When he woke, morning light blazed through the front windshield and the driver and passenger brothers shielded their eyes as they argued.
Relax, it’s not too late.
No, baba, it is too late. They’ve already changed shifts. Now we get a fresh guard with nothing to do but search the car.
Na, na. They don’t change until later.
Outside the window a man knelt and stood, knelt and stood on a threadbare rug. He wore no shoes and Saladin was surprised he had not found a more private place to pray. Ahead of them he could see a checkpoint, the border, and then Turkey.
Saladin shook Ali by the shoulders.
Posho.
Ali rolled his head to the other side and kept his eyes closed.
Wake up. We are at the border.
When his brother opened his eyes, Saladin saw red veins reached around the pupils in every direction, and a thick, yellow crust had formed at the edges of his eyelids.
Ali. You have to wake up. You have to hold this bag.
You are the one with the hero’s name. You do it … I am not going to jail for a crime as stupid as smuggling. Come now, Saladin jaan, you wanted to cross the border … you take the risk.
Ali closed his eyes and Saladin looked to the front seats. The brothers hadn’t heard. Saladin shoved the bag onto Ali’s lap and lifted his limp hand over it.
Take it. Remember. They are your books for school.
Ali muttered beneath his breath but could not seem to pull himself out of whatever sleep or dream held him.
The checkpoint was well established and functional, the buildings and roads no older than the young countries they separated. In front of the kiosk a worn flag of Turkey fluttered beside the snapping-new flag of the Islamic Republic. They slowed and then stopped at a gate, a long wooden arm painted yellow and black stopping the cars that tried to pass. An older man in the uniform of a revolutionary guard, beardless and in his own shoes, approached.
Salaam alaikum.
The men exchanged greetings, travel documents, the driver’s birth certificate, citizenship papers, their mother’s address and dead father’s occupation.
The guard looked into the back windows.
So many sons, eh? So close in age? Lucky family.
The passenger brother sighed theatrically.
Baba was a very vigorous man.
The guard walked around the car and tapped twice on the window where Ali’s head was pressed and sleeping. The third tap came from the butt of his rifle, and Ali’s spine shot up straight.
He rolled the window down and looked up at the guard and rubbed his eyes.
At your service! Though I am not sure which service you are in …
The driver brother coughed loudly into his hand.
The guard leaned down until his head filled the space of the window. Saladin saw waves of the day’s heat come off the head in a gaseous halo.
And you? Another brother rushing home to suck from maman’s dried-up teat?
Yes!
Ali announced.
I am going to go home and suck the dried teat. It is the best, you must know.
The guards eyes hardened with suspicion, and Ali’s manner fell even looser and he started to laugh into his hand as if a funny joke had just been told.
The guard straightened and stepped back from the car.
Okay, baba. Out. All of you.
Yes, of course, let me get my bag first. I cannot go anywhere without this bag. You will want to look in it I am sure …
Ali grabbed the leather satchel and began to open his door, and the driver brother jumped out and ran to push Ali back in and slam the door. He stood beside the guard and apologized in a grave, calm voice.
Please, agha, you must excuse him. You are completely right, of all the brothers he is the one who needs our maman’s milk the most. Bechareh. He was born like that. We can’t even take proper care of him. He sits in the mosque all day and keeps the hajii agha company. He’s stuck with the mind of a schoolboy. Look, he carries that dirty satchel everywhere he goes. It’s full of the same books he had in the first class! We have to take him home to Maman. Only she can care for him.
The guard looked at Ali and then at the driver. He looked at the bag on Ali’s lap and then back at Ali, and his face pulled in and then down and his attitude deflated. He walked away from the car and the brother and waved his hand carelessly in the air.
Go. Boro. And take your idiot brother with you. Our new country has no place for fools. Trust we will not let him in again.
The driver brother jumped around the hood and into the driver’s seat and started the car. The arm lifted and he drove cautiously past the kiosk and away from the checkpoint as Ali, like a child, pushed his head, and then shoulders and chest, out the window, and soon it seemed as if his whole body would fall out of the car and drag on the pavement.
Ali!
Saladin shouted.
The car had turned a corner and the driver brother picked up speed just as the passenger brother turned around in his seat and grabbed the waist of Ali’s pants and pulled him back in. He grabbed the leather satchel from Ali’s lap and smacked his face with a heavy, open hand. You thought you could stay? You thought you could make us stay? Get us in trouble?
The car moved fast now, faster than Saladin had ever felt a car move. Everything—the car, the violence, the drop of blood that fell from Ali’s brow—was happening with quickness. Beneath them the wheels spun in rapid rotations, the pistons moved diligently in their shafts, and every second they were all pushed farther and farther from Iran. Locked in a speeding car filled with violence, Saladin tucked his hands between his thighs and looked down and wished for a smooth ride, a happy time, a brother who did not bleed.
The passenger brother shouted at Ali with a fury that turned his pale face red. Just wait until you get to Van. There is nothing there. We should just leave you here, throw you out to die on the side of this road!
Ali did not flinch. His posture slumped but his eyes stayed forward. Saladin had known his brother to fight, to always fight, but in this new land, his brother was limp. The passenger brother cursed a few more times and eventually turned, and everything, except for the sound of the speed, went quiet. Saladin looked out the window and felt his chest heave. He tried to keep the tears down, back behind his throat, in his stomach and gut, and focused his attention on what passed outside, a dry and empty landscape not one boulder different, not one shade changed, from the land they had left.
Far Enough
Only after we cross the border do the questions come.
Only if we were not caught or harassed or tortured on the spot or sent back in army camions do we let ourselves ask, How? For that is a question we save until it is done and we are on the other side, flooded by the first sweat of relief or torrent of tears or prayers to a God we promise to believe in until we die. Only after the crossing with our dreams and direction intact can the men and women of the Iranian exodus stand on the other side of an invisible line and point to a mountain or clump of rocks or expanse of dry fields and wonder:
How far now?
How is it that here, in this nothing, we are safer than in that nothing over there?
Where is the guarantee that we can make a home or a love or a life in this place?
At the first stop after the border we stand, by all means free, and look around to notice that not one thing keeps the long, dark shadows of home from creeping across this random, invisible border and strangling our still-shaking frames.
All right then. How far from here?
And because no one has an answer, the panic surges in those first kilometers as we find this other side is exactly the same as that from which we came. Stuck in this monotony of motion, the men and women of the migration look around again and ask, incredulous, If this earth and rock and sky have not at all changed, then what did?
We keep on. Drive more kilometers, walk more steps, take more buses into the new landscapes and think:
Maybe here? Maybe here it will be different. This might be far enough. When will I know how far is enough? How?
The roads are all made of the same asphalt, the buildings held up by the same mortar, and the air tastes no different in our open mouths. Even as the language changes and none of the words we know suffice to buy a newspaper or order a kebab or find the bathroom or embassy or way out, there is no relief, just the confused faces and useless silence. More kilometers, more movement, more languages and more borders, and soon we begin to fear that maybe all the distance in the world will not do.
Still, we keep going until the roads end in cities where we are reassured by the bustle of cars and countless residents who insist on living their lives as usual. We catch sight of the spires of mosques and hear the azan repeated, and it hits us like a punch and a kiss, as it is familiar but a reminder too of an old home that has pushed us out. And though we know we have moved far, we realize it may not be far enough and so we keep on.
It will spread.
We whisper to one another.
As long as there are believers, who is to say Khomeini’s craze cannot be a craze here? Who can say Turkey is not next? Pakistan? Iraq? What if soon it will be a curse to be a Jew or Baha’i or Kurd everywhere? Where to go?
In truth we know it is not the believers, believers who have been our teachers and neighbors, bakers and dear friends, but the fervor that has just overtaken them. A fervor for change and pride and self-worth that makes it impossible for us to all live together, hold our varying beliefs alongside. We take stock of the first stops and move on like faulty pilgrims, away from belief into disbelief, persecuted for our love of another God and in search of some new and unknown home.
Around us scripts begin to change, the scales of music shift and the smells and textures of food open sensations in us we have never had. The earth sprouts dense forests of high trees and ends at unfathomable seas, but the sky stays the same and we move beneath it with the intuition of migrating birds and fish, forward to some sight unseen, to some farther point, and we do not falter, convinced, as pilgrims are convinced, that home will be found.
For each, the journey has its own end.
Some stop at the familiar faces of family who have gone before. Some stop at a job or a house. Some stop at the beauty and charm of a Rome or Paris or London they had only seen in films or magazines and let themselves believe the fantasy for a time. For others, it is land or money or fear that ends and they simply settle where they do and let exhaustion answer all their questions.
Here. Here is good. Why not? For now.
Most do not stop until everything the eye passes over and the nose smells and the heart feels is foreign, wholly unfamiliar, alien and so, possible. When little is recognizable, they wander about and keep an eye out for the ways they can enter, put down their bags, stay. For many the distance is far, and then just like that it is enough and they drop their shoulders, open their eyes to meet the eyes of the new people around them and take the reins of a life as they planned it. Here the men and women of the exodus unpack and light cigarettes or take apartments and finally walk the streets without luggage and nod their heads.
Yes.
Here.
Now.
And like that we give ourselves the permission to sit and sleep and stay.
Sunsets
The boardwalk is busier now than when Saladin started his walk. He wants to push forward and find a stretch of tall buildings, some other face of Los Angeles, but the crowds are thick and he must stop and start with them as they are fascinated by dancers and magicians and men who twist balloons into small animals. He passes in front of a building boarded over with painted planks of woods that advertise unbelievable oddities. Outside it a man with a thick mustache stands behind a wooden block almost as high as his nose. Carefully he leans forward and makes a show of placing his tongue flat on the surface of the block, and then another show of centering a nail on top of his extended tongue, and yet another show of presenting a hammer and slamming three times into the nail, the flesh of the tongue, the block of wood. There are applause and bows but no blood. He wears a green turban like a Hindu and no shirt. After the tongue he puts small nails through the septum of his nose and then the ears and finally the thin webbing between the fingers of the hand. Pierced, he stands and rotates for all to see. Some take pictures, a few whisper to one another and fewer clap. The rest of the boardwalk passes by until Saladin is the last one standing. The man gestures him to a nearby cage, where a woman sits in a fitted leopard-print leotard, reading a magazine and twirling a dirty tail.
Saladin cannot take her as cartoon or real so he understands her as a local species somewhere in between. He turns away from the ticket booth and walks to the shore. A dull pull of hunger make his gut hot, and he stands against the railing to take in the cool wind of the sea. A few feet away two young girls stand beside bicycles. One smokes a cigarette and stares out at the water. The other combs her almost yellow hair with a black plastic comb. Saladin sees the low-cut blouses, shoes without socks, lips and eyes with no traces of time or worry around the edges, and steps to the girls, midday wind off the sea like a goading hand at his back.
Hello. Please. What is time?
The smoking girl squints at him, checks her watch and then speaks.
Twelve oh six.
Hello.
As he has seen the men in the motorcycle movies do, Saladin stands with both of his hands in his back pockets and pushes his chest out to look cool, comfortable and calm. He repeats, Hello.
The face of the girl with the comb darkens and the smoking girl laughs.
Come on. Be nice. He’s cute.
The smoking one asks.
Well, hello yourself. What’s your name?
Saladin smiles at the one question he recognizes and answers too quickly.
My name is Saladin.
And he wants to go on to explain, to tell her it is the hero’s name, after Saladin of the Ayyubids. Great Kurdish crusader, foe to Richard the Lionheart himself, father to orphans and protector of widows. The name of a conqueror whose courage is still spoken of in all the mountain towns of the Zagros. Warrior who defeated the Christian troops in Tikrit, Basra, at the golden dome in Jerusalem. He says nothing and instead straightens his back and tries to transmute these and other integrities with his posture, his eyes and his smile. He tries again.
I like you dress. Very beautiful.
The girls look down at their shorts and blouses and sandals, and the laughing one laughs and the one with yellow hair says nothing. They roll their bikes away from him into the crowd, and Saladin has no more desire for this day. His appetite is gone and all he craves is to be inside, in a dark room with no windows on this world. He goes to the ticket booth where the woman in the cat costume still twirls her long, soft tail.
How much? Inside?
He points to the boarded up building.
The woman drops her tail.
A dollar.
The woman does not look up and repeats herself. Saladin knows she has just spoken a price he cannot pay, but he stands there until she looks up at him again.
Fine. Go ahead. It’s too early anyway. You won’t see anything.
Saladin walks through the black wooden doors into a dark hall, where he makes his way from one elaborately painted image to the next, feats and scenarios he cannot believe though they are advertised as right there, behind the door exactly as painted: fantastic and live with breath.
On the first door is an image of a blond woman with her legs behind her head, thighs open to the world. He pushes at the door to find a young girl with long, straight, black hair and blue paint on her fingers and toes. Her limbs are thick and her eyes are dull, and after a few seconds she sticks her tongue out at Saladin, a gesture both childish and serpentine. On the next door the painting shows a muscular man swallowing a knife. The man who answers Saladin’s knocks is fat and wears thin pajamas. He keeps one hand on his crotch and the other
on a cigarette.
What?
One door has the painted image of a pale-skinned woman. Her breasts are full and her smile allures, but for the tremendous beard that grows around and under it. Saladin pushes open the door and knows no matter what is behind it, he will enter, he will sit and rest in a cool room.
A black woman sits in front of the small television screen. She does not look at Saladin but speaks loudly in his direction.
Honey, please! Close that door. Don’t let all that heat in.
And it is welcome enough. She is not at all the woman advertised on the door but her room is as dark and cold as he wants it to be, and as Saladin takes a few steps in, she asks.
You going to sit?
And points to an empty place next to her on the couch. She takes up long silver needles and clinks them together to weave one thread of yarn into a long piece of sweater or shawl. Saladin does not have the language to explain that the women of the mountain town did the same thing, but with wooden needles, that everything that has kept him warm has been made this way. He takes the seat beside her and watches the television, a show of policemen on an island that is regularly interrupted by breaks in which men and women and children brush their teeth, drive cars, clean kitchens and eat whipped cream. In truth he is more interested in the old woman. He has never seen skin so brown, so old. Her face is slack, and most of the visible wrinkles are on her hands. The hair on her head is short and wiry and white, and her eyes reflect the television in a blurred glow. The show ends and she leans forward and shuts off the machine with a loud grunt.
The Walking Page 5
