by Ali Araghi
As soon as a Russian truck roared in the distance, emaciated bodies swarmed onto the sides of the street, snatching anything edible a soldier might throw at them. Their shrunken bodies inside their loose clothes made Ahmad feel embarrassed of his full stomach. The first time he saw an apple tossed to a group of men, he immediately recognized the fruit: it came from Khan’s orchards. If he had seen it in his hand, he could even have said which tree it came from. They were now called Russian apples instead of Damavand apples, as if they came from the country beyond the Caspian Sea, and not from the soil at the foot of the mountains he could see from the streets of Tehran. Later he would learn how Khan had managed to trade apples for food for the village before Sergey announced independence and people were killed in retaliation.
* * *
—
AT FIRST HIGH SCHOOLS WOULD not accept Ahmad since he did not have a formal education. But in the famine-stricken city there was no ceiling to what money could attain. Ahmad did not even want to go to school. In their apartment that felt no larger than a room of the Orchard house, he mouthed to his mother in the kitchen that he wanted to enter the army. But the next week Khan arrived from Tajrish and knocked on the door, and a few hours later, at the office of the principal, a clerk penned down Ahmad’s name in the register.
Ahmad’s first year was spent devising ways to avoid ridicule and practicing how to ignore the boys who walked up to him in the yard opening and closing their mouths like fish. Just as he had in Mulla Ali’s small village classroom, Ahmad shone as the best student in the class. He excelled in math, physics, and chemistry as well as in history and geography. That made him the object of more bullying from the start and the first day the teacher announced the math quiz grades out loud at the end of the class, Ahmad’s A made him more nervous than happy. A few hours later, wedged into the gutter outside school, fetid water seeping into his clothes, he promised Jamaal, by a nod of his head, that from that day on, he would write Jamaal’s name on top of his math papers. Ahmad’s math grades started to plummet. Jamaal was so impressed with the results that he had to trample on Ahmad in the gutter again to establish the same rule for the other classes whose teachers he knew were not astute enough to suspect a thing.
Pooran was happy to be near her daughter, in the same city, if not in the same house. After Ahmad left for school, she draped her chador over her head and walked the length of the alley to the main street where she climbed into the horse tram or bus and put a coin in the palm of the driver. By the time she reached her daughter’s house, Maryam’s husband had left for work. Maryam, too, would soon go out. She had made new friends: first Shamse, the wife of another chauffeur, Maryam’s husband’s evening company at the bar, and through Shamse three other young women. They were all from families with high enough status to afford new shoes and food from the black market: two wives of chauffeurs, a wife of a government high clerk, and two daughters of merchants. When Pooran came over was the only time Maryam could be with them without worrying about her son. The four would drink tea and talk in Shamse’s guest room. Shamse had finished high school, read women’s magazines, and believed women had to start an underground resistance movement; it could start in that same room. Four months had passed since the end of the war, but the Russians had not left. Shamse asked why. Maryam and the others listened to Shamse, but they did not think she was serious.
Maryam was the youngest of the group and the only one with a child. Being a mother gave her the confidence she had lost after her father and everything else in Tajrish had ceased to exist. Huddled around Shamse’s sewing machine, the girls learned from her how to sew. Maryam preferred to stay late, to see as little of her mother as possible, rather than bear to witness her mother’s distress, the studious way she did the dishes. When no chores were left undone in Maryam’s home, Pooran played with the boy, Majeed. She scooped her grandson into her arms before getting to work preparing lunch. Void of any trait of the Torkash-Vand family—the long fingers or the eyes that peered deep—Majeed had inherited all the features of his father: sparse hair, chubby fingers, and a face that looked baffled with amused wonder. But he was sweet. He would reach for Pooran’s pocket to dig out his daily treat: raisins and roasted chickpeas.
* * *
—
FOR TWO MONTHS AFTER POORAN and Ahmad left for Tehran, Khan tried to set things right in Tajrish and bring his family back. But things continued changing. First Mash Akbar married Sara off to a man from the city who had already outlived two wives. Then the butcher and Salman left as well. One night some weeks later, when Khan’s orchards burned in uncountable fires, he knew he had no place in Tajrish anymore. Walking among the charred skeletons of the trees, Khan patted the men who had come to help on the shoulder and whispered curses to Mulla. To keep the rest of what he had safe from the clergy man, he sold what he could, including the evergreen orchard that bore four times a year, and hid the money in Agha’s tree.
“Keep this handy,” he said holding out a hunting rifle. “Right by your bed.” For weeks the small, old man leaned against gunnysacks jammed with paper money. Before he went to sleep, Agha would lift the edge of his mattress, load the rifle, lay it barrel down on the ground and sleep with his twiggy hand resting on the bump in his mattress. The night Khan came for the money, Agha was snoring. Khan’s men took the bags out four at a time: one under each arm, one in each hand. Khan shook Agha awake.
“I’m here to say goodbye.”
“Cats,” Agha said sitting up, barely returned from the world of sleep. “Listen to me, Khan. Kill them.”
“Are you ever going to let it go?”
“As many as you can. As soon as you can.”
“Give me the rifle.”
Outside, Khan took a last look at the Orchard in the moonlight: silver coated and serene, studded with a cornucopia of rubies. “Careful, my boy, it’s loaded,” he heard Agha say from within the tree. “And don’t forget me. It’s too empty here without the money.”
It was the end of fall when Khan moved to Tehran. He stepped out of the automobile and told the driver, as he put on his Astrakhan, to wait by the side of the main street. He walked into the alley avoiding the looks of the passersby. In front of Pooran’s apartment, he took off his hat and put his finger on the doorbell. It would be the first time he rang a bell to a home without himself having a better one. A car stuffed with money sacks in its trunk and back was his only possession: paper in bags and nothing more. He pulled his finger back, put his hat back on, and walked toward the street. Half an hour later, he rang another bell. “I need to buy a house,” he said as soon as his old friend, Meer, opened the door. Meer invited Khan in to rest and spend the night; they would start the search early next morning. “No, Meer, today,” Khan said. “The money is in the car.” Meer looked at Khan for a few seconds, then put his hand on Khan’s shoulder and said, “I’ll go get ready.”
The third house Meer took Khan to see had a large garden and a hoez. “Maybe there is one more we can look at,” Meer had said, squeezed by Khan in the front seat as the chauffeur turned the wheel and the car slid into the street where the house was, “but not more than that.” The street was wide and quiet, the houses flanking it wide and large, unlike Pooran’s street where houses were crammed like two rows of matchboxes. It did not matter that the house was far from Pooran; they would all be together soon. Khan did not have to see the fourth house. He got to his feet and sent Meer away with three full sacks. Then he took the rest of the bags inside and laid his mattress in one of the two rooms that looked out on the garden. The smell of money was the last thing that went through his mind before he closed his eyes.
The next day he brought himself to ring Pooran’s bell and stomp up the stairs. He took off his polished shoes and stepped in. Before he said anything, Khan stood at the door and looked at the living room, the bedroom, and the kitchen, all that was there to see. “When the time comes, you will move into my house,�
� he said to Pooran.
“Not now?”
“I may move again. I can’t keep you on your toes. It will be before long. As soon as I know what to do.”
“Can I help?”
“You are helping, dear.”
He paid them a visit from time to time, tended to what needed his attention, and left money behind the mirror on the sill on his way out.
As Ahmad’s resolution to be like Khan strengthened, Khan’s own faith wavered. Fear slithered into his soul like a snake and he wondered what would happen if Agha’s story was more than a story. For the first time, Agha’s age struck Khan as an ominous sign. Why was the old man still alive? He had spun yarns of the times of the Qajar dynasty kings, not only the latest one, but the one who had gone to Paris for the first time, and the one people called “King Eunuch” about two centuries before. After some deliberation, Khan came to a conclusion: for the spell to break, his lineage had to break. He had to keep a closer watch on his family. He had to protect Pooran and to make sure Ahmad never had a baby. But it was a determination not free of skepticism.
* * *
—
A FEW WEEKS LATER AHMAD came home from school to find Khan sitting on the floor, not sipping from his small tea glass, a bunch of papers in front of him on the rug. He motioned for Ahmad to sit down, then picked up a paper, perused it front and back and put it down to pick up another from the stack. Sitting on a china saucer, his tea was cooling, and Ahmad knew his grandfather liked his tea scalding.
“Who are you?” Khan asked.
Ahmad was taken by surprise. He mouthed his name.
“I know for a fact that you’re not.” Khan twirled his mustache. “The Ahmad I knew was better than this.” He pointed to the report card and quiz papers, amassed by the tray on which sat a China sugar bowl next to the tea glass. In Khan’s eyes was not anger but a dreadful disappointment. For years Ahmad had compensated for his tied tongue with diligence and the prospect of a bright future. The red marks on the papers were proof otherwise; that he was in fact dumb and lazy. He wished Khan would shout at him, slap him in the face, but keep his faith in him. But Khan got to his feet, took a long look at Ahmad, shook his head, and left. Ahmad cried inaudibly. He felt the urge to run after Khan, stop him on the stairs, show him that those crooked lines on the papers were not his handwriting, make him see what was happening at school, but something within him made him feel embarrassed. He was not a child anymore. He was the man of the house, even if the house was a small apartment. Men solved their own problems, without help from their grandfathers or mothers.
* * *
—
WHEN THE APARTMENT DOOR HAD closed behind him, Khan paused for a few seconds. He searched his mind for an excuse to go back in, listened for Ahmad or Pooran’s footsteps inside to approach the door, open it, and take him back. Leafing through those exam papers with Ahmad cowering in front of him like a beaten dog had been so difficult that he had left sooner than he had wanted to. Now there was no going back unless they came for him. When extending his pause lost its meaning, he stepped down the stairs. Seated on short stools by half-open front doors, their heads receded into the collars of coats or the folds of chadors and headscarves, a few old men and women followed Khan with their eyes along the alley, sometimes smiling, sometimes saying a warm hello. When he turned into the street, a Russian truck passed on carrying six soldiers and a load of barrels. Khan looked around and waved for a buggy that waited under a leafless plane tree.
The coachman had his Pahlavi hat on. Every once in a while, he lashed an unnecessary strike at the mule, whispering under his breath to himself or the beast. People, young and old, walked the sidewalks, men in loose suits and pants, some with sloppily hanging ties, others without. “Sons of bitches,” the coachman said. “Excuse my language sir, but they’re vultures.” He turned his head halfway toward Khan. “That’s what they are. Don’t you agree?”
“It’s a difficult situation,” Khan said.
“Difficult?” The coachman reached under his seat and pulled out a machete. “I have to keep this with me. The other day, I was parked by the street just like today, two streets down, close to the mosque. I went inside to, excuse my language, I had to go. When I came back a fellow had unhitched her from the buggy and was passing right by me in the street. He was walking so calm that for an instant, I doubted if she was really my mule or not. I looked the other way and saw my buggy where I had parked it and of course, no mule. I ran to the man and punched him in the face and took my mule back. I bought the machete the same day. You see my mule here? You see how she’s a sack of bones? The guy was even lankier than her. You know how much hay is? Swear to God, the animal eats more than me and my three kids. And you can count her ribs from your seat, you see there? But she’s all I have.”
The mule struggled, pulling the creaking buggy click-clacking into a roundabout. Behind one of the windows of a bus, a little boy stuck his tongue out at Khan. The pistachio green of the bus reflected the late-fall sun. They exited the roundabout. The city droned on.
“I have a grandson who can’t speak,” Khan said after some time.
“That’s not good,” the coachman said. “I found a man for my eldest daughter last month, sent her away at last. She doesn’t speak much either. But one less mouth to feed. The other two are boys. They can take care of themselves. Worst comes worst, they can go back to the village with their uncle. He still has a herd of sheep left. As long as grass grows from the earth there will be a few drops of milk to drink.”
“I can’t send my grandson back to the village,” Khan said. “He has to finish high school. Although he isn’t doing well.”
“I sent my boys to school for three, four years. They kept ganging up on the other kids. Until I had it up to here and one day I sat them down and said, you went to school, you for three years, you for four years, and you’re not the school type. Tomorrow morning you’re going to work at the kebab shop in the bazaar and you’re going to help the ice seller. Just like that: off to work. You’re lucky you have a grandson, sir. Boys are easy.”
Back in his house, Khan brought a chair out into the yard and sat in front of the hoez wrapping himself tight in his wool coat. Twigs and dead leaves from the overarching persimmon tree sat on the surface of the water. He looked around at his house. It was still new and strange. His yard was large, but compared to the orchards he had lived and worked in, it was no more than a coop, a stable, a sheep pen with a house on one side and three walls on the other. Behind two of the walls were the neighbors’ yards. The third had the alley behind it. It was just a house in a row of houses, in a good neighborhood, but one of many.
Two hours before midnight, Khan stuck his hand into one of the sacks and shoved a fistful of bills into his coat pocket. Half an hour later, he pulled one out, tossed it over the counter, and said, “Vodka.” When at two in the morning he was told to leave, he pulled out another bill and slapped it on the counter. “Maybe,” Khan said to the barman, “you think you can control this place, this table, this ‘shop’ of yours, but can you control the roaches that scurry in the corners of this ‘shop’ of yours, too? Can you keep them from climbing up your squat toilet and creeping everywhere? All you can do is open that door and shout, ‘It’s time,’ and close that door behind you and leave and be happy that you’re the master of your destiny and walk in the cold and be happy that you locked that door of yours. You hold your fate in your hand very well. Dexterously if you will. And the fate of others. Well done. Clap clap clap. Clap for him.”
Khan was still clapping when the barman caught up with him outside and gave him his Astrakhan that he had left on the coatrack.
“The roaches,” he said, “they come out in the summer, sir. I can’t do anything about them.” He patted Khan on the back and helped his hand find the sleeve of his coat.
“What’s your name?” Khan asked but did not wait to hear the Armen
ian barman. He turned around and walked away, his hat in his hand, forgetting to put it on all the way to his house.
* * *
—
WHEN THE FAMINE WORSENED, MARYAM started paying her mother. The afternoon Pooran found the rolled bills in her purse, something crumbled inside her. She had fed that girl for twenty years, since she was a little wiggling bundle of blankets. As long as Pooran remembered, maids, gardeners, and servants had worked for her, both in the Orchard and in her father’s house. All that was gone. She rerolled the bills in her hand and slipped them into her purse. Neither mother nor daughter ever mentioned it. Tacitly turned into her daughter’s maid, Pooran went to Maryam’s house every day and helped with the boy and the housework. But the happiness she found in her heart at being with her daughter and her grandson did not dwindle even when she felt less welcome than before in her daughter’s house. There were days when no one answered the door. Pooran used her spare key and found Majeed in a room, playing on his own. She took his hand and walked to the kitchen, reminding herself that the boy had a roof over his head, food to pass down the gullet, and a grandmother who loved him.
Feeding Majeed reminded her of the time she nursed her own children, when Maryam burped only with a lullaby and when Ahmad would not get off her breast at the age of two. Now, a shade of hair had started to show above Ahmad’s lips. In his big black eyes shone the same glow that was in Khan and Agha’s; the same that had burned in Nosser’s eyes. They all had the vortex in their pupils, that dreamy character that was capable of anything, good or evil. Majeed had simple eyes full of curiosity or the unfamiliar world. He would not be hard to raise. She had raised a boy who did not talk, whose thoughts and intentions were veiled even from his mother, the one who was supposed to know him completely.
