Strange Times, My Dear

by Nahid Mozaffari

  The infant with the pacifier in its mouth was watching. The woman herself couldn’t see. The baby was chubby and healthy, with big eyes. It was heavy. It could see. You jerk your arm and with all the weight of the shoulder, the arm, the wrist, and the hand, like a stone falling from the sky, you hit heavily, and then suddenly, you jerk back. Barat was not looking anymore. We couldn’t hear what he was saying. We didn’t even hear him say “Ouch.” The woman said: “Sir, for God’s sake, tell me what are they are doing.”

  We said: “His head has dropped down.”

  She asked: “What is he doing now? What is happening to his face?” We said: “His head is down. We can’t see. His hair is covering his face.”

  He was foaming at the corner of his mouth. They struck again. Another was hitting. Four people hit, each one’s share was only about twenty lashes. They were now hitting with their faces uncovered. Why hide? Then they took him away. The crowd went to prayers. We went to prayers, too. We performed our prayers with all our hearts. In his first sermon, the Friday Imam spoke of the necessity of repentance, then about the necessity of torment in the next world. He spoke about the Desert of Resurrection, about the day that is fifty thousand years long, when we must stand in a long line, shrouds on our shoulders, under the bright sun, a sun as red as a basin of blood. And the ground will be hot, hotter than molten copper. We will stand barefoot, all in a row. We will stand for fifty thousand years, until it is our turn.

  We performed our prayers with all our hearts.

  In the afternoon, our friends did not come. We were to have a get-together, simple and casual, just a chat and some tea. They didn’t come. Sadduq called and said: “Aren’t you ashamed?”

  “Ashamed? Why?”

  He said: “All of us, we should all be ashamed.”

  We should be ashamed? Why, and before whom? The whole world was focusing its cameras on us, as though there had never been a Vietnamese girl in flames, or as though they had never lynched any blacks in their own states.

  Sadduq doesn’t understand. He says: “You are a real fool!” And he hangs up. Sadduq is prejudiced, he is too nervous, and he has no patience or perseverance.

  I called the rest of them. They wouldn’t answer the phone, or else I was told that they had already gone to bed. Early evening, someone called me. I couldn’t figure out who it was. He said: “Listen. I know where they ditched the bottles.”

  I said: “Why are you telling me?”

  I hung up. There were more calls. I said: “Don’t answer.” I said: “Turn on the television and listen to the news.” The phone rang again. It was my friend’s uncle.

  He said: “Did you hear?”

  I said: “What?”

  He said: “Someone called. They said that the tractor driver had been told to take all those bottles and dump them somewhere. He put them in his tractor and took them out to the fields.”

  I said: “Well?”

  He said: “They say the tractor driver has said, I went and dug a hole, and dumped them all in there and covered them with dirt.’”

  I said: “Good. This is what they should have done. Did you expect them to give them to you, or to me?”

  He said: “Don’t you get it? The guy has said, ‘I dug somewhere where the soil is soft. And I covered them with a layer of dirt.’ He has said, ‘If they find out, if they get wind of it, it will be a waste.’”

  I said: “My good man, in the midst of all these problems, how is this any concern of yours?”

  He said: “I am going, and I know the place.”

  How they tempt you. Like the cursed Satan, they constantly get under one’s skin. Maybe Barat himself had started this commotion. I thought I should go and see. You can’t just sit around. I looked out of the window. I saw a couple of people walking by a wall, holding oil lamps. I picked up mine, too. My wife asked: “Where are you going?”

  I said: “I’m going out for a little while.”

  She said: “But the streetlights are on.”

  I said: “Some streets are not lit, you know.”

  And I went out. A couple of back streets farther, I saw someone. I didn’t know him. His lantern was lit. We nodded. He asked: “Do you know where it is?”

  I said: “No.”

  “They say it’s toward the mountain, by the foot of the mountain. He ditched them under a tree.” “Which one?” “I don’t know.”

  When we got out of town, we saw others with lights, walking in twos and in fours. And many were ahead of us. They all were going there. We walked faster. It was cold. We hadn’t brought overcoats. A jackal was howling somewhere. Soon, there were more than twenty of us. And more were coming from behind. Someone said: “Where is it?”

  I said: “Someone probably knows.”

  We walked in groups; we teamed up and walked faster. One or two people had brought small shovels. Why shovels? The bottles will break. But we didn’t say anything. We kept going. Behind us, people kept popping out of back streets. There was such a chill in the air. We pulled up the collars of our jackets, moved the lantern from one hand to the other, stuck our numbed hands into our pockets, and went on.

  Someone said: “They will soon find out about it. We’ve got to hurry.”

  We should have stopped, even gone back. Cursed be Barat! But our legs walked on, out of our control. Or was it the smell of the soil, the smell of the old rotted leaves, that drew us — as if we were walking between the clay walls of a cellar? Once in a while, a dried-up bush would appear before us. Or someone would say: “What a sky!” Indeed, what a sky it was. We had forgotten. The same old stars, as if you were observing them from the Maragheh Observatory: there was Scorpio, and Virgo, and Libra. The constellation of the Bear was there, so big. There was also the smell of trees, the smell of damp earth.

  We saw the black silhouette of the trees in the thicket from a distance. The lights ahead of us assembled, and became fixed like a ring of fire. Bent over silhouettes circled the fire. We quickened our pace. Long shadows were cast on the ground. There was jubilation. Were they saying something to each other in a strange language? We ran. When we arrived, we saw them kneeling around the fresh earth, as if bowing down in prayer. But their hands were pushing the earth aside. We dug, too. We sunk our fingers into the earth and pushed aside the soft earth on which dew had set. We said: “God bless his soul for having thought of everything.”

  And we laughed. Someone was about to dig with a shovel. We said: “What are you doing, my good man?” We pulled the earth fistful by fistful and if we came across a rock, we handed it back to those standing behind us. Someone said: “Ouch!”

  He pulled his hand out, and put his bleeding finger to his mouth. Then he dug some more into the dirt. It was a broken bottle. Blood was dripping from his muddy hand, but he was laughing. We said: “Well, there it is, right there, but we shouldn’t be hasty. The mud and earth must be pushed aside carefully, the broken bottles passed from hand to hand.”

  But we were hasty, because we could smell the sharp scent of that “bitter, keen, light, delicious, rose-hued elixir,” as if we stood in the cellar when clay lids were removed from the tops of a thousand vats. Someone said: “I found it.”

  He stood up, holding something smeared with mud between his two bloody and muddy hands. He kissed it and handed it over to others to kiss. Someone opened the bottle with his teeth and he drank, and wiped his mustache with the back of his hand. There was more. We dug, and as we scraped the mud from the neck of those treasures buried by that crafty conniver, we handed it to those behind us, and dug again into the mud. We didn’t even say “ouch” anymore, and if a hand gave us an offering of a sip, we wiped our mustaches with the backs of our hands. Someone from the back shouted: “Dastardly is he who takes it home. It should all be finished here, right here.”

  He was drunk. He was bending over us, searching our pockets and underarms. We said: “Go home. If you can’t handle it, why do you come:

  Then, there was only mud and broken bottles. An
d we wiped our hands on our laps or whatever was on our shoulders, and wrapped our bleeding hands with a piece of torn shirt. And there, in the middle of the field, we gathered in groups, sitting on the earth with a light in the middle. Someone had even brought pickled cucumbers, just a few, to counter the bitterness. After each sip, we bit off a small piece of cucumber, and handed the rest over so that others would also have a taste. Someone said: “No thanks, the earth is our salt.”

  Who was it? Where was he? And to which circle did he belong? We did not know. Then, we heard the voice of Akbar Agha “Magic Fingers,” with the same old, tired voice, coming from somewhere among the people who stood in a circle around the few lights. He started to sing in a husky voice, we didn’t know what song. Then, suddenly he raised his voice and sang out loud:

  The heart, the heart does not long for grassy meadows, it does not.

  And we chanted: “It does not!”

  He sang:

  It does not long, does not long for strolling among the flowers, it does not.

  And we said: “It does not!”

  The heart, the heart does not get along with us, it does not.

  “It does not!”

  Let this heart bleed, for it does not have fortitude, it does not.

  “It does not!”

  He had risen up, as he was singing. We rose up, too, dancing, hand in hand, or else placing a hand on each other’s waists, and stomping our feet. Suddenly, shots rang from a distance, from the town. Come on over. Akbar Agha “Magic Fingers” continued to sing. We couldn’t hear what he was singing. Someone said: “Put the lights out, hurry up, or they’ll see us.”

  We bent over, but we couldn’t do it. We looked at our bloody hands, and we couldn’t. Akbar Agha “Magic Fingers” was singing a ghazal by Hafez:

  Even though the preacher of the city . . .

  He was singing in a full voice:

  Learn to be a libertine and be generous, for it is no virtue

  To refrain from drinking, yet reveal no trace of humanity.

  The grand name of God will be your saving grace,

  For by disguise and tricks the demon cannot become Solomon.

  We could no longer hear the shots. All we heard was the voice of Akbar Agha “Magic Fingers,” as we stood around the lights, bottles in our hand. They got closer. When Akbar Agha “Magic Fingers” finished the song, he started to sing it again, and we joined in. They had arrived. The sound of their machine guns and G-3s wouldn’t let us hear the song anymore. They were firing into the air. They stood in the dark, and we couldn’t see them. Someone was reciting a Quranic verse, in eloquent Arabic. When they stepped into the circle of light, we finally saw them. They had wrapped their heads and faces with Arabic shawls. They squatted, one knee to the ground, and aimed the barrels of their guns toward us. Only one of them was standing, holding a whip in his hand. Akbar had stopped singing. He was sitting. We were also sitting, all of us.

  They said over a loudspeaker: “We must flog them, all of them. Start from one end, and even if it takes us till the Day of Resurrection, so be it.” They stretched out one of us. Two held his legs and two his arms. They spread a black cloth over his head, gathered the ends of the cloth, and stuffed it in his mouth. And they began to hit. No one made a sound. Then, they sat on the ground, with their shawls wrapped around their heads and faces. They formed a larger circle around our circle, on the edge of the light of our lamps. All we could see was their eyes. And we all waited with our backs to the old stars, waiting for them to grab our two legs and stretch us out, laying us side by side, humble and down to earth, to await our turn. And until it was time for us to receive the Islamic lashes, we took the neck of the bottle in our mouths, and sucked on the last drops of bitter “Mother of All Evil.” And drunk, we put our heads and faces to the ground, on the cold, dew-covered dirt, our ancestral earth, and we waited.

  — Translated by M. R. Ghanoonparvar

  Footnotes

  1 Moharram is the first month in the Arabic calendar. For Shi’a Muslims, the first ten days of this month are mourning days because they commemorate the Battle of Karbala and the martyrdom of Imam Hossein, the third imam and the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson, in 61 A.H. (683 c.e.).

  2 Indirect reference to the Tudeh, or Iranian Communist Party, in 1953.

  3 The Tudeh Party was dependent on the Soviet Union.

  4 A popular snack made from cooked beans, onions, and parsley consumed while drinking arrack or vodka.

  5 National poet Ferdowsi’s poetry is used on graves. Hakim Abol-Ghasem Ferdowsi Toosi (940-1020 c.e.) wrote the famous epic history of Iran, The Shahnameh, in verse.

  6 The Shah’s secret police, SAVAK.

  7 During much of Iran’s history, wine and liquor could not be made or served by Muslims. Jewish and Christian minorities specialized in making alcoholic beverages and ran the taverns.

  8 Reza Khan was the first Pahlavi king. He came to power through a coup d’etat in 1925 and was forced to abdicate in 1941.

  9 Growing a Muslim-style beard in those days was a sign of identifying with the religious factions.

  10 In the early months and years of the revolution, there was a widespread fear that the United States would again plot a coup against the popular uprising and bring the Shah back, as happened in 1953. The Islamist factions used this fear to force veils on women, disarm and eliminate the secular opposition, and consolidate their power.

  11 Shariati and Al-e Ahmad were intellectuals who advocated using Islam as a mobilizing force to fight dictatorship and imperialism.

  12 Previously, Shah Square.

  13 Anniversary of the 1953 coup d’etat that returned the Shah to the throne.

  14 Islamist militia.

  15 These events took place shortly after the revolution. The slaughter refers to the attempts by Islamist revolutionary guards to put down the tribal rebellion for autonomy of the Turkoman areas.

  Ahmad Mahmud

  Ahmad Mahmud was born on December 25, 1931, in the southern city of Ahvaz. In his youth he worked as a day laborer, driver, and construction worker. Later he was arrested and imprisoned for his leftist political views and activities. He first began publishing short stories in magazines in 1959. Other collections followed: The Sea is Still Calm (1960), Uselessness (1962), A Pilgrim in the Rain (1968), The Little Native Boy (1971), and The Strangers (1972).

  The Neighbors appeared in 1974 and gave him immediate status as a novelist. Seven years later he published The Story of One City and the following year Scorched Earth. These three novels comprise a continuing saga set in the southern oil province of Khuzistan during three important periods: the days of nationalization of oil in 1951, the aftermath of the coup d’etat that brought the Shah back to the throne in August 1953, and Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980.

  In the 1990s, Mahmud published two collections of short stories and several novels: The Visit (1990), The Familiar Tale (1991), Zero Degree Orbit (1993), The Living Man (1997), and The Fig Tree of the Temples (2000). Ahmad Mahmud died of respiratory failure on October 4, 2002.

  The excerpt, part of the first chapter of the novel Scorched Earth, describes how, in the damp heat of late summer, the normal lives and routines of ordinary working people were shattered by Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980.

  Excerpt from

  SCORCHED EARTH

  These are the final days of summer. I’m still groggy from my afternoon nap. Damp heat shrouds the city, weighing on my every breath. I turn off the air conditioner and head into the courtyard. Sunlight has drawn up past the wall. Saber is sitting on the edge of the garden next to the fountain pool drinking tea. Mina is watering the petunias with the hose and their fragrance fills the courtyard. I squat next to the shallow pool and slap two palms full of water on my face. I hear Mother’s voice; she’s sitting on the porch tending the samovar. “Do you want some tea?” “Pour it for me in a large glass, Mother.”

  Mina lets go of the hose, takes the glass, and hands it to me. The sparrows
have gathered in the thick lotus tree in the middle of the yard and are making a commotion. Around dusk, the sparrows swarm the lotus, turning it into a mass of shimmering gray. I am sipping the tea and staring at the goldfish in the pool when I hear Saber’s voice,

  “You slept a lot today.”

  I had slept for four hours. It’s six o’clock. Mina sweeps away the red petals of the bougainvillea and the green and yellow leaves of the lotus tree, then hoses down the tiles of the courtyard. Branches of bougainvillea cover the entire eastern wall of the house. The bright flowers seem to twinkle in between the deep green leaves of the plant.

  Sunlight is drawing past the roof when Shahed comes through the door. He has a folded newspaper under his arm.

  “What’s in the news?”

  He offers me the paper

  “There’s something going on at the border.”

  I take it. Saber gets up and comes toward me, and Shahed squats on the edge of the porch to get tea. On page two there is an article about Iraqi tanks taking position at the Iranian border. When Saber sees it he begins, “Well, if this is true, why isn’t anybody saying anything?”