain. I see all of them. But to write the smallest feeling or the least passing idea I must describe my whole life, and that isn’t possible. These reflections, these feelings, are the result of my whole life, the result of my way of life, of my inherited thoughts, of what I’ve seen, heard, read, felt, or pondered over. All these things have made up my irrational and ridiculous existence.
I twist in the bed. I jumble my memories together. Distressed and mad reflections press my brain. My head hurts, throbs. My temples are hot. I twist and turn. I pull the quilt over my eyes. I think – I’m tired. It would be good if I could open my head and take out all the soft, grey, twisted mass of my brain and throw it all away, throw it to a dog.
Nobody can understand. Nobody will believe. To somebody who fails at everything they say, “Go and lay your head down and die.” But when even death doesn’t want you, when even death turns its back on you, death which won’t come and which doesn’t want to come!…”
Everyone is afraid of death but I’m afraid of my persistent life. How frightening it is when death doesn’t want one and rejects one! Only one thing consoles me. It was two weeks ago, I read in the paper that in Austria a person tried thirteen times to kill himself in different ways and each time he almost succeeded: he hanged himself and the rope broke, he threw himself in the river and they pulled him out, and so on… Finally, for the last time, when the house was empty he slashed his wrists with a kitchen knife, and this thirteenth time he died!
This gives me consolation!
No, no one decides to commit suicide. Suicide is with some people. It is in their very nature, they can’t escape it. It is fate which rules, but at the same time it is I who have created my own fate. Now I can no longer escape it, but I cannot escape from myself.
Anyhow, what can be done? Fate is stronger than I am. What fancies I get! As I was lying in bed I wished to be a child. The same old nursemaid who used to tell me stories, pausing to swallow, would be sitting here at my head. I would be lying just like this, tired out in bed, and she would elaborately tell me stories and my eyes would slowly close. Now that I think about it, some of the events of my childhood come easily to mind. It is as if it were yesterday. I see that I’m not very far from my childhood. Now I see the whole of my dark, base, and useless life. Was I happy then? No, what a big mistake! Everyone supposes children are lucky. No, how well I remember. I was even more sensitive then. Then I was a phoney and a sly fellow. On the surface I may have laughed or played, but inside, the least biting remark or the smallest unpleasant, worthless occurrence would occupy my mind for long hours, and I would eat my heart out. By no means should a character like mine survive. The truth is with those who say that heaven and hell are inside a person. Some are born lucky and some unlucky.
I look at the red pencil stub with which I am making these notes in bed. It was with the same pencil that I wrote out the meeting place and the note to the girl whom I had just got to know. We went to the pictures together two or three times. The last time it was a talking film rather that a silent one. As part of the programme, a well-known Chicago singer sang ‘Where is My Sylvia?’ I enjoyed it so much that I closed my eyes to listen. I can still hear his powerful and captivating voice. The theatre rang with the sound. It seemed to me that he should never die. I couldn’t believe that some day this voice might become silent. His mournful tone made me sad, even while I was enjoying it. Music played high and low. The quivering and wailing which came from the strings of the violin made it seem as if the bow were being drawn across my veins. The entire fabric of my body was impregnated with the music; it made me tremble and carried me down the path of imagination. In the darkness I fondled her breasts. Her eyes grew heavy. I felt strange. I remember it was a sad and poignant state which can’t be expressed. I kissed her moist, fresh lips. She was blushing. We hugged each other. I didn’t follow the film. I was playing with her hands, and she was pressing herself against me. Now it’s as if it was a dream. Nine days have passed since we last parted. We had arranged that the next day I would bring her to my room. Her house was near the Montparnasse cemetery. That day I went to get her. I got off the metro at the corner. A cold wind was blowing and the weather was cloudy and overcast. I didn’t know what happened, but I changed my mind. Not that she wasn’t attractive, or that I didn’t like her, but some power held me back. No, I didn’t want to see her any more. I wanted to cut all ties with life. Without thinking I went into the cemetery. At the entrance the watchman had wrapped himself in a dark blue cape. An immense silence ruled there. I strolled slowly, staring at the gravestones, the crosses above them, the artificial flowers and grass next to or on top of the graves. I read the names of some of the dead. I regretted not being in their place. I thought to myself how fortunate all these people were!… I was envious of the dead whose bodies had disintegrated under the ground. Such a strong feeling of jealousy had never arisen in me before. It seemed to me that death is happiness and a blessing which one is not given lightly. I don’t know exactly how much time passed. I stared, stunned. I had entirely forgotten the girl. I didn’t feel the cold. It was as if the dead were closer to me than the living. I understood them better. I turned back. No, I didn’t want to see that girl any more. I wanted to put everything aside. I wanted to give up and die. What ridiculous thoughts come to me! Maybe I’m babbling.
For several days I had been telling my fortune with cards. I don’t know how it happened that I had come to believe in superstition, but I took my fortune-telling seriously. In other words I had nothing else to do; I couldn’t do anything else. I wanted to gamble with my future. I made a wish to do away with myself. My wish would come true, the cards told me. One day I realized that I had been telling my fortune with cards for three and a half hours without stopping. First I shuffled, then I arranged one card face up on the table and five other cards face down in a row, then on the second card, which was face down, I put one card down, and so on. I had learnt this game in childhood and I was passing my time with it.
A week or so ago I was sitting in a café. Two people in front of me were playing backgammon. One of them, red-faced, bald-headed, a cigarette sticking out from under his hanging moustache, was listening with a dim-witted expression. The other said, “I’ve never won at gambling. I lose nine times out of ten.” I stared at them dully. What did I want to say? I don’t know. Anyway, I went out in the streets, walking mechanically. Several times it occurred to me to close my eyes and walk in front of a car, let its wheels pass over me, but it was a hard way to die. Even then, how could I be sure? Perhaps I might remain alive. This is the thought that drives me crazy. Thinking like this, I passed intersections and crowded places. In the middle of this hustle and bustle, this ringing of car horses’ hooves, these wagons and automobile horns, this noise and commotion, I was alone. In the midst of millions of people it was as if I was sitting in a broken boat lost in the middle of the ocean. I felt as if I had been driven out in disgrace from the society of men. I saw that I wasn’t made for life. I was reasoning with myself, walking monotonously. I would stop and look at the paintings in store windows. I would stare for a while. I regretted not having become a painter. It was the only job that I liked and that pleased me. I thought to myself that only in painting could I find a small consolation for myself. A postman was passing me and from behind a pair of glasses he was looking at the address on a letter. What did it make me think of? I don’t know. Perhaps I remembered the postmen of Iran, the mailman who came to our house.
It was last ni
ght. I pressed my eyes together, but I couldn’t fall asleep. Disjointed thoughts, exciting images appeared before my eyes. They weren’t dreams because I hadn’t yet fallen asleep. They were nightmares. I was neither asleep nor awake, but I saw them. My body was enervated, beaten, sick and heavy. My head hurt. These frightening nightmares kept passing before my eyes. Sweat dripped from my body. I saw a package of paper opening in the air. It dropped sheet by sheet. A group of soldiers passed, their faces invisible. The dark, terrifying night was filled with frightening and angry figures. When I wanted to close my eyes and give myself up to death, these startling images would appear. A volcanic circle whirling about itself, a corpse floating on a river, eyes looking at me from every direction. Now I remember well the crazy, angry figures swarming towards me. An old man with a bloody face had been tied to a column. He was looking at me, laughing; his teeth glittered. A bat was hitting my face with its cold wings. I was walking on a tightrope. Below it was a whirlpool. I was slipping. I wanted to scream. A hand was laid on my shoulder. An icy hand was pressing my throat. It seemed that my heart would stop. The groans, the sinister groans which came from the night’s darkness, the faces cleaned of shadows – these things appeared and disappeared of their own accord. What could I do in the face of them? They were at once very near and very far. I wasn’t dreaming them because I hadn’t yet fallen asleep.
* * *
I don’t know if I have fooled everyone or if I have been fooled, but there is one thought which is driving me crazy. I can’t stop myself from laughing. Sometimes I choke with laughter. So far nobody has understood what’s wrong with me. They’ve all been fooled! It’s been a week that I’ve been pretending to be sick, or else I’ve caught a strange ailment. Willy-nilly I picked up a cigarette and lit it. Why do I smoke? I don’t know myself. I hold the cigarette between two fingers of my left hand. I lift it to my lips. I blow the smoke into the air. This is also an ailment!
The Blind Owl and Other Stories Page 21