As a young boy of four or five, Amir-Ali slept in his mother's bedroom. He knew and understood even then that, in spite of her gentle smile and kind hands, his mother was utterly miserable and wept quietly under the sheets, with her face buried in the pillow so that no one would see. The only thing Amir-Ali could do with his small hands was to smash things. These crying fits were a nocturnal exercise. In the morning, his mother turned a new leaf and put on a different face. She applied rouge to her lips and cheeks, but the effect was temporary. Ten minutes later the artificial redness had been wiped from her pale cheeks and dark lips, only to be replaced by a ubiquitous gray, the color of swallowed words and furtive grief. The only enduring redness in that tired and sapless face was that of her eyes and eyelids.
Why did she pretend to be happy? Was she ashamed? Was she afraid? Perhaps this was the way grown-ups behaved. They had two faces, one for the day and one for the night. Amir-Ali did not like two-faced people, and his small brain could not grasp the meaning of duality and contradiction. He would become confused and frightened, and everything seemed unreal to him, like one shadow on top of another. He would stand in front of the mirror and look at himself. He saw that he was no different from the night before and the day preceding it, and he would feel reassured. He had promised himself to have only one face when he grew up, his real face, just as he was.
His father had four, six, ten faces. Cardboard faces. And none of them was for his mother. When it came to her, he was faceless. Just an empty circle with two pointed ears, like a flat caricature drawn by a child. When it came to the maid, he had two pairs of eyes with a big watery mouth and moving lips. At times this face would grow long and narrow, with a pronounced frown and sparks flying from its eyes. This was his ugliest face — mean, jealous, and dangerous. It was with this face that he had drawn a gun on his elder son. Amir-Ali’s brother was crawling on all fours, trying to get up on his feet, wanting to get away, when he would be kicked from behind and fall down again. The gun barrel circled his face and neck. His mouth was gaping with fright and he could barely utter a sound. His father watched him in this helpless and frightened state and gnashed his teeth in pleasure. The bone of contention was the neighbor’s comely wife. His mother was watching the fight from behind the window, and her sad and happy faces had merged, like a pair of ink drawings on wet paper. Amir-Ali was standing next to her, trembling. He couldn’t understand why his mother did nothing. Why wasn’t she screaming? Why had she placed her hand in front of her mouth and closed her eyes? Amir-Ali wanted to scream for help. He wanted to save his brother by calling out to the neighbors or the servants. He wanted to pick up a vase and, from behind, smash it over his father’s head. But his mother would not let him. She was pressing his head to her skirt to stop him from watching the scene. He had already seen too much. Boys of his age were not allowed to witness such scenes, and she had placed her finger on his lips to indicate that he should keep quiet.
It was several months later that his father ordered his cot to be taken out of his mother’s bedroom and placed in his older brother’s room. The first night was very hard on him, and he cried for a long time. The following nights — for a whole week — he couldn’t sleep, but then gradually, out of necessity, he got used to the new situation. He accepted the fact that he had grown up, and he realized that growing up meant putting up with the loneliness that accompanied it. His brother smoked before sleeping — five or six cigarettes, one after another — and he would fall asleep with his glasses still on the tip of his nose, his reading lamp left on, wearing his day clothes, and with his teeth unbrushed. One of those nights, Amir-Ali was still awake while his brother talked in his sleep. The moon sat in the middle of the sky like a wakeful and transparent eye, privy to all the world’s secrets. The lights in the house had been switched off. Amir-Ali pushed the sheet aside. Waited a moment. Briefly looked at his brother. Stepped down from his bed and slowly tiptoed toward the door. He was barefoot and he stepped on something sharp. “Ouch,” he said under his breath, but swallowed the rest of his groan. As he fumbled, he upset the glass of water sitting at the foot of his bed. The glass fell on its side and rolled toward his brother’s bed. It came to a stop when it hit a chair. Nobody woke up. He continued to tiptoe toward the door, which made a cracking sound and then opened with a deafening creak.
It was an exceptionally bright night. A tall man with his back to him stood in the middle of the courtyard, by the pool, near the flower bed. He was not moving. Amir-Ali’s heart skipped a beat and his mouth felt dry. He wanted to run away, but his feet, heavy and cold, were glued to the ground. He wanted to scream, but he had lost his voice. The man stood at some distance from him, looking like a dark silhouette, a surreal being. The figure brought his hand out from under his long coat and looked at his watch in the moonlight. A white-robed phantom emerged from behind the trees. It came forward, extracted a hand from under the robe, pointed to someone, and stopped. The silhouette turned and looked cautiously at the windows. Amir-Ali recognized his father’s profile. What was he doing there at that hour of night? The woman in white disappeared behind the trees, and his father followed her, slowly and quietly. A moment later, a light went on at the end of the courtyard. It was the young maid’s room, the one who stared at his brother and whispered in his father’s ear.
His young heart was filled with rage and disgust. He decided not to say anything to his mother, and this was the first painful decision of his life. He kept silent and learned to weep under the sheets in the middle of the night, just like his mother, just like the grown-ups with their cardboard masks. He lowered his head, pressed his lips together, and a big silence settled in his small body. As he grew up, his way of life, even his physical appearance, his smile, his voice, the penetrating look of his eyes, all changed. He stopped dreaming, and the void inside of him turned into a type of lethargy and silent passivity. People attributed his indifference, which bordered on resignation, to his practical wisdom and whispered to each other that he was a sharp, calculating operator.
On those days I saw Malak-Azar almost every day. She was hurt and desperate. She clung to me (just like in the romantic days of our youth) and, putting her pride aside, poured out her feelings and confessed her thoughts. She had put two and two together and concluded that Amir-Ali had fallen out of love with her. A husband who runs away from his wife and sleeps in a separate bedroom (making sure the door is locked from the inside), and strikes his wife on the head (she was now sure it was Amir-Ali’s doing), and who deliberately and pre-meditatedly vomits on the municipality’s dossiers with the intention of bringing about the ruin of his wife’s company, does not love her. Not only that, he is sure to be in love with some other woman.
But who? For a moment, the vague image of a young, beautiful woman flashed before her eyes. This was the first time she had considered such a possibility, and that invisible “other woman” suddenly assumed a presence more tangible than all the existing realities, more real than the glass of water on the table, than the breeze caressing her cheeks, than the shoes on her feet, more real than she herself. In all likelihood, the others already knew, but had kept it from her. Uncle G was a nosy blabbermouth and often put his foot in his mouth. Malak-Azar reasoned that her nosy uncle must have wanted to tell a story about Amir-Ali. He had intended, out of malice, to hint at Amir-Ali’s relationship with a certain lady, and Amir-Ali had shut him up by kicking him under the table. Yes, that must have been it. Plain and simple. There had been no other reason.
A new window opened on Malak-Azar’s fantasies, and a black curtain was lifted from before her eyes. She accepted without a moment’s hesitation what her feminine logic dictated. So that was it. Another woman! Her first feeling was one of fear. The fear of finding herself abandoned and unprotected in a dark maze, all alone. She felt that she had lost her grip, and that the ground was shaking under her feet. It was a feeling similar to death, like watching her own funeral. She felt a chill come over her, and her stomach churned. She grabb
ed at her long hair and yanked. Her scalp hurt and she felt pain. The feeling was real, that of a living organism, that of a discontent and inflamed being. The chill of death gave way to a hot flush and an unbridled anger ran under her skin. The valves of her heart were opening and closing with feverish frenzy and, with each passing second, love was being replaced in her heart by hate. At that moment, she was capable of setting the house on fire, killing herself and Amir-Ali. She had not believed one word of what he had said about his mental illness. She told herself that all his theatrics were part of a grand scheme, orchestrated for a reason, for a precise and calculated reason. Amir-Ali was a cheat and a liar and unfaithful, like all other men, like so-and-so and so-and-so, and she, Malak-Azar the gullible, had been fooled by his innocent appearance. What a mistake! Not even once had she tried to find out what he was up to, and only now she understood why he came home late on certain evenings and why he quickly hung up the phone whenever she appeared.
Where did he go and with whom did he associate? All his words and deeds now seemed suspicious to her. Even his face looked ugly and monstrous. There was no doubt that another woman, a young one, was involved. The word young echoed in her brain like an ear-splitting blast, and a moment later a blind jealousy, more biting than the sharp pain of a thousand tender wounds, nestled in her body and soul. The prospect of having to compete with a younger woman was daunting. A blurred image of the other woman, her unbeatable rival, appeared before her eyes and clawed at her heart. She wanted to know everything: when they had first met and where. Her name, her age, her address, her phone number, and, most important, her looks. Was she tall, taller than she? Was she slim or plump, blond or brunette? She was determined to find out. Her ignorance of these facts was driving her crazy. A hundred times a day, she would ask herself “Who?” and she felt jealous of the imaginary women.
From the moment she had met Amir-Ali, her instincts had warned her that this would happen sooner or later, and at the back of her mind she had always worried about it. She had tamed Amir-Ali as much as she could by giving him a life of ease — without any financial worries — by sweet talk and languorous caresses, and by a thousand and one amorous ruses. But she knew that part of this man’s being remained untamed and unconquerable, and this dark and unknown corner frightened her. Her imagination would run ahead of the logic of events. She wanted to catch Amir-Ali red-handed, in the act, as he was lying next to his mistress. She wanted to open the door to the room (which room?), and gaze into his frightened eyes. And then? Nothing. In Malak-Azar’s confused mind, time would end and the world would come to a stop. She could not visualize what would happen next. She would go back and start all over again. She would change the scenario. She would alter the scene, the time and the place of his betrayal. She would get to the point when she was about to open the door. Their own bedroom? A room in a hotel? Never mind. Her imaginary camera would show a door, a closed door. She would turn the knob. The door would slowly turn on its hinges. It would open. The camera would track forward. It would move past the window. It would move up the side of the bed and focus on the faces of Amir-Ali and his mistress, caught in close-up. Here her imagination would fail. The film would jam in the camera and the viewfinder would only show a frozen frame. And then there would be darkness. Total silence. A black screen. The end.
There was no end to these scenarios. Unrelated fantasies and destructive nightmares had driven the plain reality of everyday life out of Malak-Azar’s mind. She felt disoriented. In her mind, the east and the west had changed places. She was unable to find herself, she could not see herself, she could not come to grips with being in a specific time and place. And yet life went on and her everyday routine — getting up, saying a cheerful “good morning,” getting dressed, working out, chatting with this and that person on the phone, seeing to the household expenses, going to parties — continued. Objects changed their place. An old porcelain bowl, the tall crystal lampshade, and the cut-glass vase were moved from one room to another. Drapes were drawn aside. A crumpled newspaper was tossed into the wastebasket. Windows were opened and closed, and all this was done by a stranger, by an absent Malak-Azar, who had become a pale shadow of her old self, of the successful and triumphant woman who would go from one bright room to the next, and who firmly believed in her enduring happiness. Now, without warning, unprepared and surprised, she had stumbled, as though an invisible hand had suddenly pushed her from behind. She had slipped, lost her balance, and fallen into life’s unexplored ruins, down the abyss of blind urges and primitive dark instincts.
Days passed at a slow and monotonous pace, devoid of all smell and color. Life was a photocopy of events past, a mechanical reproduction of things that had lost their original form. Amir-Ali felt it was impossible to carry on and decided to write a long letter to his wife to explain everything — from that first night to their latest disagreement. He sat down to write. His first attempt turned out too short and he tore the letter up. The second and third attempts were too long. The fourth and fifth drafts were incoherent and confused. He ran out of paper. He called the cook and asked for some paper. When the cook entered the room, he sniffed and said, “Master, there’s a funny smell in this room,” and asked permission to open the window. Amir-Ali had also noticed an unpleasant odor coming from under the bed and the chairs. He thought that perhaps there was a dead mouse somewhere and looked for it everywhere, but found nothing. The stench was coming from his own body, the smell of putrid flesh. He took a bath and washed himself thoroughly from head to toe. He soaped himself. He rubbed his body with a coarse loofah. He stood under a hot shower until his skin began to burn. He smelled himself and felt nauseated by the smell. Some part of his body was rotting. He stood before the mirror and carefully looked, one by one, at his teeth. He thought that perhaps an abscess had opened in some hidden part of his body, perhaps between his toes or in his armpit. He examined himself from head to toe. He was intact. No scratches. No wounds. No abscess. And yet there was a stench emanating from his pores. What would happen if Malak-Azar saw him in this condition? What if this foul smell, the smell of rotting flesh, reached his sons? All doors were closed to him; the world was up in arms against him and he did not have it in him to fight destiny.
The only course of action was to go away. He packed his suitcase, picked up his checkbook and all the cash he had in the house. He wrote a two-sentence letter to his wife explaining that he was ill, that he was going away for a few days, and that one day he would explain everything to her. For now, the only thing he could do was to leave and put a distance between himself and his loved ones.
Amir-Ali set off with no particular destination in mind. His car was large and comfortable, and he was enjoying driving out on the open road. He had not been on the road for a long time. He felt free, and freedom was a novel experience to him. The foul odor of his body had subsided and he could breathe more easily. He pressed on the gas pedal and drove on, not knowing where he would end up. He drove past Karaj. He drove past Hamadan. Then he stopped at a small roadside restaurant and had lunch. He felt drowsy. He lay down in the shade of some trees, stared at the afternoon sky, and watched the patient passage of clouds, catnapping contentedly and lightheartedly. His eyelids drooped, then lifted again, and his body, serene and reposed, felt void of all temptations. Playful happy-go-lucky birds chirped noisily on the branches, and prudent and wise ants were scurrying to and fro on the ground. He spent the night at a wayside inn. He got up several times to look out at the crescent moon and the twinkling stars, and he slept with his eyes full of memories of cosmic rays and mysteries of the universe. He started off again at the crack of dawn. There lay ahead of him, as far as the eye could see, bare and barren land, and then suddenly in the midst of that parched emptiness, a row of green poplars stood together like neat schoolboys. Farther on, in the heart of the desert, a small oasis came into view like some rare occurrence.
A hitchhiker signaled him to stop. The man was going to Ker- manshah. Kermanshah sounded like a g
ood place to visit. Amir-Ali didn’t know that part of the country. He didn’t know any part of the country. He had been brought up in Tehran and he had stayed there. His travels abroad had been only on business, for making purchases or obtaining licenses for the Yarn and Spool Company.
Outside the city, the hitchhiker got off at the bend of a dirt road and went on his way. The sun was setting. The end of the horizon was linked to a world of color, and a mass of orange light was descending from the sky. Driving on that dirt road was not easy. Once or twice his wheels sank into the soft and muddy soil and the car stalled, then labored forward a few yards and got stuck again. It was growing dark. Amir-Ali got out, took off his jacket, spread it on the ground, and lay down on it. The earth was silent, and the nearby mountains were still. The vastness of the desert gradually seeped into his body, carrying him forward like a light-headed kite.
Strange Times, My Dear Page 32