by Ali Araghi
Having no way to go back and no family to return to, the boy stayed with the young woman. She took care of him in her shack behind the hills. As the years passed and the boy grew into a stout young man, they started to feel bored of being alone with no one around them but cats. So they decided to make a baby. The baby boy made them so happy that they wanted another. The next year they had twin girls. They busied themselves with their children. The babies were never bored since they always had many kittens around to play with. When two years later, the man and the woman made another boy, their old home was no longer large enough for the six of them. Out of the wood from the trees, the man built a new, bigger house with seven rooms. Two years after that, another set of twins was added to the group. So it went on for some time: every year or two new members joined the family. With the help of the older boys, the man made another house for his growing family right beside the first. The older children resided the newer house—that means they lived in it—and the younger were divided between both houses so that in each house, either the parents or the older siblings would tend to the youngsters.
When they decided they had had enough of fish and date fruits, they started gathering the date seeds and grinding them to make flour and bake small discs of bread in a tandoor they dug outside. As the babies kept being born, they also had to add to the palm trees. They planted a grove near their houses. The girls brought water from the pond every day. Some of the cats began to worry about the humans who lived so close by, right beyond the hills, as the family grew even bigger. There were now five big houses and a well dug for their domestic use. Voices rose in protest asking for the humans to be banished from Gorbstan.
Two years passed. When the first house appeared at the crest of a hill, many said the humans had crossed the line. A group of cats went to the settlement to talk to the woman who was now in her forties. The number of fish in the pond had dwindled, the vegetation was growing sparse, and the level of water was going down fast because of the bucketfuls the big family drew for their date-palm farm. After she translated the cats’ concerns for her husband, the man said there was nothing to do but to try to live in peace and harmony with one another, man and cat. The cats, though, said there indeed was something to do: they wanted the people to leave. The man said they didn’t know the way out, but the cats had guides ready to show them the way across the desert to the first human town. The couple’s children and grandchildren said this was their native home and they didn’t want to go anywhere else. The woman, who was the only one able to speak cat tongue, tried to keep the conflict from escalating. She told her family that the cats in the end would be satisfied with them using a few less fish and buckets of water every day and that otherwise they had no problem with the family staying there. To the cats she said they needed some time to rectify things—that means to put things in order—and get ready for their exodus—that means for their big journey.
Another year passed, but not only was the family not showing any signs of pulling back, two more boys were added. Now in the streets of Gorbstan there were always a couple of small children roaming around, playing with the kittens, or going to the pond with a fishing pole, a bucket, or with empty hands just to swim and play in the water. The water had gone down and catching fish had become more difficult. One day, two little girls were playing at the pond. One of them splashed at a cat who was lapping at the water muddied by the girls. In a sudden fit of anger, the cat leapt at the girl and scratched her face.
Two of the girl’s brothers took revenge by bagging a kitten that had strolled away from the others and beating it with thick sticks. The cats made it harder for the family to access the pond: they would attack the little ones and the bigger, stronger boys could get to the water only if they moved in groups and carried sticks. A boy lost an eye when a black cat sprang at his face from a roof top. The boy’s brothers got together and knocked down houses with their sticks and furious kicks. This intensified for another two years, by which time what was left of the cat city was no more than ruined houses, scorched walls blackened with soot, and littered streets.
One day, five cats laid ambush on a three-year-old boy who was playing on his own and scratched him until his cries died away and his blood dried on the sand. His brothers found his body and made a pact. That night, a group of young men raided the palace. They broke the gate and fought with the guards. They received scratches and wounds, lost eyes and ears, but when the sun rose, the body of the king of cats lay on the ground in the yellowed lawn, unmoving, with his blue eyes open as if looking on the destruction of his country. All of this would have been redeemable somehow if the pond hadn’t gone almost dry. The little water left at the bottom of wells was murky and smelly. The place was no longer fit for living. The thousand-well oasis was lost.
Only a few days after the killing of the king, before the boys’ wounds had healed or even stopped bleeding, the family got up at dawn and sensed a strange silence in the air. The cats were gone. The city looked as if no living creature had set foot in it in two hundred years. The family’s only chance to leave that place and find their way across the deserts was right then before the winds erased the cats’ footprints from the sands. They quickly packed the things they would need on the way: pots and pans, clothes, and some tools like spades, ropes, hammers, and axes. They took all the bread and dates they had and filled their water jugs with the yellowish, putrid water that came up in the pail from the bottom of the well. By late afternoon, they had placed all of their belongings on a cart and were ready to push ahead, following the cats’ trails.
Of that large family only one survived. The children all died, one by one, after they drank from the well water, because the water was poisoned. The night before they left their country, the cats had gathered around the well and defiled the water with their urine. The father and mother hadn’t drunk from the jugs so their children and grandchildren would have a few more drops to quell their thirst. Unable to believe how all of their children had fallen down into the sand almost at once, they ran from one body to the next. They shook them but didn’t hear an answer. They wanted to cry, but their eyes were without a tear to drop for their loved ones. They had no idea why that had happened. Maybe the excessive heat? When they accepted there was nothing they could do, they buried their children in the desert and continued on their way, grief-stricken and exhausted. Sorrow clawed at the man’s throat when a few hours later he saw a small village in the horizon. His children would have had food, water, and shelter if they had lasted only a little longer. Deep in his thoughts, the man pulled the cart on which his wife was sitting, since she was too tired and shocked to walk. Now that they were close to a village with people, now that she had no children to save the water for, maybe she could quench her own thirst with a few sips? The woman drank from a half-empty jug on the cart. When the village was so close and the man could make out the first houses, an invisible smile broke on his face. He called his wife to look at the view, asked if she believed they were saved. When he didn’t hear an answer, he stopped and turned around. His wife wasn’t on the cart. He looked about him, but couldn’t see her. He squinted his tired eyes and saw her at a distance on the ground. He ran to her as fast as he could, but he was too late. She was already gone, lying on the sands with eyes and mouth wide open.
It was only much later, after the man reviewed the past events over and over again in his head, that he started wondering what terrible fortune had let the entirety of his family perish in such a way. He found the answer after he had made a new family. He married again and, being old and weak, had only one boy. As the years passed he saw what was happening: he wasn’t dying. His son died young, but his grandson lived; his great-grandson died young, but his great-great-grandson lived. And he was still alive. With the wisdom that old age brings, he saw clear as day the price he and his lineage were paying for bagging and beating that kitten, for destroying the cats’ country, for killing the king. Regicide is the deadliest of sins. Now
they were doomed to see the deaths of their own sons. In the years to come, the man spent interminable hours pondering why he ended up living so long. He thought maybe eating dates for so many years was the secret, or the years he exerted his body to build houses, climb trees, dig the earth, and cut wood. Maybe it was the water from the pond. Could he have drunk from the Pond of Life, the pond that the early poets said Alexander was desperately seeking? But that day in the desert, as he cried tearlessly over his wife’s pale body, all he wished for was to die right there. He saw himself years before: a child who had lost his parents. So many years had passed and he was still on the sand mourning his beloved who had departed forever. It was as if decades had vanished, his fruitless life passed in thirst and futile hope.
Farther ahead, the cats were on their way to Iran, resolute to take revenge, to turn the country the boy had come from into ruins just like he had done to their homes. They treaded mile after mile eastward, traversed deserts and climbed across the mountains that ran along western Iran, a land where no cat had ever set foot in before. They didn’t mind. They were there to make a home of it, conquer it, and demolish it.
4
ESPITE THE SADNESS AT THE HEART OF THINGS, the festive face of the wedding distracted Ahmad from Agha’s story as soon as he stepped out of the tree. Everything was happening in the large area in front of the main house. Like all the past village ceremonies, they had covered the hoez with broad planks to make a stage, the center of attention. The house was allocated to the women, where they took off their chadors and danced in their colorful dresses in the uncertain space between death and marriage. Some opened the curtains and watched from behind the windows and some, the younger ones, climbed a wooden ladder and sat on the gable roof.
Ahmad had never seen such a wonderful ceremony. Hanging from the trees surrounding the wedding area, lanterns shone subdued by the fog that had coated the Orchard with an ethereal enamel. A big crowd of men had gathered, some busy with last-minute tasks and some waiting for the groom to arrive. Calm and serious, Khan gave curt orders as he supervised with eyes sharp as an eagle’s.
They took the groom to Nemat the Barber and then the bathhouse. When he arrived in the Orchard, the guests made a human corridor shouting out congratulations and showering him and his entourage with coins and sugar plums. Right hand resting on his chest as a sign of gratitude and humility, he greeted strangers on both sides of the aisle from the Orchard door all the way to the front of the house, with a smile some women in the crowd found inelegantly broad and others cheerfully open. Khan and Mulla Ali shook the groom’s hand and hugged him. Behind the groom, his father looked around to find Maryam’s father, but in vain. All that time, accompanied by percussive beats of the dohol, the sorna player blew into his instrument, his face red and his eyes shut. Women threw rose petals at the groom and trilled shrieks of joy as he was seated between his father and Khan. All in suits and ties, heads crowned in fedoras except for Khan whose Astrakhan was undetachable, they settled in their chairs and then there was a short pause. Everyone fell silent in anticipation. Khan glanced around and then nodded an approving head that marked the beginning of the wedding.
The first entertainers were a dancing group of men who waved colorful kerchiefs in harmonized movements. They whirled around and jumped and stomped on the planks. Next came a man who strode back and forth on the stage and blew a tree of fire from his mouth. He produced a dagger from the inside of his sleeve and drove it through his tongue without a drop of blood. With his tongue stuck out, he strode around for the applauding guests to get a good look. Then a young bony man stepped onto the covered hoez. He dropped a fruit crate down by his feet and announced that he would cram himself into it. He took off his shoes and sat in the crate, pulled one leg in first, then the other. Then he bent forward and folded his arms in. To prove that none of him was out, two men came and boarded up the crate with nails and hammers. One of them put the thin man’s shoes under his arm and they took the crate away as if it was just another case of apples.
The guests clapped and whistled. The ones closer to the stage were sitting on the ground. Agha watched in his wheelbarrow from a corner. A two-actor troupe elicited loud bouts of laughter with a show about a master and his shrewd slave. Show after show followed. In between, servants walked about with big trays laden with cups of tea. Fruits and sweets were bountiful. Mouth-watering smells wafted from the pots and cauldrons. It was as if the wedding and its people were detached from the mundane pains and concerns, as if the thick fog protected them from whatever evil the stars might have in store for them. Long before, Khan had made the Orchard the place to hold village ceremonies: weddings, mourning, and religious gatherings. Free and for everyone. But compared to Maryam’s wedding, the ones before were like fluttering lanterns in midday summer sun.
As Ahmad was watching the show, Salman walked up to him, patted him on the shoulder, and showed him his closed fist. The antennae of a cockroach waved like supple branches of a weeping willow. He motioned for Ahmad to follow him. The boys slipped out of the crowd. They went around the house and lurked under a window until Salman was sure no one was watching. Then he put his arm through the window and opened his fist. A few seconds later the women’s shrieking began. Ahmad saw, through the fluttering lace curtain and behind a woman who flapped her skirt and hopped around like a scared rabbit, his mother keeping the company of the groom’s mother, her hand on the woman’s arm, her smiling red lips exposing white teeth. When Pooran’s eyes, lined kohl black, turned toward the commotion, Ahmad ducked his head and walked back with Salman among the crowd around the hoez. Women went in and out of the house and the guests were fixated on the show. Nobody noticed Salman’s sister, Sara, rushing out onto the veranda. Running down the stairs as fast as she could in her white chador wrapped loosely around her blue dress, she turned her head around, swinging a folded belt in her hand.
“I’m caught!” Salman said and ran away. Sara was three years older than the boys.
She saw Ahmad in the crowd and strode over to him. “I know it was him, I saw his little bald head.” Ahmad knew Sara must have seen both of them. Ahmad had stood right by Salman when he set the cockroach free into the room and his own hair was no longer than Salman’s. Nemat the Barber had run his manual hair clipper on both their heads only a few days before. Sara was furious. Her big, brown eyes shone with anger. “Poor woman, the thing flew right under her skirt. Do you know which way the rascal went?” she asked, her thin, curved eyebrows sloped into a frown. Ahmad shook his head as a no. Some of the men were taking furtive looks at them. “Come here,” Sara said, pulling Ahmad by the arm away from the crowd. Behind a tree, far enough away to make the wedding a translucent apparition, she stopped. The frown had disappeared from her face. “Listen,” she said, “there’s this brat, I don’t know who he is, maybe the groom’s nephew or someone. He’s running back and forth from the groom’s mother to his father. I think they’ve set him up to find stuff out. He’s a sneaky rat. Have you seen him? A little shorter than you with a ridiculous tie?” Again, Ahmad shook his head. “Okay, just keep your eyes peeled. I think they’ve started to suspect things. If he comes to you, don’t let him get a word out of you, okay?” Ahmad nodded. Then Sara put her hand on Ahmad’s cheek and looked at him. The men around the hoez laughed at something. The folded belt hung still from Sara’s other hand. Her palm was hot; not the kind to add to the late summer heat, but a deeper warmth that had little to do with temperature, that had the ability to communicate even if in an indecipherable, arcane tongue.
“I know where he is,” she said taking her hand from Ahmad’s face, as if she suddenly remembered her brother’s hideout. “Do you want to go with me?” She was not angry at Ahmad, as if he had not been an accomplice in the mischief. Ahmad cast his eyes down. Sara waited for him to make his decision. When she was sure Ahmad was not going, she smiled at him and turned around, but before she took the first step Ahmad had clutched her dress from behin
d. Sara turned back slowly but did not say a thing, as if what Ahmad had done was predictable. The look on her face said, “I know.” She stepped closer. Ahmad bent his head down again. “Is there anything you want to tell me?” she asked. Ahmad shook his head. “Raise your head,” she said firmly, but Ahmad kept his head down, then suddenly leaned forward and hugged Sara. Patting the back of his head, Sara looked around lest anyone saw them, but let Ahmad rest his face on her chest. “Listen, Ahmad,” she whispered over his head, “I will always be your friend.” Then she did not know what to say anymore. When Ahmad detached himself from her, she asked, “Are you sure you’re not coming?” Ahmad’s nod was almost imperceptible. Sara turned around and walked off, turned her head after a few steps with a look that said, It will be okay, and I’m really sorry, then hurried away with an elegance that was alien to the bounds of the dress.