by Ali Araghi
29
HE LAST THING KHAN DID on his own feet was to take out the wheelbarrow and leave it in the trash. Rusted and with its purple paint flaking off, it had sat in a corner of the garden since Agha passed. It dripped on the rare days that the winds and snow relented and the city warmed under the clouds, but soon turned back into a white cone. Sometimes at the end of his painful, slow shoveling in the veranda and yard, Khan had tried to scrape the ice and snow off its sides, as if to make sure it was still there. After Pooran confiscated the shovel, he resorted to wiping some of the snow away with his gloved hands before going back in. One night that was not unlike any other night, Khan went to bed and pulled the comforter up to his chest, but midnight came and sleep was not even in the room yet. He grabbed his cane, got up from the bed, and put his coat on. But before he could open the door to the veranda, a light went on behind him. It was Pooran standing with a flashlight, a tacit question in her face.
“I’m not going to be put in that thing,” Khan told her, pointing through the veranda door at the white heap in the yard.
Pooran looked at Khan, who was holding a trembling grip on his cane and a second on the doorframe. “I’ll go with you.”
In the yard, they scooped out the snow from inside the wheelbarrow. When Pooran stepped forward to grab the handles, Khan raised his hand.
“Let me.”
He handed Pooran his walking stick and out into the night they went. With her flashlight, Pooran swept the sidewalk where the streetlamps failed to reach as Khan took a few slow, arduous steps before he dropped the handle to catch his breath. His raspy panting played over the background of the wobbly, creaking wheel all the way to the pile of trash at end of the alley. He parked the wheelbarrow by the heap and watched it for a moment in the circle of light Pooran cast: its handle touched the concrete power pole. Snowflakes quickly bespeckled the purple. Before morning, the wheelbarrow would be indistinguishable from the white heap of the trash. They returned along the winding line the wheel had left in the snow, tracing their own footsteps, the aging woman’s hand fastened around the old man’s arm.
The next morning, Pooran woke with the feeling of absence. Khan was not in the kitchen making tea or preparing breakfast, or trying to wash the dishes. The house was silent. As she rushed to his room, she wondered what she would do if he had left like he had once before. But Khan was in his bed. His eyes were open and his lips pressed together as if in terror of something that would not let him cry, something that was not in the room, though Khan could see it.
“What’s wrong, Khan?”
Power had left his knees. No matter how hard he tried, he could not muster the strength to get to his feet on his own.
“This is what I feared most,” he said to Ahmad later when the two were alone together, his voice trembling. “But I won’t end up like Agha.” Ahmad held his hand and pulled the blankets over him. Khan clutched at his wrist. “My arms are still strong,” he said, eager as in those past times when he had found a new secret about the cats, having struck upon some truth that others had to know. “Get me a wheelchair.”
* * *
—
AFTER HIS JOURNAL WAS SHUT down, Ahmad lay in his room for three days thinking of the debts he still owed, then emerged and went to the Ministry of Education. Soon he started as a high school teacher. After school, he worked as the editor of a tabloid that published photos of actresses and soccer players on its covers. He did not like it, but it was an easy job. It paid.
Ahmad and Zeeba put Khan into his wheelchair every morning before dawn according to his instructions. With the knocking of the girl on his door, Ahmad woke up and dragged his feet in the snow to Khan’s room, eyes barely open, nodding to Zeeba’s “good morning!” and admiring her punctuality and perseverance. They would roll Khan first to his side and then to a sitting position. Hugging him tight, chest to chest, Ahmad lifted Khan and put him in the chair before going back to bed. Like a child on a bike, gliding out of one room and into the other, smiling at everyone, the old man rolled around the house until late in the evening. He had regained his freedom to move without depending on others, and the joy was too great to harness. Ahmad found a broken door in the trash and made a ramp from the veranda down into the yard. On days when no one was home to push him back up the door, Ahmad would return from teaching to find Khan stuck in the yard. He brushed the snow from his grandfather’s lap and Astrakhan hat and then took him in, waiting for someone to return before he left for the tabloid office.
Three weeks before the end of calendar winter, Khan heard the honking of a car horn from behind the front door. Horns blasted every day in the alley to warn the children who played outside and the men who threw shovelfuls down from the roofs. But the car honked a second time, a third. Khan called Zeeba, but Pooran came out of the house and crossed the yard. In the street, Ahmad stuck his head out the window of a new beige Peykan with a smile that she’d last seen on his face the day when he expected Homa’s return. The car’s wipers scraped clean the flakes that landed on the windshield. Shortly thereafter, Khan was in the front seat and the rest of the house in the back: Lalah and Zeeba flanking Pooran on either side. They rode along the streets and watched the excitement of the new year: cars crowding the streets, people shopping for new clothes, women wiping windows, men on ladders hanging clean curtains, and red tubs of goldfish in store windows for the Haft Seen tables. They drove by the police cars and army Jeeps parked in major squares. They went to the Sawee Park and watched the animals in its small public zoo. Lalah and Zeeba took turns pushing Khan’s wheelchair up and down the pathways. With a sisterly patience, Lalah described the park to the blind girl, the tall pine trees white with snow, the peacock with barely any feathers on his tail, the sickly bear sitting on its hind quarters in his dark and small cage, the handful of ducks waddling and quacking in a modest pond frozen solid, but for a small hole the keeper cracked open every morning, and the one rabbit chomping on a lettuce leaf. On their way back, Lalah hugged her father’s neck from the back seat.
The car was an investment, a tool Ahmad needed for his third job. After he left the tabloid office, he worked as an unofficial taxi driver, driving around the city to pick up passengers who waited on the side of the street. He worked until minutes before the curfew, and so he was not home the day his mother found the kittens.
The spring cleaning had started two weeks before the New Year. Anything not washable had to be swept or scoured or wiped or rinsed, from top to bottom: first the four rooms on the roof, then the house proper, then Agha’s room in the yard, and finally, the basement. Pooran heard the weak meowing before she saw them in a corner by the bookcase: three black-and-white kittens that could barely walk. One with a white tail was more adventurous; it braved a few wobbly steps ahead looking around and glancing at the big woman standing with her arms akimbo. The other two looked up as if not sure whether to be afraid. The white tail took a few steps toward Pooran. Ahmad must have left the door ajar, she thought. She had seen that many times, since she was a child, cats delivering their kittens in the warmth of basements, sheds, and stables. The only way to get rid of them was to sweep them with a broom into a bag, take the bag outside of the city, and let the creatures out in the barren lands. Otherwise they would find their way back. She hesitated, thinking back on Khan’s obsession. She had had no interest in him keeping a dirty street cat in a cage and working through the night down there, but the intensity with which Khan had engaged with that work made Pooran feel she had to tell him, lest the three kittens held any significance. She closed the door and locked it.
Khan wanted to see them for himself. Pooran said he had to wait for Ahmad. “No, he’s on their side,” Khan said and tossed his blanket aside. Pooran sighed and shook her head. Once in his wheelchair, Khan had Zeeba push him out to the veranda and down into the yard. The two women tried to work the wheelchair down the four steps into the basement, but when Khan got stuck sideways, Poor
an called the tabloid office for Ahmad.
“They are here,” Khan said when he was finally dislodged and alone with his grandson. The kittens had crawled out of the corner and now were meowing under the table. Ahmad squatted down and picked them up, two in one hand and one in the other. The trio of meows grew into a crescendo of short and shrieky but feeble cries. Ahmad put the squirming things on the table. The brave kitten paddled its paws to the edges and looked over at the abyss that was the floor. The other two busied themselves with the bits and pieces of broken camera and other tools scattered on the tabletop.
“They are in this very house. Ah, the Revolution.” Like the other things that Khan had predicted, it was already happening, even though no one called it a revolution yet. Whatever it was, those small furry things were standing up against two and a half millennia of monarchy. But Ahmad struggled to see any malice or ambition in those balls of fluff. The one that had ventured to the edges of their square world was now back with the other two kittens in the middle of the table, trying to grab his sister’s tail with its uncertain paws. The third one was rolling on its back, slender paws in the air. Maybe cuteness was their natural defense, with which they camouflaged their true intentions. He took out his notepad and wrote big, a word a page.
“The eyes can be blind to the truth sometimes,” Khan said.
The sister kittens pawed at the film that lay on the table in coils, gleaming in the light.
“Agha was right; we should have killed them. I should not have kept my research a secret. I should have shouted it out, showed people how you can track these feral things and tell when something will blow up. If everyone had gotten rid of one or two of them, this country would not be on the verge of civil war.”
But was it not a good thing that the cats were causing a revolution? The cats would be content at overthrowing the regime; so would Ahmad, and so would many others. The political prisoners would be freed. People could publish a journal without fear of it being shut down for criticizing the government. Those who ran the country would no longer sit on thrones of jewel and don gold on their heads. Perhaps, one day, the factory worker who toiled from sunup to sundown could afford to send his children to school; there would be doctors to treat the feverish daughter of the farmer who broke his back working the field in such and such remote village in the South; or that at least there might be pipes everywhere—not only in big cities—that spat out clean water. Once the Shah was killed, maybe the cats would go back to their country. Maybe that was the end of Agha’s myth: a revenge equal to the original crime. A king for a king.
“You’re disillusioned if you think this country will be anything without the Shah,” Khan said with unwavering conviction. “All of the misfortune is because of them. It’s the Shah who is keeping this land from harm. Who is going to run this country after him? A bunch of Communists who come for your money at the end of the month? Would you work for free? Would you give them your house and live in a matchbox-size apartment? Or those turban-heads who make you stand to prayer ten times a day and not eat or drink for a whole month? You think they know how to run a country?” The sister kitten, which was black on the top and white on her face and stomach, had rested her head on White Tail’s back. The two had curled into a black-and-white ball of fur. It was the second brother’s turn to travel to the edge of the table. Unlike White Tail, this one leaned forward imprudently, lost his balance for a second, managed to pull himself back, but leaned forward again as if not sure whether or not to jump. The skin below his fur gave his paws a pinkish tint. Ahmad scooped him up in his hand and put him down. It looked around for a while, then took unsteady pink steps toward Ahmad, stopped at his foot, and stared at his shoestring. He raised his front paw and held it in the air for a moment before cautiously clawing at the string. Then he curled up and closed his eyes as if safe and cozy by the side of Ahmad’s shoe.
Ahmad picked up the kitten and looked at him face-to-face. Pink paws hanging, gently paddling in the air, as if in a relaxed flight, the kitten looked into Ahmad’s eyes and meowed. He wrote.
I’m keeping these for a little. I’m sure they’re very dangerous.
* * *
—
POORAN WOULD NOT HAVE ANY animals in the house or in the yard. Ahmad put the kittens in a large cage in his room. When he came home at night, he would let them out to play around. No longer so weak as to fall back down as soon as they rose to their trembling feet, they now walked and ran around the room, pawing at everything. They hid under the bed. They balled up on top of the pillow. White Tail sat on the windowsill by the begonia and looked at the yard. The sister kitten walked up to Ahmad, leapt up to hug his pant leg, and tried to climb. Ahmad took her and put her on the desk, only to brush her off his papers later; he petted the three of them entangled into a furry mass in his lap. “You’ll get sick,” Pooran told him. “Those things belong on the streets.” She would not even set foot in Ahmad’s room, but the kittens attracted Lalah and Zeeba, who fed them, cleaned them, and played with them. Ahmad was starting to like his room, now that the girls liked to be there; it was not just a space for solitary moping.
* * *
—
ANOTHER SPRING CAME, MORE WINTERY than the winter. Nature was unheeding of people’s yearly celebration of the vernal equinox with wheat sprouts and hyacinths on the New Year’s Haft Seen tables. As a fourth job, Ahmad brought home editing work. He wielded his red pen until late at night when he placed his forehead on his forearm and fell asleep at his desk. The weight of something soft and warm perched on the back of his neck woke him in the morning. Hurriedly he would get dressed, and, repeatedly checking his watch, give his kittens as long as he could to play before he put them in the cage and headed for the school.
The shenanigans that the teenage boys pulled in their other classes were absent from Ahmad’s. He was not just a teacher, but a famous poet. On top of that, Ahmad sat silently at his desk and supervised as his class abandoned the school’s usual lecture setting in favor of cooperative discussion. The boys felt engaged and responsible, and when Ahmad turned his back to them to write on the board, there was little tomfoolery. But even the haven of Ahmad’s class was not impervious to what was stirring outside in the city. From time to time, he caught a glimpse of a folded paper passing hands, a cassette poorly hidden inside a book, or a rolled picture of Ayatollah Khomeini in an open bag. Four of his students took part in everything that happened at the University of Tehran. When their seats were empty, everyone knew the university students were protesting. In a tacit shared understanding, Ahmad’s aide would not read their names during roll call and Ahmad himself would not mark them absent. The next day they would be back at their bench-desks, unless another protest was underway.
By midspring, Ahmad had saved enough to pay back half of Lalah’s dowry savings. He wanted her to continue her studies and go to college before she got married and was bogged down with babies, but he saw that she had taken a liking to the last suitor. Remembering the painful days when he stood in front of Khan, tongue-tied and fearing the prospect of being sent to Paris—away from his mother, the Orchard, Agha, Sara—Ahmad promised himself not to impose anything on Lalah. Lalah had let her hair grow long again, and although she postponed giving a final answer, she had not said no yet. The suitor had shown an unconventional patience facing Lalah’s repeated deferrals, but every time the young man’s mother called Pooran to ask if there was an answer, Pooran became certain there would not be a next time.
“That’s it,” she scolded Lalah. “I don’t know what else you want. The boy is handsome. He has a good family. He has money. He can have any girl he wants and he’s been waiting for you, how long it is, God knows. When I was your age, I already had your aunt Maryam. And what do you do? Hide in Ahmad’s room playing with those cats. You’re on your own. Don’t come to me crying when he’s gone.”
She then opened the china cabinet in the hall and hauled the dishes, six
at time, into the kitchen sink to wash. A few weeks later, the phone rang again. Lalah hoped time would solve everything, that by putting off making a decision, the dilemma she found herself in would vanish and she would not have to bear the responsibility of her future. If the suitor’s family stopped calling, she would content herself with the thought that the boy was not meant for her, that he had not persisted long and hard enough in wanting her. She wished Ebi would propose already. Every call from the suitor’s mother brought worry and pride. Someone wanted her and was waiting for her to want him back, and by that he was ripping her to pieces.
His name was Reza. He was twenty-five years old and he sold and repaired bicycles and motorbikes. He had started working in the summer of the year he turned twelve, first at a bus garage, then at a bicycle and motorbike repair shop, helping out the mechanics. Four summers later, he was working on his own. In an empty piece of land between two buildings in his neighborhood, he sat with a screwdriver and an adjustable wrench. The screwdriver he had stolen from the repair shop and the wrench from the bus garage. He fixed bikes for free for a month and when he had enough customers, by the end of the summer, not only had he returned the screwdriver and the wrench, but he had a full toolbox and a canopy over his head to keep the snow away. After he finished high school, Reza opened his own shop and before he turned twenty-three, he had three mechanics working for him. The day of the proposal ceremony, Reza had come in a blue Chevrolet Nova and smelled of good perfume. After her third equivocal reply, Lalah told Pooran she could not decide unless she spent some more time with him.
“That’s what engagement is for,” Pooran answered. Nonetheless she went ahead and invited the suitor’s family over for lunch. She had Lalah make the main stew, but did not leave the kitchen herself the whole time to ensure it was perfect, down to the last grain of salt. Pooran did not fail to laud Lalah’s cooking at the sofreh before everyone started. The little time that Reza and Lalah had to talk, Reza spent with polite gentility and genuine attention, his hands in his pockets. He cranked the two of them up to the roof and got excited explaining the principles of pulleys, taking his hands out to gesticulate. He gave the whole structure of the elevator a shake and said, “This needs a good fixing.” From up on the roof, the clouds looked so low that it seemed to Lalah Reza could reach them.