Strange Times, My Dear

by Nahid Mozaffari

  It was Uncle G. “Hello, my beautiful darling doll. Hello

  Malak-Azar screamed and hung up. She felt like grabbing Uncle G by the throat and squeezing hard. The phone rang again. Again it was Uncle G. He wanted to know what had happened.

  “Leave me alone,” she yelled, and slammed the receiver back on the phone so hard that it fell off the table and broke in two. God only knows what would have happened next if right at that moment she had not heard Amir-Ali’s cough from the end of the hallway. It took Malak-Azar a few seconds to regain her composure. She felt heat returning to her body but her arms and legs were weak.

  “I was certain he would come back,” she told herself. “Where can he find a better and cozier place?” She wanted to shout and reprimand him, but she checked herself. For a moment she thought she should kiss his face and show her happiness at his return. She even took a step forward, but she froze before reaching him. She looked down and masked her emotions. No, why should she belittle herself? She would be patient. She would wait as long as it took for Amir-Ali to capitulate. Eventually he would get tired and he would go down on his hands and knees in front of her.

  Weeks passed in the same manner until Malak-Azar could not go on with this buffoonery. She could no longer deceive herself and bury her head in the sand. Reality, however bitter, was better than this sham. She wanted to find out everything right then and there. She wanted to hear the truth from her husband’s own lips. What was going on in this man’s head? What was the truth of it all? She caught Amir-Ali in his room before he could leave the house. She closed the door and forced him to sit down. She put her hands on his shoulders to hold him there and sat down in front of him.

  Amir-Ali looked at his watch. He said he had an appointment. An important one. It had to do with the company business. Let us leave it for this evening, he said, when we can talk things over at leisure. And he got up to leave.

  But Malak-Azar was determined. She grabbed his jacket with both hands and made him sit down again.

  “On the evening of the birthday party,” she said, “when the lights went out, what really happened? Who kicked Uncle G’s ankle?” Had it really been her mother, the venerable lady? If so, why had he run out of the room, his face ashen? Why?

  Like a snared gazelle, Amir-Ali made a desperate struggle to free himself and remained silent.

  “Why?”

  Silence.

  Malak-Azar noticed him looking around, waiting for a chance to evade the subject and to escape. She moved her chair closer to his, pressed her knees against his shaky legs, put her hand under his chin, and forced his timid face up toward hers. She seemed to be encouraging a naughty boy to open up. Her voice was gentle and without any trace of threat or reproach.

  “What is it, my love?” she asked. “Speak to me. I am your wife. Do you remember?”

  Apparently he did not remember, and suddenly in a firm and confident voice which was not expected of him, blurted out that everyone has a secret and is entitled to keeping a corner of his life private.

  He had put his foot in his mouth. What did he mean by “private”? Which part and which corner of his life? Had Malak-Ahu another self independent of his wife’s? It was a tactless statement that had come out involuntarily. He himself didn’t understand how his tongue had turned and how these words had taken shape.

  Malak-Azar, who had not expected this reply, said: “I am a stranger in your eyes, am I? Don’t you trust me? Don’t you?”

  Amir-Ali could not trust his tongue and his voice. He realized that he had no control over what he said, and he was afraid that words would tumble out of his mouth contrary to his intentions. He picked up the water bottle from the bedside table and, unlike his old well-mannered self, began to drink right from the bottle. Malak-Azar objected to his rude behavior. The water was cool, and he raised the bottle to his mouth again and — gulp, gulp, gulp — drank to the last drop. He felt calmer. Malak-Azar was irate, but she held her tongue. This was not the right time for reproach. This man was like a child, obstinate and stubborn. He had to be tricked. She began praising him. Men love being praised. Even a hard nut like Amir-Ali could be cracked with a slick tongue. She softened her voice (perhaps too soft) and laughed. A bitter sorrow lined her laughter, and falsehood fluttered in her overly gentle voice.

  She held Amir-Ali’s hand (the same unkind hand that had come down on her head) and caressed it. She lowered her head and kissed his fingertips. She sensed little feeling in this muted hand and felt offended. She could tolerate everything as long as her pride was intact, and yet she swallowed her anger.

  “Amir-Ali, we were once so close, you and I,” she said. “We didn’t hide anything from each other. We were like one soul in two bodies. Have you forgotten? There is nothing in the world that I haven’t done for you.” (She wanted to say, you owe everything you own in life to me, but she checked herself.) “You must speak. You must tell the truth. Why did you move to a separate bedroom? Why are you shying away from me? Why?”

  She had raised her voice involuntarily and her last “why” rang with menace. Amir-Ali took off his jacket. He had run out of cigarettes. He crumpled the empty packet and threw it down on the table. He picked up the matchbox and began to twirl it between his fingers. He struck a match. Blew it out and put the burned matchstick back in the box. He struck another one and held it lit until it burned his fingertips. Malak-Azar hated people who put burned matchsticks back in the box. This was exactly what Uncle G did and it made her angry. She took the matchbox from him and removed the burned matchsticks. She realized he was not feeling well. A throbbing blue vein had appeared on the side of his forehead. Why was he so distraught? She did not know this man. This was not her beloved gazelle. He had become a stranger bent on deceiving her. It was obvious. And why did she love him so desperately?

  The first thought that would occur to her was that he belonged to her, that he was in love with her, that he could not survive without her. Perhaps choosing Amir-Ali had been the only hasty decision of her life. Had she really fallen in love with him or had it been out of spite for me? Whatever it was, she would not submit to defeat and admit that she had made a mistake. Never! She would continue on the course she had chosen to the end. She would do anything and everything to prove that she had been right. She had made up her mind to make out of Amir-Ali a creature after her own heart, and she had succeeded. A success that had lasted all of two decades. It was no joke. She had managed to stay high and dry in spite of all the adversities, the revolution, the war. Her house had been confiscated and the doors of the Yarn and Spool Company had been padlocked twice. For four years she had gone from one citizens’ committee to the next and from one district attorney’s office to a higher one, until she had finally succeeded in getting her house back, in reviving her semi-bankrupt company, and in reinstating Amir-Ali as its vice president. And now that she wanted to sit back, stretch her legs, and peacefully celebrate her success and her husband’s birthday, Amir-Ali was disrupting the orderly pattern of their life. He would quibble and rebel for no reason. Maybe he was scared of getting old? Maybe he feared death? She had heard that men suddenly act up when they approach sixty. And instead of continuing with their growth and transcendence, they suddenly panic and become avaricious. If this was the case, then Amir-Ali’s deteriorating health was temporary and it would pass. She only had to bite her fingernails and be patient. For Malak-Azar, the greatest humiliation was accepting sorrow and sickness. She would never accept defeat. She would go on fighting.

  It had taken her a long time to corner Amir-Ali and she was not going to let him go. She wanted an answer, a clear and candid one.

  “What is the meaning of all this,” she asked with persistence. “Answer me. Have you gone mad? Are you sick?”

  The word sick came to Amir-Ali’s rescue. “Yes, you’re right. You should know that, yes, I am sick. Are you satisfied? I am sick, mentally sick. And very dangerous. I can kill. I am capable of anything. I have no control over my actions. Do y
ou hear me? Do you understand?”

  If left to himself, he would go on and on for hours. An unprecedented anger had been released from the depths of his soul, a sweeping rage directed toward an invisible person who represented all the rest and had no recognizable face, an anger directed at everything at hand, at the newspaper on the table, at the distorted lines of objects, at all the vexing noise that came from the outside, at all the blaring lies, at himself and Malak-Azar, and at the boring ugliness that swirled in the air like gray dust.

  Malak-Azar was watching him, bewildered and terrified. She had never seen him so worked up and confused. She was not used to his panting and the beads of perspiration covering his upper lip. She thought he was play-acting, trying to fool her, wanting to silence her. What a lousy actor he was! A mental patient, my foot! Dangerous! No, the truth lay somewhere else. It was what he was hiding from her and did not dare express. For a few moments they remained silent. Then they both started to talk at once, cutting each other short. Neither one understood what was said or heard. Like a pair of drowsy and confused souls, they stood there, staring at each other. Something had been broken. They could not believe it. Accepting it was painful. Amir-Ali turned his head away, and Malak-Azar — involuntarily and for the first time in their married life — shouted at her husband, and her voice reverberated throughout the house. The cook heard the shout and dropped his spatula. And the cat sitting on the windowsill was startled and ran away.

  The Yarn and Spool Imports Company was in bad shape. The shareholders were up in arms against one another, and the municipality refused to pay the money it owed the company. In spite of his reluctance, Amir-Ali was compelled to go to the office and call for a board meeting. Malak-Azar’s brother, who was the chairman, blamed all of the company’s woes on Amir-Ali’s ineptitude and accused the company’s veteran accountant of embezzlement. The old accountant defended himself and became so emotional that he nearly had a heart attack. The other shareholders intervened and helped the old man, who was having difficulty breathing and had ripped his shirt open, out of the room. Amir-Ali told the board members that he would ask for a meeting with the mayor or his deputy and would solve the company’s problems single-handedly

  Three days later, a high-ranking official of the municipality received Amir-Ali in his office. Two other people were also present. Whenever Amir-Ali was to meet with government officials, he would let his beard grow into a stubble and he would wear an old suit. He had also memorized a few lines from the Quran and would come up with an Arabic quotation whenever necessary.

  The high-ranking official began to speak, and Amir-Ali for his part praised the gentleman’s intelligence, humaneness, and piety. The other two people also spoke for about an hour. Amir-Ali nodded in agreement from time to time. Everything was going well when suddenly Amir-Ali’s stomach began to growl. It seemed as though two thousand frogs were croaking in his intestines, and their sound was being broadcast from a set of invisible speakers. His guts were about to explode. The high-ranking official was flabbergasted and involuntarily moved away from Amir-Ali, and the other two stared at him with alarm. The rumblings subsided and there was a moment of silence. A semblance of order returned to the meeting. But the high-ranking official had hardly opened his mouth when Amir-Ali’s stomach growling gave way to long hiccups — hiccups so unnatural and powerful that everyone in the room, himself included, was startled. Amir-Ali was struggling with himself and panting hard. He felt a great nausea churning in his stomach and thought he might throw up on the dossiers on the table at any moment. Something like a wild beast, like a horrifying monster, was in his belly and it was struggling to break loose and leap out. The faces that were turned to him were angry and frowning. Their voices echoed in his ears and their irate looks pierced his body. He put his signature to a letter. He was still holding the pen when suddenly, unexpectedly, his body emitted a dreadful noise that jolted everyone. The high-ranking official got up in anger and his minions picked up their dossiers and started for the door. They were still on the doorstep when Amir-Ali threw up on the papers in front of him.

  He returned home utterly broken and exhausted. He went straight to his room, locked the door, and lay down on his bed. His bowels were no longer growling and churning. It was as if nothing had happened, as if they had not been on the verge of explosion a mere sixty minutes ago. But his body was no longer that old lovable organism that he so cherished. Every part of it, every limb, was at war with him and had risen against him. His brain was being unfaithful to him, it had joined forces with an evil power, and God only knew what kind of a plot it was hatching against him.

  Malak-Azar was not at home, and Amir-Ali breathed a sigh of relief. He did not have to explain anything to anyone, nor did he have to pretend that he was well and happy. No one understood his ailment. Once or twice he had thought of seeing a psychiatrist, but he had soon given up the idea. He did not believe in psychology or psychiatry. He had no time or patience for such things. His cure did not lie in tranquilizers and sleeping pills. He knew that the root of his ailment — if it qualified as such — lay somewhere in his past. It was an old virus that had nestled in his heart and soul. His body had not run amok without a cause. And it was not jostling him for no reason. He had to find out. But how far back did he have to go?

  Amir-Ali’s childhood memories are fragmented and vague. In his mind he has preserved certain days, incidents, and a few handpicked segments of the past (those that are agreeable to him), and he has consigned to oblivion certain other and older fragments. His memory is full of black holes, full of lapses in time and silences. He needs help remembering his past. I have known him since our childhood days. We were friends and classmates. I can still picture him. He was tall and handsome, reclusive and reticent. He was not one for playing soccer or running races or ganging up with the neighborhood boys. His greatest pastime was flying colorful kites and going to the movies. It would take him a long time to detach himself from the plot and events of a film he had seen. He loved seafaring movies, the story of some lonely captain and his sailors, casting anchor at every port and calling no place home. He traveled with these films and their adventures, and one could tell from his absent gaze that he was in another world.

  Then there was his kite flying. He had involved me in this game, and yet I had no passion for running around. We both lived in Shemi-ran, in the northern suburbs of Tehran. At the time, Elahieh and Amanieh hills were still bare and undeveloped. Amir-Ali’s kite had three colored tails trailing behind it, and it would fly high and almost reach the clouds. It would fly so high that it would become a blurred dot in the sky. My kite, on the contrary, would hardly leave the ground, and after only a few minutes would get tangled up in the only lamppost or tree on the hilltop. I can never forget Amir-Ali’s loud and excited laughter or his wondrous gaze. Whenever he was about to send his kite aloft, he would grow silent, turn his attention inward, hold his breath, and gaze at the sky without batting an eyelash. His actions seemed funny to me, but I would keep silent. Now that I think back, I realize something that I could not grasp as a child. I picture his face, happy and mesmerized. I now understand that a sensation much deeper than childish pleasure rippled in his eyes, and that he was absorbed in something far beyond his immediate surroundings. If I called out to him, he would not answer. If I tapped on his foot, he would not respond. His eyes were fixed on his kite, and no one and nothing else existed for him. He was flying with his kite, sailing the wide expanse of the sky among the cosmic islands.

  One day his kite did not come back. As it flew high in the sky, it swung this way and that. It allowed itself to drop and, as it was falling, it suddenly soared again. It played cat and mouse with Amir-Ali. It had its own playfulness. Then slowly it began to rise higher and higher until it reached a cloud and hid behind it. It played peek-a-boo for a moment and then, with the persistence of an intoxicated bird, shot up so fast that the end of the string tore away from Amir-Ali’s fingers. We had lost the kite. We sat down, waitin
g for it to return. Nothing happened. It had disappeared. It was on a joy ride in another place, in another time. Somewhere far beyond our view and our reach. I was certain that Amir-Ali would wait for his kite on the hilltop until nightfall. But no, he did not wait.

  “One day it will come back by itself,” he said. And he ran all the way down the hill. He had opened his arms wide and his sleeves flapped in the wind as he ran. He gripped a tree branch and swung from it.

  “God only knows where my kite is,” he said, laughing. Then he relaxed his grip and fell to the ground on his back. He closed his eyes and slept. It was as if he had fainted. He did not move. He was playing dead, a death that was temporary and pleasurable.

  I carefully go over Amir-Ali’s diaries. His references to his mother are like a half-solved crossword puzzle. I have to find the relevant letters and fill in the blanks. And still I get nowhere. There is always a word that remains incomplete. And I can’t find the missing letter. The image of his mother remains hidden, like a sacred icon, behind a veil of vague words and cautious references. Whenever he writes about her, his handwriting changes and his prose is different. It is as though he is afraid or cannot overcome his embarrassment. He withdraws his pen and hesitates. He writes a sentence, then crosses it out. It is clear that he is fighting with himself. He wants to say something, divulge a secret, but he cannot. I remember his mother. I mean his mother when she was young. She was thin and fragile, and beautiful in a subtle way. A beauty that went unnoticed at first glance. She was neither beautiful nor ugly. She was not conspicuous. It was only after a second or third glance that her clear, bright eyes and her sweet smile revealed themselves. From then on, whenever you looked at her, she was beautiful. I know that he had a deep affection for his mother, a quiet, unobtrusive, and yet bothersome love. In the midst of whatever we were doing and wherever we were, he would suddenly worry about her. He would say he had to go. He must. His excuses were all lame. He would say he had an appointment with the dentist, or that his father was waiting for him. All lies. The other boys would complain, but I was the only one who knew the real reason for his leaving us. He was afraid that his mother might feel lonely and grieve. He did not trust her serene, happy appearance. He knew that she put up a facade and did everything to keep him from finding out how much she suffered. Outwardly she seemed to have everything and to be happy with her life. But behind her facade of pride and confidence, there was a childlike woman with the sorrowful simplicity of an innocent young girl who wandered about in the large luxurious rooms of the house, who wept under the bedsheets where no one could see her, who waited day and night for her husband to return, and who did not dare approach him when he did.