Mohamad-Réza was a young, sturdy man. He was someone who possessed an innate physical force. I had never seen him exercise. He didn’t play volleyball, soccer, or the other sports boys liked, but he was naturally strong. Everyone knew. For example, he was able to grab someone who was mocking him a little too much, and hold him at arm’s length for several long minutes, or fight several people at once when a squabble broke out. So we paid attention to him. But our strengths always contain a weakness. His physical force and his natural resistance would later play tricks on him. Later, delirious, that strength pushed him much further than someone with a normal constitution. That night, after the fire was put out, I steered him toward his aunt’s summer cottage, where he was staying during vacation. I hadn’t noticed that, as he listened to the detailed story of the picnic and his rival’s antics, he had guzzled an entire bottle of arak on his own and was completely hammered. On the way back, he stopped twice to throw up, but nothing came out. I had rarely seen him that wasted. The night air was still warm, he was sweating in big beads and couldn’t breathe. I asked him to sit down and wait for the effect of the alcohol to dissipate, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He kept walking and swaying dangerously. It was a dark night, with no moon, and I was having a hard time orienting myself. At that time, the village had not yet done away with its anarchic construction. Each person demarcated their parcel of land with barbed wire fastened to wooden posts, dug a well, planted a few trees, then constructed a shed, the minimum required to claim and validate the ownership of the land. For that reason, the roads leading to the lands didn’t obey any law, forming a labyrinth to get from one point to another. I was leading Mohamad-Réza haphazardly through those dark mazes. He was stumbling and grabbing constantly onto the posts of the barbed wire. I had just located his aunt’s house when he stopped and suddenly started to hurl. Then, taken over by a sort of convulsion, he turned around and started walking in the opposite direction. I grabbed his hand and hung onto his shoulders, trying to stop him, but nothing worked. I couldn’t even slow him down. He wasn’t fighting against me, he was simply advancing, ignoring my efforts, carrying the weight of my body without changing his speed, unwavering, like a tank. I immediately understood: he was walking toward Villa Rose. I feared the worst. Not able to stop him, I started to walk with him, trying to reason with him. Promising him everything and anything. It was useless, he wasn’t listening to me. After a few minutes, Villa Rose appeared facing the sea. It had been constructed on a plot without any house opposite, leading directly onto the beach. It was not surrounded by barbed wire, but was one of those rare houses to be protected by a brick wall. It was to our left, but the erratic geometry of the roads required us to make several detours to get there. Mohamad-Réza’s shouts had turned into twitchy moans. Like the wheezing of an asthmatic having an attack. Seeing the villa, he markedly increased his pace and started walking straight toward it, freeing himself of the detours that the posts and barbed wire enclosures imposed on us. He was moving in a straight line, like a cannonball. He tore off the barbed wire and the posts that were in his way, without paying any attention to the needles that stuck to his clothes, tearing his shirt and pants. Behind him, I remained a powerless witness to his madness. He was finally stopped by the clump of tangled wire around his feet. After having torn and dragged an impressive amount, he fell down. Exhausted. He was barely a few dozen yards from the villa. Behind the brick wall, a window was illuminated. A shadow was moving in a dimly lit room. Mohamad-Réza was on the ground. He was moaning with less rage and more pain. His shin was bleeding, captured in the vise of the barbed wire. I realized that this shirt was also stained with blood. On the ground, his head was turned toward the window. His neck was stretched half upright. A few minutes later, in the house, the light went off, the shadow disappeared, and the young man let himself fall down, emptied, inert.
Mohamad-Réza had other moments of crisis. Sometimes violent, but he’d never really lost his head before. I spent a long hour liberating his leg from the jumble of barbed wire. Then he followed me in silence, stumbling imperceptibly because of his wounded shin. At the entryway of his aunt’s cottage, he turned toward me, placed his head on my shoulder, and unleashed a deluge of tears punctuated with silent sobs. The next day, he returned to the beach, calm as always, shaved and well dressed. He took his place again on the embankment opposite the villa, eyes riveted to the black front gate, keeping watch for Nilou’s exit to follow her during her first walk of the day, keeping the required distance from her, in the wake of Tamba the dog…
We burned our youth to the rhythm of the passing days. Our sun rose each morning, relentless. The tongue of waves licked the beach and stirred the sand as it had always done. Our days were sweet and brimming with our indolence, our youthful experiences, our happiness within easy reach. We smoked excellent Afghan hashish, we drank alcohol that went down easy, and the boldest among us stole brief embraces in the summer nights. Everything seemed unchangeable, promised for all eternity. Time was given to us like all of life’s other delights. Like the sea, like the river that flowed tranquilly and protected us from the intransigence of old laws. But something had already started to change. Muffled rumbles were rising from the depths of history. Something was afoot, unbeknownst to us. Like a volcano in the making, silently growing in the marine depths. A leviathan lurking in the obscure cavities of our country. Time was running out, and we had not yet noticed. We were positioned on a tectonic fracture, an immense fault line that would soon burst open. Even if a wise man had predicted it, no one would have believed it. Who would have imagined that our time was up? That there would be no more summer? That they would take the sea from us to wall it, to divide it in two? What spirit, what force was capable of undertaking such a project? Who could have believed that the majority of those Don Juans of the summer, those youths full of promise united around a fire, writhing with laughter, telling salacious stories, quarreling for a yes or a no, showing their muscles, burning their testosterone, then making peace to quarrel again, were destined for the worst suffering, for horrific deaths? That many of them would return in wooden boxes from a war as deadly as it was absurd, to be buried amidst the tears and moans of their loved ones? That the sand would be stained with their blood, for executions would take place on the beach itself, in the calm of the morning. They would stand one against the other with daggers drawn, not in jest, but to kill each other. Ahmad would shoot Bijan, his best friend, at point-blank range. And yet they had been drinking from the same bottle, passing the calumet of hashish, laughing uproariously, mouths wide open, twisting in every direction. Ahmad would close his eyes at the fateful moment, just before pulling the trigger. Bijan wouldn’t be able to do anything, his eyes blindfolded and his hands tied behind his back. No, really, who could have imagined?
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Sometimes, at night, I still return to that fire. I watch the smoke climb toward the stars. I listen to the Caspian unfurl on the sandy shore. I look at the face of my comrades in the dancing light of the flames. I know now that that campfire was the inferno of The Raft of the Medusa, and I’m the only survivor. Yes, me. I was the most qualified to survive, for I knew how to feed on the flesh of others.
That year, Anahid the half-German cousin arrived earlier than usual. She lived between Tehran and Düsseldorf. Each summer, she showed up in Chamkhaleh like a new arrival, and the years changed nothing. Like an alien fallen from another galaxy. She rediscovered everything. The sea, the sand, the house, the boys. Each time, I had to introduce myself as if we were meeting for the first time, or as if I too were just arriving, from a faraway place. Eventually, to help her remember who I was, I would allude to my mother. She remembered Aunt Fakhry.
“Oh, Aunt Fakhry! And her, and her… ” “… Halva,” I came to her aid, murmuring under my breath, “her fucking halva.” “Yes, halva,” she exclaimed. She adored my mother for the same reasons as everyone else. Then she left at the end of vacation and, the next year, she didn’t remember any of i
t, and we had to start all over again. Even the fact that her father and I had the same name didn’t make a difference. Once I suggested that she use it as a mnemonic device, she laughed and agreed, then promptly forgot. She was very beautiful. Her Iranian father’s olive skin and her German mother’s blonde hair were a good combination. Around her, we changed register. Everything was cranked up a notch. And, sometimes, several notches! First of all, she wore the tiniest bikini on the south coast of the Caspian. She was also incredibly noisy. You could hear her from morning to night. Thanks to her, everyone knew the hours of Villa Rose. Alarm, breakfast, dinner, curfew, and so on. She hovered around the boys. Not to flirt, or to escape, no, she was drawn to the boys naturally, because where she came from, there was no demarcation line between the sexes as there was for us. But how to explain that to my poor friends? While Niloufar had only two suitors, my German cousin had a hundred. She would ask one of those young bipeds to do her a favor, give her an address, a balloon, a log, then she would thank them, with a smile or a wink, and they would interpret it as an advance and immediately feel invested with the mission of Anahid’s devoted servant. It was completely out of control. In a surge of maternity, Niloufar’s mother had asked me to take care of her: “Make sure they don’t bother her too much. She doesn’t know the etiquette here.” I had noticed… “The etiquette here,” she had said, not “our etiquette”! An impossible mission. Anahid wanted to play volleyball and asked me to include her in one of the teams. I couldn’t do anything but comply, otherwise I would have been lynched. On top of it she played marvelously well, jumped high, and hit hard. Her strikes were unstoppable. Due as much to the precision and the power of her hits as to the distraction her feminine charms exerted on the opposing team’s defense. Each of her trips brought with it a few weeks of general euphoria. During the day, she made the boys happy. A delight for the eyes all riveted on her round bottom, when her bathing suit slid below the tan line, where the brown of the sun ceded to the natural pink of her flesh. And at night, she brought joy to the erect penises, which unleashed an abundant torrent of sperm in her honor. Sperm, the lifeblood of our youth.
That year, like the years before, her arrival had kicked everything off, and the villa had gradually filled with its other beautiful guests. Once more, the band of girls had operated as an army of invaders. A procession that trampled the coastal land and sowed a joyous discord, whose movements were followed by the opposite side with great interest. The summer unfolded at its usual rhythm. Parand, as always, played volleyball with his chest exposed, offering his most handsome appearance in the presence of the girls. I continued for my part to go about my business. Things were going very well for me. With Anahid and my new mission as her protector, I had added one more string to my bow. The boys were nearly fighting to be near me, to buy me things, to make me happy, in the hope that I would facilitate the task for them. I took advantage of their generosity without making any promises, without the obligation of any result. Mohamad-Réza remained outside of this fuss. Imperturbable, he never paid the slightest bit of attention to other girls, not even a glance at the swaying butts or the swinging breasts. For him, there was only Nilou. He was satisfied with the view at the top of the embankment. During the day, it was his designated spot, we ceded it to him without any argument. He had won it through faithfulness and punctuality, like a beggar at his place at the entrance of the bazaar, paying his tribute by accepting insults and laughs. No one dreamed of taking it away from him. It was quite simply unthinkable. At night, he had another lookout spot, but no one knew about that one. He had succeeded in keeping it a secret from everyone, except for me. Naturally. I was the one who had revealed it to him.
Even today, I ask myself why I did that. For a few puffs of hash, which I wasn’t even addicted to? For a skewer of lamb? To take a ride on his motorcycle or to drive Parand’s father’s car? Certainly not. Was it for the money that Mohamad-Réza lent me without ever asking me for it back? No, I don’t think so. We weren’t starving in my house. My pocket money was enough for the needs of a thirteen-year-old boy. The real reason for my actions was something else, something deeper, more intoxicating. It was the search for power. Hardly out of childhood, I had found myself in possession of an incredible skill. A magical power. People who in normal circumstances had no regard for the child I used to be were basically at my feet. I had understood their weakness: they desired. And I had sensed all the destructive power provoked by this limitless desire in men. They hoped, they suffered. The most powerful sentiments. They can make you move mountains. And that power, I had it in my hands, I strung these men along, as tall, as handsome, as rich as they were. I led them where I wanted, and the worst part is that I enjoyed it. It provided me with an enormous and obscure pleasure.
The summer had slipped between our fingers like the fine sand of the beach. It would soon come to its end. Without any conclusion. Not in the affair of Niloufar, nor in that of cousin Anahid, nor in that of anyone else. The pink and the brown had definitively separated at the edge of the underwear. The sun set a little earlier each day as the circle of guests in the villa slowed. Then one day, the dreaded event took place. We realized it first through a lack, a sensorial anomaly. One morning, the villa no longer emitted the same volume of decibels as the previous days. The effervescent German cousin was no longer there. The other guests would then part in their turn, for Tehran or the other big cities in the center of the region. Once Villa Rose was without guests, Niloufar would resume her habitual solitary walks on the beach. I say “solitary,” but in truth, she was never really alone. There was her dog, and, further away, the creeping shadow of her guardian angel, the silent lover, the eternal Mohamad-Réza.
When her friends were gone, and through something that resembled a bond of friendship, probably formed since our first encounter at sea, Niloufar invited me more often to Villa Rose and left the door to her bedroom open more easily. My relationship with her mother had also evolved a great deal. At the beginning, she welcomed my presence with that certain indifference possessed by people of power, those in the habit of being listened to, obeyed, and esteemed. She treated me with respect and courtesy, of course, but kept me at a distance; then, over the days, she seemed to get used to me, as one gets used to a feral cat before adopting it. She asked about me when I seemed to have been away for a while. And when I returned, she would suggest, almost out of habit, that we drink tea on the terrace. Then, inevitably, she would speak to me of my mother. That’s how I found out she was born a year after my mother, that they were like sisters and had grown up together. When her father, my mother’s brother, was still living in our town, my mother had lived with them for some time. It was after the death of my grandfather, when the older brother assumed the care of the orphans. No easy task, for there were four boys and three girls, of which my mother was the eldest. She even showed me a few old photos. In one, you could see the two of them on the banks of the river. They would often picnic, she told me. In the photo, there were berthed ships, an adorned tablecloth, and in the middle of the cluster of girls posing for the photograph, you could make out two young girls, around fifteen years old, both in summer dresses, with long braids that fell on either side of their shoulders. Both had their chins raised slightly, gazes directed toward a point outside the frame. Thanks to that photo, I realized that my mother had been the same height as Niloufar’s mother. That she too had once been a thin and elegant young woman! Her face was as radiant and promising as that of her niece.
Strangely enough, I even found my mother to be more elegant. She already had the two vertical wrinkles between her eyebrows. To my eyes, a sign of sadness and dejection, but in the photo, they gave her a determined and willful air. She was standing behind Niloufar’s mother, in a protective stance. Even though they were the same age. But one was the aunt and the other the niece. My mother never talked about that period of her life. She spoke of her early childhood, then her marriage. Her arrival in her partner’s family. My birth. As if she had p
assed directly from little girl to spouse and mother. In the middle, something was missing. There were pages torn from her story. Now I knew which, but what did they entail? What had happened in that time? For a long time I asked myself why my mother had become my mother, and her niece, the mother of Niloufar. I would only get the answer to that question later, much later.
My Part of Her Page 5