Daughters of Smoke and Fire

by Ava Homa

  The note that had been placed under my door wasn’t an eviction notice, rather the beginning of a barrage of threats to remind me that I might yet suffer the same fate as my brother. Chia’s writing had spread on social media ever more quickly after he was hanged.

  In the silence and darkness of Karo’s apartment, loss settled in, diminished the fighting and denial.

  It wasn’t just that I had lost Chia, but also the part of me that found meaning in being his sister. Who was I now? Without the part of me that was attached to my younger brother, without the role of big sister that I’d taken on so early in life, who was I now?

  When I finally got online, I found my inbox filled with requests for underground public speaking. The worst had already happened, and there was nothing more to be afraid of. I had to carry the torch that Chia had involuntarily passed on to me.

  Some seventy strangers were sitting in a damp and dark basement, waiting for me to begin. Having so many eyes on me would have made me nervous at any other time, but my senses had abandoned me.

  It was no secret that plainclothes Ettela’ati could be here, one of those who had placed a noose around Chia’s neck, looking for their next prey. Yet I was determined to respond to my calling in life.

  “Chia, my brother, carried the pain of something larger than himself on his shoulders. From a young age, he was intelligent, sensitive, and profoundly observant.” I bit my lips to force down the howl rising in my chest. “His selfless dedication to justice made him an unwitting hero. And that’s what terrorized them. Dictators are nourished by fear, hostility among the citizenry, and above all, apathy.” My voice was hoarse. I had to pause.

  I caught a glimpse of a familiar face looking down, hiding behind a pillar. His stealthy glances started up a fire in me.

  The attentive audience in the basement, old and young, looked defeated. The gathering was being held in a wealthy part of the city, right by the Touchal Mountain and not very far from Evin Prison. We all felt thwarted in our fight against the state, exhausted from the endless pain of having lost loved ones or borne witness to their physical or mental torture.

  I swallowed and took a note from my pocket. “Chia couldn’t stop his torturers from breaking his jaw . . . but he was able to maintain the life within him.”

  Everyone turned toward the door at the back of the basement when it creaked. I kept reading.

  “He had a rich inner life that no one could take away from him, its currency insightful books and people and the processing and application of the wisdom he had gained. He kept repeating that he wouldn’t let them kill him inside, and he never did.”

  A middle-aged, bearded man entered, and I wasn’t sure—perhaps no one was—whether he was an unofficial militia or just a man with an untrimmed beard.

  “Like Nelson Mandela, like Leyla Zana, Chia was not broken under torture. That’s where his victory lay.”

  Nervous eyes traveled the room. I had to continue to fill up the frightening silence, to keep going on Chia’s path until my last breath, and then someone else would take my place, maybe someone sitting here tonight. “Chia wanted all of us to understand what it meant to suffer poverty, genocide, and ethnocide: the loss of language and culture.” I spoke slowly but with emphasis, as if I were reading words written in a foreign language.

  Suddenly the breathing of the crowd turned very noisy. The fluorescent lights above my head glared. Karo had moved forward, no longer trying to hide.

  “Chia Saman was not a jodai talab,” a middle-aged man whose voice shook with anger yelled.

  Jodai talab—a separatist—was a slur in the Iranian vernacular, equivalent to “traitor.”

  A woman with bottle-blond hair sticking out from under her headscarf adjusted her eyeglasses and shouted, “Didn’t I warn you Kurds are all filthy separatists? I would much rather that fanatic clergies rule my country than see Kurds, Turkmen, and the rest divide my country into pieces.”

  “Wait a minute.” I tried to regain control of the room like my stern religion teacher. “So every time minorities speak about their tragedies, it automatically makes them separatists? And why do you act like that’s a crime, anyway?” I looked around in complete disappointment. It was no surprise that Kurds were singled out and oppressed even among the opposition, but I’d assumed the crowd that had invited me would be different. A murmur of speculation and suspicion spread throughout the room and soon dominated it. This was not the government silencing me. This was the opposition.

  Karo walked toward me. I didn’t need his help. I knew what to do to overcome prejudice: invoke sympathy. “Let me put it this way. Imagine if Persians were living under a brutal government run by the Kurds, and your children couldn’t read or write in Persian, couldn’t read Hafez and Rumi, couldn’t understand the maestro Shajarian. Think. And then, when you’ve been debased this far, think of what we have actually endured: You are to be hunted down, abused, tortured, exterminated . . .”

  “Nefrat parakani nakon. Stop spreading hatred. In this country everyone suffers equally.” The phony platinum-blonde was not to be placated with reason.

  “No. People do not suffer equally in this or any country. Talking about our reality is not spreading hate. It’s inviting understanding.” I shook my head in despair.

  An angry middle-aged man coughed for silence and said: “History has shown . . . Excuse me, brothers and sisters, please listen. History has proven that these tribes, all of these tribes . . .”

  I knew him from somewhere. “Tribes? Did you just call a nation a tribe?” I peered at his goatee; his glasses hung from his neck on a thin chain. I remembered.

  He looked up. I had dared to challenge “the intellectual.” He was the one who always showed up at the bookstore, who would make everyone in line wait while he ogled me. He always found an opportunity to accost me with some nonsense about the Russian and French Revolutions and then, finding me an unwilling listener, would leave the store without making a purchase. From an object of flirtation, I had been downgraded to a tribal interloper in “his” homeland.

  “Tribes start by asking to learn their mother tongue, and next thing you know, they want independence. Independence, ladies and gentlemen!” He spat out the word.

  Blood rushed to my face. “The moral of the story is a large group of people should be deprived of one basic right so they won’t ask for their other rights?” I pointed a finger straight at his face. My glare was riveted on his contorted features. How naïve of me to risk my life to speak to people who valued acres above humans. “Can’t you hear how similar you sound to the government you oppose?”

  “We like Kurds. My cousin has married a Kurd,” a voice called out. I searched the crowd but couldn’t identify the speaker in a sea of moving lips. A buzz rose, and the words “democracy” and “the right to self-determination” popped up from different corners of the room.

  Oxygen became scarce. The room was dank and musty and thick with tension. I started to feel faint. “I see. Freedom is good, but only for the privileged few.” I left the podium.

  “We Marxists support the right to self-determination.” A tall thin man raised his fist. People turned and started attacking him instead of me. Some young men and women stared at me with pity and nodded. “Kick out the separatists!” someone said.

  There was a tightness inside me. Fear of fear. “Stop,” I said, either in my head or out loud—I didn’t know which.

  “Unfortunately Miss Saman does not feel well enough to continue speaking.” The familiar voice became clearer with each word. “She has been through a lot, as you all know. Please excuse her.”

  Karo softly took my arm and pulled me through the press of people. But his actions only alarmed me, suggesting a larger threat. My arm went rigid.

  “I knew it,” he muttered, feeling my resistance. “I knew it.”

  The rising din of these disgruntled listeners was a hammer beating on my head. As Karo sent women and men scattering, I felt as if I were in a movie. He guide
d me outside and into the parking lot, lay me down on the back seat of his Xantia, and drove me home.

  “You must leave this country, Leila.”

  When the cradle of the car stopped rocking, I rose from the back seat. Karo held the front door of the building open for me. He held my arm when I was at the edge of collapse and kept a grip on me until I unlocked my apartment. He laid me down on Chia’s worn-out blue sofa and went into the cubbyhole kitchen to put the kettle on.

  When I opened my eyes, Karo was holding a glass of hot tea and softly calling my name. Steam danced just above the rim, and sugar whirled in its bottom.

  “You should leave. Go somewhere safe.”

  “Didn’t you say that before?” I asked.

  Karo sat down. “I’m going to have to find you a safe place.”

  “I’ve been staying at your place at night.”

  “That’s not very safe either.” His breath felt warm on my face.

  Energy was returning to my limbs, coursing up to my brain. “It’s dark comedy, the way tiny tyrants demand democracy.”

  Karo patted my shoulder. “Sometimes the people you fight for become your worst opponents. Anyway, my sister said something interesting about the Kurds. She draws a parallel between Kurds and the indigenous people in North America.”

  “How?”

  “Well, Kurds are more native to the land than the people who rule them. And the genocide. Subjugation. Cultural appropriation, whatnot.”

  My chest felt heavy. He gently squeezed my hand. When our gazes touched, I recalled Farrokzhad’s poem, that “life was perhaps this enclosed moment.” He then looked down and played with his fingers. I stared at the gray linoleum. “I’ll find a way to get you out.”

  “What happened to your ponytail?”

  His fingers drummed on his shaved head. “I’m a soldier now.”

  “Chia would have been graduating now too if . . .” I ran my fingers around the rim of the glass he had brought me.

  “You look flushed,” he whispered.

  “Isn’t it too hot in here?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. He was still in his sweater. “I think it must be the tea.”

  “I told everyone I dropped out. The truth is I got kicked out. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

  I started unbuttoning my coverall.

  Karo lowered his head, his chin pressed against his collarbone, as if struggling to admit to some deep disgrace. I stared at him intensely. “Chia’s popularity and influence . . . they backfired.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What you tried to say tonight.”

  “What did I try to say?”

  “That if he hadn’t become a hero, he’d be alive.”

  “What? That’s not what I said, but do you—” I got up, my hands clenched. “Are you saying it was my fault? That I killed him by sharing his writing online?”

  “That’s not what I said!” He raised his hands in surrender.

  “It was his fault then? For being so endearing, so influential?”

  “Leila!” He stood tall before me.

  “What, Karo? What? What are you trying to say? That the goodness in him and my desperate attempts to save him killed him, not the fascist system? Not . . . not your hands?”

  “Me?” He sat down again, deflated.

  “They didn’t know you were Kurdish, the interrogators. Did they?” I pressed my lips together firmly, biting the insides of my cheeks. “You hid that fact well, I bet?”

  He looked up, down, at the wall. “I wouldn’t be alive if they’d known . . .”

  “It was your damn phone. And you’re the one who took Chia out that day.”

  “It wouldn’t have helped Chia if they knew my origins. And Chia had an accent, a Kurdish place of birth. They later learned about his blogs and articles, about the illegal Kurdish teaching, everything.” Karo’s voice was low and rough.

  “You used your privileges to save yourself, but you didn’t do anything for my brother.” I tasted the bitter salt of my tears.

  “What privileges, Leila? I was tortured and humiliated. They just didn’t find me worthy of their bullets or ropes because I was a nobody. Chia was somebody to begin with, and he became a bigger and bigger threat. I am not saying . . . You did the best you could under the circumstances, but the support, it was small. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “No.”

  “If the Guardian or the New York Times had written about him, Iran would have modified their charges, but only the Kurdish media outlets and a few Persian ones mentioned him. Even PEN and UNICEF have limited reach. And he had too many local admirers. It terrified the state that he was becoming an icon.” He placed his hands on my shoulders.

  “Oh, go to hell.” I shoved him. “You and the rest of these phony people. To hell with your affection when it means doing nothing and worrying about your interests first.”

  “You think it’s easy for me? Do you know how much Chia meant to me?” He turned to me with those vast eyes that reminded me of the evening sky. I hadn’t looked up to see the sky in so long. Karo squeezed my hands, and I pulled them away. He said something, but I couldn’t make out the words. My eyes brimmed with tears. I sat and rested my head on the sofa arm, wrapped myself in a blanket, and inhaled deeply to catch the last remaining scent of Chia.

  Karo stood before me with a box of tissues. I wept. He kneeled before me and spread his arms wide open and enclosed me in his embrace. His chest heaved against mine, his fingertips gentle in my hair.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  When I awoke, my head was on Karo’s lap, his head lolled back on the sofa, his palm heavy and warm on my waist. He breathed deeply and slowly. I wiggled to free myself, but he only gripped my hip more firmly.

  I was fully dressed, and so was he. “Karo,” I called softly. He opened his eyes, taking in his surroundings for a moment, then jumped. “Sorry, sorry.” He untucked his shirt to hide the bulge in his pants and practically ran out the front door, almost slamming it behind him.

  I stared at the closed door and released the air trapped in my chest. How on earth had we gotten so intertwined? Did I just see Karo with an erection?

  Even in the vacuum created by his abrupt departure, I still felt Karo on my body, a sticky, invisible presence. I drew a bath and soaked under the foam.

  Bewildered, I ran my fingertips along my hip, right where his hand had been only minutes ago, then across every inch of my body, exploring sensations. When I reached my left breast, I imagined it was Karo’s palm cupping it. I bet he could hold it and its twin in one giant hand.

  This estranged body of mine, introduced to me as something to be covered and spurned because it was a source of sin—and only men’s sin—was in and of itself a meadow of desires; my body was appealing, but it was also fully capable of choosing, of yearning.

  If only Karo hadn’t led my brother to the gallows.

  I lingered in the bath until the water turned cold. A door slammed somewhere in the building, making me jump, and I eyed the window for any sign of The Men. Reluctantly I stood and wrapped myself in a towel, and my fantasies washed down the drain with the last remaining suds.

  Munching on a jam and butter sandwich, I opened my laptop. The red battery light on the computer flashed. I connected through the dialup internet and logged into my email account, hoping I still had a few minutes left on my internet card. A lot of messages from unfamiliar senders and eight from Shiler sent over the past week. She’d said I could go to the UN office in Turkey to apply for asylum, or join her, or go to the autonomous and prosperous Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq.

  I began typing a reply to Shiler. “Surprise, surprise—I was given a platform but was pulled down as soon as I mentioned Kurdish plight. Don’t think I’m ready to join your feminist revolution though. I still prefer to live for a cause than to die for one . . . I need help. A safe place. ASAP.”

  As I scrolled through my inbox, I played some music. The burning sadness in the Kurdish singer’
s voice and the piercing sound of the daf stung and soothed me.

  “Write back to me immediately. No money. No trustworthy person or place. Home could be raided any second. I’ve packed some of Chia’s notes and diaries and some of my own. Your blue hair clip is included in the small package. Please hurry.”

  I wrote to Karo too but deleted the message, retyped it and deleted it again. As I logged out, someone knocked.

  My stomach dropped. I tied my robe tight. Could The Men have seen me come inside last night? Noticed the candlelight? Seen the emails just now? I walked backward to the kitchen window. More knocks. I should get dressed. At least wear panties. Knocks.

  The voice muffled behind the door got louder. “It’s me.”

  I went to the door. But what if Karo was forced to knock at a gunpoint? Why hadn’t we thought of a safe word?

  “Come on. Come on! Hurry up!”

  I held a big kitchen knife behind me and cautiously opened the door with my left hand.

  “It’s okay. Nobody saw me.” Karo swiftly snuck in.

  “It’s crime enough that I am ‘counterrevolutionary.’” I placed the knife back in the drawer. “I can do without ethical allegations.”

  “I am sorry I stayed the night. Your eyes,” he said. “Obviously you have not slept well. I wanted to sit still so you’d get some rest, but somehow I gave in to exhaustion too.”

  “I didn’t mind that. But you coming back only makes things worse for both of us.” I fetched a long coat and headscarf from my bedroom to hang by the front door so I could put them on quickly next time someone knocked.

  “It’s easier to be in prison for anything other than politics.” He winked.

  “Not if you are a woman. Lashing. Maybe stoning. Who knows?” I brought a trash can with a lid, placed the large silver knife inside, and covered it with dish towels. “Imagine being a virgin and getting lashed for adultery!” I mumbled.