In the barracks his popularity grows as he encourages the men to smoke and sit through the hot afternoons, telling them stories of his time as a cadet, his first gun, the now infamous battle for Saqqez and how beautiful the shah’s wife is up close. Sarbaze, you will not believe the loveliness, so delicate, just the opposite of all these rocks. She alone is a force worth fighting for. Though he is only their captain they are just as easily his sons, and they sit and stare at their handsome commander only to see rounded versions of themselves reflected in his black lenses. In the evenings they take him to the whorehouse, where each disappears as rank declares, the higher the post the prettier the whore, and reconvene to smoke and drink in the green hyatt thick with the scents of hibiscus and jasmine. In the first days and weeks the captain is a quick fit and begins to walk the town alone in the evenings, relaxed and without weaponry, like a man of leisure, to stop in the bazaar stalls and sample the tea and nuts, pet the sleeping cat and lose himself in the afternoon street games with neighborhood boys. So tranquil is the captain that the mothers, aunts, cousins and old men of Kermanshah come forth cautiously to watch the young man with the familiar face, the new man who seems old to them, play like a child at silly games. It is here, under the bright glare of their curiosity and recognition, that Reza finds the dark glasses most useful.
The Way the French do it
He cannot look and he cannot turn away.
For hours now the house has rung with screams. Reza stands back, unaffected by their pierce, to watch Meena uncoil into a beast before him. Uninterested in his fixation, the midwife moves briskly about the room with pails and damp rags, bumping into Reza as if he were the bed or nightstand. For his part he takes no notice of the woman, a short Kurd who yelled and cursed at him as he ordered the soldiers to take her from her home. In the truck she sat between him and the driver soldier and muttered to herself the whole time. When they arrived at the house the midwife spat on the ground and kept up her angry rants as Reza escorted her to the bedroom, where Meena lay covered in sweat and bleeding, and the old woman took a quick look, quieted completely and busied herself with the task at hand.
He cannot look and he cannot turn away.
Hours have passed and the blood has stopped leaking. Meena sleeps and wakes to grab and curse at the midwife because she is an idiot Kurd and at Reza for bringing her to these forsaken mountains, only to fall back again into tormented sleep. Reza keeps his distance and stands in the far corner of the room, where he is unavailable for the grabbing and screaming and has a perfectly clear view of the wound, the opening he has penetrated—flesh gates that lead into the dark tunnel he has wanted so badly to enter and the babe wants so badly exit—now spread out before him, pulsing slightly in pain as if taking in and letting out tiny breaths.
When the time nears Meena lets out one long howl, half shout, half screech, and Reza no longer recognizes the place between her legs—it has pushed out so much liquid and blood and now the top of a head; the midwife takes her at the neck and back and lifts her out of the bed and motions that she should stand and then squat. The old woman does this with a gentleness Reza finds surprising and Meena resists, thrashing her arms about this way and that, and growls at the woman in Farsi.
In Tehran they deliver on their backs! That is how the French and the British do it! I want to deliver on my back, not squatting like a filthy animal.
The midwife cannot understand the language and smoothes down Meena’s hair and tries to rub her shoulders and temples. She stands in front of Meena and squats herself, showing her the way to bend the legs, stick out the back and force the child out in a manner that reminds Reza of shitting. Meena slaps the woman but screams herself as a spasm of pain jolts through her. She takes to the bed, where she lies again on her back and spreads her legs and gives Reza a view of the half head of a child, glossy with mucus and the size of a large orange. And here is the first happiness: this bloody ball with the matted hair is his orange and does not belong to the shah or to the mountains but to him alone, Reza Khourdi, and his surly yet beautiful wife, who, for some reason, is suddenly capable of producing such fruits. He wants to pluck it, as if from a tree, and walk about the town to tell everyone, Look at this! This orange belongs to me! Meena screams again and pushes down on her own stomach and the midwife, resigned to this new posture, grabs at the shoulders and chest as they emerge, only to have them slip through her fingers and sink back in.
The room goes silent and the old woman shakes her head and motions to Reza to help her lift Meena, who is suddenly pale and quiet, off the bed. He holds her limp, wet body up by the armpits as the midwife crouches beneath her and shoves her arms in, elbow deep. For a moment she is stiff and then alive and shaking with seizures that keep her unsteady in Reza’s arms. The old woman, who has disappeared between the legs of the young girl, laughs and sings an encouraging song until Meena lets out a long sigh, and all her weight falls into Reza’s arms and their bedroom fills with determined, choking cries.
He cannot look and he cannot turn away.
The babe is ugly. Covered in liquid and blood with a face that looks like nothing Reza has ever seen, compacted, grimacing, more nightmare than dream. The midwife slaps a few chunks from his throat and cuts the cord with a small blade she finds on Reza’s dresser and hands the child to him, and he is immediately astonished by the weight, neither light nor heavy, but formidable and entirely his. He brings the babe close, near his heart, near the brass on the breast of his uniform, and feels his own organs relax, his muscles give way, the roil in his head dissipate. The child screams and Reza holds him closer, certain the sound is echoing on the slate of the mountains all around. He walks to Meena, who sleeps soundly on the bed, and leans down with the babe to wake her. With soft eyes she stares first at Reza and then at the babe.
A boy?
Reza nods.
Jounam, Reza, a soldier just like his baba . . .
A smile spreads across her face like a cloud expanding across a blue sky and she is asleep again. He searches the babe for a sign, some mark of the child’s fate, and the baby writhes in his arms as if to escape. Reza clutches at the new body, forcing himself to find a guarantee that this half self will not suffer his father’s secrets or sins. The babe begins to whine and then squeal and then cry and Reza holds him tightly: it is not easy to look at the pained face; it is impossible to turn away. Impatient, the midwife grabs the babe from his hands and starts to wash and swaddle the child with the efficiency of a cook preparing a hen for the midday meal.
He and She
With the babe at her breast she asks him in her sweetest voice, Where does your love lie? He says, There, and points to the trinity of babe, maman and teat. Then tell me of your deeds, Agha Captain. How have you been a hero today? She wants to know of the latest uprisings, the schoolhouse he’s building, the status of her order of fine lace from Tehran. He clears his throat to explain that just yesterday there were three boys, the sons of farmers from Taq-e-Bustan, gathered in the meiydan and shouting to draw a crowd. What were they shouting, my love? He tells her of their pleas for Kurdish independence, how they asked the group: If Iran can suddenly have its own country then why not the Kurds? Are they not the oldest people of these mountains, is this not the era of country making? Who is to stop us? With the baby at her breast and her eyes sparkling she asks, So what did you do, Reza, jounam? And because the babe is at her breast he tells her proudly, I locked them in a room without water or food and when the families came to bribe me with their goats and copper I locked them inside too. Three days should be humiliation enough. Intent and listening, her full lips part just a bit as the baby sucks noisily at her. He goes on. Soon I will make Kermanshah as lovely and peaceful as your own Tehran. She pulls the baby from her breast and lays it on a woolen blanket and whispers, Aufareen, my captain, and brings his head close to cradle in her arms and let him take of the milk, the tender teat and the ecstatic stream that ties him to his own beginning.
The Midwife<
br />
In these ten years I have delivered them all.
From the first boy to this last girl just a few months ago, I have delivered all six, reached my hand into that Tehrani bitch and pulled loose the babes one by one. They all come out full of breath and alive and so every time she is ready a truck comes to get me and my family rejoices because they know the captain, who is normally cruel with the Kurds but holds us in his favor, will send me home with a goat or a few tins of sweet milk.
Mind you, not once has the Tehrani woman uttered her appreciation.
Still, I go when I am called.
For the first babe, the captain was forceful, cramming me into the car with another soldier; neither of them explained anything so I was sure they were taking me to their building in Kermanshah where the Kurds are kept and punished. The woman was there, still more girl to her body than mother, and I did what I could.
After the boy was born they took me back and the captain signaled the driver to stop next to the slopes of the three sister mountains. He left us, me, the driver and the babe, and walked to the mountains like they were a stream and he was a thirsty man. When he returned he had a different look to him. All of the seriousness that kept his face stiff and empty was gone and suddenly he looked Kurd, with the high bones and the green eyes. I remember how my eyes watered to see the Kurd in him, the Kurd he is. He took the babe from my arms and walked to the edge of a steep slope, where he held him out to the gray inclines, and then back to the car, as if the child needed a bit of air. As we drove back the driver and I tried not to look over at the captain, as it was clear that he was taking great pains to keep his head down and hide the tears that were falling onto his son’s face.
For the second child the captain came by himself and brought a leather ball for my boys and a small pistol for my husband. The woman birthed another son easily that afternoon and I heard from those in Kermanshah that the captain took his two sons to town to show the men, kept cradles in the barracks and his wife on hand for the nursing.
With the third, the driver came alone and the Tehrani woman suffered much this time. The babe was sideways and needed to be righted, and in her agony the khanoum screamed in that language that means nothing to me. Their kholfat translated what she could.
It’s all the same . . . She is calling you a useless Kurd, unfit to touch her or her babies. She says that right now, as she speaks, her husband, the captain, is in town punishing your brothers and fathers for ruining this new Iran.
I listened with my hands in her, feeling for the babe, and I resisted the urge to turn it backward so that it suffocated on the way out. Instead I remembered the captain, the afternoon after his first son’s birth, the softness in his face as he walked to and from the edge of the mountains, and I righted the babe as much as I could and left the rest up to God. The Tehrani bitch screamed and the first girl was born. I left without washing her. The following day the captain sent my boys two pairs of leather shoes and a fig tree for the yard.
The fourth, a girl. The fifth, a boy. The woman grows wider through the hips and when they come to call for me I whisper to my husband: Why? They are practically falling out of her now. My husband hushes me and says we need to stay in the captain’s favor; times are changing and the Kurds are no longer content with suckling up to the mountains, no longer a quiet people in the face of the shah. He himself has heard the talk of a nation of our own and explained that we too should live as the captain and his family do: under the protection of a nation, with leather shoes, guns and kitchens with running water. I laugh and tell him I am but a midwife, a guardian for the crossing, and our sweet well water is just fine for me.
When the last girl came my husband was gone, off to the mountains, or to Mahabad, or to fight with Barzani’s men—I knew better than to ask; I knew better than to know. I rode in the truck next to the captain, who had no gifts and whose face was layered again, thick and brooding and masked. In the ten years I had known him not once had he come to fetch me in such a mood as this; usually the news of a coming child turns him into a grinning boy.
At the house there were soldiers everywhere. I kept my eyes to the ground as I walk up the veranda steps into the bedroom, where the khanoum was squatting over a pallet of cushions—I have taught her well. I checked her and it was not yet time and so turned to the window where I could see the men gathered in a line to meet the trucks that come, five or six, up to the house. The kholfat whispered to me.
They caught them in the mountains. There was some fight and the Barzani men fled to Iraq and everyone from Kermanshah and around was caught. There are too many to take quietly into town, so they brought them here.
The Tehrani woman moaned and I didn’t even turn to look at her. I thought of Arash and my boys. I thought: Let that baby fall and break on the ground.
When the trucks stopped the captain ordered them to be emptied and one by one our men spilled out, our men in soft shoes, with turbans to keep their heads from the sun and loose pants to keep them comfortable on horses. I could not see Arash, but I knew he was there, among them. The khanoum moaned again and called to me by smacking her hand violently on the nightstand. I didn’t turn around. The captain walked up and down along the line of men, prisoners now, with their hands roped behind their backs, and selected a few boys, a few fathers, a few old men. Arash was chosen and he stepped forward. The khanoum shouted to the kholfat, who told me. She says it’s time. I left them in the house and walked to the veranda and stood until the captain and all the soldiers turned to look at me. The captain pushed Arash back into the line and selected the man next to him.
The selected men were taken to the side, undressed to their pants and held by soldiers while the captain hit them with a sturdy leather crop. His hits were lazy and uninspired and each lift of his arm was a forced gesture. I could not help but cringe, not at the violence of the weak hits, but at the captain’s clumsy, obvious pain. Our men didn’t cry and the soldiers tried not to seem ashamed of their commander. When it was done Arash and the others were loaded back into two trucks and driven away; only then did I return to the room, where the khanoum was red in the face from the effort. Without any effort I pulled the babe from her, a girl, born with open blue eyes. I wanted to drop the messy thing into her lap, let her cut the cord herself, but the child screamed at me with the joy brought from the other side and I recognized she is half us; one half this Tehrani bitch and one half Kurd, like her baba, the kind captain. I washed her and took her to the captain, who was smoking and serious and by himself in the aftermath. He held the babe and I watched the blue eyes enchant him, pull him in, bring him back.
In these ten years I have delivered them all: six children from the womb of the Tehrani bitch, my husband from humiliation and the captain from his lost heart.
The Nest
What the camera captures: a woman with hair curled and short and six children wrapped around her, along the shoulders, on the lap, behind her smiling head. A riverbed to their left; underneath them, a rug that buckles and folds.
What the captain captures: his wife and the smile she brandishes readily that is a lie and for the sake of false memories. Six children, one happier than the next, for they are at the river! on a picnic! and their maman is beautiful and their baba strong and full of their same childish joy and life between these mountain walls is lovely and no heavier than the air between a butterfly’s wings.
In his hands the camera is a silly thing, and after he succumbs to Meena’s demands to take a photo! Reza tosses it aside and takes the children who can walk, who run and shout, Baba, wait! at his brisk step, up the slope of the river valley to the foothills of the Zagros. At the spot where the ground turns from an uphill curve to a vertiginous launch of stone and moss and then cloud, he lifts the children up, youn gest to oldest, to climb a bit of the uneven rock, to feel it beneath them, supporting them. The girl squeals as he pretends to let go her hips—Baba, no!—while the oldest boys scuttle up and out of his lift, like spiders, across the r
ough rock face. Some make it as far as the first perch, where Reza yells to them.
Go on, jump, act the bird, spread your arms and try for the soar! Go on!
They leap and the ground pulls them down and they roll and laugh and let their baba lift them again to fly, to see who can keep fastened longest, to tease their baba—Try it! Try it, Baba! How come you don’t try?!—until they are tired enough to walk back to their maman and the two youngest babies.
Meena sits on a blanket, livid at their escapade. She is quick to chastise the boys for their scraped knees and the girls for their torn dresses and their baba for his irresponsible behavior.
I am tired, the children are a mess. Enough of this. Let’s go home.
Reza follows like his sons and daughters: dutifully, arms and legs loose with exhaustion and mind clear of everything but the memories he will make of this day, ingredients to mix with imagination and longing when he needs to cook himself a pot of happy dreams.
The Age of Orphans Page 17
