“She had prepared that telling rag beforehand, put the blood of a pigeon on it. I don’t know, maybe it was the same rag she had kept from the first night she made love—just to ridicule me even more. Then everyone was congratulating me, winking at one another and probably saying to themselves: ‘That guy sure stormed the castle last night!’ And I said nothing. They were laughing at me, laughing at my stupidity—I promised myself that one day I would write all this down.

  “Then I found out she had fornicators left and right. Maybe she hated me because some preacher had recited a few verses in Arabic that put her under my control—maybe she wanted to be free. Finally, one night I decided to force myself on her, and I acted on my decision. But after a furious struggle she got up and left. That night I satisfied myself in her bed—I slept and rolled around in her bed, which still held the heat and scent of her body—that was the only night I slept peacefully. From that night on, she slept in a separate room.

  “At night, when I came home, she was still not there—I didn’t know if she had come back or not—I didn’t want to know. I was condemned to solitude, condemned to death. I wanted to make contact with her fornicators however I could—no one is going to believe this one. I would stalk whoever I heard she liked. I would humble myself, demean myself just to meet him—I would flatter him, sweet-talk him, and bring him for her. And what fornicators: a tripe seller, a jurisprudent, a liver vendor, the manager of a drugstore, a theologian, a merchant, a philosopher. Their names and labels were different, but they were all on par with the apprentice to the guy who boils lamb’s heads—she preferred all of them to me. No one will believe with what shame and contempt I belittled myself. I was afraid of losing my wife, so I tried to learn how to act, how to behave, how to seduce from her fornicators. But I was just a miserable pimp and all the idiots were laughing at me—how could I learn the behavior and habit of the vulgar? Now I know, she liked them because they were shameless, stupid, foul—her love was mingled with filth and death. Did I really want to sleep with her? Was I obsessed by the beauty of her face or her hatred of me—maybe it was her movements, her flirtations, or the fondness and love I had for her mother ever since I was a child? Maybe it was all of these together? No, I don’t know. I only know one thing: I don’t know what kind of poison this woman, this slut, this witch had poured into my soul, that I only wanted her—every atom in my body needed every atom in her body, they were screaming with lust. I desperately wished to be alone with her on a deserted island where no other human being exists. I wished that an earthquake, a storm, or a strike of lightning would destroy all the vulgar who were breathing, running about and enjoying themselves behind the walls of my room, so that only the two of us remained. Would she still prefer any other creature, an Indian serpent or a dragon, to me? I wished to spend one night together with her, and then die in each other’s arms. I thought this would be the supreme outcome of my existence.

  “It was as if this slut got pleasure out of torturing me, as if the pain that already ate away at me was not enough. Eventually, I ceased all activity and confined myself to the house. I was like a moving corpse, but no one knew the secret between us. My old wet nurse, who was witness to my gradual death, chided me behind my back—all for the sake of this slut. I could hear people whisper to one another, ‘How can this poor woman tolerate that crazy husband?’ They were right, I had become so loathsome it was hard to believe.

  “Day by day I wasted away. When I looked at myself in the mirror, my cheeks had turned red, the color of the meat that hangs outside the butcher shop. My body burned and my eyes looked vacant and sad—I really enjoyed my new condition and saw the mist of death in my eyes—I knew it was time to go.

  “Finally, they called for the revered physician, the physician to the vulgar, the family physician who according to himself had raised us. He showed up sporting a beige turban and a three-span beard. He was proud of having given virility medication to my grandfather, poured sweet rocket-seed potion down my throat, and administered purging cassia to my aunt. As soon as he came in, he sat by my bed, took my blood pressure and examined my tongue. He ordered me to drink ass’s milk with ground pine, and inhale frankincense and arsenic vapor twice a day. He also gave this exalted prescription to my wet nurse, which included all kinds of strange decoctions and oils like hyssop, olive, licorice extract, camphor, maidenhair fern, chamomile oil, gander oil, linseed, spruce seed, and other nonsense.

  “My condition deteriorated. Only my wet nurse, who was also her wet nurse, would sit in the corner of my room by my bed, with her old face and gray hair, and put cold water on my forehead and make me decoctions. She would tell me about our childhood—mine and that slut’s. She told me that ever since she was in the cradle, my wife had a habit of chewing the nail of her left hand, to the extent that she would lacerate herself. And sometimes she would tell me stories. I felt like these stories were taking me back in time and making me feel like a child again—they brought back memories of those days. She would tell me the same stories from when I was very young and slept in the crib next to my wife—it was a big two-person crib. Parts of these stories that I never used to believe before now seemed so real to me, because my illness had given birth to a new world, a faded, alien world full of images and colors and desires that one cannot imagine when healthy. I felt the details of these fables with unspeakable delight and excitement—I felt like I had become a child and even now as I write, I feel I am a participant in them. All these feelings belong to this moment, not the past.

  “Apparently, the wishes and habits of the ancients had been transferred to subsequent generations through these fables and had become the necessities of life. For thousands of years they have said the same things, had sex the same way, had the same childish problems—is life not a ridiculous story, an unbelievable fable from end to end? Am I not writing my own story, my own fairy tale? Stories are only a way of escaping unrequited desires, unattainable wishes, wishes that any fable-writer has imagined according to his own narrow, inherited nature.

  “I wish I could sleep gently the way I used to when I was a child and didn’t know anything—a calm, undisturbed sleep. I used to wake up with rosy cheeks, the color of the meat that hangs outside the butcher shop. My body was hot and I was coughing—what deep, frightening coughs. I don’t know from what lost gorge in my body they were emanating—like the coughs of the nags that carried lamb carcasses to the butcher early in the morning.

  “I totally remember—it was completely dark and for a few minutes I drifted into a coma. Before I fell asleep, I was talking to myself—I was sure that I had become a child and was lying in the crib. I felt someone near me, but it had been some time since the rest of the household had gone to bed. It was close to daybreak—the ill know that this is the time when life extends beyond the boundaries of the earth. My heart was racing but I was not afraid. My eyes were open but I could not see anyone because the darkness was impenetrable. A few minutes passed and a sick thought occurred to me. ‘Maybe it’s her,’ I said to myself—then I felt a cool hand on my burning forehead. I was shaking. Was that not the hand of the Angel of Death? Then I fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning, my wet nurse said it was her daughter (she meant my wife, that slut) who had come to my bedside and cradled my head in her lap and rocked me like a child—apparently a motherly instinct had been awakened in her. I wish I had died at that moment—maybe the child she was pregnant with had died. Had she given birth? I didn’t know.

  “In this room that kept getting smaller and darker than a grave, I was constantly on the lookout for my wife, but she never came. Was it not because of her that I was in this condition? It was no joke. It was three years, no, two years and four months—but what are days and months? They have no meaning for me—for someone who is in the grave, time loses all meaning. This room was a tomb for me and my thoughts. All the activity, the sounds, the postures of other people’s lives—the lives of the vulgar, who are physically and spiritually the same—had become strange and meaningless to me. From the time I became bedridden, I had awakened to an alien, incomprehensible world where I had no need for the world of the vulgar. There was a world inside me, a world full of mysteries where I was forced to explore all its corners and recesses.

  “At night, as my soul wavered on the brink between two worlds, just before plunging into the fathomless chasm of sleep, I would dream. In the blink of an eye I was living a life not my own—I was far away, breathing a different air. It was as if I wanted to flee from myself and change my fate. With eyes closed, my real life appeared before me—odd scenes that easily disappeared and appeared again, as if my will had no impact on them. But even this was uncertain. The images that conjured in front of me were not from an ordinary dream because I had not fallen asleep yet. In utter calm and quiet, I separated the images from one another and compared them. Apparently, I had not known myself until this moment. The world as I had known it until now had lost all meaning, all vitality. In its place, a dark night reigned—because they had never taught me to see the night and love the night.

  “At that moment, I don’t know if I had control over my arms or not. I assumed if I were to leave my hands to their own design, they would act according to some unknown machination all their own, without any intrusion or restraint from me. If I let my guard down and didn’t watch over my whole body constantly, it would have been capable of deeds I never expected. This sensation had appeared in me a long time ago and was eating me alive. Not only my body, but my soul was always in conflict with my heart—they could not get along. I was constantly experiencing a kind of alien dissolution and decomposition—I would think of things I could not believe. Despite being reproved by my reason, sometimes a sense of pity would well up in me. Often, I would get into a conversation with someone but my attention would drift. I would think about other things and reproached myself in my heart—I was a decomposing mass. Apparently, I had always been and always would be like that—an odd, unbalanced concoction . . .

  “The unbearable thing is that I felt distant from the people I saw and among whom I lived, but we had a superficial resemblance, a resemblance at the same time distant and near that connected me to them. It was the shared necessities of life that assuaged my bewilderment. The resemblance that tortured me most was that the vulgar were also attracted to this slut, my wife, and she was more inclined toward them—I am positive that there was a defect in one of us.

  “I called her ‘slut’ because no other name suited her so well. I don’t want to call her ‘my wife’ because there was no husband-and-wife allowance between us—I would be lying to myself. I have always called her slut—the name had special resonance. If I married her it was because she’s the one who took the first step toward me—even though it was just a ruse. No, she had no interest in me at all—how could she be interested in anyone? She was a licentious woman who needed one man for sex, another for making love, and a third to torture. I doubt she was even content with this trinity, but she had definitely chosen me as the one to be tortured—in reality, she couldn’t have chosen any better. But I married her because she looked like her mother, because she had a distant resemblance to me. Now, not only did I love her, all the atoms in my body desired her, especially in my loins. I don’t want to conceal real emotions under the sheen of imaginary words like love, fondness, and faith—flowery language doesn’t leave a good taste in my mouth. I thought some kind of ray or halo—the kind of halo they draw around the heads of saints—was pulsing in my loins, and maybe my sick, tortured halo needed the halo around her loins and was drawing it toward itself.

  “When I felt better, I decided to leave, to lose myself—like a dog that has contracted leprosy and knows it is going to die, like birds who hide themselves when death approaches. I woke up early, put on my clothes, took two cookies from the shelf, and left without anyone noticing. I ran away from the misery in which I was submerged. Without any particular destination, I passed through nondescript streets among the vulgar, all marked by avarice, chasing money and sex. They were all just mouths with intestines hanging from them, at the end of which dangled their genitals.

  “Suddenly, I felt lighter, more agile—my legs were moving quickly, moving with an unusual nimbleness I could not have imagined—I felt like I had broken all the shackles of my life. I put my shoulders back—this was a natural posture for me. When I was a child, I would do the same thing every time I was relieved from the burden of some chore or responsibility.

  “The scorching sun was rising. I went down deserted streets and could see gray houses in strange, geometrical shapes—cubes, prisms, cones—with short, dark, abandoned entrances. They seemed vacant, temporary, as if no living creature could have ever lived in them.

  “The sun, like a golden razor, was scraping and removing the shadows off the walls. The alleys extended through aged, faded parapets. All was still and silent. Everything seemed to adhere to the sacred laws of hot, quiet weather. I felt surrounded by hidden secrets, to the extent that my lungs dared not breathe.

  “Suddenly, I realized I had left the city gates. The sun’s heat sucked the sweat from my body with a thousand mouths—desert shrubs had turned the color of turmeric under the blazing sun. From the depths of the firmament, the fevered eye of the sun cast its burning glance upon the lifeless landscape. But the soil and plants here had a peculiar scent. The scent was so strong it took me back to my childhood—not only did I remember the words and actions from that time but I felt them, as if they had happened just yesterday. I was lightheaded and lucid. The feeling had an intoxicating affect—like aged, sweet wine pulsing through my veins—it penetrated me to my core. I recognized the stones, the trees, the little scrubs of wild thyme, and the thorns of the desert—recognized the familiar scent of the vegetation. I reminisced about those distant days but my memories had wandered sorcerously far and had assumed a life of their own, whereas I remained but a poor, isolated witness. I sensed a deep whirlpool spinning between me and my memories; sensed that my heart was empty and the scrubs had lost the magical scent of those times. The cypress trees seemed to have more distance between them, the hills were dryer—the creature I was before no longer existed. If I prompted him and spoke to him, he would not understand me. He had the face of someone I used to know, but he was not a part of me.

  “The world seemed like a sad, empty house, and I felt a tightness in my chest. It was as if I had to walk through this house barefoot and inspect all the rooms. I passed through a maze of rooms but when I got to the last room, that slut’s room, all the doors behind me slammed shut. Only the quivering shadows of the walls, whose definition had faded, stood on either side, like rows of Black slaves keeping watch over me.

  “As I approached the Suran river, a barren mountain appeared in front of me. The dry, hard body of the mountain reminded me of my wet nurse. I don’t know how they were related. I passed by the mountain and arrived at a small, pleasant area surrounded by hills. The ground was covered in violet water lilies and on top of the mountain you could see a castle they had built with ponderous bricks.

  “I felt tired. I went and sat on the sand at the foot of an old cypress tree by the Suran river. It was a tranquil, pleasing place—I thought, No one has ever set foot in this place before. All at once it came to me. I saw a young girl appear from behind the cypress trees and walk toward the castle. She was wearing a black dress sewn from very thin, light thread, probably silk. She was chewing the nail on her left hand as she floated by, her movements were effortless and carefree. I thought I had seen her before and knew her—but from this distance and under the glare of the sun, it was hard to be certain—then she suddenly disappeared.

  “I was frozen in place and could not move a muscle—but this time I had seen her walk by and disappear with my own eyes. Was she real or an apparition? Was I dreaming or was I awake? I tried hard to remember, but it was in vain. A shudder ran down my spine. It seemed that all the shadows in the castle on the mountain had come to life, and that girl was one of the former residents of the old city of Rey.

  “All of a sudden, the scene before me looked familiar. I had come here as a child on the thirteenth day after Nowruz, my mother-in-law and that slut were here too. We chased each other and played behind these very same cypress trees. Then a group of other kids joined us, but I don’t remember exactly. We were playing hide-and-seek. I was running after this same slut on the banks of this same Suran when she slipped and fell in the river—they fished her out. They took her behind the cypress tree to change her clothes and I followed them. They held a chador in front of her but I was hiding behind the tree and got to steal a peek at her entire body. She was smiling and chewing the index finger of her left hand. Then they wrapped her up in a white cloak and spread her black silk dress, which had been sewn from thin thread, under the sun.

  “Finally, I lay down on the sand at the foot of the ancient cypress tree. I could hear the sound of the water, it was like the garbled, unintelligible words one hears whispered in a dream. I sank my hands into the warm, moist sand. I squeezed the warm, moist sand in my fists, like the firm flesh of a girl who has fallen into the water and whose clothes have been changed.

  “I didn’t know how much time had passed. I got up and started walking, but not of my own will. All was calm and quiet. I walked without seeing what was around me—an alien force was prompting me to walk—I was oddly aware of my own steps. I was walking but felt I was gliding along like that black-clad girl. When I came to, I found myself in the city, in front of my father-in-law’s house—I don’t know why I ended up by his house. His young son, my wife’s brother, was sitting on the front stoop—the two were like an apple split in half. He had slanted Turkman eyes, prominent cheekbones, a sensual nose, a narrow, refined face, and had the index finger of his left hand in his mouth as he sat there. Without knowing what I was doing, I approached him, took out the cookies I had in my pocket, and gave them to him and said, ‘Your Shah-joon gave these for you.’ He called my wife ‘Shah-joon’ instead of his own mother. He looked at the cookies with his startled Turkman eyes and took them with some hesitation. I sat on the stoop next to him, took him on my lap, and held him close. His body was warm, he had the same calves as my wife, and the same carefree movements. His lips were like his father’s lips—but the thing that I found hateful in his father, I found attractive in him—as if his half-open lips had just separated from a long, passionate kiss. I kissed his half-open mouth, which were like my wife’s lips—his lips tasted acrid, bitter like the butt end of a cucumber. I bet the lips of that slut had the same taste.

 

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