by Ali Araghi
Back in her room, Pooran sat at her dresser and brushed her hair. She pulled her dark blue dress out of the plastic cover and rubbed on her neck a touch of the French perfume she kept in her wardrobe. In that uncertain time after the sunset and before the dark, she threw her chador on her head and walked to Seyf Zarrabi’s shop and bought meters and meters of fabric, testing, with a slow deliberate touch of her fingers, each bolt that Seyf pulled from the shelf. Breathing audibly, Seyf Zarrabi excused himself and disappeared into the back room. He returned behind the counter a few minutes later walking in a thick cloud of strong cologne, a red tie hanging from his neck, his freshly waxed hair combed over his crown. At least he had the discretion not to make a suggestive comment. He pulled another bolt from a top shelf and unrolled it on the counter. Pooran felt the fabric between her thumb and forefinger and saw the gray that tainted the pink of her nails and the tiny but numerous creases on her fingers. They looked sad. “Four meters of this,” she said, and before Seyf put the scissors to the fabric, she stepped over to the back of the shop and, without a word or a circumspect look, walked behind the counter and slipped through the narrow entrance, into the back room where the teal Westinghouse fridge buzzed in the corner.
* * *
—
“YOU’RE NOT CUT OUT FOR politics…”
…
“When was the last time you wrote a poem?”
…
Ahmad was sitting in a chair. Homa walked up to him and snatched the letter he was reading out of his hand. “I miss your poems.” She sat on his lap and put her arms around his neck. Ahmad locked his arms behind her back and kissed her. He motioned for her to bring him paper. By the time Homa got back to the living room with the notepad and pen, Ahmad had picked the letter up from the floor. He took the pad and wrote:
I’m a man of anything I desire.
The smile that lingered on Ahmad’s face did not diminish the horror Homa suddenly felt at that sentence. She wondered for an instant who it was that had her tight in his arms, like a snare around a rabbit’s foot, but before the angst became intolerable, the phone rang. It was Mr. Zia. She watched Ahmad listen carefully to the man before knocking on the receiver with his fingernail: one knock for yes, two for no. The more complex codes, the combinations of knocks and silences, she had not been able to decipher. Nor had she made a great effort to do so. After the phone call, like always, Ahmad went to his room and wrote a note to Mr. Zia.
As the elections drew closer, Ahmad worked on his speeches until well after the girls were asleep in their beds. He held up the first draft and read it with proper gesticulation and facial expressions. He scrapped the draft and wrote anew until he had a satisfying version. In a matter of a few weeks, Ahmad had reached such a harmony with Hushem that even his presence right beside the podium or stage or stool attracted little attention. Some would notice the scrawny man with the sun-baked skin who opened and closed his mouth in concert with Ahmad’s like a fish out of water. They would point him out to one another, but after a few moments, eyes would drift back to the candidate. No one directed their cheerful applause to Hushem and no one shook hands with him after the speech.
Two months before the elections, the New Iran Party proposed a coalition. They were not as right-wing as most of the parliament, but kept themselves somewhere near the center. “Conservative sycophants!” Ahmad’s voice thundered in the rose garden through Hushem. The two had attained such unity of thought and movement that Hushem could anticipate Ahmad’s words by looking at the back of his head. “And Great Zia said no, right?”
Mr. Zia patted his white roses on the side. “They’ll have more seats than us anyhow, if we get any that is.”
“So you’re in this for the seats,” Hushem’s voice said.
Mr. Zia looked at Ahmad and smiled. “There’s nothing in there but seats,” he said. “What are you in this for?”
“A strong parliament is a must if anything’s to change. And strong means at least a few who are not just puppets.”
Mr. Zia turned around and dismissed Hushem. After he heard the metal gates of the garden bang closed behind the villager, he turned to Ahmad. “New Iran is a party. You may not like them, but this is as far away from yes-man as you can get without getting your ass kicked out of the seat. Great Zia is going to give them only one name: it’s down to you and the other two. I need an answer now: Are you in or out? You’re young, you’re a poet, and you have your alluring silence; people like you. Great Zia knows that. And he’s willing to throw all his weight behind you, but you’re going to have to work both with him and the New Iran. If this is not acceptable, we’ll shake hands right now and part ways. But if you still want to do this, the party is next Thursday.”
As Mr. Zia said those words, Ahmad looked into his brown eyes behind his round glasses and thought he was a good, honest man. But Ahmad doubted his uncle. That day, he decided that while he could not count on Great Zia, he would use the old fox’s power to get to where he wanted to be.
* * *
—
THE ANNOUNCEMENT CAME THE FOLLOWING Thursday in the rose garden. Seventy men from the New Iran Party sat around large tables as maids came out of the kitchen carrying heavy trays laden with cups of hot tea and glasses of sweet rose water drinks with ice. The Great Zia greeted the notable guests and then the food came out. Plates of stews and platters of rice were arranged like petals around broiled lamb at the center of tables. Bowls of yogurt, pickled garlic, and herbs were set within everyone’s reach. Big chunks of ice floated in jars of water. A layer of crushed dried mint had formed on top of the yogurt drinks. Hushem had changed into a blue suit and a pistachio tie. Sitting beside Ahmad, he was careful to speak when, and only when, Ahmad opened his mouth. He took small bites and devoured hastily in anticipation.
In response to the few questions he was asked at the table, Hushem shook or nodded his head or shrugged his shoulders. Night had set in and the smell from the roses wafted through the windows into the laughter and clinks of spoons and forks on china plates that rose from the table and swirled back down by the blades of the ceiling fan. Ahmad turned to him at one point and Hushem read his lips out loud: “Hushem, relax,” Hushem said to himself with Ahmad’s face smiling at him and Ahmad’s arm patting his shoulder. “I’m not going to say another word until the dinner’s over.” Everyone laughed.
Over tea and hookah after dinner, some of the New Iran candidates made speeches. Ahmad’s handpicked words synchronized with Hushem’s voice cracked the lens of someone’s eyeglasses and received a standing ovation. At the end of the night, the guests shook hands and left the garden for their automobiles that idled outside. Dr. Taash, vice president of the New Iran Party, extended his hand and said in a hushed voice, “You want my advice, son? Get a doctorate first. Or go back to your forge and your poems. You speak well, but this is not child’s play.” In the dim light that came from the incandescent bulb screwed to the wall by the garden door, Hushem squinted for a twitch in Ahmad’s facial muscles. But Ahmad did not speak a word. He smiled and squeezed the older man’s hand hard, looking straight into the doctor’s eyes as they grew wide-open from the pressure. After Ahmad loosened his grip, Dr. Taash hurried out rubbing his hand.
Back home, Ahmad opened the bedroom door as though he was tiptoeing to catch a fat pigeon. He changed into his pajamas, slipped into the bed, and breathed out a long breath. He was now Great Zia’s official nominee. The night was silent and heavy. On the other side of the bed, Homa lay awake, her back to Ahmad. With closed eyes, she wondered about the details of Ahmad’s night, where he had been, who he had talked to, what he had done and ate. She was tempted to reach for the flashlight on the nightstand but decided against it. Ahmad would fall asleep soon. She would ask him tomorrow. A few minutes passed. Sleep would not come to her, and Ahmad’s breathing had not yet lapsed into the telltale calm rhythm she knew well. He was still awake. In a sudden movement, she
grabbed the flashlight, flicked the switch on, and shone it on Ahmad’s lips.
“So how was your night?”
I’m the candidate, he mouthed with a smile.
“You’re what?” Homa asked.
The candidate, Ahmad repeated slower, opening his mouth wide to make the mime readable. Turn the lights on and I’ll tell you.
“No,” Homa said. “That’s okay.” In the yellow beam that lit Ahmad’s face, Homa looked at his five o’clock shadow, at the few hairs that stuck out of his nostrils and at his eyes squinting against the flashlight and hoped that everything would go well. Although she still loved him, she did not want him to see her. She turned the flashlight off and lay on her side with her back to Ahmad, and although Ahmad turned toward her and stroked her hair, she felt, at least that night, that she was sleeping alone.
20
WO WEEKS BEFORE THE NEXT SUMMER, Majeed was at the theater as the streets were being beaten under the shoes of the people who marched ahead and the boots of the soldiers and officers who would not retreat. The lover on the screen was walking in quiet sidewalks, struggling with the question in his heart: should one leave one’s beloved if one is certain that another man will give her a better life? With every step of the lover on the carpet of the dry, orange, and red leaves, a calm, crunching sound reverberated in the theater. It was at that moment when Majeed felt his seat was shaking, and before he had the time to complain in his head that someone was kicking from behind again, the whole theater trembled. The wall behind the screen fell with a loud rumble, a tank came in through the screen, and Majeed found himself in the middle of the uprising. The tank stopped on top of the debris with a hiss, coughing up a puff of smoke. Somehow the screen was not detached from what kept it in place; ripped and crumpled, the white sheet was still hanging behind the tank. Outside in the daylight, people ran back and forth across the street. The hatch opened and the tank driver, a young soldier in a khaki army uniform, scrambled out and jumped down. In shock, he looked around at his tank in the cloud of dust and smoke, the fallen wall, the moviegoers who were running away in panic, and the persistent screen that now displayed a vague shadow show of the commotion outside overlaid by a pale picture of the lover in the leaves. The driver ran toward the back exits where those previously watching the movie were now pushing one another. Majeed, who had sprung up onto his seat at some point, ran and joined the fleeing crowd.
Resting his palms on the back of the man in front of him for support, while being shoved ahead by scared bodies, Majeed made his way out of the hall and ran up the stairs. The door to the projection booth was left half open. He looked around. The room was empty. He jumped in, turned the projector off, took the reels out, and snapped them into the rewinder. While the rewinder whirred, he collected the other five reels of the movie. From the little window through which the projector shot its beam at the screen, Majeed looked down. Except for some curious people from the street who climbed the rubble to get close to the tank, there was no one in the theatre. Outside the projection room someone ran past the door. When he heard the slapping of the end of the film on the body of the rewinder, Majeed turned the machine off, fitted the last reel into a case, and snapped the lid closed. Without trying to hide his armful of cases, he walked out of the door and down the stairs. “Hey, hey,” said the box office ticket seller bending over to put his mouth to the opening, “what are those?”
“I’ve got to see the end,” Majeed said before running away awkwardly, a stack of six-reel cases in his arms. The ticket seller went back to staring at what was unravelling in the street outside his cubicle. Even if he had stepped out, he would soon have given in to exhaustion and lost the young man among the bodies that strove to change history.
Majeed hid the film under his bed and went back to the cinema. The soldiers had dispersed the people from the neighborhood and guards with G3s hanging from their shoulders were posted around the tank. It took him four hours to walk to three other theaters in search of more film. The buildings stood intact without a cracked window, but they were all closed after the actions of the day had heated up. He walked back home hands shoved into his pants pockets as the day began losing color and the demonstrations and occasional shots abated. On his way, he walked toward a grocery to buy eggs for his dinner, but before he went in, he saw the hand.
Severed from the wrist, it was stuck in the lower branches of a young plane tree. The blood had congealed to a dark substance that looked sticky. The owner of the grocery store stepped out of his shop and swatted the hand off the branch with a long broom. “I should have closed today like the rest,” he said, half to himself, half to the stranger that was Majeed, and went on complaining as if he was talking to the person in charge of all that. “This is how you run a country. Nice, nice.” The hand landed in the sidewalk flower bed, at the feet of a brown striped cat. After a moment’s pause, the cat sniffed and pawed at the hand, then turned around and walked away. Majeed remembered playing count the kitties with Khan, a game he loved because it allowed him to walk the streets without worrying that his mother would scold him for wandering. He remembered the nights he crawled out of bed to press his ear to his parents’ door, anxious to know whether he would hear his father’s harsh shout, a slap on his mother’s face and then a stifled cry, or tender smooching sounds that acted like a soporific on him. On the nebulous nights when Majeed heard his father work open one of his gallons of homemade vodka, when he heard both the stifled cries and the tender smooches, Majeed had heard his father talk about his mother’s side of the family, the “cuckoos.” It was only on those nights, when his father’s legs became too erratic to keep him in one place, that Majeed heard his father call Khan “Mr. Meow.”
In that June dusk, as the cat looked at the hand with suspicious curiosity, Majeed thought maybe Khan had not been such a cuckoo after all, although he did not exactly know how the old man had spent his life. On his count-the-kitties outings, Khan too would search the nooks and crannies of the streets for cats. Majeed only knew how to count up to eighty. Twice he came to the limit of his knowledge and asked God to take all cats away from his path, and both times God did not listen to him. Stressed what to report to Khan, he ran back and gave him the number: eighty. From then on, when he got to seventy-five, he would run back, keeping his head down to the sidewalk for fear of seeing more. The day Khan buried a cat in the garden, Majeed was watching from behind the window in Pooran’s room. But whatever cat passion was in the old man seemed to vanish at a point, sometime before Ahmad ran for parliament, during a period in which something vital in Khan seemed to have died. He sat long hours in one spot in the yard. Pooran brought Agha out and sat him on a chair by Khan. Like statues carved out of marble, the two old men sat motionless. They dissolved into the air. Agha would crawl out of his stupor soon, cry out that he wanted to go to the park. If no one was free to take him, Zeeba would wheelbarrow him out front into the alley, right by the metal door. Khan’s absence was bigger and longer. Pooran would bring him tea, or a sour-cherry drink from which he would take no more than a few sips. Having finished his share, Agha would glance at Khan’s full glass. “You don’t want it, right?” He took the glass from Khan smiling as if he had won a prize. “If you don’t drink,” he said smacking his lips after the first sip, “you will dry up and wither away.”
“What’s eating you, Khan?” Pooran asked even though she, too, knew that Khan would not divulge the secrets of his heart even to those closest to him. “It’ll pass,” he answered with a forced smile. The day the results of the election were to be announced, Khan was already seated by the hoez when Zeeba woke up with the first rays of the sun. At breakfast, Pooran turned up the radio that sent wheezy, shaky waves throughout the house. The night before, she had lit an extra candle praying that her son would not get elected. At noon the announcer began to read the list of the new members of the twenty-first parliament. Except for Agha who sat in his purple house wheelbarrow—one that Pooran had
asked Khan to buy for moving Agha around inside the house—everyone was standing around the radio that sat on a low shelf in the living room. Khan had a hand resting on his lion and another on Agha’s shoulder. Zeeba held Nana Shamsi’s hand. Name after name rang out of the speaker. “Please, let it not be Ahmad,” Pooran entreated with her eyes closed before the next name rang out. “Ahmad Torkash-Vand” was the twenty-fifth name out of thirty. “I always knew it,” Agha said, excited, hitting the sides of his wheelbarrow. “That boy will do things. I knew it.”
By late afternoon, when the family had gathered in the house for the occasion, Khan rose from his chair, determined that it was a time to celebrate, not worry, and by the time Ahmad stepped into the yard, followed by Homa, their two daughters, and Mr. Zia, the house was decorated with colored string lights from the yard up to Lalah’s room that Khan had built on top of Leyla’s after she was born. “You see that room on top of mine?” Leyla told a four-year-old Lalah. “That’s yours.”
When the guests were gone, when the night was playing its tricks dexterously, Pooran found Ahmad alone. “I hope you know what you are doing, Ahmad. Right and wrong are not always easy to see.” Ahmad reached for his notepad in his pocket, but Pooran put her hands on his cheeks and held his face up. She held his hands in hers, looking up into Ahmad’s eyes. “You know I didn’t want you to do this.” Small insects fluttered around the hanging bulbs. “I love your poems. Sometimes I don’t understand them, but I love them. I read them when I miss you. You’re in them. But when I listen to you speak about this and that thing in politics, you’re not there. Do you think you can prove me wrong?” Ahmad nodded. “Ahmad,” Pooran said after a few seconds of silence, “can I sleep tonight knowing that my son will not be on the side of the wrong?” Ahmad nodded, this time more confidently.