A Persian Requiem (24 page)

“My dear, you’re beginning to understand quite a lot of things, aren’t you?” Yusef observed with a laugh.

The next day, the stranger, who was no longer a stranger, left for the army headquarters, wearing Yusef’s ill-fitting clothes. They heard no more of him until a week later, when his letter arrived from Tehran thanking them and telling of his forthcoming
court-martial
. There was a whole file of trumped-up charges against him and, he said, it was not unlike the story of the famous coppersmith in Shushtar having to pay penance for the crimes of the infamous blacksmith in Balkh. He was resolved to resign from the army and go to Switzerland by whatever means, with his wife and two sons. But he made no mention of the two hundred tomans he had borrowed from Yusef.

O
n Thursday afternoon Zari went to the asylum. The warden was not there, so she set out on her rounds with the head nurse. She knew Khanom Fotouhi would be angry when she saw that parts of the newspapers had been cut out. In the women’s ward, only the paralysed woman, who hugged her givehs every night, and Khanom Fotouhi remained out of all the others. But there was no shortage of new patients. Four strangers were sitting on the other beds, and a folding screen hid another newcomer. In the middle of the room three patients sat around on a straw mat, playing a children’s game called “Away flies the crow”. As soon as Zari walked in, one of them said, “Away fly the bread and dates!” Zari smiled at them. Fortunately she had brought bread and fruit which Gholam placed on the floor. One of the women said, “Away flies the princess!” Then they started to fight amongst themselves and played another game.

The head nurse didn’t let her go near the bed which was protected by the folding screen.

“This patient has already received a lot of flowers and fruit,” she whispered. “Only she can’t swallow any food. Right now she’s on a drip. They’re setting up a private room for her. Her relatives say it’s all the strain and overwork in this heat, but the doctor says it’s both from stress and typhus. May the Lord cure her!” She added,

“There’s a woman who comes here late at night after everyone’s gone to sleep, does her ablutions and says a special prayer to Hazrate Fatemeh for her. Ezzat, the nurse who was on night-duty last night, said the woman stayed praying with her forehead glued to the ground for so long, she became worried. Ezzat went closer and was relieved to hear the woman repeating, “O Fatemeh save her! Save her!” She repeated it fifty, a hundred times, pleading with
God. The woman had to sleep here last night as it was well past the curfew. Now Dr Abdullah Khan has prescribed donkey’s meat for the patient … if they manage to find it, that is. They have to make her meat patties for dinner tonight; maybe she’ll be tempted to eat.”

When she had finished distributing the food, Zari went up to Khanom Fotouhi who was sitting with her back to the patients, staring out the window. Zari said hello to her, left the papers by the bed and stood a little distance away. She knew that the moment the woman opened the newspapers, the incident of two weeks before would be repeated. Khanom Fotouhi suddenly jumped up from her bed. “My brother!” she exclaimed. “I had a feeling my brother would come and take me to our hundred and twenty-four thousand metre garden!”

Zari looked out of the window, but could not see anyone. Khanom Fotouhi brushed past her and left the room saying, “The rudeness of it all! You stupid fools, I’ll show you what I mean!”

Before long she was back in the room accompanied by her brother who had truly arrived this time. Khanom Fotouhi sat on the bed and started to cry.

“Why did you come alone, brother?” she asked. “Why didn’t mother come? After all this time, you’ve come empty-handed!”

Mr Fotouhi greeted Zari who was about to go out and leave the brother and sister by themselves.

“Khanom Zahra,” he said, “I have something to tell you.”

“Tell her to get lost,” shouted Khanom Fotouhi furiously. “Every week she comes here with a lot of fuss and bother to show off for me!” And she asked again, “Why hasn’t mother come? Take me to the hundred and twenty-four thousand metre garden … my heart is withering in this cage. What kind of brother are you? You should at least get a private room for your sister …”

She clutched her brother’s hand tightly, kissing it and rubbing her tearful eyes on the dark, veined skin, asking over and over again why her mother had not come. She worried about whether her enemies had confiscated their garden … those enemies who constantly put electric currents through her body, her hands, her feet, her heart, making her heart beat backwards. She placed his hand on her heart and said, “You see!”

The head nurse and Gholam and all the other patients were staring, even those who had been playing “Away flies the crow” a moment ago. Fotouhi kissed his sister on her fair, tousled hair, and
said, “My dear, you know very well our mother’s dead. I’ve told you that a hundred times.”

“But you see, brother, I know my mother isn’t dead. She’s tricked you. When you put her in her coffin, she slipped out quietly and went into hiding. All this time she’s been hiding somewhere in the hundred and twenty-four thousand metre garden and you haven’t even tried to find her.” She swallowed and said, “I swear to God they came in the middle of the night last night and dug out my liver with a knife and stuffed some straw in its place. Since this morning my mouth tastes like straw.”

“My dear, since when do we have a hundred and twenty-four thousand metre garden?” Fotouhi said impatiently.

“Take me away,” Khanom Fotouhi begged. “I’ll be like a servant to you. We’ll live together, all by ourselves. We’ll plant wheat in that huge garden. We’ll plant mulberry trees and cucumbers, keep beehives, and I’ll bake bread myself. We’ll keep hens and a rooster and hatch chicks. We won’t let anyone in, either … we’ll buy narcissus bulbs and wrap them in cotton wool in our Kashkouli pot …”

A nurse came in and whispered something to the head nurse, who then said out loud, “All right, arrange the flowers around the room, and put the fruit on the table. No, come back. Help me take the patient out. Wait a minute, take the suitcases first.”

The nurse went behind the screen and came out with two new suitcases. Gholam helped her with one of the suitcases, and they left the room together.

Zari and Mr Fotouhi went outside too. They stood under a dust-covered pine tree in the flowerless courtyard of the asylum.

“I came here to see you,” Fotouhi said. “Yusef Khan probably told you I would come today to inform everyone of my decision using you as intermediary.”

No, Yusef had not told her anything. Perhaps he had wanted their meeting to look as natural as possible.

“Since yesterday, I’ve investigated every aspect of the plan,” Fotouhi said, “and this morning I discussed the matter at the party leaders’ meeting. Of course without mentioning any names, and more as a suggestion of my own. Everyone opposed it.” He seemed nervous, shifting from one foot to the other, and talking in clipped phrases. “You know we haven’t officially announced the existence of our party yet,” he continued; “we’re waiting for the right
moment. But how would it look if I were to leave the comrades and go south to Khuzestan with a group of like-minded friends in a plan the comrades oppose … you realize I’m responsible for my students too. In my group … with a group of young boys, what can I do?”

“So they were right,” Zari said bluntly, “they shouldn’t have asked you to join in their plan. You don’t care about your own friends, any more than you care about your sister.” She was amazed at her own harshness, although she had been harbouring resentment against Fotouhi for some time now. Yet Fotouhi answered her without the slightest appearance of being upset.

“We must build our society in such a way that no-one’s sister ends up having a mental breakdown. My sister’s condition is the symptom of a social disease. When we eventually organize the masses and come into power, we will see to it that justice is carried out.” Then he added after a pause, “In my opinion the time is not ripe for their plan, and the only result will be chaos and anarchy. It’s not as easy as Malek Sohrab thinks. I don’t believe they should allow themselves to be led by a hot-headed fellow like him. And I’m sure they won’t. After all, Yusef Khan has more experience than any of us, and even he said that without a forty percent chance of success, running the risks they have in mind is tantamount to suicide.”

The words had hardly left his lips when Khanom Fotouhi appeared, coming towards them wrapped up in a white sheet which kept tripping her as she walked.

“Kill me and let me have some peace!” she shouted. “Take out your pen-knife from your coat pocket and kill me! I’ve put on my shroud and I’m ready!”

She let go of the sheet when she reached them, exposing her stark naked body underneath. The nurses immediately rushed to her, but she fought them off, hitting one nurse sharply with her elbow.

“You bastard!” she shouted, shaking a fist at her brother. “Meeting under the pine-tree, is it?” She held her own against all the nurses as they struggled to pin her down. “You stole my property! You sold my hundred and twenty-four thousand metre garden to pay for this whore …” Then she ran around the empty pool in the courtyard, dodging everyone and screaming, “People, I want you to know I’m the greatest woman of this nation! I’m a
poet. I’ve composed fifty thousand verses. This whore has stolen my verses …” She gasped for breath for a moment, then went on, “This whore has given my verses to the
Red
Aurora
newspaper under her own name. I’m the Prophet’s daughter, Hazrate Fatemeh … I’m pure and chaste like Hazrate Fatemeh herself. My brother’s stolen my possessions … he executed my mother and father … all these flowers you see … springing from their blood … put these flowers in a bunch on my grave—” And she cried with abandon. “Oh the fatherless wretch that I am! How wretched …” she sobbed, and she went on and on until she started frothing at the mouth and collapsed. The female nurses covered her naked body with a chador and a well-built fellow came forward and picked her up to take her to the office.

Zari was tired and her head was aching. Telling the head nurse so, she began to take her leave.

“Thank goodness our new patient, Khanom Massihadem, is feeling much better,” the nurse said. “We’ve transferred her to a private room, and she can have visitors now. Why don’t you go and wait there while I bring you a pain-killer or something.”

So the patient who was getting such special treatment was the new midwife! Zari knocked and went in. Khanom Massihadem was sitting on the bed and shaking her head from left to right, sending a mass of black curls around her head and letting them sweep her face from side to side. The room was filled with flowers. Some of the bouquets had obviously been arranged by the caring hands of a lady gardener, and some of the others were made up of rare wild flowers which someone must have searched for in distant fields or plains. Khanom Massihadem went on shaking her head from side to side, and paid no attention either to the flowers or to the crystal bowls arranged tastefully on the table in the middle of the room. The bowls were covered with lids, and Zari guessed that they must be filled with all kinds of home-made sweets,
painstakingly
prepared for the patient in that heat.

Eventually Khanom Massihadem tired of shaking her head. She noticed Zari for the first time. Zari said hello, while Khanom Massihadem stared at her with a vacant gaze. Despairing eyes, set in a young but skeletal face. Her collar-bones stuck out from underneath her thin white night-dress. Her breasts sagged, and her complexion had a jaundiced look, paler than the sunshine touching the last row of bricks on the opposite wall.

“I hear you’re feeling much better,” Zari said.

“I’ve heard this voice somewhere before!” replied Khanom Massihadem, biting her nail and staring at her hard. Then suddenly she burst out laughing as recognition came into her eyes. “I know you! I know you! You’re Tal’at Khanom!” She clasped a hand to her heart as she said, “How frightened I was! So you’re alive. I knew God would answer my prayers. I asked God to take six months off my life, but to keep you from dying at my hands. Come closer so I can see you with my own eyes.”

Zari knew Khanom Massihadem was mistaken, but she kept quiet. If the poor woman could smile and her eyes brighten up at thought of some friend or sister or patient being alive, why should that joy be taken away from her? Zari sat next to her on the bed. Khanom Massihadem took Zari’s hand in hers and pressed it. Then she explained in a surprisingly sane manner,

“When it’s born, if its complexion is pink as a petunia, if it screams until the mother can hear it, or if it pisses—” she put her other hand to her mouth and suppressed an innocent giggle, “then all the tiredness seems to go out of your body. And you feel so satisfied, as if you yourself created the baby! But when your child came out, your first one too, dear oh dear, he had no colour. There was no blood in the umbilical cord. I hit him, I hit him hard, but he wouldn’t scream. I felt the weight of a mountain on my shoulders. It was the first still-born child I had delivered.
Suddenly
I noticed you weren’t bleeding either. I knew the blood would be running somewhere into your stomach, filling it up until it stretched out like a drum. I palpated your belly. But oh God, your eyes turned up, your pulse disappeared, your heart stopped. I heard the front door slam. Your mother had gone out into the street. Your husband came in and said, ‘You killed them both? You murderer!’” And she pressed Zari’s hand even harder,
complaining
, “But if you hadn’t died, why were you pretending? Why?”

Zari didn’t reply, and Khanom Massihadem continued, “You know, we doctors have to get used to death. We mustn’t be afraid of the signs. But I panicked. It was as though a storm was raging inside my head, tearing out all the wires of my nerves and brain and jumbling them up in a heap. It was as if my heart had sunk down to my feet. These people think I’ve gone mad, but I haven’t. I’m just very, very unhappy.”

Zari tried to get up, but the young woman would not let go of her hand.

“I saw the ceiling part with my own eyes,” she was saying, “and a black-robed, winged person came down and took you away under his wings. But they won’t believe me. I begged that black-robed person to spare Tal’at and take away my life instead. But he said he was taking her to heaven, under the Tuba tree. ‘Take me instead,’ I said … Now, for goodness sake, Tal’at, tell me how come he brought you back? Do you mean to tell me there was no room in heaven?”

She was squeezing Zari’s hand very hard and carrying on rapidly, “Now, will you do something for me? You know that I’ve promised to go away in your place?”

“Of course.”

“Buy a few grams of good opium,” she whispered in Zari’s ear, “and crush it well. Bring it to me before this evening, before the old man comes. But don’t tell anyone anything. If the old man is here when you come, just drop it quietly in my lap and go. All right?”