The Book of Fate

by Parinoush Saniee

  It took a week for me to accept the fact that Massoud was gone, but I did not get used to it. I not only missed him and worried about the danger he was in, but I felt his absence daily. With him gone, I suddenly realised how much of a partner he had been and what a heavy load he had lifted from my shoulders. I thought about how after a short time we selfishly deem someone’s help to be their obligation and we forget their generosity. Now that I had to do everything on my own, I appreciated everything Massoud had done for me and my heart ached each time I did a task that used to be his.

  ‘I was devastated when Hamid was executed,’ I told Faati. ‘But the truth is that his death had no effect on my everyday life, because he had never accepted any responsibilities at home. We mourned the passing of a loved one and a few days later returned to our normal routine. The absence of a man who helps and participates in family life is far more tangible and to the same degree much harder to get used to.’

  It took three months for us to learn how to live without Massoud. Shirin who had always been a cheerful girl didn’t laugh as much and at least once a night she would find an excuse to sit and cry. I found my only peace in praying. I would sit at my prayer rug for hours, forgetting myself and everyone around me. I would even forget that Shirin had not had any dinner and I would not notice that she had fallen asleep on her schoolbooks or in front of the television.

  Massoud called us whenever he could. Every time I talked to him my mind was at ease for twenty-four hours, but then anxiety would set in again and, like a stone rolling downhill, gain strength and speed with every minute that passed.

  When two weeks had gone by with no news of him, I was beside myself with worry and I started calling the parents of his friends who had been sent to the front with him.

  ‘My dear lady, it is too soon to be worried,’ Faramarz’s mother said matter-of-factly. ‘I think the boy has spoiled you. It is not as if they are at their auntie’s house and can call home whenever they want. Sometimes they are posted in areas where for weeks they don’t have access to a bath, much less a telephone. Wait at least a month.’

  A month with no news from a loved one who is under a shower of bullets and shells is difficult, but I waited. I tried to fill my days with work, but my mind would not cooperate and I could not concentrate.

  Two months went by and I finally decided to make inquiries at the military department responsible. I should have done it sooner, but I was afraid of the answer I might have received. With trembling legs, I stood in front of the building. I had no choice; I had to walk in. I was directed to a large, crowded room. Men and women with pale faces and bloodshot eyes were standing in line for their turn to be told where and how their children had perished.

  When I sat in front of the administrator’s desk, my knees were shaking and the sound of my heart pounding was echoing so loudly in my ears that I could hardly hear anything else. For what seemed like an eternity, he leafed through his notebooks and then asked, ‘What is your relationship with Private Massoud Soltani?’ My mouth opened and closed several times before I was able to tell him I was his mother. He didn’t seem to like my answer. He frowned, looked down and again leafed through his notebooks. Then, with feigned kindness and reverence, he asked, ‘Are you alone? Is his father not with you?’

  My heart was about to leap out of my throat. I swallowed hard, tried to hold back my tears and in a voice that sounded unfamiliar to me, I said, ‘No! He has no father. Whatever it is, tell me!’ And I half screamed, ‘What is it? Tell me what has happened!’

  ‘Nothing, ma’am, don’t worry. Stay calm.’

  ‘Where is my son? Why haven’t I heard from him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ I cried. ‘What does that mean? You sent him there and now you tell me you don’t know where he is?’

  ‘Look, dear mother, the truth is that there has been heavy military action in the region and parts of the border have exchanged hands. We still don’t have accurate information about our troops, but we are investigating.’

  ‘I don’t understand. If you have taken back the territory, then you have found things there.’

  I could not bring myself to say ‘bodies’, but he understood what I meant.

  ‘No, dear mother, so far no body has been found with your son’s identification tags. I have no further information.’

  ‘When will you know more?’

  ‘I don’t know. They are inspecting the area. It is too soon to comment.’

  A few people helped me get up from the chair, men and women who were waiting to hear similar news. A woman asked the person ahead of her to keep her place in the line and helped me as far as the door. The queue was just like the ones people stood in for subsidised food and supplies.

  I don’t know how I made my way back home. Shirin had still not returned from school. I paced the empty rooms and called out my sons’ names. My voice reverberated through the apartment. Siamak! Massoud! And I repeated their names louder and louder as if they were hiding somewhere and calling them would make them answer me. I opened their closet. I smelled their old clothes and clutched them to my chest. I don’t remember much else.

  Shirin found me and called her aunts. They brought a doctor who gave me an injection of sedatives. Restless sleep and dark nightmares followed.

  Sadegh Khan and Bahman continued to investigate. A week later, they said Massoud’s name was on the list of soldiers missing in action. I couldn’t understand what it meant. Had he turned to smoke and disappeared? Had my brave son perished in such a way that nothing remained of him? As if he never existed? No, it was not logical. I had to do something.

  I remembered one of my colleagues saying that one month after his nephew disappeared in the war they found him in a hospital. I couldn’t sit and wait for the bureaucrats. I wrangled with my thoughts all night long and in the morning I got out of bed having made a decision. I stood under the shower for half an hour to get rid of the effects of the sedatives and sleeping pills, got dressed and looked at myself in the mirror. So much of my hair had turned white. Mrs Parvin, who had stayed with me during those dark days, looked at me with surprise and said, ‘What is going on? Where are you going?’

  ‘I am going to search for Massoud.’

  ‘You can’t go alone! They will not let a lone woman go to a war zone.’

  ‘But I can search the nearby hospitals.’

  ‘Wait!’ she said. ‘Let me call Faati. Perhaps Sadegh Agha can arrange his work and go with you.’

  ‘No. Why should that poor man neglect his life and work just because he is my brother-in-law?’

  ‘Then ask Ali, or even Mahmoud,’ she insisted. ‘No matter what, they are your brothers. They won’t leave you all alone.’

  I laughed bitterly and said, ‘You know that is rubbish. In the most difficult moments of my life they abandoned me more than any stranger would have done. Besides, I need to go alone. This way, I can take my time and search for my innocent child. If there is someone with me, I will end up having to come home, leaving my search unfinished.’

  I took a train to Ahvaz. Most of the passengers were soldiers. I shared a compartment with a couple who were also searching for their son. The difference was that they knew he had been wounded and was in a hospital in Ahvaz.

  Spring in Ahvaz was more like a scorching summer and it was there that after almost eight years I finally grasped the true meaning of war. The tragedy, the suffering, the devastation, the chaos. I saw no smiling face. There was commotion everywhere with people bustling about, but just like gravediggers and mourners at a burial, their movements and expressions were devoid of any joy or spirit, and a constant fear and veiled anxiety hovered deep in their eyes. Everyone I talked to was somehow bereaved.

  I went from one hospital to another with Mr and Mrs Farahani whom I had met on the train. They found their son. He had been wounded in the face. The scene of the father and mother reuniting with their son was heart wrenching. I told myself, If Massoud
has lost his face, I will recognise him by his little toenail. It wasn’t important if I found him crippled and missing an arm or a leg. I just wanted him to be alive so that I could hold him in my arms again.

  Seeing so many wounded, disabled and maimed young men shouting in pain drove me mad. My heart broke for their mothers and I wondered, Who is accountable? How could we have been so unaware, thinking that those air raids alone constituted the war? We had never understood the depth of the calamity.

  I searched everywhere, going to different military offices and departments until I finally found a soldier who had seen Massoud on the night of the military operation. The young man’s wounds were healing and he was about to be transferred to Tehran. Trying to smile reassuringly, he said, ‘I could see Massoud, we were advancing together. He was a few steps in front of me when the explosions started. I was knocked unconscious. I don’t know what happened to the others, but I have heard that most of the casualties and martyrs from our squadron have already been found and identified.’

  It was useless. No one knew what had happened to my son. The phrase ‘missing in action’ was like a sledgehammer that kept pounding on my head. On my way back to Tehran, the load of pain I was carrying seemed a thousand times heavier. I went home in a daze and walked straight into Massoud’s room as if I had forgotten to do something. I went through his clothes. I thought a few of his shirts needed ironing. Oh, my child’s shirts were wrinkled! I started ironing as if it was the most important task I had. My entire focus was on the invisible wrinkles on his clothes. Each time I held them up to the light they still looked creased and I had to iron them again…

  Mansoureh was talking non-stop, but only a small part of my brain was aware of her presence. And then I overheard her say, ‘Faati, it is worse like this. She is really losing her mind. She has been ironing the same shirt for two hours. It would have been better if they had told her he was martyred. Then she could at least mourn for him.’

  I tore out of the room like a wild dog and screamed, ‘No! If they tell me he is dead, I will kill myself. I am only alive with the hope that he is alive.’

  But I, too, felt that I was not far from losing my sanity. I often found myself talking out loud to God. My relationship with him had severed; no, it had transformed into the hostile relationship between a merciless power and someone who had been beaten and had given up on life. A defeated person who had no hope of being saved and in her final moments had found the courage to say whatever was in her heart. I spoke with irreverence. I saw God as an idol that demanded sacrifice and I had to carry one of my children to the altar. I had to choose between them. I sometimes delivered Siamak or Shirin to be sacrificed instead of Massoud and then, with a guilty conscience and deep hatred for myself, I would again grieve and ask myself, What would they think of me if they ever found out that I would sacrifice one of them for the other?

  I was incapable of doing anything. Mrs Parvin had to bathe me by force. Mother and Ehteram-Sadat offered advice and talked about the honour and eminence of martyrs. Mother tried to instil a fear of God in me. ‘You have to be content with his pleasure,’ she said. ‘Everyone has a fate. If this is his will, you have to accept it.’

  But I went mad and screamed, ‘Why should he give me this fate? I don’t want it! Haven’t I suffered enough? How long did I go from prison to prison, wash blood from my loved ones’ clothes, mourn, work day and night, and raise my children despite a thousand miseries? All for what? For this?’

  ‘Don’t speak evil!’ Ehteram-Sadat cried. ‘God is testing you.’

  ‘How long do I have to pass his tests? God, why do you keep testing me? Do you want to prove your power to someone as wretched as me? I don’t want to pass your tests. I just want my child. Give me back my child and give me a fail grade!’

  ‘May God spare you!’ Ehteram-Sadat scolded. ‘Don’t raise God’s wrath. Do you think you are the only one? All these mothers, every woman who has a son the same age as yours is in the same situation. Some have had four or five children martyred. Think about them and stop being so ungrateful.’

  ‘Do you think I thank God when I see other people’s misery?’ I screamed. ‘My heart breaks for them. My heart breaks for you. My heart breaks for myself for having lost my nineteen-year-old son and for not having even a corpse to hold in my arms…’

  I was starting to accept Massoud’s death. That was the first time I mentioned his corpse. But those fights and arguments were making me feel much worse. I lost count of the days and months; I took sedatives by the fistful and thrashed about in a world between sleep and wakefulness.

  One morning I woke up with my throat so dry that I thought I would choke. I made my way to the kitchen and saw Shirin washing dishes. I was surprised. I didn’t like her to do housework with those tiny hands.

  ‘Shirin, why aren’t you in school?’ I asked.

  She stared at me with a reproachful smile and said, ‘Mum, schools closed for the summer a month ago!’

  I stood there aghast. Where had I been?

  ‘What about your exams? Did you take the final exams?’

  ‘Yes!’ she said grudgingly. ‘That was a long time ago. Don’t you remember?’

  No, I didn’t remember and I didn’t remember how thin, sallow and sad she had become. I had been so selfish. In all those months wallowing in my own sorrow, I had forgotten she existed; I had forgotten the little girl who was perhaps grieving as much as I was. I held her in my arms. It was as if she had long wished for that moment. She was trying to bury herself deeper in my embrace. We were both crying.

  ‘Forgive me, my dear,’ I said. ‘Forgive me. I had no right to forget you.’

  Seeing Shirin so unhappy, so thirsty for love and so helpless, pulled me out of my apathy and stupor. I had another child for whom I had to live.

  Heartbroken and alone, I resumed my daily life. I tried to stay at work longer and drove myself harder. I could not concentrate on anything at home. I decided never to cry in front of Shirin. She needed a normal life, she needed fun and joy. That nine-year-old girl had been harmed enough. I asked Mansoureh to take her with them when they went to their villa on the Caspian coast. But Shirin didn’t want to leave me alone and so I went with them.

  The villa was the same as it had been ten years earlier and the northern coast, with the same beauty as before, was waiting to transport me back to the best days of my life. The sound of the boys playing together echoed in my ears. I felt Hamid’s eager gaze following me. I sat for hours and watched him play with the children. Once I even picked up their ball and threw it back to them. These beautiful images would suddenly end with an intrusive sound. God, how quickly it had all passed. Those few days had been my share of a sweet family life. The rest had all been filled with pain and suffering.

  Everywhere I looked brought back a memory. Sometimes I would instinctively open my arms to embrace my loved ones and I would suddenly come to, look around me with shock and wonder if anyone had seen me do that. One night, when I sat on the beach drowned in my thoughts, I felt Hamid’s hand on my shoulder. His presence seemed so natural. I murmured, ‘Oh, Hamid, I am so tired.’ He squeezed my shoulder, I laid my cheek on his hand, and he gently stroked my hair.

  Mansoureh’s voice made me jump.

  ‘Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you for an hour!’

  I could still feel the warmth of Hamid’s hand on my shoulder. I wondered, What sort of fantasy is it that seems this real? If madness means breaking with reality, I had reached it. It was so pleasant. I could surrender to it and live the rest of my life in sweet illusions, in the freedom of insanity. The temptation drove me to the edge of the cliff. It was only Shirin and my responsibility for her that forced me to resist taking the plunge.

  I knew I had to go back home. I was suddenly afraid the fantasies would defeat me. On the third day, I packed my things and returned to Tehran.

  One warm August day, at two in the afternoon, everyone at the office suddenly started running and s
houting with joy. They were all congratulating each other. Alipour opened the door to my office and yelled, ‘The war is over!’ I didn’t move from my chair. What would I have done if they had given me this news a year ago?

  I had not gone to make enquiries at any military department in a long time. Even though as the mother of a soldier missing in action I was extended every courtesy, the officials’ expressions of respect were as painful to hear as the insults I had endured behind the prison gates as the mother of a Mujahed and the wife of a communist. I could not tolerate them.

  More than a month had passed since the end of the war. The schools had not yet reopened. At eleven in the morning, the door to my office flew open and Shirin and Mansoureh burst in. I leaped up in horror, afraid to ask what had happened. Shirin threw herself in my arms and started to cry. Mansoureh stood there staring at me with tears streaming down her face.

  ‘Massoum!’ she said. ‘He is alive! He is alive!’

  I fell in my chair, leaned my head back and closed my eyes. If I was dreaming, I wanted never to wake up. Shirin was slapping me with her small hands. ‘Mum, wake up,’ she pleaded. ‘For the love of God, wake up.’ I opened my eyes. She laughed and said, ‘They called from headquarters. I talked to them myself. They said Massoud’s name is on the list of prisoners of war; on the United Nations’ list.’