Missing Soluch (26 page)

If the conversation had ended right here, and Karbalai Doshanbeh had descended off his podium to go take care of his own business, perhaps Mergan would have been able to just take in all he said and not react. But he couldn’t give up there. He’d found a foil for himself. He was sitting in his nephew’s house, preaching to a woman whose hands and hair and face were covered in mud. It was as if he was intending to reach in and empty Mergan’s heart simply through his oration. Mergan
was trapped and didn’t know what to do. Should she respond? Of course, if she could … but how?

“Karbalai, it’s never good to speak of one who’s not present.”

Karbalai Doshanbeh responded with a sincerity verging on insolence.

“You mean, to speak of the dead!”

Mergan softly and painfully said, “What in the world had Soluch ever done to you?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. I never saw ill from him. He was always truthful in his business. But we didn’t know he was planning to leave. But the day before he left, he came to our Salar Abdullah and told him to come and settle his accounts by taking some pieces of copper work. But no, he was always honest in his dealings.”

“Good. So why do you speak ill of him, then?”

“So you want me to sing the praises of such a man? Hardly even a man! Ha! In whose care did he leave his young wife before going? In whose care? In the care of the wind of the plains? How am I to speak of such a person? Isn’t this just what he deserves? Do you even know what this means?”

“What?”

“If a man disappears himself in this way and is gone for several months—I don’t know how many exactly—and there’s no word from him, his wife is considered to have been divorced. Just as if a Muslim does not eat meat for forty days and nights he is considered an unbeliever! Did you know this? You’re a Muslim woman! A person without a spouse is cursed on the earth!”

Karbalai Doshanbeh had said his peace. He rose and said, “This is an important point, from religious law. So you should know about your own status and situation!”

Mergan looked at the broken frame of the old man in silence. Karbalai Doshanbeh led his lamb away and left. She stood quietly for a moment and then, as if something suddenly clicked in her head, she sharply returned to her work. She snapped at her daughter, “What are you doing just standing there? Pour water in the mud! Can’t you see the clay is drying?”

Hajer leapt back to work.

Once again, the mother and daughter were swept away by the work. But now a thorn had pierced Mergan’s heart. Her heart was burning. Karbalai Doshanbeh had released a bag of poison in Mergan’s heart and left.

Was it true, that Mergan was now single, and her marriage was invalid? Was Soluch no longer legally hers? Had Molla Aman brought untrue news of Soluch for his sister for this reason? These questions all mixed in her mind and made Mergan more and more anxious. Mergan had not taken this possibility into account. Could Soluch have divorced her with this silent act, just by leaving? Strange …! But why? Mergan wanted nothing from Soluch. So why had he not just divorced her by handing her a religious writ, as was legal? No, perhaps Karbalai Doshanbeh had made all of this up himself! It’s impossible. Mergan had to go in person and request a religious consultation. But what would people say? If Mergan went to request a decision for this question, the others in the village would say a thousand different things about her. It was impossible that they would not say, “The woman’s drunk! Her husband’s been gone
for a short while to work and provide for her and their children, and she’s been possessed! What people you’ll find!”

And if they said this—which they certainly would—Mergan felt they would have a right to. After all, she would say the same thing were it another woman instead of her. Things like, “She’s scrambling around trying to find a legal justification for herself!”

But what would happen to Mergan? To her sons and daughter?

So she needed information. The matter needed illumination. Mergan had the right to be worried for herself. The only path she could imagine taking was to go late one night to see the Molla of Zaminej. But how? His wife would certainly find out, and as soon as she’d heard what questions she’d brought to him, it would be spread all across the town. Any gossip from the Molla’s wife’s mouth had an audience of a thousand ears. So what to do?

“Fill the cup with clay, girl!”

Mergan took the clay-filled cup from Hajer. She wiped clay over a spot under a high shelf and stepped back from her work. She still had to go to the house of Mirza Hassan, Agha Malak’s son-in-law, to do the same task there. She brought her implements out into the yard. She set out to wash up by the edge of a pit next to the olive tree. Hajer poured water onto her mother’s hands and then sat so her mother could do the same for her. Zahra came out of the kitchen and looked at Mergan from the corner of her eyes before calling, “Zabiholla told me to tell you to be sure to do two coats. You know he …”

Mergan picked up some of her tools and said, “Tell him I’ll send Abrau to come and collect the payment.”

She didn’t stick around for further conversation. She walked out the door and told her daughter to gather the remaining implements and to bring them.

* * *

In the house, bread and tea were consumed without a word. When dry bread is combined with water, it expands inside the stomach, and when combined with a hard day’s work, it brings on sleep. But Mergan couldn’t succumb to the heaviness of her eyelids. Before the exhaustion could set in, she rose and took her work tools and Hajer and headed to the house of Mirza Hassan.

They had just set the table and the fresh blood of a recently slaughtered lamb was still on the ground. Salar Abdullah, Zabihollah, and Mirza Hassan were sitting on a cloth out in the sun beside the yard pool while picking their teeth. Salar Abdullah was sitting with his back against the wall, leaning the back of his head against it. Although he was sitting on one knee, holding up his body with his left hand, he still looked taller than the others. Zabihollah, round and bruised-looking—not unlike his uncle Karbalai Doshanbeh—was sitting cross-legged by the throw-cloth, picking at the mud dried on the cuff of his trousers. Mirza Hassan, a petty landowner in Zaminej, had risen and was going to fetch a round of tea.

Mergan, observing tradition, offered her greetings to the men before heading to the room behind the porch.

Mirza Hassan had put colored glass in two of the small windows of the room. The room was already clean and didn’t need to be swept and washed down. Just a little water splashed on the walls would be enough. Hajer, as a student who has begun to
master her lesson, went out to fill the water sack from the yard pool and brought it back. Mergan then began sprinkling the room with water.

“You’re working hard for the New Year’s season. Bravo, Auntie Mergan!”

It was the sound of Salar Abdullah. He was sweet-talking her from where he had been sitting. Mergan didn’t reply. From the moment when she learned that Zabihollah and Salar Abdullah and a couple of the others had designs on God’s Land, she couldn’t bear seeing any of them. She refused to look them in the face. But one has to separate the accounts between breadwinning and those reflecting personal preferences of good and bad in people. Sometimes, one has no choice but to accept work and pay from the devil himself. One can’t use the same hand to accept one’s wages and to ask for help. That’s just how things are. Despite this, Mergan didn’t have the heart to respond to Salar in a voice that feigned happiness. She didn’t see the need to.

Let him go to hell!

So she preoccupied herself with her work. After all, at this moment, Mergan wasn’t just a toy for Salar Abdullah!

Mergan had heard that Salar Abdullah had been speaking about buying a tractor. She had heard it said that Zabihollah and Mirza Hassan and Kadkhoda Norouz were all partners in this purchase. Then, talk of a water pump also arose, and of unifying different scraps of land into a single domain. Then, the gossip became complicated and Mergan couldn’t quite follow all of it. So, she let her imagination take over. Based on things Ali Genav had said, and what she had more or less heard from others in the village, Mergan pieced together that the larger landowners were now in a partnership. According to Ali Genav, the Kadkhoda’s
interest in this was that in addition to what he already had, the parts of his farmland that would not be served by the water pump would be ploughed for two years by the communal tractor. But Mergan couldn’t really believe that this could all be possible.

Mirza Hassan’s voice rose.

“They’ve accepted the plan. Pistachio farming is a new trend across the country. If it catches on—and I hope it does—it’ll turn the whole nation around. On paper, after eight years, the harvests will have us richer than we’d ever dreamed.”

Mergan hadn’t known of these details. She had only heard that Ghodrat’s uncle had offered his land and, so they said, had received a promise that he would work minding the water pump. And Ghodrat’s father, who was heavily in debt to Kadkhoda Norouz, had come to an agreement as well. He bought his opium from him and so had been compelled to give up his land. But at this point, Salar Abdullah and his partners had not yet been able to make deals with many of the others, people like Mergan and Sanam’s sons, Morad and Asghar Ghazi.

Salar Abdullah had called for Sanam’s sons, and they had now come and were sitting beside the pool. Asghar Ghazi had a long neck and bony shoulders, a thin upper body, and a mole on his chin. He looked at the ground and played with pebbles in his hand, saying, “No, no. I’m a farmer here. I’m not the kind to take any other work. I’m staying in Zaminej. I’m busy here with my plot here, and in the end, I keep a couple of the watermelons just to wet my dry mouth with.”

“To repay you, we’ll get the best opium from Kadkhoda Norouz to give you; that’ll be your repayment. In the opium den you and your mother run, you can make a living from that.”

“No, Salar! I’d rather buy the opium from the Kadkhoda with cash. You can count on it!”

“So why isn’t Morad choosing to drag his feet like this?”

Morad looked at his brother.

Ghazi said, “No, my case is different from Morad’s, Zabihollah. Morad isn’t meant to stay in Zaminej. His heart isn’t here. He wants to leave. He needs to pay for his travel. But as for me … where could I go? My mother and I aren’t able to leave like him! Morad has wanderlust; he’s young, he’ll be fine anywhere he goes and whatever he does. But let a cold wind blow in my face and I’m sick in bed for a month. And my mother’s worse. So we’re both fated to stay here. We’re stuck with this land, Salar!”

Zabihollah placed a cup of tea before Ghazi and said, “Drink. Your mouth must be dry like wood now! You’re smoking a lot, man! You’ve become like a pipe yourself!”

Salar Abdullah looked at Mirza Hassan and said, “So, you’ll pay Morad’s way, yes?”

Mirza Hassan said, “Sure. I’ll pay for his travel!”

Morad looked at his brother and said, “My voice has gone hoarse from telling you to lend me what I need for me to go! I’ll give you my part of the land, and I’ll repay you the money later. I’ll go and work, and I’ll send you the money. If I don’t pay any of my other debts, I’ll be certain to pay off my debt to you. But you’re so cheap! Well … now what should I do? Will you lend me what I need or shall I sell my share of the land to these people?”

Ghazi sipped the tea and said, “You keep saying ‘give me’! No one’s at your neck with an axe, but all you want is to extort from me!”

“I want to extort from you? You poor little lamb, who are you for me to extort from you? All I want is a little money to pay
for my travel, in exchange for giving you my share of the land. That’s extortion?”

“What share of yours? You keep talking about this land! How many times in your life have you dug that land with a shovel? Tell me! I’ve worked that land myself. I’ve planted cottonwood around it. I’ve sweated over it, weeded it on hot summer days. I’ve had to struggle just to pick a handful of watermelons from the melon patch—where were you on those days? Just because we came from the same belly, you think everything I own is also yours?”

“Everything you have? Tell me again, what do you own, anyway?”

Others had begun to arrive. Those who worked on God’s Land. Asghar Ghazi gave up. He could see the veins on his brother’s neck beginning to bulge. Ghodrat’s father also arrived, as did Ali Genav. Hajj Salem and Moslem also showed up. Salar Abdullah invited the new arrivals to sit beside the wall, which they did. Morad rose, along with Asghar Ghazi. Mirza Hassan removed his money pouch from his side pocket and took Morad to one side.

“Do you need anything other than just the cost of your travel? I’ll pay your way directly—but why are you being such a loudmouth?”

Morad said, “Let’s wait for now. Just let it be, Mirza. Later … I’ll … I’ll …”

“What do you care about the good or bad of it? Take this money and go. I’ll make a deal with Ghazi myself—he has to listen to us!”

Mergan called from the doorway, “Hey … Asghar Ghazi! Pay your brother’s travel costs so he can go! That is, if you don’t want your land taken from your own hands!”

“If you’re so worried about him, pay him yourself! The same way you wanted to give your daughter to him!”

“You fool! I’m thinking for you. You’re going to lose your land. He’s your partner in that land, you know.”

“Don’t mix up things! Morad’s not my partner. If he takes money from Mirza Hassan, that’s between them. It has nothing to do with the land. Hey … everyone here! You are my witnesses that Morad has no claim to my land!”

Mergan came out into the yard, her head and body covered with dust and plaster, looking for Asghar Ghazi, but he had just left. She turned and approached Morad, taking him to one side.

“If it’s just money for your travel, I’ll lend it to you. Don’t sell the land!”

“What sweet nothings are you whispering in the ears of our young people, Mergan dear!”

Mergan ignored Salar Abdullah’s interjection, walked to the porch, and then was lost in the room inside. Morad followed in his brother’s footsteps. The partners began haggling over the plots on God’s Land with those who had arrived. Mirza Hassan had written up a document already and had placed it aside for those who worked the land to sign. First of all, he showed the document to Hajj Salem.