Missing Soluch (50 page)

Raghiyeh said, “Let’s see what’ll happen! If this bastard has a bit of mercy and agrees to a divorce, then I’ll be free.”

“You need to come to an agreement with him so that you will give up your claim to the dowry you’re due. But if only he doesn’t come around here in a few weeks trying to claim that his wife, Hajer, has a stake in these four walls as well! You understand? You have to pin him down. Ali Genav’s a cunning man!”

Raghiyeh said, “I know him well enough. But I doubt he’ll object to the divorce. He’s actually waiting for me to suggest it. But one thing!”

“What thing?”

“I want to have an opium cafe. You know how much income that brings in? Look at Sanam! She’s free and doesn’t need anyone!”

Abbas tied the string to his change purse and carefully placed it beneath his shirt, then said, “It’s not a bad idea. I’d not thought of it before!”

Raghiyeh put a piece of bread in her mouth, rose, and said, “I should go then! It’s dusk. Maybe I can go and lend a hand to your sister. She’s in the last month. Why do my bones hurt so much?”

Abbas also rose and slid over to the edge of the oven, lighting a cigarette. The sun was fading behind the rooftop.

Mergan came out with two cups of tea and brought them over to the oven.

“I’d just poured her a cup of tea!”

Abbas exhaled the smoke from his nostrils, saying, “She left!”

Mergan placed the teacup before Abbas and remained standing there.

Mother and son both had sealed lips. Abbas smoked his cigarette, and Mergan trained her eyes on the edge of the roof. They both knew they had to speak to each other, and they knew the subject as well. But neither was able to initiate the discussion.

Abbas tossed the end of his cigarette into the oven and took a cup of tea, sipping it softly. Mergan sat down by the oven and put her back to its outer wall. Now they didn’t have to look at one another. Abbas was on one side, and Mergan faced the other. Mergan, in the shadows of the dusk, put one hand under her chin and sat there. Abbas was sitting upright, with his long drawn face and wavy white head of hair, staring into nothingness.

“So what are you planning to do, Abbas?”

“What do you mean, what am I planning to do?”

“Are you staying or coming with us?”

“I’m staying.”

Mergan couldn’t bear it any longer. She rose and stood face-to-face with her son.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to you! If I told you to come with us, I don’t know what would happen. But if I say stay, I still don’t know what would happen to you! I feel cold, hot, wet, and dry. My heart’s uneasy. On one hand, I see that your brother, who is now our breadwinner, isn’t happy and
can’t work here any longer. He’s become used to a kind of work that he can’t do here. On the other hand, in whose hands am I to leave you here if I go? At the same time, I’m hearing news about your father. Oh God! This son, that daughter, that son, my husband, myself. Oh God! Why are we all splitting apart? I don’t understand it at all! I feel like I can see what has happened, but I can’t understand it at all!”

Abbas said, “You have a right. You miss your man!”

“No! Don’t make those heartless insinuations! That’s not all. My heart’s been torn into pieces! Each of you … I feel each limb’s been pulled in a different direction. And then nailed down!”

Abbas replied, “You’re going to go looking for a man who left us disgracefully. He’s dishonorable!”

“You’re calling him dishonorable? No! If among all those who have left, one of them were to be called honorable, that would be your father, Soluch! Many others left and were never heard from. But not with your father …”

“Very well, it really doesn’t matter to me either way. I’m not trying to stop anyone. I didn’t try to stop him, and I won’t try to stop you. Go then! Go, and farewell!”

Mergan was hurt. She said, “I don’t want you to speak that way, to tell me to go and farewell! It’s not the pilgrimage to Mecca I’m going on. Where I’m going is no heaven. I don’t even know where it is! They say he’s in the mines. But I don’t even know where they are! I just know that I should go. It’s not in my own hands. In fact, it’s more like I’m being taken. But my heart breaks when you … It’s as if you think I’m going to the garden of paradise that you’re so cruel to me! Oh God! God, why are you
tearing me apart like this?”

Abbas picked up a half-smoked cigarette and said, “There’s no need for you to beat your chest like this for me. Just go! I’ve not said anything to you, have I? So, just go!”

“Go! Yes, I’ll go! But I don’t want to go with your tears and curses following me. I don’t want to be hurt by you more than I already am.”

Abbas said, “If you don’t want my tears following you, just don’t forget about me!”

“Of course I’ll not forget about you! How am I supposed to forget about my own son?”

“I don’t mean you should sit and cry in my absence!”

“So what do you mean?”

“Send me money! Help me with money. I’m still a living person. I breathe; I have to eat. But you see I can’t use my arms or limbs for anything. So I have to find a way to make a living. I’m thinking of opening a grocery or a flour shop. So that one day I can order a bushel of dates, four boxes of tea, and ten
mans
of flour, and to have had five
seers
of bread to eat before that. You can’t start with an empty pocket! With empty pockets you can’t even raise dirt.”

“Okay. Fine. Accepted. I promise. I’ll send you some. I’m not one to avoid working. I’ll work. And I’ll send you something when I have it. What else?”

“Nothing. Nothing, really. When you do see my father, if you really want me to think kindly of you, have him send a letter bequeathing me these four walls here. I’m not in a position to have to confront Ali Genav tomorrow if he starts demanding part of it from me. It’s clear as day to me. It’s as if I’ve read it in
the palm of my hand: in a short while, Ali Genav will come around here demanding his wife’s share in this property. And if he wants it, he’ll get it! I’m just a bag of bones. How am I to stand up in front of him? He’ll come and put a line in the yard, take the house for himself, and put me in the stable! What’ll I be able to do?”

“You’re right. He’s capable of doing anything you can imagine. Fine, I’ll somehow obtain a letter for you and will send it. What else?”

“Nothing. That’s all. I do want one piece from the copper that you’ve hidden. I’m only human. I want a bowl to drink water in.”

“Fine! That large bowl that we use in the house, I’ll leave for you. What else?”

“Nothing, nothing, nothing!”

“Good! So why don’t you get up and come into the house? Why are you staying out here by the oven?”

“Don’t worry! I’ll come in; once you’re gone, I’ll move my things into the house.”

Mergan took the teacup and said, “Do you want me to pour you another one?”

“I wouldn’t mind it if there’s some left. My mouth is dry.”

By the time Mergan had gone to fetch the second cup, Abbas lost himself in a reverie. He was leaning his head against the wall and had a cigarette hanging from his lips with his eyes shut.

The dusk was so pleasant!

A voice rose from the alley: “They can go to hell! We’re going. Let them gather all the ropes in the village and weave them together to see if they can get the old mare out from the
well. Ha! Do you know how deep that well is?”

“Ninety-eight lengths of a body!”

“I still remember when Abrau’s father Soluch used to say it was more than ninety-eight lengths. It’s the main well, after all! No joking!”

Molla Aman, Abrau, and Morad turned from the wall. Abbas opened his eyes to look at them. The men were speaking among themselves with excitement. Molla Aman and Morad didn’t let each other complete a sentence, and each would cut the other off by talking about what they had seen and what they had thought about it. Abrau was caught in the middle, lost for words, watching their mouths as they spoke. From the graveyard to here, he’d slowly pieced together that matters concerning the canals had descended into a quarrel. He’d seen the groups of men who had returned to Zaminej anxious and worried. He’d heard that the authorities had taken Zabihollah and the Sardar to town. But despite this, his mind wanted more new information, and this was not to be found in the banter that continued between Molla Aman and Morad.

Molla Aman took a cup of tea from his sister’s hand and gulped it down in one go, saying, “Ruined. Everything’s ruined. Fallen apart. The death of everything … My poor donkey’s dying from thirst and hunger in his stable! What a hell!”

Morad said, “I think that many of these people who were living off a goat’s sip worth of water from the canal system will now have no choice but to leave!”

Molla Aman handed back the teacup and said, “If they don’t now, they’ll have to eventually. The heaven or hell we’re left with will be on their hands!”

Abbas raised his head from his place by the oven. Abrau sat
beside it and Morad went over to the water jug.

Abrau said, “You think things will be improved if they change the place of the water pump?”

Molla Aman laughed and said, “Maybe!”

Morad said, “Don’t be so naïve! Where is Mirza Hassan to come in and roll up his sleeves and try to set things right? Do you know how much it would cost to move the pump? Ha! It’s not just a waterwheel that you can pick up and set on a donkey to take it somewhere else! It’s a thousand
mans
of iron! Maybe more! Who has the expertise to do that? They’d want to be paid the price of their father’s blood. Not just anyone knows how to do this. You’d have to go out to Gorgon or the capitol itself and lure a couple of experts out here with a pile of bills. Do you think they weren’t paid a pretty penny to set it up in the first place? And how quickly they came out and shut it down! But what about Zabihollah!”

Molla Aman, using the same mocking tone he’d been using all day, said, “The best thing to come from this was that! I loved it!”

“The Sardar really has a way with the stick, no?”

“I doubt Zabihollah will be walking anytime soon!”

“I really doubt it.”

“They can go to hell!”

Ali Genav’s voice rose from the alley.

“Hey! Don’t you want to come and help get the camel out of the well?”

His head appeared at the edge of the wall and stayed there.

Molla Aman said, “Help for what? You think I’m eating bread for free to go and put myself to work like that? That same Karbalai Doshanbeh who’s locked himself into the pump house
has taken my donkey and is starving it to death! He’s made me wretched! So I’m supposed to go and help open his son’s canal system! Whoever has land needs that water. Whoever needs that water can go and do the work. Why am I supposed to go and kill myself to pull that camel from the well? If I’m injured, who’s going to pay for my stay in the hospital?”

“What about you, Morad?”

“I’m busy. I have to go and get my things ready to leave. We’re leaving.”

“And you, Abrau? They have the ropes all ready. Everyone’s going.”

Abrau said, “I’ve done plenty for them! No more! They can go to hell!”

As Ali Genav turned away, Mergan ran out following him.

“Wait a minute. Wait. Let me come with you. After all, a body’s a body.”

Morad looked at Molla Aman. Abrau looked down at the ground.

Molla Aman said, “It’s not in her hands. She has no self-control, this woman. She’s a fool!”

In the end they failed. They failed to pull the camel from the well. They motivated themselves, used all their strength, but still they failed. All of the village’s ropes were brought to the task, and the experienced well-diggers of Dehbid went down into the well with them. They passed the rope beneath the camel’s body, wrapped it around its neck and legs, and then pulled themselves up the rope like snakes. They shook the dust from their bodies and clothes and said, “Go on! Pull!”

The rope had eight ends; the rope made of all the ropes of Zaminej village had ended up with eight ends. Ten men took a hold of each of the eight strands—eighty men’s strength all together!

“One, two, three—God’s help!”

The camel’s body rose from the mud and earth in the well.

Eighty men, together! The camel’s body began to ascend the earthen wall of the well.

“Wrap the ropes around your waist. Ha … go! It’s coming up!”

“It’s stuck! It’s stuck! Wait a minute! Hold yourselves. Plant your feet into the dirt.”

The men held on with the ropes wrapped around their waists, digging their feet into the earth. Their bodies leaned back; their feet were set forward. They were like narrow trees bending in wind. The two master well diggers were standing at the edge of the well and were looking over the edge into the well.

The rope was also twisted around Mergan’s body.

“Its neck is caught against a pole in the well. Right in the middle of the rod!”

“What shall we do? What can we do? Our hands and waists are being cut through!”

“We have no choice! Pull. We have to keep pulling. We can break its neck and then bring it out. Pull!”

“Pull! With God’s help!”

They pulled with all of the strength they could conjure from their bodies. But the animal was still stuck.

“Pull!”

“No! Don’t pull!”

Two of the rope strands went slack and tore. Two of the groups fell back onto each other. The body slipped down and six groups of men were pulled forward with their strands of rope.

The well diggers shouted.

“Slowly, slowly, pull on the ropes! Slowly!”

“Slowly, now let the ropes go loose! Slowly!”

The body suddenly tumbled back down as the wall of the well collapsed onto itself, and six strands of rope, like six dragons, leaped into the mouth of the well.

“Oh no! Worse! The spring in the well will be blocked by all the dirt!”

A billow of dust rose from the mouth of the well.

“Oh no! Much worse!”

Covered in dust and sweat, the men stood there.

“Now what do we do?”

The well-diggers sat down.

“We need tools, implements. And better rope.”

“Ah! I have an idea!”