Desolation, p.8
Desolation, page 8
‘I’ve really missed you!’ Parvaneh said. ‘How have you been?’
‘Why would you care?’ he said, and turned and walked away.
♦
The wedding ceremony was held at a holiday house with a large garden in Darband, north of Tehran. ‘Last time I was here, it was just a village,’ his father said as he parked near the river. ‘Do any of you know what Darband means? Door to the mountain!’
The groom had chosen the secluded garden because he wished to have a real party for his wedding, with music, dancing, drinking and without sex segregation. What would all these drunk people, all these women in revealing outfits, do if members of Islamic Revolution Committees raided the party? He pictured all those frivolous people in a state of absolute fright. He would not mind seeing that; he wouldn’t mind at all. Hopeless men rushing around trying to destroy the evidence of alcohol being served; those reeking of alcohol looking for a way out or a place to hide; screaming women running indoors looking for their hijab; collapsed tables, scattered chairs, broken dishes, smashed pastry, crying children, hysterical people, raging officers … That would be a real party, he thought.
Instead of being trapped here with all the unbearable music and dancing, he could be spending time with Parvaneh. He could be talking to her rather than dealing with drunk people who wouldn’t leave him alone, insisting that he join the circle of dancers. He could have told her about the time he had swallowed his pride and called her. The line was not clear and he had taken her mother for her. She had told him that they’d found out about him and Parvaneh, but out of respect for his grieving family they had never brought it up. And since they were leaving anyway, they hadn’t told Parvaneh they knew either. Now, he shouldn’t try to revive a relationship that, for many reasons, could have no future, she had said. She had hung up on him without mentioning any of the reasons.
He could have told Parvaneh about the books he was buying and collecting without reading, and about the VCR his father had bought a year after Hamid’s death, which he had never touched. About the few Indian movies Jalal had bought for his mother, which Amin couldn’t stand a minute of their dancing and singing, but his mother watched over and over in silence without asking for new ones.
He could have told her that Mr Don Quixote had passed away a few months ago, that his sons had opened a posh clothing shop, and he could have held her hands when her eyes filled with tears at the news. How stupid and impulsive was he for walking away? How happy she looked when she had seen him. Parvaneh! Beautiful Parvaneh!
Too restless to sit, he snuck out of the wedding before dinner was served.
He ambled through the neighbourhood where the gardens were losing their colours in the fading light. He could be walking with Parvaneh by his side, if he had acted like an adult. Could he have acted like an adult, though? No. Even if he saw her again and was given another chance, he would mess it up at some point. He had seen her happy with another man and that was something he could never forgive her for. Anyway, it was too late. She was lost among millions of people and he would never see her again.
The neighbourhood grew busier as the sun began to set. People were returning from hiking in nearby mountains streaked with snow, or having dinner at the restaurants and cafes. He paused to look at the last play of the pale shadows, swallowed by darkness as the sun abandoned them. Something stirred in his stomach and turned to a knot in his chest. He bit his lower lip and blinked back his tears.
He took off his tie. If not for his mother—excited to see her handsome boy in his new suit—he would have never worn it in the first place. He put the tie in his pocket, took off his coat and untucked his shirt. He was trying to get comfortable, nothing more, he told himself, but when he saw a young couple sitting on a bench holding hands, he walked towards them without thinking twice.
‘Are you guys related?’ he asked.
‘What’s it got to do with you?’ the young man said.
‘When you spend a night in jail you’ll have time to find an answer to your question.’
‘Show me your ID card.’ The young man got to his feet. He was taller and bulkier than Amin had expected.
He kept his calm. ‘I asked if you’re related.’
The girl stood up now. She too was athletic and well-built. ‘You’re not from here, are you?’
His accent had given him away.
‘You fucking village people come here and dare to tell us how to live our lives, huh?’ the man said.
Seeing the rage in his eyes, Amin should have turned and run, and left his pride behind. Instead, he said, ‘If you don’t answer my question then I—’
He was on the ground, covering his face with his hands, which were growing warm with blood. That left his lower body vulnerable to the kicks and the excruciating pain. The girl kicked him once or twice herself before saying, ‘He’s had enough.’
By the time he was able to stand on his quivering legs, they were long gone. His empty stomach heaved and his mouth filled with the foul taste of bile. He spat. Tehran was indeed a different city. He walked to a restaurant and, ignoring the inquiring eyes, went straight to the bathroom. He washed the blood off his face, stuffed his nostrils with tissue, put on his tie and coat and did up the buttons to conceal the blood on his shirt. He sat at a table, ordered a cola with ice and used the ice to soothe his swollen nose.
Near midnight, when the restaurant was about to close, he returned to the wedding. A couple of hours had passed, but the music was as loud, the people as annoying, and the smile on the groom’s face showed that he had got the real party he was after. What had happened to his nose? He had tripped over a kerb in a dark alley, he told his father, and disregarded his follow-up questions.
He never felt the urge to pick on people again.
Military Service
The day before his dispatch, Amin had packed a few clothes, some underwear, a towel, and his toothpaste and toothbrush in a backpack when his mother entered his room with a black suitcase.
‘I don’t need anything else.’
‘Of course you do! It’s military service, for God’s sake. The food is terrible, you won’t get enough rest, and the weather is either too cold or too hot. There was no way you could get exempted?’
‘I told him to meet my doctor friend.’ His father followed his mother into the room. ‘With Amin’s flat feet he—’
‘Do you really think I could get an exemption for slightly flat feet?’
‘He helped Hamid get one. He’s a good man.’
‘Are we talking about the same “good man” who eats for free at your restaurants whenever he wants? And how did that exemption work out for Hamid?’ Amin glanced at his father’s forlorn face and continued in a soft voice, ‘If there was any other choice, do you think I’d waste two years of my life?’
He hadn’t gone to the doctor because he couldn’t wait to get out of the house, which had become unbearably quiet since Vahid had left it too. Was he selfish for leaving his parents behind? Perhaps, but he could not take it anymore. He couldn’t deal with his mother’s smothering love and the way his father watched him anxiously whenever he left the house, as if fearing he would never return.
His father’s anxiety wasn’t helped by the fact that Zahedan, the capital of one of the most underprivileged states in Iran, was associated with drug smuggling, armed gangs, kidnapping and religious tensions between Sunni and Shia. Amin’s mother was coping with his departure better than he had expected, though—probably because of all the pills she was taking. Can’t you share some with Dad? Amin thought in that moment of frustration.
‘Even if your flat feet couldn’t get you an exemption,’ his father said, ‘surely you could have got one as the brother of a martyr.’ The victims of flight 655 had been proclaimed martyrs by the government.
‘I told you before,’ Amin said, trying to stay calm, ‘I asked and they said the exemption is only for the family members of those who were killed in the war.’ He had never inquired; even if he wanted an exemption, he would never use Hamid’s death to get it.
‘Come and see what I’ve packed for you, then you’ll know what you have when you need it,’ his mother said.
A plastic bag of mixed walnuts, pistachios, almonds, and green raisins. Woollen underwear for cold nights. Honey and lemon juice in plastic containers for soothing an irritated throat. Vitamin C pills to boost his immune system. Different pills for colds and flus, and antihistamines for allergies. A packet of sugar candies to have with his tea if he had stomach pain or diarrhoea. His own personal plate, cup, and cutlery. An extra towel, just in case. A small blanket. Two small locks. His mother had packed everything in the new suitcase.
‘I already have a suitcase!’
‘This one has wheels.’ She zipped up the suitcase and wheeled it around the room.
♦
Vahid drove him to the bus terminal from where he would travel to Zahedan for three months of military training. On the way, Vahid talked about how lucky he was to have finished his military service before the beginning of the war. ‘If I was a bit younger, then I would have been sent to the front. Sometimes a minor thing can completely change the course of your life. Think about Hamid, may God bless his soul; if only …’ His voice trailed off.
Vahid’s tone, which was as if he had discovered one of the complex and dark secrets of life, irritated Amin. You had a limited window in which to be you. If you were younger, you wouldn’t be you; you’d be different. Maybe you’d be as smart as Hamid rather than what you are now, Amin thought. He opened the window, placed his arm on its sill and looked out to avoid any more conversation.
‘I have a few pieces of advice to make your military life easier,’ Vahid said as he parked the car near the bus terminal. Amin heard him talk without listening to a word. They hugged goodbye and he boarded the bus. When Vahid had left, he asked the driver to retrieve his black suitcase from the luggage compartment.
‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said. He walked around the terminal until he spotted a man in scruffy clothes, hunched under a thin blanket next to a fire in an empty oil drum. Amin placed the suitcase next to him. ‘Do you want this?’ He walked off without waiting for an answer.
During the next three months of his training, every item in the luggage could have come in handy. He didn’t regret giving it away in the slightest.
♦
He adapted easily to the strict routines, bland, watery food, and harsh exercises. With his disregard for physical pain and ability to follow orders, he could have made a perfect soldier, if not for the one aspect of the training he was never able to cope with: the Rage of the Night. After an intense day, when his body was desperate for rest, a group of lieutenants stormed into the dormitory in the middle of the night, shouting and hitting the bed frames with their batons. The trainees had sixty seconds to be standing next to their beds fully dressed. The punishment for failure was push-ups on the spot. Ten for an open button, twenty for being in one’s pyjamas, thirty for being in your underwear, and ten more on top of that for being an imbecile who had chosen to sleep in his underwear. Failing to do push-ups was punished by more push-ups, which didn’t make sense to him. If he had failed to do the first twenty, how could he do ten more?
The first night it happened, he was sitting on his bed—his heart pounding, feeling light-headed and disorientated—with a lieutenant shouting into his ear.
‘I’m sorry,’ was all he finally said, knowing he sounded like an idiot.
‘You know what else you are? Dead! Do you understand, you incompetent wuss? Dead!’ The lieutenant smacked his head so hard that he almost fell off the bed.
From that night on, he slept fully dressed with his boots on.
♦
Amin didn’t manage to make any friends. He couldn’t laugh at his comrades’ corny jokes and pointless pranks, and what excited them—like a picture of a half-naked blonde girl—meant nothing to him. They could tell from his face that he came from a well-to-do family, and his silence and indifference were taken as a sign of arrogance that turned him into a target for their teasing and tricks. Their practical jokes always made him feel sad—not for himself but for them. What did they have to be so cheerful about? For the majority of them, nothing awaited them outside the military but poverty. In the case of war, they were the ones who would have no escape from it; in the case of a deadly epidemic, they’d be first to die; in the case of an economic crisis, the first to starve; and in the case of economic growth, the last to thrive.
He had no complaint about the tough, unfriendly environment, though. On the contrary, during his training he was always exhausted, had no time to think, and no energy to feel. He slept, ate, and was worked to death: the kind of break he had been waiting for all these years.
Ghazi
After his training, Amin returned home for a short break. It had been only three months, but the house seemed gloomier and his parents older than he remembered. He wished to be kind to them, spend time with them, bring a smile to their faces, but it was as if the chasm between them had grown too wide. He could not hear them from the other side; he could not understand them.
He spent most of his time in bed—no amount of sleep could overcome his exhaustion—but still, he couldn’t wait to leave, to escape the beginning of the ruin. He could feel, see, and hear it everywhere: the cracked and chipped tiles in the bathroom; the dripping of the shower that echoed in his head at night; the peeling paint in the kitchen; the external staircase caked with a thin layer of dust; the creeping weeds conquering the gardens and killing his father’s narcissus flowers; his mother getting lost on the way home; his father carrying his heart pills wherever he went …
He could not wait to leave.
♦
Amin returned to Zahedan to serve the rest of his military service and was assigned to work as a colonel’s driver. He considered himself lucky, as this meant he had a lot of free time on his hands and didn’t have to do night shifts like his comrades. His military service would have been nothing more than following routines and crossing off the days, if it were not for Ghazi.
The first time he entered the barracks dormitory, Ghazi was on his bed, his torso propped up against a pillow, with a book in his hand. Wearing a singlet that seemed too white against his dark skin and displayed his slim but big-boned body, he looked relaxed like someone on a beach holiday. As Amin placed his bag on the top bunk, he raised his head and welcomed him with a smile.
‘What are you reading?’ Amin asked.
Ghazi passed him the book. It was a memoir called When Heaven and Earth Changed Places.
‘What is it about?’
‘It’s about the author’s childhood during the Vietnam War,’ he said, and his large black eyes flickered with intelligence.
What struck Amin was that the book was in English. After the Islamic Revolution, the English titles had almost completely disappeared from the market. He’d had to search for a while to find a second-hand copy of Wuthering Heights in English for Parvaneh’s birthday. Then Hamid had died and he had never given her the book. A few weeks after Parvaneh left Mashhad, he had found it in his desk drawer—wrapped in red paper printed with tiny blue flowers and with a small card attached to it—and thrown it in the bin.
Ghazi was three years older than Amin and had a Bachelor in History from the University of Tehran. Amin was impressed that he could enter the University of Tehran, coming from a tiny disadvantaged city near Zahedan with a population of merely ten thousand.
‘You must have studied very hard.’
‘I was young and determined to get out of my town. What’s your plan for after your service?’ Ghazi asked.
‘What’s yours?’
‘Initially I wished to further my study, but now I want to work as a teacher in my home town.’
‘So you have it all sorted out. Good on you.’
‘Not really. What about you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Amin said. ‘And honestly, I don’t care.’
♦
‘You should see the bazaar here,’ Ghazi said the first time he took Amin to the city.
Rasouli Bazaar was a maze of small shops. Textiles in every colour, handicrafts, rugs and carpets, and traditional grocery stores filled with beans, rice, vegetables, nuts, fruits, and the aroma of herbs and spices. He entered a shop selling local textiles with their mirror embroidery, brilliantly designed and unlike any fabric he had seen before.
‘My mother would love these,’ he said.
‘I know where you can buy them for half the price. Do you want to go to my cousin’s kebab shop for lunch?’ Ghazi said as they left. ‘He is the one who gets me the English books from Pakistan.’
‘He travels often?’
‘His brother, Omar, has a textiles shop, like the one we just visited. Sometimes he accompanies him to help him with the merchandise.’
Haroun Kebab, an average-sized restaurant, was popular with the shopkeepers from the bazaar, and there was no empty table. Haroun, wearing the local dress, kurta with shalwar, a long baggy robe and a pair of loose, pleated trousers, greeted him with a handshake and three alternating kisses on the cheeks.
‘Come,’ Haroun said, ‘I’ll take you to the backyard balcony so you don’t have to wait for a table.’
He led them through the kitchen, through the smell of rice, saffron, butter, and charcoaled meat. Among all the men rushing around in the kitchen, Amin saw a woman in a green burqa adorned with small golden studs wearing the most beautiful kameez he had ever seen: black with embroideries of orange and yellow leaves that reminded him of autumn.
They sat at a metal table with three plastic chairs, facing a small garden. ‘I usually have lunch here myself,’ Haroun said. ‘I’ll bring your food out in a minute.’
