The Lemon Grove

by Ali Hosseini

  Musa waves his hand toward the building, then toward the desert, pointing at something or indicating a direction. Giving up on trying to understand, I drop to the dirt floor, my heart beating hard against the ground.

  Five

  THE SPOT BESIDE THE DRY STREAM has become my favorite place. I sit against a half-dead tree and watch the fields and the village in the distance. If I see anyone coming this way, I can disappear into the lemon grove.

  There is a group of men, women, and children on the road and it looks like they have emerged from a long-forgotten world. They carry black-and-green banners that wave above their heads. The beating of the drums and the mourning wails are just like in a passion play. The women are in black cloaks that shimmer in the bright sunlight. A fawn-colored horse is being led at the front of the group. The horse, Musa says, is named Zoljena after the horse of Imam Hossein who fought against the infidels in the desert of Karbala. The animal is kept saddled and ready for the Holy War against the new Iraqi infidels. I don’t know how many times I’ve looked out at a scene like this. Maybe every day since I came here—I’ve lost count. They are probably on their way to the city to accompany the young men going to the front or to bring the body of a martyr back home.

  It was past midnight when I finally fell asleep. As on all the other nights I dreamed of the square in the city and the chanting crowd that was hunting me. I couldn’t see their faces, only their dark figures, shadowy in the bright daylight. Their pockets were full and their hands ready as they waited for the casting of the first stone. In the square a figure wrapped in a white shroud was buried to her bosom.

  The shrieks of the jackals woke me. I could hear them beyond the walls of the farmhouse. They have been coming out every night, and in the mornings I’ve seen their footprints on the soft ground around the building. This morning, at dawn when they were gone and the horizon was turning to amber, I ventured out half-asleep and went into the orchard. The trees were still, as if resting from their night’s battle with the wind. For a moment I thought I saw someone moving behind the trees. Although fearful, I looked around, thinking it could be Ruzbeh. I walked out of the orchard and still didn’t see anyone. I kept walking until I reached the desert and the sand, cool from the night’s chill, grew warm under my feet. I tore my shirt off my parched skin and went on. I walked until the sun was directly above me in a colorless sky. My feet burned from the desert salt that had crept into every cut. My mouth was dry, and I felt the sand scratching my throat. Around me dead bushes whispered in the wind.

  But where did I go? And how did I get back to the Naranjestan? Was it a human figure I saw there in the distance, or only a shimmering shadow, a trick of the desert? Was someone watching me from afar? If it was Ruzbeh, why did he run away from me? I walked in his direction, but each time I got closer he was gone. I have to go on searching this unsearchable place until I find him. I have to tell him what happened to Shireen—he needs to know. I should go back to the city and search for him and Shireen. Maybe she is alive. Maybe she survived. Could it be possible to survive the anger and the stones? Maybe she too ran away to the desert. Maybe we’re all here in this desert full of the signs and secrets of defeated and victorious people and dynasties come and gone.

  Last evening I watched the full moon slowly rise and roll out her silver sheets over the desert. But then she went away, as if there were somewhere else she had to be. Left alone in the night, I lay down on the brick platform beside the farmhouse and listened to the desert—the sounds that come alive in the dark, the whispers that move past as if the earth were breathing.

  I wandered lost among the stars and the darkness. The flickering stars reminded me of the fireflies that I saw with Juanita those summer evenings in America. I went to the United States to study. But I couldn’t sit and listen to the math instructor with a voice like chalk on a blackboard, or the chemistry teacher whose hair and eyebrows looked like he had stood too close to the Bunsen burner, or the beginning-philosophy professor with his bushy mustache, trying to look like Nietzsche. Why couldn’t I concentrate on my studies? What went wrong? Was it as Father always said—that I didn’t know what I wanted and didn’t take the time to finish one thing before starting something else? Or was it pure laziness and confusion at being on my own? I was too willing to leave my classes and go traveling. To be in a larger classroom, as I thought then, to travel that vast, open land laced with rivers and fertile with forests and fields. To see the cities that scratch the arc of the sky, full of people from the far corners of the globe.

  If it hadn’t been for my friend Juanita, I wouldn’t have had a chance to see the Great Plains. She was a Native American and had jet-black hair hanging down to her waist and an energetic and easy-going nature. She liked to laugh and knew how to deal with the sense of dislocation I often felt in America. I miss the days that we drove to different states and wandered through the downtowns of American cities. We would go to a movie theater—here they’re all burned down—or to a play—something that hardly exists now in Iran. After the theater we would go for a drink at a jazz club. If only I were back in a noisy and smoky bar with Juanita, our heads dizzy with cold beer and hot conversation.

  I promised Juanita that we would go to Iran to experience the desert nights in the Naranjestan and be with Ruzbeh and Shireen. I showed her the letters I had from Shireen when she was studying sociology at the university. She sent news of a campus tense with postrevolutionary changes. Conservative Islamists were ordering women to wipe off their makeup and cover their heads and men not to wear short-sleeve shirts, but the socialists and liberal students and professors were fighting back. Many of the leftist and liberal faculty were being purged from their jobs. Students were boycotting classes and marching on behalf of their professors. Women were standing strong to demand that civil family law not be changed to religious law and that wearing hijab should not be a demand but a choice. In one letter Shireen described how she and her friend Farideh were participating in the movement and gone to the International Women’s Day in Tehran to march with more than a million protesters, mostly women, cheering and demanding equality. The American feminist Kate Millett had traveled to Tehran to support the protesters, marching in the front line of the demonstration. The Islamists were there too, to disrupt the march and enforce hijab. Women without chadors or scarves were beaten up and Kate Millett was detained for three days before being expelled from the country—Juanita and I saw the event on the ABC evening news.

  I used to dream of having Shireen and Ruzbeh come to America so they could experience the freedom there. Then we would be a family again. I knew they would both like Juanita. There were so many things we could show them. Well, they tried. They got their visas and their tickets, only to be unable to follow their plan, because the American Embassy in Tehran was seized by Islamists and the embassy personnel were taken hostage. Shortly after, all diplomatic ties between Iran and the United States were cut.

  In the years just before the revolution, I had endless arguments with my Iranian friends about the political situation in Iran. The Shah’s totalitarian regime controlled the media and didn’t tolerate any opposing voice. One-party rule and the sword of censorship hung above the heads of writers and intellectuals and halted our progress toward democracy. In private we argued and debated. Some of us believed that class struggle would pave the way for an urban guerrilla movement as in Cuba. Some denounced the armed struggle altogether. We spent hours trying to grasp the meaning of concepts like “surplus value.” The Trotskyites and Stalinists were always at one another’s throats. The Islamic students denounced all of us.

  It was a time of words, hopes, and illusions. One friend would talk of “Permanent Revolution,” another would bring up thesis, antithesis, and synthesis no matter the subject, except that he would say it in a different order each time, not really understanding the concept. Yet another friend would attend the meetings wearing boots and overalls, believing that a true revolutionary must be close to the proletarian
way of life—he even slept in these clothes to show his sympathy with the working class, since, according to him, in capitalist societies workers didn’t even have time to sleep normally. This was the same friend who owned a black Trans Am that he would drive through the streets of downtown trying to impress the girls.

  We organized demonstrations, sympathized with other international students, Latin American, Palestinian, and African, and tried to denounce capitalism and be the voice of any social movement around the world. Our rallies always attracted a few Vietnam veterans with shabby army jackets and long hair. We had the dream that one day we would have a country without political prisoners or torture, where there was hope for the future, and we were eager to go back and lend a hand. America was the battleground of growing up for me, a world that I wanted to become a part of but couldn’t embrace totally. I knew I could never completely free myself from Iran. I missed it and was always thinking of my family. It was as if I were suspended between two worlds. The easygoing world of being a student in the United States and the complex culture and habits I grew up with in Iran that were so slow in loosening their hold on me.

  My memories of Juanita calm me down and help me to deal with the loneliness that is always present within me. She comes to me, to my arms. She brings me quietness, the way she always did in our small apartment filled with plants in that small midwestern town where I would lie beside her on the cold nights of winter. She would tell me stories about her Indian ancestors who roamed the plains from the Dakotas to Oklahoma. I would tell her of the orchard of sweet Persian lemons.

  “Sweet lemons?”

  “Yes, sweet ones. They’re yellow just like the ones here, but sweet. We have an orchard called Naranjestan. In spring the lemon grove would be in full blossom, and I would be there with my brother and Shireen—her name means sweet, too.”

  “Who was Shireen?”

  I felt a lump in my throat, not knowing what to say. Not being able to say that she was my brother’s girlfriend but that I liked her too.

  “She’s married to my brother now. I would love to have them meet you. Maybe someday we’ll go there.”

  Maybe. It was “maybe” that controlled my life. Maybe I should stay in the United States and forget about everything back home. Maybe I should just go back to Iran. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It was a plague of uncertainty and doubt. Then came the revolution, a revolution derailed by the Islamists with their anti-Americanism and hostage-taking. And then the war. Not long after Ruzbeh had been called to the front, I received a letter from Shireen saying that he had been injured. I had to make a decision, but my mind was clouded with anger at the war and the people who had brought it about. Not knowing at all what to do disturbed me, and the result of it was arguing with Juanita. Everything seemed to unleash itself against our euphoria. She wanted me to wait and think about the future. But the future was dark to me. I could only think of my brother. Juanita came to doubt my love for her. I decided I had to go back and spent the fourteen-hour flight home sitting without speaking to anyone.

  Those first few months, I thought of her constantly.

  Dear Juanita,

  I’m sending you

  this letter from Persia

  with the smell of tea and tangerines.

  The tea is hot and the tangerine

  is peeled beside my bed.

  Make a pot of hot tea, peel

  a cool tangerine beside your bed.

  Imagine my kisses

  with the bitterness of tea

  and sweetness of the tangerine

  as I imagine yours.

  Behruz

  Six

  I WAS LYING ON THE PLATFORM and must have been dozing when I heard footsteps. I opened my eyes and saw a man in sunglasses standing there watching me. He was stroking his mustache and grinning. I sat up quickly. I recognized him. He was Kemal, the man that Musa warned me about, and there was no time to walk away.

  “I didn’t hear your motorcycle,” I said, trying not to show my nervousness.

  “Exactly,” he said, taking off his glasses. “That’s why you see me in front of you. If you had heard it you would have been heading into the orchard like every other time. I parked it away from here and walked.”

  “What can I do for you?” I asked apprehensively.

  “Nothing.” He sat on the edge of the platform. “There’s nothing I want. I just like to come here once in a while. That’s all. To get away.”

  I didn’t trust his calm demeanor and remained on guard. “I see. I’m Behruz Pirzad. This is my property.”

  “I know who you are.” He smiled. “You don’t need to be alarmed. I’m Kemal.”

  I didn’t say anything. He smoothed his mustache, staring at me. “Ruzbeh and I were friends. I used to come here often.”

  “He’s not here now.”

  “I know. I wish he were. This place needs him.”

  “Did you work for him?”

  “Not really, I came by when he had a problem with the motor pump. The last thing I did was to help him build the pool that never got finished.”

  I must have appeared nervous because he said again that I didn’t need to be alarmed. That he knew Ruzbeh and Shireen very well. And that at one point Ruzbeh had wanted him to work for him. But he didn’t want to because at the time he had a good job at the oil refinery on the road to Shiraz and was planning to move to the city.

  “Why were you helping him?” I asked impatiently.

  He stared at me in disbelief. “Why? Because he’s my friend … It seems you don’t trust me. I’ve always tried to do what I can for him. I’ve taken my motorcycle into the desert many times looking for him.”

  He talked rapidly as if he had to be somewhere. He was quiet for a moment, then suddenly got up, put on his sunglasses, and hurried away. I was surprised to find myself wishing that he hadn’t left so suddenly. I wanted to find out what he knew about Ruzbeh, whether he had ever seen him around here.

  The next day, sitting in my usual spot, I watched the road and waited. I thought he would do the same thing—park his bike far away and walk. He didn’t come that day, but on the third day I heard the motorcycle. He came right up to the pump house, parked, and drew water from the well. After washing up he came to the platform, carrying a shoulder bag.

  “I have a few things for you,” he said, opening the bag. “I thought you could keep yourself entertained with what goes on in this country.” He handed me a couple of magazines and newspapers. “Although you can’t trust what you read in them.”

  “Thanks,” I said warily.

  “I’m glad you didn’t try to avoid me this time.”

  “Should I have?”

  “No. There’s no reason to. I couldn’t believe it when I heard you’d come back from America. What a time to be back!” He sat down next to me. “Tell me about America.”

  I was more interested in finding out about Ruzbeh than talking about America, especially to him.

  “When was the last time you saw Ruzbeh?” I asked.

  “Oh, long ago. At least six months ago.”

  “Here?”

  “No. In Shiraz, at the end of the bazaar, close to the Shah-e-Cheragh shrine. I remember it well, because it was the mourning day for some imam, I don’t know which one, and many pilgrims from the countryside were rushing to the shrine. I don’t know why Ruzbeh was there or why I was there for that matter, I usually avoid those places. It was like he didn’t recognize me or didn’t want to acknowledge me. We said hello and he walked away.”

  “You didn’t see him after that?”

  “No.” He changed the subject yet again. “I’m surprised you came back from America. You must have found everything different from when you went away. It’s worse than even a year ago. No jobs, no security. People have changed too. In this time and place you have to be clever. If you’re not more clever than the next guy, he’ll take your shirt off your back. Trust no one these days. If you ask people around here about me, everyone will tell you someth
ing different. Don’t believe everything you hear. What people say doesn’t bother me a bit. Most of them can’t even see what’s in front of their nose. Don’t get me wrong. Musa’s not like that. He’s a decent man. He has been looking after this place since Ruzbeh went away.”

  “I know,” I said.

  He grabbed his bag. “A few times I asked Musa to let me fix the motor pump and try to irrigate the lemon grove, which is dying of thirst, or just grow some vegetables for our own use. Each time his answer was, ‘The permission has to come from Pirzad’s family.’”

  He eyed me expectantly. “Now that you’re here, it could come from you.” Then he raised his hand in a half salute. “See you later.”

  Seven

  TODAY IN THE DESERT I FOUND MYSELF near an ancient ruin with toppled columns and statues of winged bulls buried in the sand. There was a frieze with an animal standing on its hind legs—a demon in the shape of a winged bull. A warrior was grabbing the bull’s horn and pushing his sword into its body up to the hilt. It was obvious from the crown on the warrior’s head that he was a majestic king. Maybe it was a belief of the time that a king had to prove his bravery by confronting a creature from the underworld.

  I wished I knew whether the king was clenching his jaws in anger or wearing a victorious smile. I guess he was smiling, since, centuries later, another conqueror—one who had perhaps forbidden smiling even on the faces of statues—had scratched out his face. I touched the disfigured face, thinking of this ancient land and all the victories and defeats it has seen. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw a shadow moving among the broken rubble. Was someone watching me? I rushed away, but nothing was visible in the midday haze when I looked back. There was only a soft sound of bells jingling in the distance. I ran until I was back at the Naranjestan, my feet full of cuts and thorns.