The Lemon Grove

by Ali Hosseini

  “If Ruzbeh were here and was well,” he says, “this place wouldn’t be run down this way. It wouldn’t be in danger of being taken over, either. Ah, poor Ruzbeh. It’s hard to imagine what war is like, what he went through at the front and then being injured. Even Shireen became strange to him—Shireen whom he loved so much. You weren’t here to see them together in this orchard. It was like the Garden of Eden, and they were inseparable. You know, they had plans for this place. Ruzbeh was studying agriculture at the university in Shiraz. Shireen was studying there too, although I’m not sure what. You know all this of course. Ruzbeh told me he was learning about new ways to irrigate the desert. The way the Israelis have done wonders in the Holy Land. He said there were experts coming from Israel to study the irrigation system in our province and that he might go to Israel to see for himself. It would have been a nice trip for him. Israel—I wonder what it’s like there. But then everything changed with the revolution. Overnight America and Israel were the enemy. Then the war with Iraq started and Ruzbeh like many young people ended up going to the front.”

  I don’t want him to talk anymore. Everything he says is causing me more anxiety. I wish he would get up and leave as he said he was going to.

  “I’ve looked for him all over,” he says, pointing outside. “To the end of the fields and into the desert. What is this ‘shell shock’ we hear about these days? All these awful new words that we never heard before and now are on our tongues day and night. I can’t comprehend the power of a grenade or rocket—a man-made thing that blows people up and even if you’re far away, these things still shake you so hard that the sound never goes out of your head. Has God created us to make these sorts of things? Ruzbeh was a calm and free-spirited man before he went to the war and became moji— shell-shocked. That’s what they call it, shell-shocked. It’s something new to us in this country, we never had seen it or heard of it before. Until a few months ago Ruzbeh would come here, sunburned, weak, and lost. Each time, I tried to make him stay. I gave him a big bowl of milk and some nan or whatever food I had with me. He ate in silence, although I could see he was nervous. He would eat quickly and then go back to the desert. You know what I think? I think he hears the sounds of the war in his head.”

  Agitated, I get up and move toward the door. I need to go and find Ruzbeh, but neither my mind nor my body cooperates. I feel light-headed and nauseous.

  “What are you doing? You can’t go out in this hot wind, in this sun. Sit down.” He talks as if he understood my intention. “You won’t find him, believe me. We have to wait for him.”

  I sit down and keep my silence.

  “What can I say about these strange times? May God forgive those who pain us, damage us, and do evil acts. Well, what was I going to tell you? Ah, yes. You see, I actually went to the city to try and tell you. And that’s when I first heard about Shireen. One of your neighbors told me. I sat there in the alley by your door and cried. Yes, I cried. How could that happen? I told myself it must be a mistake. They must have been looking for someone else. It has happened before that they took away the wrong person. Shireen was intelligent. When she was going to the university, many times she brought her classmates here. I would sit and listen to them and watch Shireen talking to them in sign language. They were full of ideas about everything, eager and hopeful for better days. For sure there must be a mistake.

  “Your neighbors told me you’d run away, gone back to America. People have nothing to do these days except talk. Empty talk is as abundant as the sand out there in the desert.” He points outside and is quiet for a moment.

  “Now that you’re here, you must stay put. These days no property should be left without its owner close by. This place belongs to you, to your family. You shouldn’t let it run down. This beautiful property could be like the Garden of Eden again, if you take care of it.”

  I can’t help smiling at this hopeful old man and his ridiculous idea.

  “I need to be as clear as I can. I’ve seen some people coming here, looking around. They’re just waiting for any excuse to take the property out of your hands. Maybe it’s the villagers. But I would say more likely someone from the city. City people have been going around finding places like this and buying them for practically nothing or taking them over, mostly properties that belonged to people who had to leave the country because of the revolution. You see, they can do it because they have connections in the new government. This young man—Kemal is his name—is one of them. He’s the one who told me what happened to Shireen. I didn’t believe him until I went to Shiraz myself. He’s a suspicious young man, if you want my opinion. I think he scared Ruzbeh away, and that’s why your brother hasn’t come back for months. Kemal seems to be everyone’s enemy. I don’t know what group or gang he has connections with or what illegal things he has his hands in.”

  He goes to the door and looks out for a moment.

  “I’ve seen him come here with several other people. I’ve seen them looking around and wandering in the Naranjestan. I’ve tried to figure him out, but he’s too clever for me. He won’t give you a straight answer. If he comes here, which I’m sure he will, you must be very careful. I suspect—no, as a matter of fact, I know—that he is after this lemon grove. When you were abroad in America, his father was killed in a fight over land. Someone hit him on the head with a club. For what? For a piece of land, a piece of scorched earth. For a piece of this salt land! How much greed humans have. We forget that in the end all the land we really need is less than six feet! This Kemal has his eye on the land. He’s told everyone that he has a share in this place because his father lost his life over it. But that’s not true. I know that. It wasn’t this land. It was a different property altogether. I’ve heard him say, ‘I’m going to take this place. Aghaye Pirzad’s sons are not the type to take care of it. Ruzbeh has lost his mind and is wandering in the desert and Behruz is in the city daydreaming about America.’”

  Suddenly Musa gets up and looks outside.

  “That’s what I wanted to tell you. I owe this much to your parents and to Ruzbeh. They’ve always helped me and my family. If you hang around, I may be willing to tell you more one of these days. It’s too much for one day. Now it’s up to you. This place is yours—it belongs to your family. You’re here now, not in America.”

  He picks up his stick. “Don’t think of doing anything crazy. And don’t leave this room.”

  I try to smile at him as he turns and goes out. I go to the door and watch until he is no longer visible in the dusk and it’s as if he’d become one with the desert.

  Four

  I CAN’T REMEMBER FALLING ASLEEP last night, but my first night’s sleep in days left my mind calmer. Early this morning, when I went to the orchard to urinate, my urine was bloody. I wasn’t alarmed, but the sharp burning brought tears to my eyes. I haven’t told the old man, having no patience for his remedies.

  Yesterday Musa brought another old army blanket and a kerosene lamp. He helped me move to a different room of the farmhouse. This room is much cleaner and has two windows. From one of the windows I can see the well and the redbrick pump house next to it. A pipe from the pump leads from the pump house to a small cement pool, now empty and only dreaming of the shor-shor of flowing water. Beyond the pump house, the fields spread out flat as far as the village, about four miles distant. The desert-colored village is often barely visible except for the smoke that coils up mornings and afternoons.

  Through the east window are the trees of the Naranjestan, half of them dead now and in need of replacement. Many times when we stayed in this room, Ruzbeh would wake me to see the morning sun over the white blossoms. The lemon grove covers about fifty acres and has a single row of sycamore trees as a border around it. In the distance, the arid mountains stretch southward with the ancient city of Shiraz hidden in the valley behind—is it possible that Shireen is still there?

  The wind is blowing continually. It blows with determination, as if trying to summon up the wandering ghost
s of this ancient land and scatter them to the far corners of the earth. It sweeps over the orchard and fields, picking up dust and dead leaves and rolling them up into whirlwinds that glide across the land. As soon as one reaches the edge of the desert, another picks up. One after another they circle over the fields, taking their gatherings and wrapping them up in an amber veil of dust and thorns rising up to the sun.

  The bare, half-dead trees of the orchard are in a fearful battle with the wind. They bow and bend and every so often a branch breaks away, light and empty, giving way to the flow.

  This ruined farmhouse and everything else I see around me are not the way I remember. The house has been added on to and has a new hallway with three more rooms. There’s a stone porch in front with columns, now crumbing, that hold up the roof. Nearby there is a half-finished swimming pool. Maybe this is what Ruzbeh meant in his letter when he said he was building a place as nice as any I had seen in America. I still remember his words—“Behruz-aziz, the beauty of a place is not only in fair weather and greenery. The pleasant company of friends is a must as well. When you come back, we will flee the heat and gloom of the city with our friends and come here. We’ll stay all summer if we want. Like our childhood days—you must remember.”

  Remember? Certainly I remember. You weren’t aware of what was happening to me—how I waited for your letters and how with each one I would imagine you and Shireen in the gardens of Shiraz or in the Naranjestan, talking and laughing. And now, everywhere I look, I see you, Ruzbeh. I see you, Shireen, and remember the times we wanted to love and be loved.

  In springtime we were happy. Even Father was glad to leave the city and the calamities of his office behind, and Mother couldn’t wait to get to the orchard and into the open air. She enjoyed being with Shireen’s mother and loved Shireen as if she were her own daughter. We would run into the Naranjestan among the trees and crimson-flowered poppies. Father would sit at his usual place under the willow tree, smoking his water pipe, drinking tea, and watching the workers in the orchard. Sometimes he would sit there for hours, maybe daydreaming about the grandchildren who someday would be there playing around him.

  The spring days would be quiet with the orchard full of lemon flowers and the fields green with winter wheat. Then one day the blossoms would wither and cover the ground. Father would order Haji Zaman to organize another round of fumigation. People would come to look, talk, and gossip and would offer all sorts of opinions. Someone would say it was the water, another would claim it was the soil or the fertilizer. There was even whispering that it was the wrongdoing of our ancestors!

  The government agricultural technicians came too. They would wander in the lemon grove collecting branches and soil samples and then suggest a particular treatment—every year something different, but with the same results. Nothing improved. And you, Ruz-beh, you also fought the diseases and even went to school to study agriculture. You tried to send soil samples to me in America, unaware that U.S. law forbids the entrance of soil or seeds.

  Haji Zaman would try to convince the concerned people, even the agricultural technicians, that it was the work of demons and jinnis. He would ask Mother to walk with his wife through the orchard, carrying a Koran and burning incense in an effort to send the ancient ghosts back to the desert. We would follow behind, chanting along with childish seriousness. We listened quietly as Mother talked to the trees, telling them to get well and touching them to see if they had a fever. And now, here they are, the old trees still hanging on despite the endless years of drought.

  Father died two years after I went away to America, but when I look toward where he used to sit beside the dry stream, I can almost see his bony figure. He’s stooped over and sucking on the empty water pipe, his hands like dry branches, his eyes as empty as the fields in front of him. His voice, though, is strong, as it was even in old age. “There’s no hope for you, Behruz,” he says. “You’re here and not here. You don’t stay and you don’t go away. You’re happy and not happy. You have your heart here and God knows where else. Look at you! I foresaw your future very clearly. I knew you weren’t patient enough to finish anything. Why did you go to America with a heart full of hopes and dreams and then return to this scorched land? Someone like you isn’t made for taking care of this place. Leave it, go away from here.”

  But you, Ruzbeh, you were his man. You became his man. He grew to trust you, to believe in you. He knew you would take care of this place, keep it alive. And you did what you could. You were able to do it because you had Shireen beside you. Did you know, Ruzbeh, that I left to give you room to be with Shireen? You had the benefit of her beauty and high spirits, her strength and hopefulness to help you take care of the old orchard until the hurricane of revolution came, uprooting the established order and replacing it by force with a new and unexpected one. A cataclysmic change that gave birth to the war that has been devastating for you and so many others.

  Tired of standing and looking through the window, I go outside. I shield my eyes from the wind and see a shadowlike movement in the haze. It must be Musa and his sheep out in the fields. I wander in the orchard and stop under a sycamore tree where Father put a rope over a big branch and made a swing. What an unforgettable day we had here, a day that left its ugliness with you, Shireen. We were only children. We were only playing.

  The three of us were here in the corner of the orchard. We had tied a white chador to the trees and made a tent, a bridal chamber, and acted out a wedding, our own made-up wedding. You were the bride, Ruzbeh the groom. I was a friend invited to the wedding. I can see it now. We were lying down with you between us. I was holding you from one side and Ruzbeh from the other. It was a warm, nice feeling, just lying together, enjoying our innocent game. The sun and the shadows of the branches were playing on the top of the chamber, when suddenly a voice came like thunder, the birds scattered, and the chamber was pulled away.

  “What are you doing? Who taught you this?” It was Haji Zaman. “It’s all your idea, Shireen, isn’t it?” He grabbed your hand, yanked you up, and wrapped the chador around you. “I can see it in those devilish eyes of yours!”

  I could feel his grip around my wrist, pulling me up. He bent over, looking straight at you. “You wretched girl. You’re always up to something shameful, aren’t you? What were you doing? Ha! Tell me!”

  Ruzbeh got up and stood beside you. I didn’t understand what was wrong, what we had done that was so bad. Haji looked at me with his big red eyes, then at Ruzbeh. I cried, “Maman, Maman,” but you didn’t cry and didn’t answer your stepfather. Ruzbeh was holding your other hand. Between my tears I saw Haji’s hand going up and then coming down.

  “What were you doing?” he shouted. Slap. “Ha? Tell me.” Slap. “Or by Allah I’ll cut your tongue out.”

  He bent down in front of you. “If you do things like this now, what will you do when you grow up?”

  Then I saw my mother and your mother rush toward us as if flying. I ran to Mother’s open arms, but Ruzbeh stood there holding your hand.

  “Why are you hitting the children?” Mother said angrily.

  “They are doing shameful things.” Haji Zaman raised his voice. “It’s all Shireen’s idea. She must be punished. I can’t touch these boys. But her—she must learn not to do it again.”

  “Haji, don’t hit my child,” your mother said, stepping closer to wrest your hand from Haji’s grip.

  He pushed her away. “Tell me, Shireen!” he demanded. “It was your idea, wasn’t it?”

  He dragged you toward the pump house. Ruzbeh didn’t let go of your hand and was pulled along.

  “Haji, let the child go,” Mother pleaded.

  “No, Khanom. No. I’ve got to punish her. If I don’t do it now, I’ll never be able to control her later.”

  Haji stopped by the fire that he had fed with the dry brush and branches he had collected throughout the Naranjestan. I watched as you clenched your teeth while trying to free your wrist from Haji’s grip. Suddenly he screamed.
You had one of his fingers between your teeth.

  “You bite me, ha? You don’t want to talk, ha? I’ll make you talk.”

  I saw the flames of the fire and the reddened tongs in Haji’s hand. With his other hand he was trying to open your mouth.

  “Haji, don’t. Don’t hurt my child,” your mother asked desperately, pulling Haji’s coat. “I swear to Allah, don’t hurt my child. Let her go!”

  Haji pushed her away.

  “I knew it,” your mother wailed from the ground. “I knew you would never be a father to her. Oh, did God take her father away from me so I would end up with this cruel man?” She grabbed Haji’s leg.

  “Don’t, Haji,” said Mother, holding Haji’s arm. “Don’t do it,” she said, struggling with him. Haji finally managed to free himself. Then I saw you flat on the ground with Ruzbeh bent down, still holding your hand, and Haji Zaman moving away.

  I listen and then hear the sound of a motorcycle. On the path from the village dust is rising and a motorcycle is coming toward the Naranjestan. I hurry back to the house and look out the window. The tails of the bandana tied around the rider’s head flap out behind him. He slows down and stops by the pump house. He is a slim man with a mustache and is wearing olive-green clothes.

  When he takes off his sunglasses and looks toward the window, I squat down, hoping he won’t see me. The few minutes that pass seem like forever. Then I hear voices. I move behind the door and try to see through the broken boards. The cyclist talks to Musa, then grabs an old shovel lying beside the building and walks to the orchard.

  Musa hurries into the room and gestures to me not to make a sound. I watch the man, a ghostly figure in the dust and wind, digging beneath one of the lemon trees.

  “That’s Kemal,” Musa whispers, “the young man I told you about.”

  Kemal takes a small sack out of the hole and shakes off the dirt. Then he throws down the shovel and walks toward the house. I freeze and don’t know what I should do or could do. Before Kemal gets any closer, Musa runs out to meet him. They talk for a moment and then turn and together walk back toward the motorcycle. Ke-mal ties the sack on the back of the motorcycle and, pointing to the house, says something to Musa. I turn my head and try to hear them, but the wind takes their voices away.