He comes to a street full of traffic, people and sound. Lights tell the cars where to move, and lights tell the people when to stop and when to go. Tiredness overwhelms him but he crosses streets and intersections and pushes himself up one block after another, glad for the sight and sounds of flesh, for the eyes that catch his to say, Yes, you are alive, you are here, and nothing more. He keeps on even when he would most like to stop and sit and stare at the strange new faces, bodies, skins, clothes and moods, all of them incompatible and odd. But he goes on, forces himself to keep walking, to be alone as they are alone, to move like the men move, with purpose, on the way from one place to the next.
In the middle of the next block Saladin is forced to stop. In front of him a man and a woman are intertwined, their limbs tangled, faces fastened at the mouth, hooked, it seems, by the tongues. She is tall with short hair, and he is taller, enough so that he must bend to grab her waist so they can sway, turn their heads back and forth, and never once forgo the lock of their lips. Saladin stands rooted to the concrete, and all that moves through them moves through him as well. Never has he seen such a thing. Not on the street, not at school, not between his mother and father, only in the cinema, and then again and again until each film became the long wait for the kiss and nothing else.
Cars and people pass but Saladin is stuck, as if between the bodies of the couple, and watches them pull near and nearer into each other, and heat fills the hollows of his groin and stomach and chest and throat and fumes up into the heavy hollow of his head, burns just one degree hotter and ignites. Here! On the street! Saladin turns to share the excitement with his brother.
Ali! Can you believe it? On the street! Only in America! Ali! Ali?
But his brother is not at his side. The block has emptied. Behind him there is only a shopping cart pushed into the curb, in front of him a scarred, squat palm. Where is his brother? Saladin remembers exactly where his brother is and moves, quickly now, so he might forget. The same fast feet eat up the sidewalk to keep hysteria back, and he steps briskly and practices. My name is … It is nice to meet you. Yes. I am from Italy. I am from Greek. I am twenty-six years old. I am twenty-seven years old. Hello. Tomorrow is my birthday, I will be twenty-nine years! Old enough for America. A brother? No, I have no brother. Not a one. You are a mistake. He corrects himself. You are a mistaken. I am happy to meet you.
It works, and after a time the exertion pushes the memories back and he begins to see the city around him, a city he recognizes from a lifetime of films, a city that could be no other, with the tall buildings of clean glass and bending palms and a golden sunlight that touches everything. He looks to the sun itself, brighter here than it was in the mountain town, closer, more brilliant, and knows it as it is known everywhere: to rise in the east and set in the west. That knowledge snaps through Saladin like a reflex, and with certainty he can tell the cardinal points and thinks back to a map of America that showed a country between two oceans, one east and one west, and like that he knows how he will be welcome, how he can finally arrive. Saladin looks for a western street, long and straight, where the sun drops down, so he can follow it all the way to the great water that ends Los Angeles, a city with half her letters in the sea.
He arrives at the beach just after dusk, and the expanse of blue water is, in shade and spread, the same as the sky. Sand fills the cracks in his leather shoes, and Saladin walks until he is at the lip of her, thick with white froth, and walks until he is in, ankles, knees and thighs, still clothed and moving like a man in a trance. The water is as salty as his own tears and it is warm; water like a meal and a medicine; a tonic in which to bathe and receive the ablution that blesses the Kurd boy, poor boy, new boy. It rises over his hip and then to the elbows and neck, and then he is entirely under, where the long tongues of strong currents lick him in a wild love fiercer than any caress he has ever known. Tight in the mouth of the sea he is anonymous, a body cast out, kissed. He dives down to where the blue becomes black, a whole darkness where the only sensation is the sting of salt as it cuts through the last embraces, last looks, of that old life. Saladin stays under until breathless, convulsing, and clean.
It is a long bath.
He swims and is sure to keep sight of the beach, the land, this continent he has come to, and when the excitement is too much, he swims to it and walks onto shore like the first offered man, the boy from before dissolved now into particles smaller than sand, smaller than the oncoming evening mist, smaller than the air itself.
The wet clothes stick to him but he feels nothing of their cling and lies his body down on the sand. Above, the sky is made of dark and light blues and he imagines the colors are blankets he can, if he wants, pull across himself from the old world into the new.
This is here.
He says to himself.
This is here. There is no forward and no return, and Saladin is happy, caught between this coming night and days of dreams he has dragged halfway across the earth.
Sleep does not come. All around the beach has been dark for hours but Saladin cannot calm his body, electric and stiff and packed with energy as if it were morning or midday or the seconds just after a nightmare. He tries to remember the start of this day and can only think of dawn on the island, and even that seems like one thousand years ago. There was a brief, almost miniature night on the plane and this is the first night after that, but Saladin cannot for sure say how this day connects them. Is this the same day he left the island or a different day? And if so, how many different days have passed in between? He waits to sense the clock in his body, but it has turned off in confusion. Saladin hugs his knees in close and wishes for some sunlight to illuminate this world and match his ready mood. This is the second night he will see all the way through.
The first night he saw all the way through was the night of the day the brothers ran out of the valley and up into the mountains, until they could no longer run and had to walk, Ali ahead and Saladin behind. It was a night without sleep, bed, father, home. There was little to discuss, every direction was up, away from the trees and grass and hearths they knew and into the rocks and sky. They walked in silence. By evening Saladin could no longer see his brother and had to listen for the faint lead of steps that padded out in front of him as night took his brother’s body, the shape of boulders and the outlines of summits all around.
Until the dark came, Saladin moved with a hurry made partly of fright and partly from the rush of memories that came off the land as they mixed this escape with the childish games from before. Just as before, he followed his brother’s back up the trails and over the passes where their boyhood selves had played as wealthy traders, fleet messengers for a king, warriors en route to battle. Ali, the older, always kept ahead, but they would walk down together, as victors, worldly explorers, new grooms just back from collecting twin brides who sat split-legged atop invisible horses while the brothers argued which was the finer. Mine sings like Maman. Yes, but mine has the sound of gold in her laugh. And they were always out of the mountains by dusk. Saladin had never seen night so far from home, had never slept in a bed that was not his own. He ran to catch his brother.
Ali, where are we going?
Away.
Where?
Where it is safe. To hide for a week, maybe two. Until the mullah leaves and we can go back and fight.
Fight? Fight what?
Today was a bad day for the Kurds … we must … we will stay away for a time, a week, maybe two, and then sneak back. Ehyd’s brother will keep us in his house.
And tonight? Where are we going to stay tonight?
Nowhere. We are going to walk.
Where? Where are we going to sleep?
The footsteps stopped.
Saladin jaan. Am I not your older brother?
Yes.
Then listen to me. You must follow me. Don’t you remember the stories the old men told? Kurds have always escaped through these mountains. We are no different. Even you, you who have lived in the cine
ma, you are no different. We will follow in their footsteps and there will be a place to stay, a place to hide for a few weeks and then we can go home. With honor, for honor.
The moon was no more than an eyelash in the sky and lent little light to the land. Of his brother’s face, Saladin could only make out shiny teeth and the lively whites of eyes. Soon there was no face and no brother, and the same fast footsteps padded out into the dark. Saladin ran to keep up, and like this they passed through the darkness, their faint chalky shadows jaunty in front of them, and then alongside, and then behind and then gone.
They spent the morning in descent. Shaky talus slides gave way to hilly gravel roads that gave way to a hot, rolling piedmont that they walked with aching knees and a hunger that went unmentioned. When Saladin saw them, the six or seven men who rose and sank in the high grains, he stepped forward to call out, I am hungry. Do you have food? We are hungry.
But Ali held him back.
Wait. Wait.
The brothers stood out of sight, and Ali studied the dusty men, their dip and pull and rise and tie, told Saladin to wait until they found a rhythm and logic in the work so when they approached with their Hello, we are traveling through, is there a place for the night in exchange for a few days’ work? the men were not interrupted and responded easily.
Yes, Baba, yes. Come help.
The work was easy to learn and Saladin copied his brother to stretch and pull and gather and knot the hay. Ali only spoke to him once, when they were both hidden beneath the high level of the grains.
If they ask, say we are going to Tabriz. For exams.
Otherwise they worked quietly like the others, and when the field was flat, they followed the oldest man into a village of mud-and-straw huts, chickens and skinny goats. The old man washed his head with clean water from a ceramic gourd. When the water was cloudy, he handed the bowl to Saladin and smiled, dust still lodged in the creases of his face. The brothers cleaned as well as they could, Ali with serious determination, as if washing for prayer. Saladin watched him work with the dirty water and saw all the sweat of the last day and night and day stick to his face like a wet glaze.
Inside the hut a woman in a sequined scarf crouched beside a smoky fire. She did not rise to greet them. Across the room the old man had taken his seat and busied himself with the filling and lighting and smoking of a pipe he did not offer. When the food came, it was gelid and salted and held the flavor of the dust that coated everything. Out of habit Saladin tasted the food and then forced himself to swallow without chewing and fed his hunger as best he could. Ali ate with relish, and the old man paid no attention to either of them. When he finished, he gathered his bones up and stood, burped and walked slowly out of the room. Ali casually asked after him.
Have you heard the news?
News?
Of the Shah? The Ayatollah? The old news.
The old man rubbed his groin and the smell of him filled the small room, and Saladin could no longer even swallow and pushed his plate toward the old lady, who watched everything with the one eye left uncovered by the shawl.
Baba jaan, there is always some new king. Here, there, what do I know?
The old man stepped outside and they heard the sound of a thin stream of piss. Ali followed and left Saladin alone with the old woman. No longer shy, she turned her uncovered face to him. She had no nose, only flatness with two uneven holes just above the lip, and Saladin stumbled out of the hut in a shocked and childish rush.
His brother and the old man were crouched together near the ground. The old man picked through his teeth with a stalk of grain.
Then you know nothing of the news? Of the massacres, the revolutionary guards who have been shot …
Ack. Shahs come and shahs go. Here nothing changes, thanks be to God.
Ali looked at Saladin as he smiled and repeated the words of the old man.
Yes. Thanks be to God.
They stayed outside a while longer, and Saladin listened for a television or a radio, but there was only the susurration of the wind through the grain and some far, loud bug. A few smoky wisps rose from the center of the huts, but no lights flickered from the glassless windows, no sound of machine or music came into the street, and Saladin understood. In a town without news there is no news of them, their crime, their flight, and without news they were simply brothers on a journey, innocents.
Ali turned a shaft of grain between his teeth.
Yes. Yes. Nothing changes. Thanks be to God.
They worked days in the field, and nights they returned to the old man’s hut, ate the woman’s bland food, and slept through the quiet dark. Sleep did not come easily. If it was not the old woman’s snoring and the old man’s restlessly chattering teeth, then it was the deep silence that covered the village and seeped into all the homes and heads. Saladin lay awake remembering the lyrics of Elvis songs, lines from James Bond movies, the particular pitch of radio static that hummed behind the Voice of America. But the quiet was bigger than these small memories and he stayed awake, craving some hum of the world outside this world. In the silence he felt the dust of the village seep into his fingernails, between his eyelids, up the crack of his ass as if the earth were trying to bind him. Even the sky pressed him down until he could barely breathe, and in this suffocation came sleep.
Each night he dreamed about his mother.
In one dream he was a boy in his third year of school. His mother had just died and he was asked to give a report about her. He stood before the class in his wool V-neck sweater and short pants and read from a piece of paper that was written in her hand. I had a mother once. When she slept on her side, the weight of one breast made a line down the middle of her chest, like she had been folded in half. In the morning she drank dark tea and did not look anywhere but at her magazine and the bottom of her teacup and never at my father, who shouted loud enough to shake the windows. At night she smoked thin cigarettes and sang or cried or laughed, depending on the moon, she said. I had a mother who loved cinema and radio programs and me more than my brother. A mother who took me to my first cinema and the one after and gave me money to go by myself. I had a mother who stood far apart from my father, called him a coward, a weak captain, a man who could not provide for his family or send her to Tehran to buy clothes and see cinema. And then one day I had no mother and a father who was not as sad as I.
In the mornings Saladin was the last to wake and trailed behind the men on their way to the fields as Ali went up ahead with the rest, addressed the village wives and children by name, while the women smiled kindly in return. No one noticed the surly brother who ambled and squinted just behind. On the fourth day they did not go to the fields. The men woke and ate and washed but did not walk west as they had all the days before and turned east instead, in the direction of the hills from which Saladin and Ali had just fled. Ali grabbed the old man by his thin arm.
The fields? Why aren’t we going to the fields?
The old man shook off the hold and kept walking.
We have duties beyond those fields. Come.
After an hour of walking they stopped on the side of a slope where the air blew hot and they were without shadow and exposed. Around them small mounds rose from the ground, and where there were no mounds, the earth gaped with deep, square holes. Saladin bent to look into one and saw the dirt wink with tiny blue, green and gold eyes. The men went to work, with fingertips and tiny tools, and carved away the earth little by little. When a jewel or ornament dropped into their open palm, they tossed it into a basket with all the ceremony given to a bulb of garlic or blossom of radish. The old man came to the brothers with a small shovel and an even smaller pickax.
Carefully. Very carefully.
In the tight space the brothers dug back-to-back, and Saladin felt every move of Ali’s shoulder and torso against his own. In front of him the walls of dirt twinkled with all manner of tiny buttons and medallions, charms and broken trinkets, but Saladin could find no worth in them.
How l
ong until we leave this place, Ali? We can’t stay forever.
Behind him Ali’s back and shoulders moved relentlessly and answered, breathless.
Baba, relax. This place is good for now. We have to stay away for a while.
How long?
Longer. Until the news of the guards is gone. Until the mullah leaves our town.
There was nowhere to go, nowhere to fight or argue, the hole was small and with the energy of his anger Saladin could only dig. When the pieces started to fall, he threw them up without care for their shine or shape, and soon his face and neck were covered in sweat. He felt Ali’s shoulders jostle up and down, and then he heard his brother laugh.
Just like your pool. Remember? The pool you wanted so badly. The one we dug in the backyard?
Eleven years old, their mother just dead, Saladin lived in the cinema. He went for the dark, the sounds and the images of a world lovely and clean, full of mothers and wives and happy girls. In many of the movies there were pools. Rectangles of clean water and tile, and every time there was a pool there were pretty girls in swimsuits, men with jokes, sun and splashing. He begged his father to build one in their hyatt. Build it yourself, he had said, and Saladin bribed his brother with the money he had saved for a trip to Tehran. Ali took the money but was of little help. He would throw shovel loads of dirt over his shoulder onto Saladin and joke, You don’t think Haleh is going to put on a swimsuit to get into this puddle? Does Haleh even have a swimsuit? Saladin ignored him and the hole grew bigger, and Saladin imagined the crystalline water, the swimming races, the ghost of his mother smiling down at her beautiful reflection. His brother left him on his own and the fall rains came, and in the end it was a shallow, muddy hole that even their youngest sister, a toddler who loved puddles, refused to get in. Ali went on, giggling.
Saladin did not get annoyed now, tried not to get frustrated that he was stuck, again, in a hole with his brother, he did not even hear him, so quickly and noisily did his head jump from memory to memory all the way to the idea that made him dig furiously at a large piece packed tightly in the earth. The pools were in America. He had not wanted the pool, he had wanted America. A country to the west of the mountain town, far, impossible to see except in the cinema. And now, even in this hole, Saladin is a dozen steps closer to America. All of the hardest and heaviest steps, the ones out of the mountain town, out from under the heavy press of love and family, name and blood, had already been taken the night they did not sleep, and all the steps now, out of the hole, west, across land and water, would be far easier.
The Walking Page 3
