Strange Times, My Dear

by Nahid Mozaffari

  I do remember, though, that by the fifth game I started getting really annoyed and irritable. The old man was acting cocky, and he kept bragging about the glories of European democracy. Maybe it was my imagination, but in all honesty it seemed he was going too far. I remember in the middle of all his chatter he also started boasting that in his youth he had been an expert chess player. In fact, the best, a master of all the moves.

  It was hard challenging him on European democracy. My English wasn’t good enough, then, and I had this habit of using Persian slang phrases that, when I was forced to translate, came out sounding ridiculous and comical! And the old man would always insist, no matter what, that I explain exactly what I had just blurted out. I couldn’t help it, I took my revenge in the chess game: since he was on his high horse, I checkmated him. He was so startled his glasses flew off his nose and his fat face turned beet red.

  After that, the old man didn’t invite me to watch TV for a while. The old woman also turned a little cold toward me. And, you know how it is in this country: unless neighbors (even close ones) have got specific business, they don’t see one another sometimes for months at a time. The old man and woman were true-blue Dutch: once they withdrew you couldn’t even get them to look at you! For one whole month they boycotted me; the only times I saw them were when I bumped into them twice on the stairs.

  They would wake up late, and on days when the old man didn’t work they would walk in the nearby forest for a few hours. And when they were home, they would sit in the living room and draw the curtains. One Sunday evening I was overwhelmed with loneliness. I had spent the whole week in the house. I couldn’t even take my lonely walks because of the cold, the snow, and the storms. All week I sat staring out the window. The snow had covered everything. My new knee-high boots — the ones I was so surprised were so cheap — failed on me the very first time I wore them out in the snow. Water leaked in from every possible seam. The boots got so waterlogged that after even a short walk, it was as if I wasn’t wearing anything! Anyway, it didn’t matter. Even if I had the best boots in the world, where could I have gone with all that rain and snow? Waking up very early in the morning, I would light up a cigarette on an empty stomach and tune in to the BBC News. When the news was over, I’d sit by the window and think.

  The world of an exile is a strange one. At first you think it’s just you and your backpack — your four shirts, two pairs of socks, a suit, two pieces of underclothes, a towel, and an electric shaver. Then for a while it’s all about finding a place to live: you get a small room, a desk, a lamp, and a notebook, then a few books — half in English, half in your native language. Little by little it starts. You see yourself, and realize that you have a whole history you’ve left behind. You begin to remember, one memory after another. And suddenly it dawns on you that the being that sits here is really an empty space whose whole existence is floating around somewhere else. Stunned, you find yourself gazing at both people and things.

  You see everything but at the same time you see nothing. The pain penetrates to your bones; you feel you’re cursed. Damn it, remembering the past has no boundaries — any phrase, any word, triggers yet another memory. Nothing you do brings any relief. At first, a shot of booze eases the pain, but after a week or so you start to dislike the liquor and beer. A long endless road looms ahead.

  Maybe it was all of this — and fear — that kept me imprisoned in my room for a week. It’s strange that I didn’t get sick — develop an ulcer or a nervous disorder. I used to think, during one of those nights, that my heart would just stop beating of its own volition. I even went so far as to leave my door open, so that the old man and the old woman would find me quickly before my body started decomposing and smelling to high heaven. But nothing happened. Each morning I would wake up fine, healthy, and in one piece. During those few months, I didn’t even catch a cold and I eventually stopped thinking about death.

  Finally one day the old man spoke. “How are you?” he said.

  And without hesitation I blurted out, “Gooze peecham!”2

  He laughed and repeated it with difficulty, “Goozepeecham? What does that mean?”

  I was stuck. How could I translate this? Secretly, I cursed all the Middle Eastern language professors. If they would only teach a few pages from Hedayat’s Alaviyeh Khanum instead of two or three hundred pages of Saadi’s Golestan, the task before me would be so much easier!3

  I decided to demonstrate. I pulled a tissue from my pocket and sat on it. Then I made a farting noise with my mouth. I pointed down, indicating the noise came from below. Then I stood up and crumpled up the tissues and explained, “You have to wrap that sound up in the tissue.”

  “What for?” he asked, still laughing.

  I said, “First, tell me: did you understand or not?”

  “Yes, you have to wrap up the fart in a paper tissue.”

  “Is this how your Persian-English dictionary would translate and make sense of gooze peecham?!” I asked.

  Completely astounded and confused, he replied, “Huh, how weird.”

  “It’s an expression. When somebody doesn’t feel well, this is how they answer,” I explained.

  “So, in other words, you’re annoyed that I asked you.”

  “No, not at all,” I said. “It’s just an expression that describes a feeling.”

  “That’s really strange. No matter how hard I try, I can’t connect the two,” he said.

  “It’s a little surrealistic,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  It sounded as if he finally got it. In any case, I let it go.

  I kept vacillating whether or not to go downstairs. Before finally deciding, I swore to myself once more that if he set up the chessboard, I would let him win. I would gain nothing by shutting myself out of this possible place of refuge. I was tired of talking to myself. Afternoons, when it would usually get foggy outside, it was really hard to look out the window. The gloomy dark green pine trees would appear and disappear in the fog like ghosts, and when I’d talk to myself it felt as if I was talking to a ghost. It was really hard to accept that I was now talking to ghosts. Maybe it was too soon, but when I thought I was talking to a ghost and accepted it had come to this, I started to cry. I cried the way you cry when your heart pounds and a power within makes your fingertips burn.

  Hadn’t I always been the one on the offensive? Hadn’t I spent my whole short life running? Never looking back or wondering what is, what was, or what will be? The flame in my heart warmed me. With only a bouquet of wildflowers in my hand and the shining sun above, I would boldly recount the tales of my journey. And this was what was so difficult to accept. I knew it was still too soon — that there was still something that made my fingertips explode with impatience.

  I took my cigarettes and my lighter and went downstairs. As always, the sitting room door was closed, but I could hear the sound of the TV. I knocked.

  From inside the old woman said, “Yes?”

  I had learned that this meant to come in. I opened the door. The old lady didn’t move, but the old man got up.

  In Dutch, he said, “Hello. How are you?” I shook his hand.

  “How are you, Mama?” I asked the old lady.

  The old lady liked to be called Mama. She laughed and asked, “Was your room warm last night?”

  I’d become very sensitive to this kind of inane question and answer, but I refrained from answering. I hadn’t traveled thousands of miles to care if my room was warm or not. Under my breath, I cursed the whole world and myself, but outwardly indicated nothing. I didn’t want to screw things up.

  “Very warm,” I said and cut it short. The old lady seemed pleased.

  “Will you have tea or coffee?” she asked.

  “Coffee, please.”

  And so I sat down on the sofa next to the old man. There was an American film on television, but the hero was Italian and spoke English with a heavy accent.

  The old man started telling me about a new roof design h
e was working on for a building. He had already told me he was an engineer specializing in roofs but every time he told me about his work he would emphasize again that he was an expert in roof design. “I was better than everyone.” I was listening to him, but watching the TV out of the corner of my eye. It wasn’t a bad film. The man was a fanatical socialist and the woman, a feminist, and they didn’t get along. Caught between them was a sad little child who broke your heart. The old man noticed that I was paying attention to the TV

  “There are a lot of feminists in this part of the world,” he said.

  The old woman put my coffee down. “Milk?” she asked.

  “Do they drink coffee with or without milk in your country?” the old man asked.

  It was one of those stupid questions that drive you crazy.

  But I had no choice.

  “We drink it all kinds of ways,” I said.

  I think I said this in a way that made the old man think. His chin began to quiver and he said, “I don’t understand.

  “With milk, sugar, and sometimes with nothing . . . sometimes with crying, sometimes with tears. It’s our misfortune, you know,” I said.

  “You’re upset today, aren’t you?” the old woman asked.

  “No, I swear I’m not. Here they drink coffee with milk and there are a lot of feminists. There they drink coffee without milk and

  I cut myself off. To go on about this would just make me angrier. I picked up my cup and said, “Mama, the coffee you make doesn’t need milk or sugar. It’s delicious as it is.”

  The old lady laughed and laughed and looked as if she wanted me to repeat it all over again. But the old man still sat there staring at me and frowning like a brooding hen.

  “How about a game of chess?” I asked.

  The old man looked as if he was remembering his losses. He rubbed his forehead and said, “I’ve got a headache. I worked hard today I’m not feeling too well.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Another day.”

  “Yes, he’s not feeling very well today,” the old woman said.

  They’re banding together to prevent another chess game, I thought. I leaned back on the sofa pillows and lit a cigarette. I’d lost track of the film on the TV, but it looked as if the man and woman were still fighting. They were walking in the rain, trading blows, after which the woman stalked off alone. The man stood for a while and then started to follow her, trying to get her to come back to the house. The woman wouldn’t and kept shouting. They were both soaked to the skin. And then I remembered the child.

  “The design I gave the office today is wonderful. Perfect,” the old man said.

  “Can’t you mail the design in so you don’t have to go all the way there and back?” I asked.

  “I couldn’t! As the engineering specialist, I definitely have to be there,” he said.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Usually engineering specialists have to be there. Otherwise no one can figure out their drawings.” I pronounced “engineering” carefully and he really loved it.

  “You’re absolutely right,” he said, and added. “Anyway, I’m used to traveling. And Germany isn’t very far from here.”

  “It’s not bad in the spring and summer, but it isn’t great in the winter,” I said.

  “You know how many kilometers I’ve driven so far?” he asked. “No! But I bet it must be a lot.”

  “I was twenty years old when I started to drive. I’ve driven five hundred thousand kilometers!” he said.

  The old woman gave the old man an approving look. He got up, picked up an album from the bureau and showed me pictures of the cars he had driven — a Volkswagen, a Fiat, and a Toyota.

  “BMWs are the best,” he said.

  “How many kilometers did you drive with this one?” I asked.

  He pulled his chin into his chest and thought a little. Then he said, “A hundred fifty thousand kilometers.”

  I said, “If you had been driving a straight line, you would have been halfway to the moon.”

  He laughed and I felt sorry, but I don’t know for whom, him or me.

  A few days ago, when I was sitting in the Eastern languages library, a small dark handsome Bengali fellow appeared. He looked at the Persian books for a while and then came and stood above me. He said in English, “Excuse me, are you Afghani?”

  “What difference does it make?” I said. “Right now, we’re stuck in this dump.”

  My words must have struck him as being a bit harsh. He pulled himself together and stepped back. I regretted my words. I thought: he’s like me, homeless.

  “Do you smoke?” I said, and offered him a cigarette.

  “No, I don’t,” he said, adding, “I’m looking for someone who speaks Persian.”

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “My name,” he said, pausing. “I mean my family name is Chunie. I wanted to know what it means in Persian.”

  I wasn’t thinking of anything bad yet and I said, “It corresponds to chand, which means how many. Chand expresses an amount; chun expresses a condition.”

  He looked baffled. “That’s strange,” he said.

  “What’s strange about it?” I asked.

  He grinned a little shamefully and asked, “Doesn’t it mean . . . doesn’t it refer to something else?” Hesitantly he pointed to his ass.

  Finally I understood. For once, I said to myself, you tried to act like an adult.

  “You mean kunie?”4

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Well, the kids in the street in the south of the city sometimes say chunie instead of kunie, but you’re here and they’re there — there’s no connection.”

  “Sometimes some of the Dutch professors at the school where I study tease me,” he said. “What do you do?” “I teach sociology,” he said.

  “Why did you come here? Did you have to? You should have stayed home.”

  “They pay well here and the environment is better, too,” he said.

  This really annoyed me and I felt spiteful. I said, “Are you sure your name isn’t Kunie?”

  “No!” he said and puckered his lips and said, "Chunie!’” and then he repeated, “It’s really strange!”

  I looked down. The Bengali stood there nervously rocking from side to side then said, more to himself than anyone else, “I’m surprised that foreigners pronounce my name like that. ‘K’ and ‘Ch’ really do sound different.”

  “Maybe they don’t like you,” I said.

  “Maybe,” he said. Then he abruptly turned the pages on some of the books and left.

  When the old man realized I was deep in thought, he said, “Okay. I’ll play one game, but only one.”

  “Great,” I said and cleared off the table to set up the game.

  The man and woman in the film were still in the rain, tired of the stupid and meaningless fight they were still having. The woman had her hand on the man’s shoulder as they walked back to the house.

  The old man sat down at the table and we drew pieces. He got white. As soon as he moved his first piece, I realized he was starting to play crazy again. But I had made my decision. I followed his lead and played like him. He was so absorbed in the pieces that if you didn’t know better and hadn’t seen him play before you’d think he was unrivaled. He moved his pieces like a general who was ordering his soldiers about on the field. I let him take a few of my pawns. When he saw he was ahead, he lifted his head and asked, “Whiskey or wine?”

  “Whiskey!” I said.

  “Me too,” he said.

  “It seems your headache is better, no?” I asked.

  He stared at the chessboard and didn’t answer. His wife, who was sitting on the other side of the room, said, “I’ll get it,” and got up and went into the kitchen. I could hear the sound of the cabinets opening and the glasses being taken out.

  He moved a piece. “Now it’s your turn!” he said.

  I took a quick sip from my glass that the old lady had put on the side of the board and
hit one of his men. After thinking a little, the old man moved his queen in front of his king, so that I could have checked him with my bishop. I thought it might not be a bad idea to shake him up a little after having lost my pawns. But when I went to move my bishop, I realized I was checked myself. I don’t know how his rook got in front of my king. Bad luck, I guess. I had been checked for some time and now I wanted to check somebody else. When I thought about it later, I couldn’t believe it had really happened. But it had. I was stuck in a bad way. I could still make a few more moves, but I couldn’t break out of it. Being in check is painful. You can’t move forward and you can’t move back. You’ve made a stupid move and you have to face up to it.

  Exactly like my life situation. What was the use? With whom can you share the bitterness of these moments? Who can you tell that your heart is breaking, piece by piece? And that you can hear it crumbling? One day you’d say, how nice it is to be with one’s people and share their whispers. You’d say, see how you spoke out loudly? But the stream that leads to the river that leads to the ocean always flows with a whisper. Then when you understood the meaning of a whisper you understood why a rock tolerates years of wind, storms, and sun, and then remains forever. And you felt the roar that was concealed in life. You accepted to be a whisper; to slowly whisper the silent pain of your heart to yourself and others as if you were reading the alphabet. You lived life as if it were a journey that passed through interlocking doors. You wove a colorful shirt from the laughter of children and hung it in the blowing wind. You lighted a small lantern with the small stream of hope from those you loved until the sun, little by little, shone its glorious light. But behind all of this, little by little, a hand was weaving its own nightmare.