by Zoha Kazemi
Another young girl comes into the cabin with two bowls. She silently puts the dishes by the door and leaves. Tirad wants to ask her about Narivan but she goes out before he has a chance to speak. Tirad goes to the bowls. The food is strange to him, its chunks of pink meat in a soup. The fish they usually eat have white flesh. It can’t be chicken either, unless a red fleshed chicken that he doesn’t know of. He is starving, not having eaten the whole day. He takes a chunk in his mouth. It has the taste and the texture of a fish but much more delicious, softer and with more fat. He eats the whole bowl and even some from Dalia’s dish. She is asleep now and wouldn’t eat this cooked food anyway. He needs to find her raw fish or bring some dried fish from their boat. Tirad washes his face and hands. A man comes in with slow steps. He is medium aged and looks calm and relaxed.
“Ashid said you were a couple! She never mistakes such things. She can tell in one glance when two people are in love and have slept together,” he says without an introduction. Tirad guesses that Ashid must be the old woman healer who is treating Narivan and had found out he was a Saviour Disciple upon their first encounter. He agrees with the man, nodding.
“I’m Pejhan, the chief of the eastern Parsana Ship. You do know that the Saviour guards are looking for you! The first place they will come looking would be here… The Saviour Disciples come here to hide whenever they have to escape. So far, we have given refuge to all of them in the name of the great Lady Parsana… But this time, it is different. If they come here for you, we can’t stop them. Even now, the Parsana residents can’t forgive the person who has set the Oxan harbour on fire,” the man continues. But Tirad doesn’t understand him completely. He knows that Mart must have sent troops to find him by now but what he doesn’t get is the ‘great Lady Parsana’ and the ‘Saviour Disciples escaping’. He has more questions now. He wants to speak up and tell the man he is innocent, but he knows there is no way to prove it yet and the people of the sea believe things that seem more convenient to them, and usually gossips seem easier to take in. He can go ahead and deny he is the person they think he is and say he has no idea what Pejhan is talking about it. But it is better if he stays silent for now. Anything he says might put him in more trouble.
“I can’t decide about you and I cannot judge you… It’s all in the hands of Armina now. She will tell us what to do with you,” Pejhan continues. Tirad can’t keep silent anymore. He asks who Armina is and why is she in the position to charge him with anything? He repeats Dalia’s lie of going to Oxan for the purchase of oxygen masks and denies knowing anything about the Oxan fire. He says they have just come to treat Narivan and not for any other reason. Pejhan shakes his head.
“Well! You just proved you have come from the Saviour Ship! People of the sea know Armina too well! She is the only true descendant of the Saviour and Lady Parsana! The only people who deny this are the ignorant residents of the Saviour Ship!” he explains. Tirad is furious for having been called ignorant. He shouldn’t have said anything and kept his mouth shut. But he needs to understand what Pejhan is saying to him. All this seems too obscure and strange to him. Perhaps Parsana’s exile sentence was true and she was sent to this ship and that’s why this ship is named after her. But what about Armina? What did he mean by the ‘descendant’? He wishes Dalia was awake and could help him understand what this man was saying. He goes over to Dalia and shakes her until she opens her eyes. Dalia sits up and looks at Pejhan in wonder. Pejhan shortly glances at her and addresses Tirad again.
“I have come to take you with me to Armina. She will decide!” he says and waits for them to follow him out. As they walk out of the cabin door, the girl comes to them horridly. She turns to Dalia.
“I’m sorry… He lost a lot of blood when we were cleaning his wound… His heart stopped!” she says with a shaky voice.
Chapter 27
Narivan lies on the table with a face as pale as the white bubbles of the waves. There is a lot of blood on the floor that Asin’s assistant is cleaning. His wound is open but nothing can be seen except for the flown red blood.
“It looks like a knife cut… It was too deep and had become badly infected… I’m so sorry!” Ashid says but without any sorrowful tone. She covers the body with a stained blanket. She seems ignorant to the death. Tirad thinks perhaps she has seen too much of it before that she is not moved by it anymore.
“I will prepare the body to be thrown to the sea… It should be ready by the time you get back from Armina,” she continues, as she steps towards the door with the same disinterest. Dalia can hardly walk. Tirad had never seen her so broken like this, not even when her mother was beaten to death by the Saviour Island women, when Mart tried to attack her on the boat or when they had thrown out the naval guard into the sea. She seems to have changed from a lively playful dolphin to a slow and small turtle. She is looking down and takes slow and heavy steps. Tirad wants to comfort her. She jumps into his arms and cries, murmuring, “What am I going to tell Asin?” within her sobs. Pejhan leads them to the floating bridge.
“Don’t take fast steps… You should walk slowly with the least tremble…” Pejhan explains and asks one of the ship guards to go with them. He says the guard goes first, and then Dalia and Tirad should follow her. But they need to keep an appropriate distance. Dalia stops before the bridge and whispers in Tirad’s ear.
“We should escape now. We could jump from the bridge…” she says. Tirad looks down. The bridge is at least three times the height of a man and it is long… Too long for Tirad to be able to estimate it. He throws his head down in shame.
“You know I can’t swim properly,” he says.
“Yes, you can! You may not believe it…but I saw you last night! There is nothing wrong with you. Someone must have messed with your mind when you were a child lying to you about your heart… From what I have seen, you seem completely healthy!” she says trying to convince him. But Tirad is scared. Even if she is right, he doesn’t have the guts to jump. He can barely look down. He doesn’t find it in him to jump from this distance and swim to their boat. Of course, Dalia could do it but he won’t be able to pull it off. He is not even sure if they should escape. Deep in his heart, he wants to find out more about Armina and this ship, to learn more about Lady Parsana’s past. But he can’t tell her these, there is not enough time. Pejhan orders her to go and Dalia steps on the bridge. She is obviously crossed. Tirad follows, holding the cable rail and putting his feet on the floating planks. The bridge trembles with the guard’s and Dalia’s steps, waving all the way through. It seems shaky and unstable. Tirad can hardly keep his balance and thinks he will fall off the bridge at any moment. He is scared and wants to turn back. But Pejhan blocks the way and orders him to move on and get to the other side quickly. He can’t do it. His legs are locked out of fear and his palms are pressing on the cable so tensely that they might bleed. He wants to sit there on the planks and cry. But he knows he needs to pull himself together. Nothing will happen. At worst, he would fall down into the water and Dalia or the guards will get him. He doesn’t look down but can’t look at the long bridge ahead. Pejhan reaches him. Helps him with his bag and then takes his hand encouraging him to step forward. Tirad feels ashamed of him and of Dalia who has already reached the other end of the bridge, watching him.
Tirad wishes he could close his eyes and when he opened them he would be at the end of the bridge…at the end of everything. He wishes he could go back to the beginning, to the moment he had crushed the water snake under his heel. He could have excused himself from going to the Circle meeting and postpone it to after cleansing himself in a Spawn-Scorching ceremony. If he had delayed his entrance to the meeting, he would have never given that cursed mission. He would have stayed in the Saviour Island… He wishes he never had left Mart alone in Oxan and had stopped him… He wishes Hurmaz was still alive and could go back to him, begging for his forgiveness… He continues wishing for impossible things and before he knows it, he is at the end of the bridge. He presses Pejh
an’s hand and steps on the deck. He sits on the deck floor for a few minutes and takes deep breaths. He doesn’t want to throw up in front of Pejhan and the guard. Dalia stands beside him and puts her hand on his shoulder. She is not mad at him anymore, perhaps she knows now that she was wrong expecting him to jump from the bridge. Tirad’s pale face had told her he didn’t dare to do such a thing. Dalia takes his hand and pulls him up. They walk behind Pejhan towards the cabins of the central Parsana Ship. They go down three stories and stop before a cabin. Pejhan tells Tirad to go in while they would wait outside.
Tirad enters the small cabin lit by the dim light of an oil lamp. There is nothing much in the cabin except for two piles of books next to Armina’s short stool and the smell of the fish oil burning slowly in the lamp reminds him of the Saviour Ship. Armina looks at Tirad from top to toe. Tirad didn’t expect her to be so old. She has wrapped a green scarf over her head. Wrinkles cover her dark and dry skin, on her brows, by her lips and next to her eyes that have no lashes. She is thin and small and her clothes seem to be wet. Tirad sits on the floor in front of her as she tells him to do so. She seems somehow familiar to Tirad but it is not clear to him who she reminds him of. Armina brings the oil lamp closer, probably to see Tirad more clearly. Tirad understands now whom Armina resembles, as she takes off her green scarf and puts it aside. She has no facial hair and the lamp light reflects from her hairless scalp that obviously has never had a single hair growing on it. Tirad looks down to her hands. She does have small nails on her fingers that have darkened probably because of cleaning fish and working on the ship for too long. She is not exactly like Dalia, but this small resemblance makes him feel more at ease with her. He sighs and moves a little to sit more comfortably.
“You are Tirad, right?” she asks. Tirad doesn’t know what to say. If he says he is, they will probably arrest him and if he says he is not, he will have to continue lying; he knows he is not a good liar. He wants to introduce himself properly first and then reveal his name. And anyhow, Armina seems to have already made up her mind about who he is, she just wants to him to say it loud. Tirad takes out the reports of the dead pregnant women from his leather bag and shows them to her.
“I was sent to investigate these deaths… I was already out of Oxan when the accident took place…” he says with a shaky voice. Armina takes the papers and looks at them carefully and then she repeats her question.
“Are you Tirad or not?” she asks again. Tirad still doesn’t want to say his name. He is not sure why she wants him to.
“A year ago, a parcel was sent to me from Hurmaz with a letter saying that after his death, a young man named Tirad will come to Parsana to collect it. Are you Tirad or aren’t you? I need to be sure,” Armina explains. He has no choice but to reveal his name now, but he hesitates again. He needs to see what this parcel is about. Why has Hurmaz sent a parcel there? How did he know he would go to Parsana, while Tirad had no idea such a ship even existed? He never had any intentions to come to this ship… It was only to save Narivan’s life! Maybe Armina is saying this to make him curious and admit whom he is. Tirad is sceptic towards Dalia again. She looks so much like this woman, as if Dalia is Armina’s young age. Could two women be so identical and yet not related in any way? Why did Dalia bring her there out of so many ships on the sea? Is she part of a plan he doesn’t know of, another conspiracy against him? How is Hurmaz involved in this? He can’t put all these pieces together and think they were just random events leading one to the other. He better not say anything.
Armina shakes her head and shows Hurmaz’s letter to Tirad. He immediately recognises Hurmaz’s handwriting and starts reading. Hurmaz has expressed his sincere devotion to Armina and to the true followers of the Saviour and Lady Parsana. He has written that his life is in danger and the Circle is trying to poison him. He says one of the maids was forced to put the poison in his food but she had given them up in fear of being punished by the sea. But he knows they will carry out their deed sooner or later and has asked Armina to hand the attached documents to his most trusted disciple, Tirad. He has added another line under his letter saying Tirad doesn’t know much about the Parsana Ship and he hopes to have given him enough leads to find his way there. He has asked Armina to tell Tirad about the true history of the Saviour and Lady Parsana. Tirad reads the letter again, taking in every word. He looks at Armina with a half-opened mouth.
“You should start with the true history of the Saviour!” he says and takes out the pages he had found in the forbidden library: Parsana’s exile sentence and the Saviour’s prophecies. Armina takes the pages and starts talking like a grandmother telling a night-time story to put her grandchild to sleep.
“The Saviour was indeed the only survivor of the library ship, but he was not a baby. He was fifteen years old and had hid himself in the book cupboards, staying alive through the Great Fog. He was an intelligent, learned young man who knew mathematics and astronomy. When Hami, Ariad and Parsana found him, he helped them find their way to the highest areas drowned by the new sea. He was one of the few people who knew the topology of the new world after the earthquakes. They had sailed towards the Zagros heights but accidentally found another island on their way that they called Oxin, changed through the years to Oxan, since it was near the drowned city of Ahwaz and Oxin was its ancient name,” she explains while Tirad listens with wonder. He doesn’t want to hear more. It all seems to be a great lie. It cannot be. What about the Saviour’s marvels then? The Narratives? She must be telling him a fantastic, make-believe tale like most people of the sea love to do so.
“It was Hami who set up the Oxan trade system and came up with the Saviour Rules. The Saviour and Parsana fell in love from the beginning and were separated from Ariad and Hami. The exile sentence for Parsana was signed when she was carrying Saviour’s baby,” she continues and shows the exile paper to Tirad to prove her word. Tirad still doesn’t understand what she is trying to say. He tries to overcome his rage and let the old woman finish her tale.
“Parsana and the Saviour came to this ship. They had two children, one of them died young and the other lived. I’m a descendant from their daughter. I know their true life story since it was told to me by my mother who had heard it from hers and so forth,” she says proudly and doesn’t seem to care about Tirad’s ignorant reaction. Tirad doesn’t want to interrupt her. He just wants it to be over and take the parcel.
“Some years ago before the war with the pre-rain religionist, Hurmaz came to us and lived here with his wife for a while. We wanted to put an end to all the nonsense and lies told throughout the sea about the Saviour. Hurmaz didn’t cooperate with us back then and went to another ship. When the war broke out and he lost his family, he came to us again. He promised to help us if we helped him win the war. We sent around four hundred men and women to fight for him and if it wasn’t for our help, he couldn’t defeat his enemies. He became the leader after that and tried to make essential changes like banning the Book Burnings etc. But his hands were tight. He could lose his position and even his life if he went too far. We had to wait. But as we waited, the Circle grew stronger and gained more power and people believed the fake history to be absolutely true, forgetting about this ship and my true great grandparents. It got out of hand as to the point where they killed Hurmaz and set the Oxan refugees fire…” she says, shaking her head regretfully.
“I’m too old now and people seem too devoted to the fake beliefs…nothing can be done to wake them up anymore,” she finishes her explanations. Yet Tirad cannot believe this parallel and imaginary history. He knew Hurmaz had gained help to win the war from a ship that he had never revealed its name, but he always thought it was one of the border ships. He needs to ask his question and test the validity of Armina’s claims.
“How come the Saviour Ship has nothing to do with you? They have just erased your name?”
“Hurmaz had been protecting us so far… We have a peace treaty with him, we won’t act on our belief and they will just
ignore us. But I doubt we would be safe anymore,” she says and looks down in regret.
“What about the other sea people? If they believed in you, how could they go through so much trouble every dry season to bring alms to the Saviour Ship?” Tirad asks again.
“The people of the sea don’t truly believe in anything! They just do whatever suits them most or is less troublesome. The truth is irrelevant to them,” Armina answers. But the truth is important to Tirad and the many children who were sent to be raised as disciples, devoting their lives to the Saviour Ship.
“Has anyone else ever come here except for Hurmaz?” he asks, and Armina approves.
“The missioners come here every once in a while. Especially the missioners from the border ships who are so sick and tired of trying to keep up with the Saviour Rules and feel unable to carry them out on the ships. They gradually lose faith and hear about us. We usually have one or two disciples per year that come seeking refuge…but…” she says and pauses. Tirad is waiting to hear what she has to say after the ‘but’.
“I’m so sorry, Tirad! We can’t take you in… I know you are probably innocent in the fire incident, but the people on the ship won’t believe it. There must be someone within our five hundred residents that has lost a loved one in the fire, they will take you back to the Saviour Ship or even hurt you. You should leave immediately…go as far as you can…even outside of the Oxan region…you are not going to be safe here,” she says. Tirad can hardly breathe. He didn’t think he would bring about the rage and hatred of the sea people for something he hadn’t done. He tells her he understands. But he feels so abandoned inside, having no place to go to. He still needs her to explain and clarify more things. Armina says it will take time for him to adjust to what he heard, but he has to face the truth and stop denying it.
