Strange Times, My Dear

by Nahid Mozaffari

  Special thanks to Deborah Tall for editing this story. veiled woman abated, the scheming stars aligned in his favor. He found his way into the enchanted realm of her body and was soon immersed in the nectar of her ministrations. From that night on, the veiled lady was never seen again — that is, not until the night the demon loosed his winds.

  Gales rose as the gossip mongers wagged their tongues, tying the disappearance of Hajar to the vanished lady of the caves. The fearsome wind carried such grime that even the gossipers’ words, like the trees and houses, were coated in dust. Windows flew off their hinges and fires were snatched from hearths. Haylofts caught fire and dried-up trees burned for hours. Anything that dared stand in the way of the wind was battered down. Trapped in their huts, the villagers abandoned hope. Gardens vanished, walls collapsed, sands shifted, animals were buried, and finally the churning earth disgorged the remains of the missing woman. Only then, in the glaring sunlight that followed the storm, could they confirm that the veiled woman had, indeed, been Hajar.

  Indignant, the village men blamed Hajar’s husband, who, utterly humiliated, shouldered the blame and took it upon himself to journey to the city court so that he could receive his just punishment. But alas, the winds had so distorted the collective history and identity of the village that there seemed no remedy for the despair of the men and the torment of the women. The fields were devastated and the wells dried up. Dead animals slowly decomposed under the sun, and the fatty stench carried disease. Finally, weighed down by their memories and few belongings, the villagers departed for other places, became strangers in distant lands. But the men were forever after haunted by the infamy of Hajar, who was, after all, more or less a blood relation of them all, and the women were trapped by walls of suspicion the men built around them as a consequence of Hajar’s betrayal.

  A few months after their arrival in the city, Masumeh, who was mistakenly named Mahbubeh, was born.2 Fearful of future disgrace, her father had secretly prayed for a boy child. Her birth, therefore, did not gladden him. But there was an added source of distress: a few weeks before the delivery, the child had issued blood in the womb, and when the mother detected the blood, she was so horrified that she was driven to the brink of death. This strange development persuaded the parents to sacrifice an innocent lamb before the proper, designated time to welcome a baby.

  Mahbubeh’s uncle, her mother’s brother, had already declared that the child was to be a boy and that he would grow up to be as fierce as a lion. But her father, in the grip of his forebodings, worried aloud, “Our family is blessed by the birth of boys, but our unfathomable fate brings us nothing but misfortune with girls. Just look at Hajar, the only female of our generation.”

  The uncle snapped back, “My family is blessed with an abundance of girls, and they all grow up to be chaste, noble, and faithful like the blessed Masumeh. And each time providence gives us a boy, he grows up manly and brave like his godly patron, Ali, whom he serves loyally, like a slave.”3

  Then the uncle made sure to inscribe Ali’s name on the right side of his pregnant sister and the name of Masumeh on her left.

  When Mahbubeh’s mother went into labor late one night, her husband buried his feverish head under the blankets. But Mahbubeh’s uncle rushed through the dark alleys of the city toward the mosque to pray for the health of the mother and child before the morning call to worship. Just before dawn, Mahbubeh was born. Despite her father’s anxiety, and although she arrived just a few months after the storm, she was a creature of calm. She had long hair, lay quietly, and her eyes, wide open, seemed filled with astonishment.

  Her mother’s anxiety, however, only worsened because Hajar, too — as she had heard her say herself — was born just this way, looking like a woman, with long hair and wide open eyes. What’s more, Hajar had added, a girl born with wide-open eyes like that is the property of Ahl, as she, Hajar, had been.4 “Ahl took me away and now I am not Hajar anymore,” Hajar had lamented. “My name is Mahbubeh now. Hajar was the one who was taken by Ahl.” (As fate would have it, a few days later, because the official in charge of issuing birth certificates was hard of hearing, Masumeh’s name was in fact mistakenly registered as Mahbubeh.)

  On the very night of Mahbubeh’s birth, Ahl, wasting no time, staged his assault. Her uncle had not gone very far when he heard the birth cries rising from the house. The baby girl, gawking at the world like a startled, lost animal, had just been placed beside her mother on a bed of ashes, circled by bricks, when the mother began to turn green from some constriction in her throat and stared transfixed, as if drawing her last breath.

  Mahbubeh’s father, from within his refuge of blankets, plunged into delirious hallucinations from which he was never to fully recover. But, as luck would have it, Mahbubeh’s uncle, midway to the mosque, had bumped into Ahl.

  Years later, an older cousin, Mahbubeh’s playmate, and a perennial source of both pain and pleasure, told her about her uncle’s strange encounter with Ahl.

  On his way to the mosque, in the dim light before dawn, the uncle had arrived at a stream, created by the storm that now divided the city. There, at that juncture, he had seen the silhouette of a man, bent over the water, who seemed to be waiting for the uncle to cross the stream. Thinking the man was about to bathe, the uncle covered his head with his cape and sped on, but he was stopped in his tracks by the screech of a newborn. And before it was too late, he turned on his heels and pounced on the man, not giving him a chance to touch the water with whatever it was he held in his hand. He quickly grabbed at the man’s face and tore off his nose. Warm and wet, like a chunk of moist clay, the nose writhed in his palm. The whole frame of this strange creature now glowed a phosphorescent red, and yellow sparks flew from his eyes. If it were not for the prayers the uncle mumbled in the secret of his heart, he’d never have been able to shield himself from the venom flung at him. But heroically, he managed to roar, “In the name of the Holy one, the all powerful, you are to put back the liver of the mother where you found it and restore the child, unharmed, to her mother.”

  This, the cousin concluded, was how Mahbubeh’s life had been spared and her mother rescued from the claws of death. “But who knows,” he added menacingly, “if Ahl did not tamper with your identity and change it in some way. It is quite possible that my real cousin, whose name was Masumeh, is not you at all.”

  When Mahbubeh’s uncle had returned home that morning of her birth, he heard joyful ululation all over the house. He sat in a corner and uttered not a word. He was busy stringing a necklace out of the lump of clay in his hand, waiting for the women to finish their business with the baby. They were washing her in salt water so that, when she grew up, she might have a firm body and a pretty face. They placed crushed candy between her legs so that her womanhood might smell good and taste sweet, and they swaddled her in white. Finally they put her in the arms of her uncle, who placed the newly made necklace around her neck, whispered prayers in her ear, and wrote her name inside the cover of the Quran. He advised the women to dry the umbilical cord before tossing it into the river, so that the baby girl might become a woman of great forbearance and few words, and eventually, when she came of age, marry not just anybody but a man who is upright in the sight of God.

  A few days later, the uncle completely vanished, and for years his family nourished the hope that they might still hear from him, receive a letter from some far-off country. It was only Mahbubeh’s cousin who, with his curious brand of meanness, whispered in her ear, “Wherever he is, even if he is in Russia, the demons must have gotten him by now.”

  Mahbubeh’s mother insisted she always wear the clay necklace in remembrance of her uncle. But the cousin used this as a pretext to torment her. He was relentless, cunningly cruel. At playtime he dispensed misery to his playmates, and like the king of snakes, breathed dread into Mahbubeh’s dreams. He exacted obedience, and any hint of rebellion, no matter how small, was punished by his fat fists. His poisonous tongue alone could leave his opponents
lifeless.

  “You see this girl?” he would say, pointing to Mahbubeh. “An ogre named Ahl has taken possession of her. If you take away the necklace her uncle made for her from Ahl’s nose, she’ll drop dead in a split second.”

  One day, fed up with her cousin, Mahbubeh walked into a dark closet to welcome death with open arms. She tore off the necklace and from the bottom of her heart she called out for Ahl. On this same day, her cousin — weary of pretending to be a pirate at sea, bored by bloody battles, kingly exploits, and chasing scorpions through the cracks between bricks — was entertaining himself by relishing the pitiful cries of a tar-smeared cat. It was in the darkness of the closet that Mahbubeh suddenly realized the truth — that Ahl was none other than her cousin.

  The next morning, Mahbubeh and her cousin were taken to a religious school and registered as students. Mahbubeh’s father, holding their hands, helped them down a seemingly endless stairway to a dingy little room where Mollabadji, a toothless, green-skinned, white-haired hag with red eyelids and breasts that drooped to her knees, presided over a bunch of wrinkled children. The students were listlessly mumbling the litany that was their lesson.

  “A is for animal, B is for beast

  Mahbubeh’s father, who after the eventful birth of his daughter had placed all his hopes in the life hereafter, listened to the mournful chants, his eyes filling with tears as he recalled the sad fate of the orphaned children of martyrs in the pages of the sacred writings. He sat beside the children and rested his aching head on his aching knees, joining the funereal incantations until the crone commanded silence. And within that stillness, which was like the damp bottom of a deep pit, she asked, “What do you want, sir?”

  “I want to place these two children under your command. I’ll offer you their flesh but keep their bones. Give them a taste of your rod. This girl here is a dumb donkey, always silent. This boy here is a mad mule.”

  The crone replied, “Rest assured, man of God, I know how to beat them into shape.”

  As soon as Mahbubeh’s father had left, the rod of discipline descended crushingly on her poor cousin’s head. As he let loose a piercing cry, Mahbubeh’s heart filled with pity for the little Ahl. And, then and there, she realized that the old, green, white-haired crone, whose breasts came down to her knees, was actually Ahl. All the pain and suffering that her cousin had heaped upon her immediately vanished from her memory.

  The following day, the cousin stubbornly refused to go back to the religious school. His father was not as devoted to a religious educa- tion as her own father was, and so the boy was sent to a regular secular school instead. From then on, the cousins saw little of each other, until one cold night, while sitting near the pleasant heat of the hearth, a strange affection in the air drew them closer. But this moment of pleasure was marred by dread.

  Mahbubeh’s cousin and his family were guests at her home that Friday night. She had just finished studying and memorizing some thirty pages of the Quran for which the old crone was rewarded with a kerchief full of candy and a crisp hundred-toman bill. Her mother was soaking three kilos of rice in water to prepare the meal.

  Friday nights in general were happy times: cooking rice, sitting around and talking, even if they did not have guests to entertain. On Friday nights she hardly ever heard the usual “I-said-you-said” bickering between her parents. She could hear her mother’s discreet giggling and her father’s more or less cheerful disquisition on the purity of imams and martyrs.

  On that particular Friday evening there was a heavy snowfall. The guests would need to stay overnight, and so the pleasant hours lingered on. After dinner, the father, boastful of a daughter who could read the Quran, decided to indulge in a bit of innocent fortune-telling.5 So he opened the Quran to a random page — the sura on women, it turned out — and handed it to Mahbubeh.6 Like a seasoned reader, she did full justice to all the nuances and ups and downs of vocalizations. Head high, her father used the occasion to brag to his brother-in-law who, like other modern folk, had sent his son to a secular state school where faith was undermined and boys became worldly dandies, believers in ungodly science. Slyly, he placed the Quran in the hands of the cousin and asked him to read a verse or two for the edification of the group.

  The boy, stammering and stumbling, clumsily made his way through a line or two before his father’s fist came crashing down on his head. The reading was stopped in disgrace. The boy hung his head and sulked for the rest of the evening, until he eventually fell asleep. Mahbubeh, who had suffered much degradation under the green-skinned crone for years, was able to empathize. Her heart bled for the young Ahl, and her compassion left her sleepless. She moved closer to her cousin and, as when they were little, she snuggled against him and whispered in his ear, “Are you sleeping? Listen, I’ve seen Ahl.”

  She had been in the women’s bathhouse, she told him, with its labyrinthine rooms leading one into another. There was more steam than usual, and it was darker than usual, too. The women were mostly silent, but curiously, quite a few of them offered to wash and scrub her clean. She turned them all down. She found the heat so unbearable that she felt faint and fell asleep. It was then she saw Ahl.

  In her dream she was married to him. Her mother-in-law belonged to a tribe of ogres. Mahbubeh recognized that such was her lot — to be married to Ahl. Ahl told his mother, look, I’ve brought you a maid, and he ordered Mahbubeh to treat his mother with utmost deference. Mahbubeh obeyed, greeting her politely. The mother-in-law immediately shoved a broom into Mahbubeh’s hand, handed her a bucket with a hole in it, and set down before her a huge tray, heaping with mung beans, lentils, and rice. The whole pile was infested with mouse droppings and sand pebbles. Then the mother-in-law got all dolled up and left for another ogre’s wedding. She should sweep the house, the mother-in-law ordered Mahbubeh. She should also water the garden using water from the courtyard pool, clean the rice, separating the good from the bad, cook dinner, and put henna on her hands and feet in readiness for the bridegroom. If the courtyard is not swept clean, the house will fill up with snakes and scorpions, she said. If the trees are not watered, her womb will only be able to deliver dried-up babies. If the food is not cooked and ready, her husband will chew on her liver instead.

  The courtyard was small, but no matter how much she swept, there seemed no end to the dirt. The bucket was useless, and there was blood and pus sloshing about the pool. The cleaning of the heap of rice was a chore for forty women. She sat by the tray and wept, waiting for her husband Ahl to return and kill her.

  Suddenly, one of the women who had offered Mahbubeh a rub-down tore off the towel she was wrapped in and glared obscenely at her nakedness. Mahbubeh awoke and quickly covered herself. The woman laughed. “What a lovely bride you’ll make. Not a single flaw or blemish on your body.” Mahbubeh looked at her hands and feet and saw that they were hennaed. She felt feverish. She sprang up and quickly gathered her bundle of belongings and put her clay necklace back on. But the fever stayed in her body, and each time the memory of the dream of her marriage to Ahl flashed through her mind, she told her cousin, she felt the fires of hell roaring inside her.

  Sweet God, how cool were the hands of her sympathetic cousin. The snowstorm was gently penetrating everything, sifting through the ceiling, through the comforter, and settling under her loose cotton dress. It was the sky-blue dress with little white flowers that for years had lain folded at the bottom of her mother’s trunk. Long ago, her mother had received it from Hajar as a gift, and she had just bestowed it on Mahbubeh as a reward for learning to read the Quran.

  “Hajar! Hajar! O martyrs in heaven!”

  It was the father returning from his nightly visit to a favorite martyr’s shrine in his dreams. He had been particularly grateful at that Glorious Threshold of Purity for his daughter — a weak vessel, so meek and mild — who could flawlessly read the Quran. He had secretly whispered in his heart that, after all, the daughter of the prophet was a female, too, as were so many others in the h
oly hierarchy. They were all mothers and sisters to the great men of faith. That night, during the little pilgrimage in his dream, he had put his infinite gratitude into words. And it had seemed to him that the holy imams, although invisible, had smiled in approval, and their eyes, also invisible, had glinted with satisfaction. Then, with embarrassment for having doubted his daughter’s potential, he had rushed back home. It was there that the stench of iniquity met his nostrils. Dashing though the interminable corridors of sleep, he woke up, jumped out of bed, and rushed into the other room. There, writhing under the quilt, he found an evil spirit like a dragon struggling to free itself as if from the slime at the bottom of a swamp.

  “O heavens above, this must be the ghost of Hajar the whore!”

  Shrieking madly, he tore asunder the sleepers’ curtain, and the violent rain of his fists fell on the young couple. He pulled a chunk of hair that dripped with blood from his daughter’s head and reduced her to a seeming heap of bones thrown into a corner of the room. Her cousin, lips gashed, eyes swollen, cheeks scratched and bleeding, was flung to another corner. Poor young man, he couldn’t conceive how a joyous moment had abruptly turned into a nightmare.

  When the brother-in-law heard about the outrage from the frothing mouth of the father, he beat the young man some more, until the aunt stepped between them and put an end to the gruesome display of brutality.

  “Stop this at once! You’re behaving like raving lunatics! They have slept next to each other since childhood. Why dump the filth of your thoughts on them?” She held the young ones in her protective arms and took them to her house. Thus, that night, in this manner, were Mahbubeh and her cousin introduced to love and its forbidden dimensions.

  During the two weeks that Mahbubeh stayed at her aunt’s, in spite of the pain and frightful memories of that night, she and her cousin continued to savor the delicious gifts and anxieties of love in all the nooks and crannies of the house. But their secret lovemaking, which inspired their bodies and enlightened their souls, never went beyond mere kissing, fondling, and awed glances.