Ten years later Miss Baji became a bride again. This time, her husband was the leader of one of the tribes of Lorestan.7 He was a sunburned nomad, about six feet tall, whose brutality and greed inspire my grandmother to say that he would “devour the donkey along with its load, and the corpse along with the grave.” His name was Ja’far Gholi, but he was called “Jeff.” (Was this a memento from British friends, or a personal choice? No one knows. This was the Pahlavi era — the time of the forced settlement of tribes and nomads. The plan was to make the nomads pay through their noses for all the havoc they had wreaked in the last hundred years. Forcing them to drink the poisonous Qajar coffee wasn’t fashionable anymore. They were now speaking about injections of air in the veins, and injections of water in the knee.)8
Jeff was a one-armed man. When his right arm took a bullet in battle, he cut it off himself, from under the shoulder, with a Cossack sword. He was a bitter man with a broken spirit, who confronted all life’s disenchantments in two ways: smoking opium and tormenting his wife. And in both these habits, he had a fastidious and distinctive taste.
On the night of the wedding, he established who was boss. He returned the young bride with her white dress and uncovered hair to her father’s house. She was holding an unstained handkerchief in one hand, and a mouse lamp in another.9 (According to my grandmother’s definition, a mouse lamp is something that looks like a teapot with a wick coming out of its spout. The wick soaks up and burns the oil inside it.) Before the sun was up, Miss Baji had been turned into “Mouse Lamp” Baji. Her father had a heart attack from the shock, and in his sickbed accepted the demands and conditions of his mendacious, greedy son-in-law. He paid his daughter’s inheritance in full, in advance, along with six kilos of superior saffron from the Ghaenat region. The sun has just reached the wall when “Mouse Lamp” Baji changed into “Saffron Baji,” and this is how they began their married life together.
Jeff had a heavy hand (as he should have . . . since he only had one hand, his body wasn’t well balanced), and he responded to every mishap with a jab in the mouth, a slap, smack, or strike. My grandmother says a man who is an opium addict has only two ways of preventing his wife from going on the prowl.10 Either he must father so many children that she won’t have time to scratch her head, never mind be tempted to do anything else, or in the midst of the warm and tingly feeling of the opium high, when the pipe is ready and he is feeling good, he must use the pretext of the wife’s earache to give her a puff, so that the next day, the wife can make up the excuse of a toothache for another puff, and so on and so forth, until the day comes when they both sit on opposite sides of the opium stove and scratch their noses, and talk rubbish in their husky opium-addict voices. However, Mrs. Baji did not show talent for either of these two scenarios. She gave birth to seven children, six of whom died, and opium, alas, did not suit her constitution. But as she had come to her husband’s home in a white dress, she could only leave in a white shroud. So she suffered and stayed.
On moonlit nights, she tied her baby to her back and headed out with Jeff to Sofeh Mountain. It was a rocky ledge towering over takht-e poulad, which is Esfahan’s cemetery. Watched over by her husband, she rubbed the opium in the radiance of the full moon. In those times, they would rub opium either in the vicinity of fire, or under the sun. But Jeff the opium addict believed that opium rubbed in the radiance of the full moon induces a high that is out of this world. The full moons come and go. Moons become new and old. Crescents develop into full moons, full moons into crescents . . . Until one night, Jeff cut the trip short and died right up there under the moonlight. In the morning, the assembly of mourners realized something strange. Jeff’s healthy hand — the same hand he used for slapping his wife — had been cut off from the wrist.
Questions, investigations, and inquiries led nowhere. The family and relatives made some lukewarm protests, and the body was finally put to rest. Moreover, what did it matter if a one-armed man lost the other when he died, especially if he had never done anything good with it?
Mrs. Baji was left with a few pots and pans, a couple of worthless kilims, a ten-year-old daughter, and the need to keep up appearances in spite of her dire state.
A few weeks later, Mrs. Baji sold the furniture and the house, and disappeared with her daughter. Five or six years passed by. There was news that she had a charming little house and lived in Tehran. She was probably clever enough to have secretly saved a few of the gold Ottoman coins in the lining of her dress. Her daughter grew up. She managed to give her a respectable wedding and a worthy dowry to take with her. The girl became pregnant, but died during childbirth. To avoid her grandchild being brought up by a stepmother, Mrs. Baji came to an agreement with her son-in-law. She took in the baby, tended him for years, and brought him up. Now that she has been old for a long time, she is respectfully called Agha Baji.
I still can’t fall asleep. Hard as I try, I can’t understand why Agha Baji wants to see Psycho. Maybe it’s just an old woman’s whim and will be forgotten tomorrow. I am not frightened of the old woman in Psycho anymore. I calmly replay the basement scene in my mind and go to sleep.
A few nights later, when I get home, I see that Agha Baji’s grandson is there. She has named him Siavosh.11 (Which ordeal has he successfully triumphed over? Which fire has he overcome? Maybe the story of Siavosh invokes the tale of her own tribulation.) Siavosh is a medical student and an intern in a hospital. He’s a quiet, heavy young man with straight hair and has a way of speaking that sounds more like humming. After the initial rubbing of his hands together in silence, he curiously asks about the film that I have promised to take his grandmother to see. I get nervous again. The truth is that I am embarrassed to take Agha Baji to the movies. Maybe because my friends show off and say that they’ve been to the movies with their “girlfriends” and here I am ending up having to go with Agha Baji. He starts laughing when I tell him about what happened that day with the film Psycho and the ordeal that followed with the bathroom floor. He says, “You started it, you have to finish it! Really, it’s all your own doing!”
He reaches into his pocket and gives me 20 tomans. I want to pass the buck to Siavosh and make him take her, but I feel too shy to do it. He’s probably very busy, otherwise he would have thought of it himself. My grandmother eggs me on. I console myself with the thought that this is a good deed, although I doubt that any angel is going to keep track of it up there in heaven. Siavosh has a cup of tea, and we make the arrangements for the next day. He thanks me shyly and leaves.
The next morning, I go to my appointment. It’s the first trimester and my classes are not that serious. Agha Baji is ready and sitting there waiting for me. She is wearing her party dress, a silver-colored veil with little white polka dots, and black plastic boots up to her calf, fastened with a zipper instead of laces. We take a taxi, and get off at Shah Square.
I am still embarrassed. But I realize that no one is taking any notice of us. So we don’t seem unusual. I take her arm and bit by bit we head down the street.
When we get to the cinema she perks up, as if she was sleepwalking until now and has suddenly woken up. She looks at everything very carefully. She is watching my every move. As if she is collecting memories. Or uncovering a secret or cracking a code. I buy tickets and we enter the cinema. She stands in the middle of the lobby and stares around as if in a stupor. To get her out of this state, I motion to the refreshment stand and ask if she would like something to eat. She shakes her head. I carelessly ask, would she like to go to the restroom? I immediately regret it. I guess that was an offensive question. Besides, going up and down the stairs to get to the bathrooms at Mahtab Cinema knocks my breath out, never mind Agha Baji’s.
Fortunately, the cinema is not crowded and everyone is doing their own thing. Agha Baji is startled by the sound of three or four chimes a few minutes before we sit down. They open the theater doors. She throws me a questioning glance. I hold her arm and guide her inside the theater. We ask the man at the door i
f we can sit up front. He gives us both an inquisitive look, but says there’s no problem. As we enter, Agha Baji stiffens. Standing there with an open mouth, she stares at all the empty seats. A few other chimes bring her back to motion. We go ahead and sit seven rows from the screen. I steal a look at her. She is sitting cross-legged on the chair, adjusting her veil. The lights go off, and for about a minute, everything is covered by darkness and silence. Moments later, the glare of the usher’s flashlight falls on us. He probably thinks we are up to something and wants to catch us at it. As Agha Baji turns her face toward the light, the usher switches off the light right away. Relieved, I lean back and wait for the beginning of the film. I am sure that I am not going to be scared of the ending. Agha Baji is by my side.
For the entire duration of the film, she does not utter a sound. Not a cough or a sneeze, or a yawn, or a sigh, a groan, a movement. Nothing. Hunched over, she’s staring at the screen like a statue. When the shower scene is finished, I look at her. She is still motionless. I suspect that she has fallen asleep. I bend forward a little to see how she is. She turns toward me, frowning. Embarrassed, I lean back and become immersed in the film again. I had decided to watch her in the basement sequence, but I got so nailed by the film that I forgot. Toward the end, the part where they take Anthony Perkins to the sheriff’s office, I cautiously throw her a glance. The only difference is that she is now grabbing the chair in front of her with both hands.
The lights go on. I take a deep breath and get up. I put my hand on her shoulder and call her name. She moves her head a few times, as if she is talking to herself. I politely explain that the movie is finished and we must leave. She pulls herself toward the front of the chair a little. She puts her feet down and gets up. On the whole, she looks tired and drained, but her eyes are shining. As we exit the cinema from the side street, she covers her face with her hand so that the bright light doesn’t bother her. Then she looks this way and that a few times, as if she has forgotten where we are. It’s one of those days when the sun is shining and everything seems brimming with life. A cool, pleasant breeze is blowing. Boys and girls from the Hadaf schools pass us by. The sparrows chirp and twitter as they frolic among the branches of the trees. I am suddenly overcome with a feeling of immense joy. I put my arm around her shoulder and elatedly ask, “So, Agha Baji, did you like the movie?”
She gives a faint smile and nods.
I ask, “Did you figure out the story?”
It takes her a few moments to answer, “Yes . . . but I haven’t figured out the way of the world yet.”
It’s cramming time before the final exams. Early mornings, I walk back and forth in a side street behind the Swiss embassy on Pasteur Street. I curse at the books and I curse myself. Whenever my grandmother sees me, she angrily says, “You’re going to get stomach cramps and the runs! You’re going to get a cough! Look at him! He’s thin as a rake! Eat something! Sleep a little! You’re going to get sick!”
I can’t deal with this kind of talk now. My lips move all the time like people mumbling magical incantations, or like old men with false teeth. I am reviewing all my subjects. Physics, Chemistry, Algebra, Animal Biology, Plant Biology, Evolution, English . . . oh . . . oh! What was the formula for the friction of bodies on a flat surface?. . . Damn the effect of hydrochloric acid on methane . . . How to draw an ellipse on coordinate axes? . . . What kind of protein can be found in the hemocyanin of invertebrates?. . . What does suberification in plants mean?. . . Archaean, Alconican, Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian, are the Precambrian and first eras in geology. . . Hamlet, whose father is dead, is the chief character in the play. . . . Everything is jumbled up in my mind.
One morning at seven-thirty I see Siavosh in Pasteur Square. I am in no mood to say hello, but we run directly into each other, so there’s no way I can get out of it. Several times, back and forth, we ask how are you, and several times, back and forth, we thank each other.
I suddenly remember Agha Baji. I feel close enough to my fellow cinema-enthusiast to ask after her. In a gloomy tone, he murmurs that she is the hospital. What is her illness? He just says, “Old age.”
That night, when my grandmother hears about this, she makes me promise to go and visit her at the hospital. She herself has a bad leg and can’t take one step forward. I moan and groan a little, but I accept.
The next afternoon, she has wrapped up a bundle of gifts in a cloth for me to take for Agha Baji. I lift the cloth layers and take a look inside. There’s a bag full of sugarplums, a few pieces of rock candy with a dizzying fragrance of saffron, a set of fine blue prayer beads, and a travel-size water pipe with its crystal water jar and a bag of tobacco. I didn’t know Agha Baji smoked a water pipe.
“She had quit, but now it doesn’t matter anymore,” Grandmother says.
The room in the hospital has two beds. The bed closer to the door is empty. Agha Baji is lying on the bed next to the window, looking at the sky. Siavosh is sitting on the only chair in the room, reading a newspaper. I enter and say hello. I’ve been smart enough to buy three white carnations. Both of them are surprised and delighted to see me. Siavosh walks around the room nervously. He finally finds a glass and puts the flowers in it. I put the bundle on Agha Baji’s lap and give her my grandmother’s greetings. She opens the bundle with interest. She takes out the gifts one by one with appreciation. When she gets to the water pipe, she beams with happiness. Siavosh casts a look of displeasure in my direction and warns his grandmother against smoking the water pipe. He’s about to throw the bag of tobacco in the wastebasket under the bed. But he doesn’t. He probably thinks I would be offended. He explains that smoking a water pipe would be dangerous for Agha Baji. He spices up his explanations with a few medical terms to drive the point across. Then he concentrates on serving me refreshments. I thank him and say that I have to go. He insists that I sit down, stay a few minutes and eat something. Then he glances at his watch and says that he is late for his class. He gives a few major and minor recommendations to his grandmother. He shakes hands with me and leaves. There are a few moments of silence. I glance at Agha Baji. She points to the water pipe with her eyebrows. She winks encouragingly toward me and invites me to take part in the forbidden act. Happy to collaborate, I get up and remind her of everything Siavosh said. Nonchalantly, she shakes her head and says, “You have to be your own doctor.”
I fill the jar of the water pipe halfway and give it to her. I adjust its wooden body on top of the crystal water jar. She wets the mouthpiece of the pipe with her mouth and sets it in the hole. She takes a puff and gets the bubbling action going. It seems that there is too much water in the jar. She blows into it and about half a cup of water spills out from the pipe to the ground. She puffs again, and this time the water is exactly right. Under her supervision, I take a handful of tobacco. I wet it under the sink in the room several times, and then I squeeze the tobacco so that it absorbs the water well. Then I arrange it on top of the water pipe. Suddenly both of us realize that we have forgotten the most important thing: charcoal. Where could one get charcoal? Upset by this obvious oversight, she looks around a few times. Then she thinks of something, and asks, “Aren’t there any coffeehouses around here?”
I take the head of the water pipe and leave the hospital. She had guessed right. In the side street next to the hospital, a few people are sitting under the shade of a weeping willow drinking tea in front of a coffeehouse. I enter and ask for hot coal. The coffeehouse waiter delicately places a few pieces of hot coal on the pipe head. I want to pay him, but he does not accept any money. On the way back, I keep blowing on the coals to keep them burning. I enter and give the pipe head to Agha Baji. She puts the pipe on her knees and sits up straight. She swallows her saliva, and puffs out her chest. She puts the mouthpiece on the side of her lips and begins to puff. I am standing directly in front of her, watching her, engrossed. When the smoke begins to come out of the pipe, her lids get very heavy. She closes her eyes and bends to the left and right like a pendulum. She
hums a song under her breath that I can’t understand. It’s probably in the Lori dialect. Although I can’t make out the words, it sounds sad.
Suddenly the door opens and a short, fat nurse rolls into the room. With her eyes popping, she stares at Agha Baji and says, “I beg your pardon? We might as well have called Samia Jamal for the party, too!”12
With a touch of indifference and a trace of mockery, Agha Baji stares straight back at the nurse. Then she openly breaks out into song:
If you had told me you would visit me by my sickbed,
I would not have foregone the pleasure of illness, for this world or the next. . . .
The nurse narrows her eyes and rolls her head several times. Then with contrived anger she grabs the water pipe from Agha Baji’s hands and says, “When water flows upward, the frog sings an abu-ata song.”13
She empties the pipe head into the garbage bin under the bed and pours the water from the jar. When she’s done with that, she wheels in a carriage from behind the door into the room, fills up a syringe with a red medicine and distilled water. For the first time, she glances at me. I go to the window and look outside. Not too far away, a flock of pigeons is flying around. One of them, pure white, is flying higher than anyone else. I had meant to be looking away until the nurse was done with the injection, but I become completely engrossed in the pigeons and lose track of time. Alone or in groups the pigeons sit on the roof of a two-story house on the opposite side of the street, except for the white one, which is still in relentless flight. I feel compelled to pursue it with my gaze until it sits down. As if the pigeon knows this, it keeps on lowering its altitude but then goes up again. I tell myself that if the pigeon sits after I have counted up to three hundred, then Agha Baji will get well and go home. I start counting. But in the middle, I forget whether I had said that Agha Baji will go home safely if the pigeon sits before I count to three hundred or after I count to three hundred. Now I don’t know whether I should count slow or fast. I am afraid that Agha Baji’s life may be hanging on my counting. Suddenly I panic and my heart begins to beat fast. I regret this deal that I made with myself I worry about the pigeon. The closer I get to three hundred, the more I worry. I close my eyes and stop counting. I imagine Agha Baji in her youth. I haven’t seen it but. . . long tresses of hair, like embroidered flowers in a tapestry, down to the curve of her waist. Her brow, smooth as marble. Eyes, brown as the eyes of a gazelle. Thick bow-shaped eyebrows. Nose like a chickpea. Lips, parting in a smile like the shell of a pistachio, and the dimple in her chin — an abyss for lovers to plunge into ... I open my eyes. Having done a few spectacular somersaults as a finale to his flight, the pigeon finally sits among the other pigeons and is lost from sight. I turn around and encounter Agha Baji’s tired and teary eyes. I smile, and to break the silence, say, “Agha Baji, do you remember we went to the cinema together?”
Strange Times, My Dear Page 35