Missing Soluch (46 page)

Although Abrau hadn’t lost very much materially in these events, he still felt lost in the storm. He felt stranded in the desert. He didn’t know what his role should be, what he should hope for in his work. As a result, his disposition had been upended, and his temperament and nature had changed. He no longer saw things as he once did. The earth, his home, his brother and mother, these all had new meanings for him. Something had collapsed under its own heavy weight, imploding, and its bits and pieces were scattered in the shifting dust and smoke. The scattered pieces were no longer recognizable. They were part of the original object, but had lost their original mass. They were now scattered, lacking identity. Each of them no doubt sought a new identity, but Abrau couldn’t recognize
them. Among the pieces were Abbas, Abrau, Hajer, Mergan, and—perhaps—also Soluch. These were the elements of their family, but none of them comprised the family on their own. They were all individual elements to themselves. Also, the people of Zaminej were individually still the same people. But as a people, they were not the same. It was as if an infestation had spread into everyone’s clothing. The landless people had set out on the roads to town, and the small landowners were hiding in various corners of the village, still trying to make out what was to be won and lost in this new game. Zaminej was being torn apart. The previous stillness that blanketed the rubble of the village had been overtaken by a new struggle, a struggle inevitably leading them into a new battle.

No one could try to imagine where and in what city, province, or location Mirza Hassan might show up next.

“I had come to ask about Auntie Mergan as well!”

Abrau came to himself. He started in his place. Morad came down from the oven and began heading to the house. His heart pounding, Abrau quickly leapt down and grabbed the edge of Morad’s jacket.

“Take me with you. By God, please take me with you! Will you?”

Morad removed the edge of his jacket from Abrau’s hand and said, “You can come on your own. Who’s stopping you?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, and he stepped over to the threshold of the door. The house was as dark as a grave. He stood leaning against the doorframe, trying to get used to the deep darkness of the room. He couldn’t see anything. He took a match from his pocket and asked, “Are you asleep already, Auntie Mergan?”

“No!”

Her voice sounded broken. Morad drew the match to light it and stepped forward. He could see the outline of Mergan in the trembling shadows cast by the light before the flame died out. Mergan was sitting, just sitting quietly. The flame went out. Morad went to the cabinet and lit the lamp there with another match. A layer of dust, as though it were one hundred years old, covered the outside of the lamp. It was as if Mergan never used the lamp. Morad wiped the dirt from the glass and turned up the fuse a little. The room was illuminated by a dim light. Morad turned around; he could now see Mergan clearly. She was sitting with her back against the wall and had her chin resting on her knees. She sat motionless, frozen, and silent. It was as if she had been in the same position for a thousand years.

Morad walked forward, holding the lamp. He set it down and sat before Mergan, looking at her. Her eyes were set deep into their sockets, a strange look caught in them. A peculiar, frightening look. This stopped Morad from opening the conversation with niceties, and he was at a loss for words for a few moments. Suddenly he wondered, why had he come? He didn’t regret coming, but he was disturbed to be there. The problem of what to say and how to explain why he had come at this hour, and to have a good excuse for having come at all, now stymied him. He was stuck, trying to find a way to move this mountain, wondering how to raise it. Something suddenly occurred to him.

“Abrau! Auntie Mergan … I’ve brought you Abrau! He’s sorry for what he did! Auntie, do you want to see him?”

Mergan remained silent. It was a heavy and profound silence, one that seemed impossible to break with a few words,
especially uncertain ones. It was a silence that portended a forty-day vow of silence by Mergan. A forty-day meditation, the kind that seeks new avenues into the soul. A silence hinting at living through a distilling experience, twisted and terrifying, passing through pain to a summit. A forty-day vow that becomes one of forty thousand years. An old, even ancient vow that ends up as something entirely different from what it began as. It casts a new mould, takes a new structure.

A forty-thousand-year vow by Mergan, or a forty-day vow by Morad.

How can a mere infant speak with the old mother of the earth? He can’t converse with her; it would be sheer impudence! But how can this infant now escape the field of Mergan’s disbelieving stare? Morad felt short of breath. He had to find a way to release himself of this situation. His forehead was bathed in sweat, and he felt as if his shoulders were bound tightly and his legs were paralyzed. The feeling was like death. He wondered, what kind of woman was this? What kind of woman had Mergan become? Was she made of stone? Of dead earth? Was she death itself?

“Ahh … Auntie Mergan, shall I bring him? He’s come to kiss your hands.”

He no longer expected an answer. One couldn’t expect an answer from this Mergan. So this was his avenue to escape. It was as if the silence was frozen in ice. He had to make a move. And to make a move, he had to say something. So he spoke, not for her, but just to speak.

“Let me bring the poor boy in from the dark!”

He ran outside and grabbed Abrau’s elbow, dragging him in with himself.

“Come on. No need to feel embarrassed! You’ve said yourself you ate shit for what you’ve done. Your head was full of air that day. Now you’re sorry! So come on!”

In the doorway, Abrau pulled his elbow out of Morad’s grip and stood by the wall. He felt like he did when he was a little boy. He had thrust his hands into his pockets and looked at a spot on the floor. On his face, below the skin, an abundance of feelings mixed to make an expression that was unintelligible. Did it signify pain and love, regret and arrogance all at once? And this was not the full burden that he now felt lay upon himself. A thick smoke had wrapped the young flame of his soul into itself. It was a smoke that exhausts, that makes you listless, that smothers you and makes you want to claw at your collar and tear your shirt open to your belly.

While the cells in his body were enflamed, Abrau just stood there silently. It was as if his entire existence had been awakened. He felt as if covered by a thousand scorpion stings. Stings stung upon other stings, all venomous. Abrau felt filled with this venom. It rose within him; it poured over. It poured forth like a fountain, from his eyes, and his breathing, the helpless breaths that come and go, carrying a torturous world upon themselves. This venom pours like a fountain—from the cells of the skin of his face, from his forehead and his eyes. A fountain of the soul’s poisons. Is it the blood rushing in his veins that beats within him so anxiously? It is his jugular pumping, or is it the feckless beating of the wings of a pigeon whose head has been ripped off by hand? Why don’t these veins rip apart, then?

“Okay … I’ve brought him … Auntie Mergan …! Here … finally … finally … Well, okay!”

Mergan sensed her son, but didn’t look at him. Abrau was still standing in the same place. He’d grown up! His voice, most likely, had dropped? She didn’t know. Maybe his facial hair was beginning to sprout by now. That day—how many months ago was it?—the day he took her out of the ditch? That day, she’d sensed that his arms had gained the strength of a man’s arms. Bless you, my boy! He’d pulled her out of the ditch in a single motion. He must be a man now. Thank God! She finally knew that she had brought one of her children into adulthood. But what of the other two?

I wish my back would break! I wish your back would break, Mergan!

If she had been able to bring the other two to this same stage, she would have had no sorrows in the world. But they’d been wasted along the way. Each was trapped in a different predicament. Her sorrow no longer centered on the question of why Abrau had turned out the way that he had, but why the other two had turned out as they had.

I’d sacrifice myself for you, my son!

But Abrau was now of age. He was a full person. He could fly away, or work. He could work without being tormented. He could even fight with her, with Mergan!

Come here, my son. Come here!

No, but Mergan couldn’t do it. She couldn’t. It was not that she couldn’t forgive him; she could do that easily. She had already forgiven him. Mergan no longer had a sense of herself, although she knew herself. Things had been shifted; some things had been unified. Her “self” was no longer separated from the “self” of her children. Mergan “was” as they were. Her inability to speak was not as a consequence of her
difficulty in forgiving him. She could forgive. But she didn’t want to fill the house with lamentations by opening her mouth. If she opened her mouth, she felt, fire would shoot out, a store of smoke and fire and pain. She would be crying, wailing. Tears were better left for solitude, especially if they were going to make your throat ring like a piece of copper. She didn’t want to release the unending pain from its binding within her heart. There would be other times to cry. But not here, not now. Abrau had not come to mourn. He had come to make peace. His man’s shoulders need not be made to tremble. He need not cry! He need not drown himself in lamentation. This was not the role of a man, and Mergan’s son Abrau was now a man.

My son, be strong!

“At least say something, Auntie Mergan!”

She didn’t say anything.

“So you come forward, Abrau. You say something!”

Abrau looked at his mother. Was she looking back at him? No … it seemed she was both in her own thoughts while also almost looking at him. She was like stone, like crystal. Abrau approached and stood by Morad. Mergan remained sitting in the same position. Abrau had to say something. But what could he say? He stood there.

Morad again began speaking.

“Kiss each other on the cheek then! The world is the place to forgive. So go ahead, kiss each other!”

He grabbed Abrau’s wrist and pulled him into a kneeling position.

“It’s the night before the holiday, as well. So make peace with each other. Come on, Abrau!”

Abrau threw his arms around Mergan’s neck. His cheek pressed against his mother’s bony cheek, and he stayed in that position for a moment. Their eyelashes were blinking. Their hearts were beating. Abrau turned and sat on the ground.

Morad said, “Good! Auntie Mergan … good … You can set aside your anger now. You, Abrau, act like a decent person now. What was that you did? But let’s forget it now! Okay, let me go and set the kettle on. We can drink a cup of peace tea, no? Where is it? Where is …?”

Morad was looking to light the stove and prepare the tea. The blinking of Abrau’s eyelashes slowed a little. He pulled himself to the edge of the wall. Mergan sighed. The air was broken. Each one, by the movements of their bodies, or with a glance, broke the dark icy silence, which was thrown into confusion. The first to strike at it had been Morad. Once he had begun to speak he didn’t stop. He busied himself with preparing the tea, and kept talking. He said nonsensical things, as he had become a prisoner of his own stream of words. He talked and talked and talked, and when he thought he had said something that made no sense, he just tried to make up for it by saying something else. This led to further binds; nonsense begat worse nonsense. But Morad wasn’t trying to just say sweet things, or trying to have his words produce a specific outcome, or bear a specific fruit. He didn’t think of these things at all. His only desire was to fill this house of ghosts with sounds, the sounds of voices. He wanted to rend the curtain and try to take things back to where they had once been. He didn’t hesitate to add flourishes to what he was saying, and even spun unrelated tales—some true, others not—about his work and life outside the village.

“… so now it was almost dusk! We were going to go to wash our hands to think a little about what to do for supper that night. We brought up some water from the well, and all of us made a circle around the well. There were eight or nine of us! Guys from Kashan to Nahavand, and from around here, too. All that was left of the sun was a sliver the width of a single tooth from a winnowing tool. I turn my head, exhausted and tired, and I could see that someone was coming toward us from far away. He looks tired, too. He’s limping. He has a shovel in one hand as well. I tell the guys, look at him! They all turn. We’re all looking at him. When he sees us, he begins to slow down. It’s clear he’s hesitating. When he comes closer, we see he’s a stranger. None of us have seen him anywhere in the area where we were working. He comes closer. We see that his clothes are all torn up. Nothing on his body is in one piece. One of his sleeves is torn right off; one of them’s only hanging by a thread. His arms are bare up to the shoulder. But what muscles he had! His shirt was torn from the collar down to his belly. His arms are bloody up to his elbows. There are scratches on his forehead and on his cheeks. The blood on his face and chin is dried. He had cuts on his chest as well. One of his pants legs wasn’t torn; that was the leg that was limping. I thought maybe he’d been hit with a stick or a shovel. He didn’t say anything, and neither did we. One of the guys from Kashan—Rizaq, what a great friend he was—took him a bucket of water. The man kneels at the bucket like a thirsty camel. I think to myself that it looks like he’s not had a drink of water in ten days! He puts his face and lips in the water, and it seems like an hour before he takes them out. The sun’s set by the time he gets up from beside the bucket. We thought he’d just wash up and then rest with us and tell us what
had happened to him. But he just takes his shovel, and without looking at any of us he leaves, vanishes. We were just left there, completely baffled … I’ll go get the kettle off the stove. The tea’s ready. Shall I pour you both some?”

Abrau was also helping out. He brought out the cups and went to get the kettle. Mergan pulled the lamp over to the wall. They sat in a circle. Abrau brought the kettle and put it beside his mother. Mergan took the kettle and poured the tea. Three cups of tea. It was time for them to sit back and drink the tea. Mergan took the cup before her, took a block of sugar, stood up, and walked out the door. Out by the clay oven, she set the cup and the sugar beside Abbas and then returned and sat down.