“Why?” he asks, confused.
“If you take your medication, your pain will ease and your fever will stop.”
He puts the pill on his tongue. I hand him the glass of water. He swallows the pill and the water. “You’re tired of illness,” he says. “Just like he who comes home late.”
I lay his head back on the pillow. “He will come and he will bring you a toy.”
I sit on the edge of his bed.
“I don’t want a toy anymore,” he says irritably.
I run my hand over his tousled hair. “It will do you good to sleep. I will tell you the story of Youssef . . .”
ARE THEY GOING to kill the female dog, but spare the puppy? A new sound, a small sound. Eyelids wounded by light close in the darkness. The blast of the bullets being fired tears the darkness into shreds. They throw my Youssef in the well for the sin of being loved. In the end, who is going to interpret my sleep and my wakefulness? In the empty and silent reading room the shelves tremble and the dusty books shake. My colleague and office-mate sneezes nonstop and dials. How many zeros are there in the telephone number for City Hall? Does the female dog abandon the puppy and go to the ruins on a moonlit night? Grandmother always says disaster follows sin. Youssef looks at her with disbelief. The sword hanging overhead is always shaking. No one puts cats and crows on trial. K. must be punished; so should the taxi driver who doesn’t tape a picture of crows on the dashboard. But Raskolnikov is searching for earthly punishment. Is that the sound of the front door? But Youssef doesn’t want a toy anymore. The janitor takes the rag out of her uniform pocket. Hajar disappears in the dust of the old book. Grandmother says no stranger’s grave will be the same as Ismael’s. Does Ya’qub cry over his own heartbreak or over Youssef’s shirt? All the clouds in the sky descend to darken the earth. Will the flames from fuel and sulfur drive away the darkness? Grandmother bites the skin between her thumb and index finger and says, “Of all impossible things! How could a pair of Pahlavi shorts properly cover the privates!” The girl who has lined her eyes with kohl holds her binder in front of her bangs. A fire that can be extinguished will not replace the sun. The rain at dusk drenches the dove. Grandmother says they finally pull Youssef out of the well and return Ismael to Ibrahim and . . . but the rain that blurs the earth and sky will not bestow on Ya’qub even a sliver of sun the size of the palm of a hand.
They come and take the puppy away. The female dog remains. She remains? The hand that was vainly reaching out drops down. The absent sound, the closed mouth. I lift my head off the covered sheet over Youssef’s legs. The female dog rejects fate. Doesn’t she?
Born in Tehran, FERESHTEH MOLAVI has written many novels, essays, and short story collections, including The House of Cloud and the Wind, The Departures of Seasons, Dogs and Humans. She moved to Canada in 1998, and is a member of PEN Canada.
The Queue
Shiva Arastouie
SHE DECIDED AGAINST the jeans. Instead, she pulled out a pair of black, loose-fitting pants from the drawer and put them on. It had been seven years since she had worn those loose black trousers outside. She had always pushed them aside every time she rummaged in the drawer choosing something else to wear. Her jeans, on the other hand, hung on the closet door ready to put on whenever she went out shopping.
She had only two coverall uniforms. She took the darker one off the hanger and put it on before starting to look for her black Islamic headdress, something that would cover her hair and neck draping over her shoulders. She hadn’t worn it for seven years and couldn’t remember where it was, so she decided to wear a scarf and fasten it under her chin with a safety pin. She was reminded of her husband, who in situations like this would say, “Darling, just knot it under your chin and relax.”
She changed her mind, started looking for the headdress, and finally found it at the bottom of a box of old clothes. Pulling it on her head, she felt some satisfaction in its discovery.
She then checked her handbag to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. Seven years ago she carried a much larger bag, almost the size of a briefcase, the one she had left at her mother’s.
“These days,” her mother would say, “girls carry a suitcase over their shoulders when they go out in the streets.”
She used to pack her handbag with all kinds of stuff, from books and stationery to hairbrushes, lotions, a mirror, painkillers, adhesive tape, sterile gauze, cough suppressant, nail files, thread and needles, stockings, hair clips, deodorant spray, and sanitary napkins.
“Naturally,” her mother would say with a touch of sarcasm, “if you’re going to be out and about all day, you need all this stuff.”
She remembered her black binder, and now had to look for it in the pile of old books and notepads to retrieve the university ID card inserted in the pocket on its front cover. She pulled out the perforated card and placed it in her small handbag, which could hardly accommodate anything else other than her wallet, eyeglasses, and key ring.
She had taken the last examination seven years ago. The hall monitor had punched a hole in the corner of her ID card, as confirmation of her presence in the final exam, and returned it to her. She thought of the day she had her picture taken for the card. She had worn the black headdress and had wiped all traces of makeup off her face. “Try not to frown, Miss,” the photographer had advised. “Think of happy things.” She had thought of her admission to the university and the picture had turned out satisfactorily. She looked fresh and youthful. Even the official in charge of issuing student ID cards commented on it positively, as he affixed it to the card and stamped it in the corner. She looked at the back of the card and was pleased with the data: age 24, female, hazel eyes, brown hair, weight: 54 kilograms, height: 162 centimeters, and blood type: O negative.
There was no comment under “Restrictions,” only an ominous “Warning” declaring: “Any attempt to forge, alter, or abuse this card is an offense subject to prosecution.”
The only alteration to the card since then was the punched hole in its corner, which gave it an added air of authenticity. The picture on the card lacked the prescription glasses, which she would now need to locate Room 374, the office where she was supposed to go, according to the announcement in the newspaper, to get her suspended degree. The glasses were now on the table in the hallway, a space which also served as a living room as well as a reception area when they had guests or visits from their parents. She had left them on the table the night before, going to bed after turning off the television. One side faced upward and the other, attached to the frame by superglue, was slightly askew. When she wore them, they did not fit securely behind her ears. She thought she should have them in her handbag to look for the room numbers.
Next, she looked at the footwear lined up at the bedroom door. They were all summer-season sandals and open-toe shoes. The problem was that they had to be worn with thick socks —and she hated the feel of them on her feet. In earlier days she always wore boots or shoes that covered her feet up to the ankles so she didn’t have to wear socks regardless of the season. In conversations with other women on clothes, shoes, and other matters of fashion, she would say, “It is as if I breathe with my feet. Every time I put on socks or stockings I feel strange, like someone is choking me. I have to take them off to breathe.”
Some women would have the same feeling, “Yes, yes! Me too!”
Other would roll their eyes and say, “Oh, really!”
It took her a while to make up her mind to breathe or not to through her feet. Ultimately she decided to breathe through her nose, which happened to be naturally shapely and well-formed. Women often asked, “Where did you have it done? It looks so nice.”
“It is my own, I swear to God!”
“Oh, really!”
The problem was that she didn’t have any socks. She thought of borrowing a pair from the landlady. After all, she had loaned the woman a basket of potatoes—which she hadn’t yet returned. She felt she could ask her for a pair of socks.
&nb
sp; Her feet, clad in black socks, fit snugly in the white sandals, although the color clash made her cringe and avert her eyes when she looked herself over in the hall mirror. Other than the absence of the big handbag and black binder, she didn’t look any different than seven years ago.
The night before, she had placed the binder on the hall table and thumbed through its pages to see if she remembered any of its contents after seven years.
She reached for the house key in the door to drop it in her handbag. But she then decided to leave without it, surely her mother and daughter would be home to let her in. She had persuaded her mother to come over and stay with the child for the day so she could attend to her business. Her mother had shown some reluctance, what with all the broad beans she had to clean and store for winter. She had offered to help and her mother had consented.
Wearing a thick pair of black socks, an overcoat, and her headdress, she stepped out, ready to face the outside world. Seven years was about the length of time since she had walked the streets on her own, now she couldn’t make up her mind whether to catch a cab or take the bus. Most of her outings were limited to shopping for staples in the neighborhood or taking her daughter to the nearby school. Her husband bought the newspapers and magazines on his way to work. In the past seven years she hadn’t had any reason to think about public transportation. On Fridays, her husband’s beige-colored Renault, as if programmed, would take them to their in-laws and bring them back home at night. It even seemed to know which set of in-laws to visit each alternate Friday. On the way back, her daughter would fall sleep on her lap. Sometimes she herself dozed off after the car traversed the bridge.
“Last night we were watching videos at my mother-in-law’s until past eleven,” she would report to a friend over the phone. “It was an old movie. My husband loves old movies. We asked if we could borrow the video, but they said no.”
“Oh, really!”
But better than any movies, she liked to watch the windows of the houses alongside the bridge. At night, when they were crossing the bridge, she would put on her spectacles and peer through each window as her husband drove past them. There was something in each window that made it different from others. Before they got to the bridge on their Friday outings, she hardly looked out the windows of the car. Nevertheless she knew every moment where they were. She was not interested in the clothing stores, which she found boring. But she was fascinated by green grocers and fruit stalls. She had to suppress an urge to make her husband stop the car to buy fresh fruits and vegetables in large quantities. She didn’t like bakeries and confectioner’s shops either, especially the silly conical hats they supplied with birthday cakes. Their daughter always insisted on them for her birthdays and her husband always obliged. She always made sure she wore one for her birthday photograph. By now they had seven of those hats at home. She had made up her mind to leave them behind in case they had to move.
Anyway, most shops were closed on Fridays, but the windows of houses were always there. Even if the lights were out in some of them, she could imagine what was going on inside. With or without people behind the windows, she had a sense of the atmosphere that permeated the darkened spaces. If the lights were out, it meant that dishes had been washed and were drying in the strainer, or that they hadn’t yet been brought back from the dinner table. She would catch glimpses of men in pajama bottoms and women with their hair in buns behind their heads, just standing there. Before she could see what they were doing, the car would pass the window. It was like thumbing rapidly through a photo album. Just the attempt to guess the nature of the human interactions through a fleeting glimpse of the people seen in the window excited her. After they crossed the bridge, she would close her eyes and reflect on the succession of impressions she had seen through those windows.
Some windows revealed living rooms. She was struck with the uniformity in their furnishings. The windows were treated with delicate, transparent sheers. A sofa and matching armchairs were arranged around an oblong coffee table over which hung a chandelier of modest size. There was always something of ornamental nature in the middle of the coffee table—a crystal vase, an artificial flower arrangement, or an antique china bowl, she guessed. Every room had a large framed tableau or print on the wall directly above the sofa. Again, she could only guess what they depicted: a bunch of multicolored flowers in a bowl with some blooms strewn around it, or a stormy seascape with a schooner in the foreground leaning at a precarious angle, or a woman with long, wavy tresses seated on a highly ornate armchair. Or it could be the same tableau she had over the sofa in her own living room, representing a country house in a snowstorm. Once she had thought of taking it off the wall altogether, but she found that without it the room looked strangely bare and uninviting. Without it, she felt out of place watching TV, reading newspapers, helping her daughter with homework, cleaning vegetables for dinner, sipping on a cup of tea, or even dialing a number on the phone. In due course, the picture went back on the wall.
Along the bridge, there was one window she found more intriguing than others. It opened to a fairly large kitchen with metal cabinetry painted lime green and a dinette set in the middle. An old woman, always wearing a cardigan, regardless of season, would be sitting on chair knitting. She was always in the kitchen whether they were on their way to or from their in-laws’. Sometimes she was on her customary chair and knitting; she might be looking for something in the cabinets, or cooking something over the stove, or just moving aimlessly around the kitchen. If she was not actually knitting, the skeins and needles would be still be visible in a heap on the table.
In some windows at various times she could see young girls in different outfits and hairdos talking to someone not readily visible. In other windows she saw adolescent boys leaning out of the window surveying the traffic on the bridge.
All in all, crossing the bridge, especially at night, was a pleasant experience. The good thing was that the bridge had a long span, and her husband, sensing that she enjoyed her pastime, drove more slowly when they crossed it. Now she was on her own and wondered in what way her impressions would be affected if she crossed the bridge in a taxi or on a bus.
AFTER SOME HESITATION, she decided to take a cab. Everything had changed since then; using the buses required a skill that she had lost after seven years. In those days, she knew all the routes and bus numbers, and managed her commute so that she could do some studying and preparation on the bus. There were some passengers so regular that their presence or absence would tell her if she was late or early. On the bus she would scrutinize the faces of the passengers or make a note of what they read. Sometimes, when she had nothing to read or prepare for class, she would steal glances at what the passenger next to her was reading. Most passengers resented this practice. They would either close their books or reposition themselves so she wouldn’t be able to see what they were reading.
“How dumb! So what if I know what they read?” she would think to herself.
Sometimes a passenger would write a phone number on the margin of his reading material and tip it over so she could see it.
“How vain! He thinks I am in love with him!”
She would then turn her head away and divert her eyes to other passengers until the bus arrived at the campus, her destination.
The campus was crowded with faces and people, although in class she had to keep her gaze on her instructor’s face—which she subjected to a series of assessments: If the nose were a little less prominent . . . His eyes are too closely set and his hairline recedes too far . . . His lips are too thin, clashing with his bushy eyebrows . . . He must have had a better complexion as a young man . . . concluding with a complex hypothetical exchange of facial features involving professors of literature, linguistics, philology, literary translation, and deconstructive theory. If all this could be done, then everything would be fine.
Even at her wedding she got bored looking at her own face next to the groom’s reflected in the mirror as the cleric recited the m
arriage vows. She felt better after the ceremony when a lot more people and faces showed up for the reception. At the end of the night, after everybody had left and the lights had been turned off, she had a lot of faces in her mind to keep her busy till morning.
Now that she got into the cab, she positioned herself in the backseat so as to be able to see her face in the rear-view mirror. She was pleased that her eyes, eyebrows, nose, and mouth looked good together and individually, although her face could not be considered strikingly beautiful and could stand some improvement by makeup.
She thought of what lay ahead: she would present her punched ID card to the official in charge, as per instructions in the newspaper, and finally receive her degree, which had been languishing in the Ministry of Higher Education because her field of study had been suspended. On the way back she would buy some dill weed and, once home, using the broad beans her mother had bought, she would prepare a delicious rice dish and offer it to the family ceremoniously as “my graduation banquet!”
To reward herself for her efforts, she would stay in bed until noon the next day. In three days it would be Friday, when they would drive across the bridge.
At the entrance to the building she produced the ID card from her handbag and showed it to the security guard before putting on her glasses. She saw a long line of women already formed on one side of the long corridor. She took her place at the end of it. An equally long line of men stretched on the other side, and a young man joined it almost at the same time as she joined the women’s. She looked at her wrist to see what time it was and found that she had left her watch at home. She would be out of there by noon, at maximum, she thought. Soon she started feeling bored. To amuse herself she looked probingly at the faces of the women ahead of her in the line.
It occurred to her that looks had generally improved since seven years ago. She took off her glasses and put them back in the handbag. She wouldn’t need them until she got to Room 374. Besides, that was where everybody was going. But there was no movement in the line. She thought of analyzing faces again as a diversion. So she put the glasses back on and surveyed the crowd, and noticed that it was becoming thicker by the minute. Both lines for women and men had almost doubled in length since her arrival. A familiar face caught her eye. It was the man who had come at the same time as she. He was at the same position in the men’s line as she was in women’s. “It doesn’t matter what I look like,” she thought to herself. “He’s probably already married and has children.”
The Shipwrecked Page 14