by Ali Araghi
—
SOME OF THE FOOD HAD burned over unattended fires. They emptied the cauldrons and washed them before starting anew. Pooran gave quick instructions to the men and women and hurried inside the house to her daughter. Maryam had locked herself in her room. Huddling behind the door, a few women were trying to draw her out. When all attempts failed, Pooran asked a girl to fetch a man from the garden. Mohammad the Carpenter threw some ineffectual kicks first. Then he took a few steps back and slammed his fat body through the door.
Maryam was sitting on the floor cutting her wedding dress into small pieces. White clippings were strewn all around her like snow. Apparently unperturbed by the intrusion, Maryam cut a strip off the skirt of the dress and flung it aside. Pooran closed the broken door and held her in her arms. Maryam said she would not marry with her father’s body above the ground. Her mother reasoned that the wisest thing was not to cancel the wedding, that Khan was taking care of everything and many in the village were busy making sure that things would go well. In the end, she said that this was what Nosser would have wanted her to do. “That’s a lie, that’s just a lie,” Maryam shouted, shaking her head, her cheeks rosy, her small nose red.
“Let me tell you something then.” Pooran petted her daughter’s hand. “Last night, in the middle of the night, I heard noises in my sleep. I opened my eyes. The room was dark and your father was not in the bed. I sat up and then I saw him. He was sitting on a chair in front of the wall where your wedding dress was hanging. When he heard me wake up, he turned around. He said all his life he had been waiting for this night.”
Maryam put the scissors down and buried her face in her hands.
* * *
—
WHEN AHMAD FINALLY STIRRED THAT afternoon, he saw his mother sitting with her back to him, a silhouette against the huge, curtained window with panes of different colors. Ahmad heard his mother’s stifled weeping above the other sounds that came through the half-open window: men and women talking, pots and pans clinking, the cries of children running around. He recognized some of the voices. His mother turned. “You’re up at last!” Her eyes were red and puffy. She crawled to his bed and scooped him into her arms.
“My boy! My life! I was so worried. I’m happy you opened your eyes again.” Tears streamed down her round cheeks. Her shuddering shoulders shook Ahmad’s head. She put him down and wiped her tears with her sleeves. “But we can’t tell anyone,” she lowered her voice. “You have to keep everything to yourself for now. If anyone from the groom’s family asks where your father is, say, ‘I don’t know’, say, ‘He must be in the Orchard somewhere.’ ” With her red headscarf that was now around her neck, she wiped a tear hanging from the tip of her nose. The room was hot. The feeble breeze only billowed the beige curtain. “Listen. Ahmad. Are you feeling all right?” Ahmad nodded. “Okay, listen. I have to go sort things out. Stay here in bed and rest. Do not speak a word about what happened today, all right, my boy?” Ahmad nodded again. His mother got to her feet. She hoisted her scarf and covered her head.
Before she stepped out of the room, she turned back to Ahmad. “You didn’t kill your father,” she said. It was not a question, but she waited as if for an answer, her hand frozen in the middle of a sweeping motion to tuck a fugitive lock of hair under the scarf. “Did you?” That was a question. “Tell me you didn’t kill your father, Ahmad.” Ahmad pulled the blanket over his face and buried himself in the hot, damp dark that was not quite pure: the light of day oozed in where the blanket had worn thin. He traced the irregular shapes of the patches of light with the tip of his finger. “This should have happened some other day, not today.” She left and closed the door behind her.
Ahmad pushed the blanket away slowly and looked around. Apart from the mattress, pillow, and blanket, a big wooden wardrobe sat in one corner and a table with two chairs in another. He was in the small room next to his grandfather’s which they often kept locked for guests. Khan’s Astrakhan was hanging on the peg of the hatstand by the door; he had come to visit the patient in bed, but forgotten his hat. Ahmad got to his feet. His right knee hurt. He pulled up his pants leg, checked the bruises, and rubbed them. He walked to the window and swept aside the curtain with the back of his hand to look out through the red, triangular glass. Salman’s father was skinning a red sheep that hung from a branch. Another red sheep was tied with a rope to an apple tree nearby, eating the red apples that had fallen on the ground. Soot from the red flames had blackened the bottoms and sides of three huge, steaming cauldrons. He shifted to the right and pressed his nose against the next triangular windowpane, this one green. His mother handed two green sugar cones to Ghasem who was sitting cross-legged in front of a big tray, hacking at a green cone and breaking it into small pieces to fill the sugar bowls. Salman and three other boys ran past. Ahmad’s mother was now looking into one of the cauldrons while trying to keep her distance from the green flames that leapt out from under the vessel.
Ahmad wanted to go out. He shifted and looked through a blue pane. From among the distant trees, his blue grandfather walked hatless in front of Norooz the Gardener toward the wedding preparation scene. Ahmad did not know how old Khan was, but he knew he was younger than Norooz because he remembered the day he had sat on Khan’s horse, Rakhsh, waiting for his grandfather to finish talking with Norooz and take him horseback riding. Norooz’s white face had turned red with anger. “Sir, don’t send me off,” he said. “These trees are like my children. I have watered them and nursed them since you were younger than Mr. Ahmad here. Please, I will die if I go to another orchard.” Ahmad remembered that day with clarity, not for anything specific that had happened, but because of his excitement on the back of the large horse. He had run his hand on her mane, trimmed and groomed, black from her head to the middle of her neck and white from there down. Khan was behind him. Ahmad held the reins in his hands. Norooz the Gardener looked up, too proud to beg the little child from years past who had grown up to become Khan. Khan must have nodded his agreement because Norooz nodded his head and put a grateful hand on his chest before he turned and left with his olive knit hat on his white hair. Those days Norooz could still walk without a cane and carry Ahmad on his shoulders when he was in the mood.
Ahmad stepped back from the window and went to a yellow pane. Khan and Norooz talked as they walked toward Agha’s tree. When they reached its huge trunk, Norooz pulled the drape and held it for the yellow Khan to enter. Norooz followed and the drape swung back in place. That was where Ahmad wanted to be at that moment: in Agha’s small house, with its two blankets, brass mug, and samovar. Agha had moved into the hollow guts of a thousand-year-old plane tree after he retired from the obligations of the orchards, and Khan fully inherited the business. The tree was Ahmad’s haven. He sat on Agha’s blanket and listened to his stories, the ones from when Agha was a little boy and the ones he said were from One Thousand and One Nights and Rumi.
The yellow sheep tied to the tree bit a piece off a dark yellow apple. Ahmad watched the bright flames a little until the tarp that was Agha’s door moved again and Norooz stepped out of the tree. He called out to Mohammad the Carpenter who went around behind the tree and came back with the wheelbarrow. This meant they were going to move Agha. Soon they came out of the tree: the wheelbarrow, with Agha sitting cross-legged in it, and Mohammad pushing. Khan and Norooz followed. It must have been something more serious, or else why would Agha agree to come out of his tree in the first place? Maybe Khan had talked his great-great-great-grandfather out so he would be present at the ceremony. It would be a bad omen to sit in a corner and brood like an owl when someone in the family was getting married.
“Ahmad,” a voice called. Salman was standing in the doorframe. Ahmad had not heard him open the door. Salman looked at him for a while without getting any closer. He started to play with the door handle. “Do you want to go out and play?” The door handle gave a squeak as Salman pushed it down and let it jump back up.
Ahmad threw his head back as a no. “We’re throwing apples at the watermelons,” Salman went on. “We’re going to play hide-and-seek next.” Ahmad threw his head back again. “I will let you shoot sparrows.” Salman pulled his slingshot out of his pants pocket. He waited for an answer, but Ahmad held still. Salman seemed to be out of suggestions. “I’m putting this here. Take it if you want to play.” He set the slingshot on the floor at his feet without letting go of the handle. Then he left and closed the door behind him.
Ahmad turned back to the window and saw Salman run to his father and talk to him. Both turned their heads as Salman pointed to where Ahmad was standing behind the colored panes. Ahmad stepped back. He sat on the floor. With the tip of his finger, he traced the arabesques of stems winding up and down the rug, ending in flowers meticulously designed, but worn and pale. He got back in bed and pulled the blanket over his head to take shelter in the dark.
After a little while the door handle squeaked and Ahmad heard someone enter the room. “If you are not playing with it, can I take it?” Of course Salman wanted the slingshot back. He could not live without it. He was known for making the best slingshots. His specialty was shooting sparrows, the smallest and fastest of moving targets. Ahmad remembered the day Salman pulled two pebbles from his pocket, placed them in the rubber, and the next moment, two sparrows plummeted from the top of the wall, one into the flower bed, the other right through the wire netting, into the coop, in front of the surprised rooster who pecked at it but was not sure what else to do.
Something hit the blanket. Salman was shooting pebbles at him. One landed on his stomach, but not very hard. Ahmad stayed under the covers. A stone hit him on the shoulder, and another hit the tip of his nose and landed on his face. He could feel the weight of it on his lips. He slowly pushed off the blanket.
“Now look who’s here to see little Ahmad!” Norooz the Gardener said with a smile. The four of them were there: Agha, Norooz, Mohammad, and Salman. “Now get up from that bed and come help.” Norooz limped forward and threw the blanket back. He held Ahmad’s wrist, helped him up, and took him to Agha’s wheelbarrow. “Come. Sit,” Agha said with that perpetual smile of his carved into the wrinkled folds of his cheeks, moving his head in the slightest of nods.
Norooz lifted Ahmad and put him in the wheelbarrow, in front of Agha. Mohammad the Carpenter gave a push and they headed out of the room into the corridor.
“So do you want to play hide-and-seek after?” Salman asked, striding by the wheelbarrow. At the end of the corridor were the stairs. Mohammad the Carpenter wheezed and pushed forward, strong as a bull. Ahmad was not sure what was going to happen at the stairs, though of course Norooz would manage as always. He felt Agha’s consoling hand on his shoulder. He turned around and looked at him. Agha was smiling.
Down in the Orchard, Mohammad maneuvered the wheelbarrow past the cauldrons and the people, around the main house, to the back of the garden where the stable boy was holding Rakhsh’s reins in his hand. Khan’s favorite horse was ready for a ride, her white muzzle down, sniffing at the ground. “Khan wants you to ride her.” Ahmad felt Agha’s light hand again on his shoulder. They were pampering him and Ahmad did not know what to do the with their attention. If Khan had allowed him to ride Rakhsh any other day, he would have felt elation in his chest, he would have run to the stable and even helped the boy saddle the piebald. All he wanted now was to go back under his blanket. But he could not find a way to say that. Trapped in his head, “I don’t want to” would not find a way to his tongue. Ahmad’s only consolation was when Agha said, “I will take you with me when you’re back from your ride.” The stable boy hoisted Ahmad onto the saddle and walked the horse down the alleys until they were out of the village where the Shemiron Road began its journey from the foot of the mountains toward Tehran. The boy mounted behind Ahmad and the two of them rode through a sea of fog over the plains that had started to surrender their green to the yellow of the late summer heat. “Having fun?” the stable boy kept asking. Ahmad nodded, knowing the boy could not see the tears that dropped from his eyes onto the white shoulders of the horse.
When they returned to the Orchard, Agha was waiting by the stable. Ahmad sat in the wheelbarrow while the stable boy groomed Rakhsh. Then he wheeled them to Agha’s tree.
* * *
—
AGHA STRUCK A MATCH AND turned on the samovar to make tea. Along with the muffled sounds of people working in the Orchard, some of the daylight came in around the edges of the tarp, which allowed Ahmad to see Agha’s bent figure in his pistachio sweater, old, but light and alive as if attached to the roots of the tree that drew life from the depths of the earth. Above their heads, the hollow went up high into the trunk where light could not reach. It was an upside-down well in which Ahmad could not see a reflection, no matter how much he stared up.
“How many stories have I told you?” Agha asked Ahmad, who undid and redid his shirt collar button. “One hundred? Two? Three?” Ahmad did not answer. Agha placed the teapot on top of the samovar. I have a big one for you today. It’s the best of my stories. It’s about cats…
“Look at me, son.”
3
LONG LONG TIME AGO there was a boy who lived in a faraway village with his father, mother, brothers, and sisters. They grew wheat and barley on their small farm. Because of their hard work and the favorable rains, they harvested more crops every year. Little by little, they could have a few chickens, some sheep, an ass, and a cow. Things were going well until the boy’s mother fell ill with a sickness that turned her yellow. After much futile treatment—and futile means it did not work—they were told that the only hope was a visit to the holy shrines in Karbala and Damascus. Long travels were very dangerous in those times, but the boy’s father decided to take the risk, and the ass said he would help the man carry his wife on the journey.
Now those days people lived a harmonious life with animals—not all of them, but at least the farm animals. No one bought or sold them. The animals lived with people and worked for them in exchange for food and shelter. If someone could afford to build a stable, a barn, a pen, or a coop, they could get animals to live with them and the animals were happy to help with milk, eggs, wool, or farm work in return. That was before they became disgusted by the humans’ greed and decided to stop talking. Of the animals that didn’t belong on farms, some were wild. Others were not; they just didn’t want to live and talk with humans—like giraffes, rhinos, mountain goats, and mice. Also cats. Cats were very territorial. They preferred to live alone and so they got together and formed their own country, somewhere in the deserts between Iraq and Syria. Now in those times there was no such country as Iraq. What we know as Iraq today was part of a big empire called the Ottoman Empire, which ruled for hundreds of years. Then the Ottomans were defeated in a war and the empire was partitioned into several countries. But before all that, the cats made their country in a large oasis saturated with well water in the middle of vast deserts far from any human settlement.
The boy’s father gathered all the money he had saved and borrowed more from his brothers and the kind village people. The little boy said he wanted to go with his father and mother, too, but his father said no. It would be a dangerous trip for a boy of his age. The boy stopped eating and drinking and was soon so weak and thin that his father agreed to take him. To reduce the hazards of their journeys, such as getting lost and being attacked by bandits, people traveled in groups. Those groups were called caravans. A caravan of fifty people set off with the boy, his father, and his mother all on the ass. The boy and his father thanked the ass for carrying their heavy weight and took care to walk whenever they could. After a month, they reached the city of Karbala where the caravan sojourned—that means they stayed there—for three weeks to give everyone ample time to rest and visit the shrines.
Then they started the second part of their journey from Karbala to Damascus, crossing arid deserts from one caravansary to the
next town, from one town to the next village, and from the village to the next caravansary. It was a few weeks into this second part when, one day, the animals started to feel uneasy. They asked the people to dismount them. The animals were panicking, but they weren’t sure why. Some started running around on the sand when all of a sudden the sun went dark. The people told the animals it was just an eclipse and there was nothing to be worried about, but that was not very helpful. The animals kept running in panic until they saw the sun shining in the sky again. But shortly after they had resumed their journey, the animals started feeling uncomfortable again and asked the people to get off of them. Several started running around again. A mule traced and retraced a circle without speaking a word to anyone. Before long, large clouds appeared on the horizon. The guides shouted, “Sandstorm!” and now it was the travelers who were taken by horror. They began running away from the clouds of sand that moved in their direction like plague, trying to escape the inevitable. Their fear blinded their eyes and deafened their ears and they didn’t hear the cries of the guides and the camels who asked them to huddle and take shelter. By the folly of the ignorant, the wise too were afflicted. Colossal waves of sand washed over the desert and buried them all. Only the boy survived. He tried to dig his father and mother out, but no matter how hard he strained his eyes and worked his hands, he found nothing but sand. When he lost hope, he started to walk. He shuffled ahead in the desert with no food and water. On the second day, he fell down. He had no desire to get back to his feet again. He lay there and closed his eyes waiting for death to come. But as he had walked aimlessly, the boy had crossed the border of Gorbstan, the country of cats.
The patrols found him half-dead, licked his face, and took him to the city. He slept for two more days before he opened his eyes. The city was built around a large pond surrounded by low hills. The biggest of the houses was still shorter than the boy. They were mostly painted light rose interspersed with yellow, blue, or green. Palm trees had grown here and there among the well-tended verdure, all enormous compared to the small houses. Some of the roofs were domed, others were flat. He roamed around enchanted with the city and the cats who ignored him as they caught their daily fish from the pond and lay in the shade. The next day a young woman with long hair and a broad face appeared from behind the hill and wrapped the boy in a hug. She had lived there for some years since, like the boy, she had lost her way in the desert when she was very small and landed in Gorbstan by chance. The cats gathered behind the woman in the plaza in front of their cat palace. She was their translator. As the boy recounted his story, she explained it to a large white cat with long hair and a flat face who sat on its hind legs in the gilt balcony, looking up at her sternly. When the woman was finished, the king of cats lowered his blue eyes to the boy whose clothes were torn and his face and neck red with sunburn. He was barely half as tall as the woman. The king of the cats opened his mouth in a long yawn, then let out a meow before he got to his feet and ambled slowly and graciously back into his chambers. The woman smiled at the boy and welcomed him to the city. The cats hailed him with celebratory meows and a kitten rubbed its hazel ear against the boy’s bare ankle. The woman was glad to see a human being after so long. The boy was also happy to see the woman after an arduous trip—that just means hard.
