She turns to Saladin.
Hrmph. You look just about as lost as you can be.
If he tried, he might be able to understand the words she sings slowly out of her mouth, but he is distracted by the hairs that sprout from the area where her chin meets her neck. The beard is unconvincing, almost an accident on this woman who is, in all other ways, a woman, with long breasts and small shoulders and thin, nimble fingers.
I knew you were coming. Yes. They all come to me. Some at the beginning. Some later.
The voice is easy to listen to, melodic and soft like an owl’s call or a lullaby. Her eyes focus on him and Saladin notices they are not green or blue or black but almost no color at all, lighter than blue, dirtier than white. He tries to match their gauzy, intent stare.
Your mama. She is dead. Is that right? Is your mother dead?
Saladin recognizes the word and looks to the old woman for more, but there is no more. Morde, he thinks. He wants to explain, I am here because of my mother. This was a dream for her. For me. But she is dead. Since I was eleven. I came in her place. She would be very proud of me. In America.
The old woman nods as if she has heard all the thoughts that crossed his mind, and Saladin feels comfort from this old mother who mentions his mother. They sit together in an easy silence for some time.
Yes. That’s what I thought. Mama is always the first home … but you’ll find your way. You won’t be lost forever.
A small smile dances at the edge of her lips and then dissolves, and another face takes the place of the face she wore just a second ago. Her eyes close and her lower lip drops open.
You had a brother too. You had a brother once. Al? Albert? Alley?
Ali. Ali.
The sound of the name spoken out loud splinters in Saladin’s gut, and he is quick off the couch and quick out the house of false diversions and on the boardwalk before the old woman has opened her eyes. The sun is a half circle now, partly hidden by the flat line of the sea, and he looks for a place to take a shit, a place to relieve himself of the nerves that have exploded inside him, but the boardwalk is full of people stopped to watch the sunset. He ignores the oohs and ahhs and steps on their shadows and runs back to the beach where he slept, back to the only place he knows. In running, the urge to shit disappears and he searches the sand to find the divot his body made just last night. Every inch of the beach is the same, indistinguishable. Everywhere a shivering child runs out of the sea, and everywhere a mother waits, towel spread wide. He cannot stand these and other sights and moves on and searches for some far beacon.
Ahead, a pier juts far into the ocean, and Saladin goes toward it for no reason other than it is a landmark his eyes can focus on. When he gets to the long structure, he sees a place, just beneath, where the wooden planks of the pier meet the planks of the boardwalk. It is low and covered and broad, a space for him to tuck himself, to hide. The sand is cold and smells of urine, but he spreads out his body anyway, lies flat on his back and waits for his breath to slow, for night to come, for sleep. As on the night before, memories come instead of sleep, and he thinks of the last time he stretched out on a beach and waited to disappear.
The smugglers left the brothers at the lip of an enormous lake.
Go. Get out. Walk around like the idiots you are. It will be only a matter of hours before the border police find you and send you back.
They offered no instructions or farewells, and the car was gone before either Saladin or Ali had taken his first step.
The afternoon was warm and sunny. The brothers walked on a pebbly beach that sank beneath their feet and tried their best to avoid the families and groups gathered to picnic at sunset. The smell of food plagued them both, but neither brother mentioned it. Saladin let his mouth water and Ali walked slowly past the giant copper pots of fragrant stew. They had no money and no conversations about money and kept on as if they had no need.
Farther down the beach they passed a family speaking Farsi. A mother and grandmother, father and three sons. They had with them sandwiches of bologna and potato salads, thermoses of tea and small almond desserts. Saladin could not stop himself, not with shame or manners, and he leaned down.
Excuse me, agha. I beg your pardon, we heard your Farsi and …
The father looked once at Saladin and once at Ali. He put a hand up to silence Saladin.
Are you leaving Iran? Do you have to leave Iran too?
Saladin did not answer. The man said a few words to his wife, and she looked at him helplessly before handing over a wrapped sandwich and a tin of cookies.
Many apologies. It is all we have. Like you, we have come a long way, like you we have a long way to go. Inshallah, we will all see each other in a better place. Inshallah.
The man did not smile. He did nothing more than pass the two items, but Saladin felt as if they had just met a martyr. He thanked him profusely and waited for Ali to say something, but his brother stared out over the water and made no remarks. They walked away until they were far from the families and the picnics and alone on a narrow stretch of beach. Ali sat in front of a smooth boulder and Saladin sat a few feet away, and quietly they ate. The sun dropped, and two birds of a sort Saladin had never seen, long legged and white, flew close to the surface of the lake.
See, Ali. Many people are going.
Ali said nothing. He picked up handfuls of pebbles and tossed them into the lake.
Many are going. It is not just us.
Ali’s mood hardened. Every handful of pebbles grew heavier, fell farther from where they sat.
Many are cowards. Just like us.
But they are going. They have to go too.
Where are they going? Where? You don’t even know where we are now. We have crossed the border, it will only be harder to get back.
Saladin kept his eyes on the birds, the pale mark they made on the sky. What birds were they? What birds were there in the world?
His brother went on.
You move like a man made of dreams, Saladin jaan. I blame Maman, she took you to that stupid cinema, told you, Of course, jaan am, you can go to Amreeka. And now look at you, look at me. Two brothers on the way to nowhere. We belong to that town, to our sisters, to the life there. Only the weak leave at the first sign of danger. The strong stay, with their people. Their homes.
Behind them the old town of Van pressed its ancient buildings up against the sky, and Saladin saw rooftops spiked with antennae, the glass of their windows murky and dull. There were balconies and a few cars, but no promenades filled with pretty girls and no cinema marquees. It was a town no better than the mountain town. The sun dropped and a few women started to set up their wares, copper pots, knitted shawls, jars of pickled radishes, onions and beets, for the night sale. Saladin knew the taste of the radishes, the feel of the shawls, and his stomach churned with the idea of going back, of a life of knowing things he had always known, a life in which he had caused death.
Ali. We have killed. We might have killed men.
His brother skipped a stone forcefully across the water.
You don’t know what happened to the guards you shot. They all fell. The men I shot, the ones I hit, might not have been dead yet. Maybe I have killed men who might have lived. Maybe you have killed men in the new army.
Ali found a large rock and threw it in. It hit and sank with a loud splash. Across the lake the white birds jumped up and flew. He lay back on the sand with one hand behind his head and one hand on his stomach, his face drained of energy, his breaths in and out of his ribs in slow, steady pulses. He closed his eyes.
I am tired, now. Let’s sleep. It is warm here, no one will bother us on this beach. Tomorrow we will know.
Saladin fell back, and pebbles printed themselves into his shirt and then his skin. He took in the soft blue of the sky as it turned gray and then navy and finally all black like the edits of black between scenes in films, the moment of total dark that allows for change.
Under the pier Saladin lets the memories
come and go. They were tired as he is tired now. They were upset, as he is upset now. And that day, just as this day now, was over and there was little to do in the night but sleep. At the end of the beach the ocean is big with waves and white wash, and heavy waters slam into the pillars of the pier. Saladin closes his eyes tight and feels the vibration of the wood through his bones and muscles, and after a time the heavy rhythm calms him and he is gone, finished with his first American day and off to a sleep that is neither here nor there.
Left Behind
There are those of us who cannot leave.
You go. Take your fear and nerves and your What if? And If then? And Ay, Khodas. Take with you all the selfish and small-minded thoughts but do not try to take us. We, the brothers and fathers and sisters and cousins and neighbors and friends, will stay here, in our apartments and houses, in our gardens and among our dead. This revolution does not bother us. Life is life.
But you have no imagination! you shout.
For what! we ask. For the stories and lies you tempt us with?
It will be just like Tehran or Esfahan, lovelier than Shiraz, you say. It will be better, less dangerous, more free.
Free? We tilt our stubborn heads and ask, What is free? You will have nowhere to point and say, There, there is where I; or, Here, at this corner is where I; or, That is my primary school and this is where my baba works, look, there is my uncle right now, under the hood of that car. He loves that car. All the men in this village have my surname. You get angry when we say this and shout at us, Use your imagination!
Pfff. For what?
Later we will let you know, in phone calls or letters, that we were right.
We will call and say, Yes, things are hard, yes, and the world is upside down here, but we were right to stay. Just last night for example we simply tucked ourselves into the comfortable known beds, and when the noise of the garbageman tossing over an empty can or a sharp dream of you in peril woke us up in the middle of the night, everything was there. The old pillowcase, the photographs of you as a baby, the guitar we shared, the painting our old, dead uncle made, the light of the bright streetlamp outside, made a force of familiarity to guide our minds, our unsettled souls, most directly and easily back to sleep, back home. Come on now, what more do we need before we die? That is enough.
We will pray for you, for your journey, for your crossing. Worry not, we have enough imagination for that.
And, yes, the days will come when our hands will itch from want. Want for the touch of our brother’s rough hand, our daughter’s supple shoulders, and our beloved’s warm cheek. We busy our hands with chores, feel over the objects we have known all life long—the calcium-stained faucet, the doorknob to the hyatt, the bottom button of the wool sweater whose color refuses to change—and think of you and all the generations you have taken with you, away, all of you gone now on journeys complete with small paradises and many little hells.
Days will come when our feet itch from the want of a walk with you down the labyrinths of the bazaar where we busy ourselves with errands of the outside world and keep our heads down as we trace yesterday’s steps to the baker, the teahouse, the woman with the best paneer, and try to forget you in the pleasures of the daily back and forth.
Days pass as they will. After the every-night noise of the television news and radio news that mention nothing of your safe arrival, your quick death, your long purgatory in some strange city where no one is kind, we sit in silence. The silence stays. It fills the space between the waves of longing and our attempts at joy and celebration. Such is life. We will stay and keep this Iran. Let the others go and start a new life elsewhere …
Maybe you are still traveling when Iraq invades the western border? It is September 1980. The leaves on the trees of our street have just begun to turn, and within months we sit surrounded by barren winter branches and listen to the silence between bombs and think of you, of ourselves, of this life and other things. We wash clean our hands and feet and ears and nostrils and we pray. We touch the things you have touched—the stuffed toy, the American rock record, the key to the yard—and we wonder, Are we, here on the verge of death, more alive than you? For we are here, living, while you have gone and that seems now like a kind of death? That you can no longer touch the things you touched, that your marks are slowly being rubbed off all that was once familiar, is a disappearing that is no different from death.
We pray for you. Pray and wait, for though we are stuck here, in this back land with the falling bombs and food lines and masked ceremonies of devotion, there will come a time when our spirits will travel to meet you in some place in the between, some place at the end of days.
In the months after you leave, we are forced to imagine you. How can we not? There is so much empty time in the first weeks there. Time we used to fill with drawn-out, pointless arguments over tea and cigarettes in the kitchen, protracted, roundabout walks that took us to your mother’s house or my uncle’s house, where we sat and waited for the evening to be over. With the beloved, the grandfather, the brother, the cherished daughter, life takes its time. Everything is faster when you are alone.
So we fill the time with thoughts of you and imagine how it is where you are. Around us everything is the same, and some things are worse. The stores offer less variety. There is talk of war though no one wants to hear it. The cinemas are shut down and the universities have refused students for more than a month now. Even the most regular things have been given new names. Shah’s Square is now Azadi Square, my brother insists we call him by his full name, Hossein Abdullah, for the sake of propriety before God. To anger him I just call him boy. In this unremarkable sadness we think of you and know nothing around you is the same.
Do you like what you see? What does the food taste like? Are the people kind? Is the sun the same color, the moon just as meaningful as it is here? Do you stop under the new sky to miss us?
It is not uncommon to slip up, imagine ourselves alongside you in the new lands, eating the strange foods, waiting for transport, nervously clutching our passports and visas and important documents, taking the bus, boat, train. We remember the trips we have taken together in the past, as far as the Caspian Sea, as close as the bakery down the street, and this brings to mind the trips we had planned: the anticipation of dinners in Paris, nights of dancing at Roman discotheques, the photos we would take beside the Statue of Liberty’s stiff flame. We imagine you might do these things without us, and here our imaginings end. It is too exhausting to think of you enjoying our plans; to think of you alone enjoying anything at all is, at times, too difficult to bear.
We start to fill our time with other things, none of them as beloved as you, dear, but we make them important. School, the new job, our sick parents—all become obsessions and distractions. As you gain distance in the world, distance from us, we train ourselves to think of you less. Only on occasion—of your birthday, the day we run into your mother or brother in the market, the anniversary of the day you left—do the imaginings come again strong and fierce and beyond our control and we wonder if you imagine us still.
Do you imagine us? In the boredom of long bus rides, in the hustle and pleading of embassy waiting rooms, when you are alone in some dark without sleep? We like to imagine you think of us then, but it does not escape us that you might also think of us when another eye catches your eye, when some flesh lust draws your attention or when a proposition is made by glance or saunter or laugh. We like to think that you think of us then, remember us, love us even more deeply, from afar.
How do you reach the ones who have gone? Can it be enough to sit and concentrate on their names? Their faces? The habits of their hands? Can you close your eyes and wish for them to hear the thoughts in your head, the cravings in your soul? After a time we recognize it is not in our control. The old, adamant mothers and aged fathers pray to reach you. They call up to God one or two or five times a day for your health, your safe journey and successful arrival as you slip between worlds. They pray to re
ach you as you travel through that middle place where only faith can go.
Let the old pray. We will pass the time with our visions of you eating ice cream in Spain, playing volleyball on a beach in Los Angeles, wearing a cowboy hat in Texas, smiling into an invisible camera, waving and planning our inevitable reunion. And when we no longer have the energy to conjure the image of you loving us from afar, missing us, wishing we were there, we imagine the days we had, the afternoons of slippery games in the shallow rivers, the summer nights asleep under the stars, the shape of your face in the mirror, until even those memories grow into fictions, stories from a past for which we will soon no longer have proof.
Heroes
A truck driver from Taquboustan found them playing soccer with a pinecone. Saladin and Ali shouted back and forth in a mixture of languages, and the truck driver stopped and listened.
Brothers?
He asked in Kurdish.
They stopped their game and said nothing.
If you are here.
He pointed at the lake.
It must mean that you cannot be there.
He pointed east, back to Iran. His Kurdish was odd, chopped off at the edges.
Come. I am going west, to Ankara and then Istanbul. I will give you a ride.
And just as Ali opened his mouth to resist, to say they had not yet made up their minds and Van might be far enough, but thank you, the driver held up the palm of his hand.
Please. I know what it is like to be a Kurd where Kurds are despised. You should go. Van is not safe.
They drove for three days and stopped four times for petrol and twice for the driver to sleep fitfully in the back of the cab. They spoke little and listened to the strange music that came from the endless cassette tapes he kept under his seat. They arrived in Istanbul at night, and the driver stopped the truck in front of an enormous concrete building without windows.
The Walking Page 6
