The migrating birds were chirping. They zigzagged, and sometimes formed a circle. It was as if they were trying to choose a leader. I rose from my corpse and took flight until I reached them. They chose me. They selected a fellow traveler for me, too, and resumed their triangular flight formation. Where were we flying to? Perhaps we were flying toward infinity, or heading to the nowhereland. But I remember we first passed over the greengrocer’s vegetables. The greengrocer was sprinkling water over the vegetables and button radishes.
We were lining up to go to classes after prayers. The head teacher grabbed my arm and pulled me out of line. The two of us stood in front of the others. The head teacher removed my head scarf. First she chopped off the middle part of my hair with a pair of scissors. Angrily, just like that. My head probably looked like the African continent, or like the shape of our own country. The shorn parts were the deserts.
“Jeer at this stubborn girl!” she ordered the children.
Not a sound escaped a soul. I could hear some of my classmates mumbling.
“Get your scarf back on, you worthless wretch!” the head teacher said. I didn’t do it, so she did it for me. But she knotted the scarf so tightly under my chin that I nearly gagged. She took me to the school office. The principal was breast-feeding her baby. She didn’t look up. Her gaze was fixed on the baby’s earlobe. An earlobe that looked like a freshly unfurled spring bud.
The head teacher asked the registrar for my file.
“Has she got herself into trouble?” the registrar asked.
“I have run out of ideas what to do with all of them!” replied the head teacher. “The principal has turned this school into a second home for herself. She even does her washing up at school. She has her breakfast at school. And she has the janitor do her grocery shopping.”
Searching for my file, the registrar asked, “You still haven’t said what offence this girl is guilty of?”
“Disobedience. Blasphemy, too. The geometry teacher doesn’t bother to lead them on the path of righteousness. I heard it with my own ears — she read out to them that there are pebbles in God’s shoe, and then this girl said Satan is God’s friend. I’ve already reported it. The theology teacher, too. I’ll take care of her as well.”
“But this girl is in her last year,” said the registrar. She added a few words about my cleverness and my good grades, and about the final exams, but by then the head teacher was swearing that she would take care of her, too.
The head teacher thrust my file under my arm and said, “You are expelled. As a lesson to the others here. Have your mother and father come to the school tomorrow to see me.”
“But I already told you I have no father.” Then I asked, “So you spy on us behind classroom doors, and what’s more you overhear incorrectly and report incorrectly on us. I never said Satan is God’s friend. The geometry teacher and the theology teacher didn’t blaspheme, either.”
“Shut up!” she shouted. She picked up a ruler from the office desk and went at my head, face, and shoulders with it. I kicked her ankle-bone with the tip of my shoe. She nearly passed out on one of the chairs. The registrar handed her a glass of water and quietly told me, “Off with you, now. She has a problem that goes back thousands of years.”
I hadn’t blasphemed. I just didn’t know that the solitary fast on the third day was a compulsory one.3 I didn’t even know it was possible to be secluded on the third day. If I had known it, I would have cloistered myself in the paper-flower garden of my mind and would have let weariness befriend me instead of Satan. I even told the theology teacher so. The theology teacher laughed and said, “Child, where on earth did you learn such big words?”
I abandoned the migrating birds. I told them to fly ahead in a straight line, that I would catch up with them soon. The birds said, “We will never fly without you.” I said to them, “Go with my fellow traveler instead.” They said, “We will rest by the spring and take water. This, too, is a kind of fountain of life.” My fellow traveler said, “You as well thirst after this fountain of life.”
I asked all of them, “Can you wait for forty years?”
“We can wait a thousand years for you to come,” they answered.
“Forty years is only the shortest of waits for God,” I said.
The classroom window was open. I went in. My classmates looked up at the ceiling. The theology teacher cut short what she was saying and stared ahead. I don’t think they saw me. No, they hadn’t seen me. They had placed a pot of bougainvillea flowers on my empty seat. I perched on my classmates’ head and said, “You are the Queen of Sheba and a stork will transport you to Solomon.”
They didn’t hear my voice, either, but both the theology teacher and my companions seemed to be listening to a message they didn’t understand or know from where it came. Suddenly the head teacher opened the door and walked in. The children booed her.
“Why do you blame me for what happened?” she said.
“You can’t fill up the ditch you’ve just dug,” said the theology teacher. “But if you’re determined to dig graves, at least go for a proper plot for yourself instead of standing in the ruins.” She picked up her notebook and bag as she was leaving the classroom, and said, “Goodbye, children. There’s no place for me in this high school anymore.”
And now I was sitting on the rooftop by the drainpipe, waiting for water. The neighbors’ white sheets were flapping in the wind. The sky was so pristine it was as if angels had licked it clean. Or maybe it was as pure as a freshly bathed person, someone who had just done their ablutions . . . the sun had grown so large the whole horizon gleamed. A cool breeze was stroking my wings. The earth beneath us was bright. Perhaps the earth was festive or celebrating something. The fields were lush and green. As green as the greengrocer’s greens in front of our house. The bougainvillea flowers had opened up and their perky bright blooms reminded me of red button radishes. But I couldn’t figure out why I was craving peaches or figs. It was possible to swoop down to a fig tree and peck at the figs. But none of us had warped beaks. I could hear my mother’s voice saying that no one gave anything out for free, not even figs.
In the early evening the stars came out. I recognized my own star. It burned out and fell, and we found ourselves flying over a graveyard.
My mother was asking my brother in her nightmare:
“What do you wish for? I’m prepared to give up my life to get you whatever your heart desires.”
“I only want my sister.”
My mother sprinkled rosewater on the tombstone. My mother’s tears, and those of my brother, mingled with the rosewater. I could hear their wailing, and I kept shouting:
“Don’t go! Don’t leave me by myself!”
But I knew there could be no reply to my shouting. I knew that we migrating birds would continue to fly toward infinity, with moonbeams penetrating our wings to touch the feathers of our bosom.
— Translated by Roxane Zand
Footnotes
1 This is a line from a famous poem by Nasser Khosrow, a poet and writer of the fifth century, addressing God and raising the question of the source of evil. To have a pebble in one’s shoe is akin to having something up one’s sleeve in English.
2 Here the writer presents a clever play on words with the Persian names of bougainvillea and oleander flowers. Bougainvillea is literally called gol-kaghazi or “paper flower” in Persian, alluding to the fact that the flowers look like brightly colored paper. In the text, the writer uses deliberate ambiguity when employing the terms gol kaghazi, meaning the actual flower bougainvillea, and gol-e kaghazi, “paper flower,” as an image of the innocent, unfulfilled life of a young girl. Oleander is khar-zahreh or “donkey poison” in Persian. In fact, oleander is a poisonous plant that can kill any animal that ingests it. Here the writer uses the image of the flower to invoke its poisonous attribute, to suggest a state of shock from fright (zahreh tarak) for the sadistic head teacher.
3 These are the details of religious practice reg
arding compulsory fasting.
Hadi Khorsandi
This is what Hadi Khorsandi wrote when asked for a biography:
When I was born I was two years old. In those days due to high death rates and high birth rates, it was customary to keep the identity card of a dead child for the next child to be born. So if I say I am 60 years old, you may be confused. Am I really 58 or 62?
I was born in Khorassan, near the city of Mashad, in the town of Fariman beside the famous Fariman sugar factory. My father worked at the factory, and my mother said that when I was two, I fell into the factory pool. I am not sure if I was 4 years old at that time or if I was just born. In any case, I know it was me who fell into the pool and not my brother because, according to my mothers account, the child who fell in the pool was rescued from drowning. It had to be me.
I received my elementary education in Iran. I received my secondary education in Iran. (I say them separately to make my educational resume appear longer.) I was uninterested in literature as a child, but I liked religious and Quran studies. Now, I don’t know why, the situation is quite the reverse.
I began my profession as a satirist when I was 18 years old and have continued until today. That is why I still can’t make my mortgage payments.
Khorsandi has been the editor and writer of the satirical journal Asghar Agha since 1979. His other publications include The Ayatollah and I, published in English by Readers International in 1984, The Iranian Verses, and The Essays of Sadegh Sedaghat. He was the recipient of the Hellman-Hammett Award in 1995, which was established in 1990 by the executor of the estates of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett to help “writers all around the world who have been victims of political persecution and are in financial need.”
THE EYES WON’T TAKE IT
It happened five years ago. A smuggler led us to New Zealand, saying it was the only possible destination left. We said it would be all right if it were near Sweden, as we had relatives there. The smuggler replied that New Zealand was a bit farther away, but it was the only country that admitted refugees. We gave our consent. He first took us to another country, possibly the Philippines, and from there he led us to New Zealand. Before we boarded the plane, he collected the remainder of our cash, telling us that having cash with us would cause problems. His other piece of advice was that we should tear up our passports and flush the bits and pieces down the lavatory. There were four of us. He strongly urged all four of us to get rid of our passports.
On board the plane, my companions went to the toilet one by one and tore up their passports. But for me, my passport was too near and dear to get rid of. I had protected it everywhere as part of my body; how could I get rid of it just because the stupid smuggler told me to?
I resisted. We were approaching New Zealand when my companions told me once again to get up and tear up my passport. One of them quarreled with me, saying that I was ruining not only my own chances of being granted asylum but theirs, too. He told me that if we did not comply, our Iranian nationality would be discovered and we would all be returned home.
I went to the toilet. I was very upset. How could a sane man tear up his own passport? How could he destroy the proof of his identity, his nationality, and his trustworthiness? But on the other hand, our aim was not to be identified. I took the passport out of my pocket. Good-bye, my passport! I tore it up into smaller and smaller pieces. I was not kind to it. I was even cruel, as if confronting an enemy, as if wanting to tell my companions: “Here you are. Are you satisfied now or shall I tear it up into even smaller pieces?”
The cover was hard. My friends had given me a small razor blade for the purpose of cutting it up. I did so. I cut it up into smaller and smaller and yet smaller pieces, as if I was doing something very important.
The toilet bowl was full of the bits and pieces of my unfortunate passport, but my hand would not move toward the handle. No, it was not easy. I was looking at the bits and pieces of my identity, my respectability. My hand felt as if it was about to pull a trigger and send a bullet through my head. I put all my strength into my eyelids and closed my eyes. Next, I grabbed the handle and flushed the toilet. The sound of rushing water made me feel that all my belongings were being flooded away. My eyes closed, but I could not visualize how the bits and pieces whirled around the bowl and went down.
When I opened my eyes, a few bits and pieces were still there. I flushed the toilet again — with cruelty, with violence. The water and, with it, the remaining bits of my passport whirled and whirled . . . and so did my head. Water was breaking up their resistance and taking them with it.
I was about to leave the toilet when I felt someone was calling me from inside the bowl. Was I imagining things? I had a look. A pair of eyes was gazing at me. I felt that these eyes were calling me. They were my own. They were the eyes of my passport photograph that had not been torn up properly. Although they were tiny, they looked huge to me. They were talking to me: “Is this your affection and your loyalty? You are just leaving us here to go away without us?” I was frightened. Then I felt ashamed. Then I was frightened again. Then I felt ashamed again.
The eyes moved around on the water of the toilet bowl but would not go down. They were gazing at me. They were talking to me. They were saying: “You just dump us down the drain? Great! Go ahead, leave us! And good luck! You’ve shown how much you care. Go on, you save your own skin and flush us away!”
I was really frightened. I was panicking. The eyes were getting bigger and bigger. They looked as big as my own. I was holding some toilet paper. I formed it into a ball and threw it at the gazing eyes. I felt a pain in my own eyes. I heard somebody or something saying: “If you had a revolver, I suppose you would shoot at me!”
I flushed the toilet again, this time as hard as I could. The water whirled around and around. It took away the compressed toilet paper but not the eyes. Water moved them upward and they were stuck on the metallic surface of the bowl. Damn! What was I to do? I looked at them. They looked sad. They were begging me not to leave them alone. Water was dripping from them in such a way that they appeared to be weeping. I sobbed. I had tears in my eyes. In addition to tears, there was a flow of sweat from my forehead and into my eyes, which prevented me from seeing clearly. I was about to bolt out of the toilet when they called me again: “Where are you going, you coward?”
I was horrified. I took out my ballpoint pen and with the tip of the pen moved the remaining bit of the photograph, making it fall into the water. I flushed the toilet again. With a lucky strike, the little piece was now upside down, so the eyes could no longer see me. I thanked God. It is good to be a believer. I felt relieved. There were no longer any eyes. There was just the whiteness of the back of a bit of an old photograph. Whatever it was, it whirled around and kept going down — like a man in a whirlpool. Two pairs of eyes were no longer gazing at each other. But I could still hear the moaning of the other pair. It was refusing to go. It was screaming. It was swearing at me. It was trying to stick to the bowl’s surface.
But it was taken away.
To make absolutely sure, I flushed the toilet once more and stepped out triumphantly.
— Translated by Lotfali Khonji
Nassim Khaksar
Nassim Khaksar was born on January 1, 1944, in the southern city of Abadan. Upon receiving his teaching certification from colleges in Es-fahan and Hamadan, he taught in villages in the Abadan and Boir Ahmad region of southern Iran until his arrest for political activity in 1968.
Khaksar began writing fiction in 1966. He writes short stories, novels, plays, poetry, criticism, and travel literature. Two collections of his short stories, The Grocer of Kharzeville and Between Two Doors, have been published, as well as his novel Windmills and Lashes. He has also published a collection of plays, Under the Roof, and an account of his travels to Tajikistan. A number of his stories and plays have been translated into German, English, French, and Dutch.
Obliged to leave Iran after the revolution, Nassim Khaksar currently
lives in Holland. Since he began his life in exile, his has been an articulate voice for the experiences of millions of Iranians who had to adjust to life in unfamiliar lands. He has been particularly adept at demonstrating the feelings of disassociation, loss of language, and the inability to express oneself and one’s feelings that accompany the experience of exile.
“The Grocer of Kharzeville” was published in a collection of the same name. The fragmented sequence of the narrative, its disunity as exemplified by patches of thoughts and memories woven into reality, its fixation on language, all reflect common traits in the literature of exile, in effect mirroring this painful experience.
THE GROCER FROM KHARZEVILLE
The old couples bedroom was right next door to mine on the second floor. But they spent most of their time on the first floor, where they would watch TV until the last show and then come upstairs. I had been renting the upstairs room from them for about four months. They were easy to get along with, and the old man knew a little Persian. I had found the room through the college in town that offered courses in Middle Eastern languages — Turkish, Arabic, and Persian. People who had studied there for at least two years could rent out a room to foreign students from Turkey, Iran, and the Arab countries; by doing so they could get a little practice in speaking these languages. Of course, the old man was past the age when he actually wanted to practice speaking Persian. All the same, he didn’t mind the chance to remember the few words that he’d learned from Saadi’s Golestan.1
In the beginning, about once every two weeks, they’d call me and I’d go downstairs to join them when there was a good show on TV. Then I’d chat a bit with the old man as we watched the program. And sometimes I’d play a few games of chess with him.
One time we were playing and I was winning every game. Even though he was desperately trying to win, the old man kept losing. He just didn’t have any skill at it. After I had won another three games, I realized he was getting pretty upset. When we started the fourth game, I decided to let him win no matter what. I can’t remember now, but I think he played so poorly that he didn’t give me a chance to lose — after all, I had to play so that the old man would really believe I had lost.
Strange Times, My Dear Page 12