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Strange Times, My Dear

Page 42

by Nahid Mozaffari


  “When they all take it upon themselves to kill a living thing but it doesn’t die and even goes so far as to trust them again, I realize that all the things I have ever said to you were simply a mirage, the fantasies of a dog with seven lives who knows the secret to the engraved image on the wall and his fifth life is about to end.”

  In the days when he used to come to town, it was autumn and winter. We would go for a stroll on a deserted street. Perhaps you did this sort of thing, too, when you were engaged. Not much of it stays in one’s memory, not the words that were spoken, not the jokes, perhaps only the image of feet treading in unison and the memory of a tree-lined dead-end street which does not look like a dead end. And one more memory; the smell of wintersweet flowers floating from behind the walls of a house on a rainy day. In those days, if I asked him to talk about the place where he was stationed, he would say, let’s not talk about it. Maybe he just didn’t want to change the subject, and then he would carefully look around to see if we were alone, and he would take my hand or he would . . . And he used to write nothing about Guraab. Perhaps he thought that if I knew where he was stuck and how he was suffering, I would be distressed. But he was becoming so unsettled I could sense there was something wrong.

  Then, after two months of not having sent any news of himself, a letter arrived in May. The one that is mostly about Guraab. He writes that there are some words that cannot be carved on the wall or spoken to anyone; they can only be written in a letter, so that while writing one can picture their effect on the reader’s face. At the end he writes two or three lines about that dog, and good-bye. With no “I hope to see you soon” or “I kiss your eyes” or even “say hello to this or that person.” Do you know what he used to write in the early days? “My soul mate and other words that I cannot repeat. I would write back, you careless boy, what if they open your letter at the post office, what then . . . what would they think? It was obvious that he was painfully lonely, but whatever it was, his thoughts were occupied with me and the time when his military service would end. Now you tell me what this means:

  “I climb down the stairs of the cavern at noon, I take a lantern with me, it is hell outside. A greasy sweat seeps out of my pores, I thirst for water, but I throw up the minute I drink. The men of Guraab, a few here and there, are sitting in the shadow of their huts smoking water pipes; they whisper to each other and keep a watchful eye on the road. They’re not concerned with me, and I am comfortable down here where the vapors of the earth bloat and swell. I sit in the middle of the circular wall and listen. I hear sounds. Besides the steady sound of water trickling, there are voices that still linger from a thousand years ago or even before. Someone screamed, someone lit a fire, the condemned ones laughed, and another uttered incantations.”

  What anxiety his May letter caused me and, worse, the letters that followed. I wrote to him that it is better if you don’t talk about Guraab. No matter how cursed the place, you are there, you represent the Development Corps, you are there to help them.1 Think of how important your work is from a humanitarian point of view. I couldn’t string together complicated words the way he could. In any case, I meant I admire you for your service. Then, as though he developed a grudge against me, too, he started sending these letters, some only a day apart. Like this one, only three lines long; it’s obvious he wrote it in a hurry. And what does it say? That they are lying in ambush waiting to capture him and to strangle him with a rope, but they still don’t know where he is hiding. He writes that he alone knows of this hiding place and, of course, he won’t tell them. Four times he has repeated that: he won’t tell them, won’t tell them . . .

  No. How could I go? There are times when I don’t even dare walk alone in the streets of our own town. I dreamed that a few men are chasing me, in the middle of the day, and nobody else pays any attention. I run through the crowds screaming. The men catch up with me . . . Would my father go with me? Could I go alone? I wanted to, what he must have thought of me . . . Besides, I was scared. I am still scared of Guraab. If the people there are anything like the way he describes them, they would have strung me up me in the middle of the village square. What? Where did he write it. . . Read! Right here: “Forty or fifty huts made of sun-dried bricks in the middle of a sunken plain and on three sides of the plain, high mountains of sulfurous sandstone and slabs of slippery rock.2 No trees and no water. When soil decays, it sucks up the water and it seems as though it has never ever rained. The decay is spreading. It will scale up the pass and infest the surrounding plains and overrun everything.” Well, isn’t this scary? He writes:

  “There is another village on this plain, it’s called Gur-Gedaa, and guys from there come around here to steal. Dark skin, with even darker, dazed eyes. I’m scared, I’m scared of the look in their eyes. They shun me, too, like all the rest. Only this dog runs to me when he sees me. He comes and sniffs at my ankles. It’s as though he smells a scent that I’m incapable of smelling myself. Even more appalling is the wheat crop. It has already turned yellow and it’s pathetically scanty and short.

  I tell these godforsaken people, why do you fool yourself into thinking that you will have a good harvest this year? Their contentment and thankfulness makes me even more nervous.”

  He has told some guy named Farvardin, why are you so resigned? If you go to town and work as a laborer, you will have a better life. There’s water there for you to wash yourself. You’ll have some money to check out the town in the evenings, you’ll see colors, you will go to the movies, you will see things that you have never even dreamed of. If you go uptown, you’ll see beauty and well-being all concentrated in one place, and you will finally realize that Sabz-Ali’s sister isn’t such a great catch after all.

  He writes: “No one here has ever seen the sea. They haven’t even seen a river. Once in a while they see a flood and they climb up to the top of the hill where the crevice leading to the cavern has slit open. When the water subsides they go back and rebuild their huts, a couple fewer each time. Just yesterday someone sold his daughter. They plucked her eyebrows and made her up and sent her to an Arab on the other side of the Gulf. Maybe she won’t even make it to the other side. The kid had her heart set on getting some candy. Her father, Sadegh, needed the money to take his wife to town to give birth. The woman is past her eleventh month and she still hasn’t given birth. The child is alive in her belly, but it will neither die nor come out. They say they can hear it cry. I went to the cavern to avoid hearing it. The dog hadtaken refuge there, too. He was sitting there listening. I am amazed at what this animal finds to eat around here. There isn’t enough to feed humans. I share my own food with him. Sometime he disappears for a few days. Maybe he goes to Gur-Gedaa . . .”

  From what he writes, it’s obvious that it was a large dog. An animal that doesn’t choke to death when they throw ropes around his neck and pull from both sides must be quite a beast. He wrote: “It is white with black spots and is constantly panting from the heat. If spring isn’t over yet and it’s already this hot, the summer must be hell. I take off my clothes and try to fall asleep in the darkness of the cavern.” At the end of this letter, he asks me, in the middle of the night when it is quiet everywhere, to go and turn on a water faucet so that water drips from it, and he wants me to listen to the drip, drip sound in the dark. He writes that this sound bears a secret and for those who discover it, all places in the world will become identical. Don’t say it. . . no . . . you, of all people, don’t say it. . . everyone tells me what’s the use . . . don’t tell me that either. Let me cry and get it out of my system. And don’t tell me that I am still young and that I should be thinking of my future and my happiness. I don’t want to. I wrote him this, that without you I won’t exist, either. Think of me, too. I don’t even want a wedding. Just come back, let’s get married, have kids, and then go wherever you want, chasing after whatever dream you have. I wrote that I am still full of life ... I put all caution aside this time, I thought maybe his feelings for me will be rekindled. I
wrote your life and hope is still here . . .

  No, he didn’t come. He writes he now realizes that the existence of the chiseled image in the cavern is not without significance. A stone man is standing there. He writes that he is cleaning off the rest of the carving, then maybe he will understand what it means, with the help of his companion, that dog . . . When he was here I never saw him avoid people. He was simple and quiet, but he certainly wasn’t shy with me. He was spirited and exciting, I was sure that once he fell into the routine of life, he would really make something of his life. His mind-set was such that any woman knew that once he started to work, if his heart was content, he would provide a decent life for his wife. And then this same man becomes such a recluse that he writes he can no longer stand the light; the sun shines to blind him.

  He writes: “The poor villagers, despite all their ignorance, sometimes play me for a fool in their own way, and I get it. I tell them, you poor slobs, leave, go somewhere else, migrate to the seaside, you have never seen a rice paddy, you don’t know what it smells like ...” They all laughed at him. I am sure they laughed at him when he said such things. They had put him on the spot and asked, who are you, what do you do, why don’t you know anything? It seems they blamed him for a couple of their palm trees drying up. “Farvardin was yelling at me, wanting to know why the well has dried up. I don’t know, I don’t know why none of the wells reach water. They keep on killing their hens one by one. It is a bad omen if hens cluck at dawn and some of the hens have started clucking. Rostam says, what do you think . . . what is wrong with the hens? Why don’t they want to sit on their eggs? . . . Now what do you think we should plant in this soil? I don’t know. Bibi Golabatun says, then what did you come here for? I tell her I don’t know. She says our own men understand soil, seed, and rain better than you do. These men have planted this land for generations. And they’ll be here to the very last day, not you. I don’t know what to say. I came here to finish the remainder of my service and then go home.”

  He actually led a few of them by the hand into the cavern to show them the image. It took him a month to clean away the centuries-old dirt and to reveal part of it. A wheat field — or something similar — was carved into the stone. The man’s hand is not empty. He has drawn a dagger out... I think he lost all hope and confidence in his work when he didn’t manage to save the palm trees. He writes: “The sparse wheat grows here only out of a thousand-year-old habit, it is only a mirage of the fertility of centuries ago; once it becomes aware that it’s a mirage, it stops growing.” He writes: “Rostam dragged me over to his plot of land to boast about his harvest this year. I told him it’s no good. He broke off a stalk and counted the seeds, thirteen of them. He said it’s full. I said it’s as little as alms for a beggar. He walked into the wheat, held his arms open wide and hollered, do you even know how I’ve struggled here, you who come from the city? I said that whether I know or not, this soil is dead, it no longer breathes and it can’t be cured with fertilizers. He was insulted. He leaped toward me. I turned my back to him and headed for the village and he stood there clenching the thirteen seeds in his fist and yelling. Bibi Golabatun says I bring a curse to Guraab because the dog walks in my shadow. I tell her you are your own curse. If that dog peeks in through the door of your homes and stares at you, it means nothing. I tell her, every single one of you needs treatment at the hospital. Trachoma, parasites, smallpox, boils, and infections are festering in you. They cannot imagine a life without disease. But they avoid me because the dog has licked my ankle. The cavern . . . the cavern

  I wrote, Why do you bother with these people? Don’t confront them. Let them be. I wrote, It’s me who should help you build your life, it’s me who will bear you a child who will have no illnesses. He answered: “In your opinion, you, who live in the city and who if I am no longer around will hook up with someone else, in your opinion, why has that man buried his dagger in an animal’s head, here, on the stone. There is an expression on this man’s face that I don’t understand, I can’t stop looking at him. The expression has deepened as the stone has aged and peeled. His clenched teeth, the stone scar on his cheek ...” I wrote, For the love of whoever you care for, don’t go to that cavern, you’ll get sick. From his response, I know he sneered at me when he read my letter . . . are you listening?

  “Here the weather is free from all seasons and in this place, all the dreams in the world settle like sediment. I close my eyes and I see them. Would you believe that a person’s sense of smell can fantasize? It can, but just as we free our visual dreams by closing our eyes, we need to free as well our fantasies of smell and hearing. The dog and I sit facing the lines on the stone wall and then it begins to happen. The scent of a stream, a whiff of the honeybee’s saliva, the fragrance of lean meat, the blood of a sweet vein, the smell of thunder, the odor of an earthquake, the scent of a female

  This must be his next letter, if I’m not mistaken — I didn’t keep the envelopes. Starting with this one, even I have trouble reading his handwriting: “I told them, if you peek into my room again at night, in the middle of the night, I will go to the police and tell them all about the opium poppies you grow. Leave me alone. They had left me in peace for a while. But now they’re picking on the dog. This animal is not that important to me. He is like all the other dogs on the road who get hit by cars, their cadavers squashed by trucks. His left thigh has a sore and he constantly licks it, but that’s not important. Maybe one of the dogs from the village bit him, but just because he bites off the scabs, it doesn’t mean he is rabid. If he is not like other dogs, it doesn’t mean he is rabid. Sabz-Ali confronted me: he is, he is rabid. He said let’s not tempt the devil, this year we’ve had no calamities. The animal was sitting farther away, panting. Well I feel hot and I pant too in this weather. Even stones pant here, so does the air. Rostam said this dog is a stranger, he is not from Guraab or Gur-Gedaa. Our dogs are thin and agile. This one is like the tame city dogs. There’s no place for a strange dog in this village. It seems that the day and the time had come; I couldn’t see that a few people had gathered around me, I only saw Rostam, who stood there, his neck stretched out. I felt like tearing that protruding vein on his neck out with my teeth or with a fork. No matter how many times they kicked me in my side I didn’t let him go. They were pulling my hair from behind and I was smashing Rostam’s head against a rock and my hands were bloody and they separated us. I said leave the animal alone, I will kill him myself. I even got the poison for them to smear it on the goat’s guts. The animal ate it. I threw it to him myself. He devoured the entire intestine and disappeared. It is now three days that I sit in the cavern alone. There is no more to say.”

  How does a man suddenly become like this? No, I never want to lay eyes on him again. He can go to wherever the hell he belongs. But why did he waste three years of my life? I want to see him just to ask him this. What a difference between the things he said at the beginning and the things he says now. What do I care if the dog didn’t die from the poison, that he went back to him, still panting. He writes: “The dog knows that I fed him the poison, and he’s come back to let me know this.” This has to mean something . . . What? — do you understand it? I don’t want to know and I don’t want to know what the animal on the stone carving — the one that resembles no other animal and yet bears a trait from all of them — actually is or what it signifies. What does two thousand years ago have to do with me, or the return of the dog . . . ? The villagers saw the dog return. The dog managed to escape from their clutches and went to hide in the cavern. Maybe he hid the dog there himself. I wouldn’t put it past the person who wrote these letters. He writes: “I will not let them be until I find out which of us is genuine. Which one of us is real. Hot bread and cheese, milking an animal, shimmering robes in a rhythmic dance, a gurgling spring, a flute at sunset, have all been shed from my fantasies like the filth on my body that peels under my finger tips and falls off. Here everything whirls around in a wind tunnel and turns into dust. The black sh
adows of the days, the blackness of the nights . . . They gnaw on dry bread, they steal if they can, like dogs they hide their meager trifles from each other in a hundred little holes, they beat their wives at night and tell each other about it . . .

  “These same people swarmed my cavern. I hadn’t told them about it. I said I wouldn’t tell. No one knew. I don’t know how they found out. They dragged the poor animal outside with a rope. He wasn’t howling. He was subdued. The rope squeezed his neck but he did nothing. They pulled him up from the branch of a dead tree that sits in the middle of the village. The children threw stones at him, they could have killed him then and there, but they wanted to torment me. They looked at me while they beat him with a stick and laughed when he thrashed about. . . Now that I write, the night has come and the dog is still hanging there. He is snorting. I am petrified of going out. He’s probably calling me. He wants to stare at me with those sad eyes, like he usually does, but I want to go to the image on the wall. I have discovered something. The animal is not attacking that man — the way he is perched up on his hind legs, he doesn’t resemble an animal about to attack. He’s the same height as the man and has rested his paws on the man’s shoulders; then why? . . . What do you think the shadow of a hung dog looks like on a moonlit night? Try to see it in your sleep. Although I know you won’t be able to hear the sounds.”

  I am sure there was a lot of pain in his heart for him to take it out on me like this. It’s not my fault if I didn’t understand what he was talking about and didn’t know how to respond. And this is his last letter. It wasn’t written in sequence. There is no stamp on the envelope, it came with that package that had someone else’s handwriting on it. It’s the handwriting of a beginner. Maybe the handwriting of someone he has taught to read and write, perhaps he has spoken of me to him, said things that made the person bring this package and leave it at our door one early morning. Early morning! That is also how the letter begins. “Early in the morning when I woke up, it was quiet everywhere. I had fallen asleep at midnight with the sound of the dog’s snorts echoing in my ear. When I opened my eyes I thought he must have choked to death by now and I looked out the window. The rope was still there, swaying in the wind, but there was no dog hanging from it. He had cut through the noose with his teeth. I laughed. I went over to the tree and laughed and when Sabz-Ali came I showed him the rope and laughed some more. One by one they came. They were terrified and this made me laugh even harder and it seemed as though they were scared of me, too. Fearful of the rabid dog, they sent their wives and children home and armed with shovels and clubs they started searching high and low . . . I’m going to look for that dog

 

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