A Persian Requiem (34 page)

“All right, all right,” said the Indian soldier.

But Zari knew, and was quite certain the captain knew too, that the route the soldiers had taken could never have led to the shrine.

At this point Zari noticed Majid and Haj Mohammad Reza the dyer holding Khosrow and Hormoz by the hand, leading them towards the side-street. They helped Abol-Ghassem Khan lift the coffin, but they didn’t let go of the boys’ hands. This small group, followed by Zari, returned to the house and took the body to the cistern. Abol-Ghassem Khan sent Haj Mohammad Reza for more ice, praying that he wouldn’t return empty-handed. By now the garden was filled with wounded people. Several half-conscious, bloodied men with their shirts ripped open had collapsed on to the wooden beds. Two men were washing their faces at the pool, and drinking from it even though the water was no longer clear.

Zari went to the basement, hoping to find the twins there. But instead she found Ezzat-ud-Dowleh, lying on the bed with Ferdows at her feet, fanning her. The pool-fountain had been turned on, and no-one else was there.

Zari found Ameh and the twins in the bedroom. The curtains had been drawn and the room was half-dark, but Mina still spotted Zari, and she got up from Ameh’s side on the bed to throw herself with open arms into her mother’s embrace. Zari kissed her on the eyes which were moist from crying. Marjan was sitting on Ameh’s lap and didn’t get up. She just stared at her mother with round eyes.

“Mother,” said Mina, “the old man didn’t say Nargessi, Narengi. He kept saying ‘Ouch! Ouch!’ His head was hurt! It was bleeding …”

“But you were supposed to stay at Aunt Mehri’s,” said Zari.

Mina kept staring at the curtains of the window which opened on to the verandah. “Why did you let them into the house?” she asked. “Now they’ll take dadash’s horse and father’s horse away … that boy was hurt there …” and she pointed to her arm.

“I asked you why you didn’t stay at Aunt Mehri’s,” Zari repeated.

Mina pointed at Marjan, who was still in Ameh’s lap, and said, “This cry-baby was scared and cried. She kept saying, ‘I want my mama’ … Ameh didn’t let us look … he kept his head under the tree like this, it was bleeding …” She paused and threw an arm around her mother’s neck. “Aunt Mehri and Uncle Mohsen were fighting. Aunt Mehri cried. Uncle Mohsen said, ‘I’m scared!’ Then he hit Aunt Mehri. And this cry-baby started to cry …”

“I didn’t want it to be like this, and I didn’t think it would turn out like this,” Ameh said.

“But I don’t regret it,” Zari said. “As Yusef used to say, a town mustn’t be completely empty of real men.”

“I wanted them to mourn the poor martyr’s death, but I didn’t want it to end up in fighting and violence. As my late father always said, in any war, both sides are losers.”

Mina, still holding on to Zari, said, “Father will come and scold us. My brother will say, ‘Where’s my horse, then?’ I’ll say, ‘Brother, Sahar was hurt and died.’ All right?”

Now that Zari had her keychain she could fetch the first-aid box from the cupboard to treat the injured. The noise still continued, as did the gun-fire. In the midst of all this, the telephone kept ringing stubbornly. Abol-Ghassem Khan went to pick it up. It was
obviously
for him because he was a long time answering, and when he left by the garden gate, he seemed in a great hurry. Soon afterwards, Hormoz left too. But Majid remained, holding Khosrow’s hand in his own, sitting next to Zari on the bed while Zari rubbed some ointment on to Khosrow’s other wrist which was puffed and bruised from the gendarme’s grip.

“Does it hurt a lot?” Zari asked. “I think it’s dislocated.”

“No, mother. And anyway, I’m not more precious than father, after all. When he was shot …” He didn’t finish his sentence. Instead, he smiled at his mother and said, “Even if it hurts, it’ll get better.”

“That’s my man!” Zari said with a smile.

That night, they moved the body from the cistern and its bags of ice to the boot of Abol-Ghassem Khan’s car. Ameh, Zari, Khosrow, Hormoz and Abol-Ghassem Khan sat in the car and drove around Seyyid Haj Gharib’s grave as a ritual gesture. Ameh Khanom cried all the time, sobbing, “O my poor lonely one!”

But Zari had no tears. She wondered whether Ameh was
referring
to the solitary saint, or Yusef’s loneliness. She could only wish for her own tears to flow, and a safe place to sit and weep for all the lonely and estranged people in the world; for all those who had been killed unjustly and buried secretly by night.

When they reached the Javan Abad cemetery, the grave had been prepared and they lowered the body into it by the light of a lantern Gholam held. Seyyid Mohammad wanted to say the last prayers but he couldn’t remember them properly. At Gholam’s signal, Khosrow pulled back the shroud, crying behind his hands. Gholam and Seyyid threw a handful of earth over Yusef, while Ameh wailed, “My martyr is lying right here. My brother is right here. Why should I go to Karbala?”

But Zari felt nauseated with everything, even with death. A death which had had no last rites, no departing prayer, no proper burial. She decided not to have anything engraved on the gravestone either.

When they got home, several letters of condolence had already arrived. Among these, only McMahon’s really touched her, and she translated it for Khosrow and Ameh:

“Do not weep, my sister. A tree will take root in your home and
many trees in your town and even more in your land. And the wind will bring the message of each tree to the other, and the trees will ask the wind, ‘did you see the dawn as you were coming on your way?’”

SIMIN DANESHVAR
was born into a provincial, middle-class family in Shiraz in 1921, educated at a missionary school and later at Tehran University. The comparatively relaxed political
environment
 
of the forties in Iran led her to choose journalism as her first career, and she began writing fiction at the same time. She subsequently married Jalal Al-e Ahmad, the leading Iranian intellectual and writer, received her doctorate from Tehran University and won a Fulbright scholarship to Stanford
University
. Upon her return to Iran she became an associate professor of art history at Tehran University. She was an articulate and outspoken lecturer and her promotion was hindered by Savak, the secret police.

After her husband’s untimely death in 1969, Daneshvar assumed a leading role in the Writer’s Association which he had helped found and she provided moral support for intellectuals opposing the Shah’s regime. After the Revolution in 1979, she retired from her University post. Since then, she has kept a low profile whilst continuing to write fiction and remaining deeply committed to her life-long concern with women and their role in Iranian society.