The Immortals of Tehran

by Ali Araghi

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  THE END-OF-TRIMESTER EXAMS PULLED AHMAD back into the classroom. At the first one—history—as soon as he put his pencil on the paper, the image of Khan shuffling out of the apartment in disappointment flashed before his eyes. He paused for a second and then wrote his own name on top of the page with such determination that he drove the tip of the pencil through the exam paper. He knew Jamaal would give him the beating of his life as soon as the exams week was over and the serial cheating was revealed, but he was not going to remain passive. The first day after the exams he strolled into a neighborhood infamous for its feisty residents and street brawls where it was not hard to entice someone into a fight; all it would take was a look longer than a glance and a defiant face when he was asked, “What are you looking at? Never seen a man in the hellhole you’re from?”

  The first two nights he mimed slipping on an icy street. “Again?” his mother asked the second night. The next time, he put up his fists with a grimace as Pooran poked a gentle finger on his swollen cheek. “With who? At school?” she asked. Ahmad nodded. “Why?” Ahmad stuck his tongue out and pointed to it. “They make fun of you?” Ahmad nodded. Pooran stepped into the kitchen and came back with the small cloth bag. “Did I ever teach you to lie?” she asked, rubbing ointment on his wounds and bruises and petting his head.

  Inevitably, Ahmad and Jamaal each had to go to the principal’s office separately for explanations. After handwritings were compared, it took little investigation to determine that Ahmad told the truth. Jamaal was not even allowed to finish that day of classes. He was expelled immediately. With his small gang, he was waiting for Ahmad outside the large metal school gates. Accepting his fate, Ahmad walked among the three of them who escorted him into a quiet alley. He did not run away. He held his head up. Rocking on a branch, a crow cawed from the top of a bare plane tree. It had gotten wind of things. Ahmad pictured the blows that would soon land on his face and body, the pain shooting up his limbs, the burning of skin breaking open, the sting of chipped teeth, and the sore of the bruised swellings on his face. He felt weak in the knees and was about to sink to the ground like a pile of snow in the sun, but Jamaal’s aides held his arms and helped him to his feet, like trustworthy friends respecting bonds of camaraderie, never letting their brother down in times of need. Where are my friends? The thought reverberated in Ahmad’s head. It was Salman he was thinking of at that moment.

  Even with the bitterness that had gone between them after the rumors about Sergey and Sara spread in the village, Ahmad was sure Salman would stand up for him against Jamaal and his boys. If he had been there. For now, Ahmad resolved to hold up his head and his report card the next time he saw Khan—proud and bruised.

  They had barely entered the alley when Ahmad turned around and punched Jamaal in the nose. The two boys, thin and undernourished from the famine but experienced in the ways of street fighting, jumped on him like an avalanche and pinned him down in the blink of an eye, but Jamaal raised his hand and ordered them to stop. His other hand covered his nose. The two boys stood Ahmad up, securing his arms behind his back. Jamaal eyed him up. “Nice, nice,” he finally said, his voice echoing in his cupped hand, “Our dumb dumb has balls, too. Who would have thought?” Then he extended his hand and offered to be friends. They needed each other’s support during the desperate famine. The two boys let go of Ahmad. Undecided and doubtful of Jamaal’s honesty but feeling a wild happiness at the sight of blood running down the boy’s nose, Ahmad reached and shook his hand.

  As they walked back along the alley, Jamaal gave Ahmad his address and said he could count on him if he ever needed anything. He admired temerity especially when it came from somewhere unexpected. Ahmad felt a dizzying joy. He had triumphed. He had transcended his fear. He walked light, each step landing not on frozen mud, but on a coat of fresh snow. Then Jamaal landed a heavy punch in Ahmad’s stomach. The pain was a vortex that churned his insides into a sore mess. The three of them kicked Ahmad for what seemed like a long time outside of time, where nothing could reach anything. After they were done, Jamaal said, still standing over Ahmad, that all he had said before was true; Ahmad could count on him, but he also had to remember not to mess with him ever again. Lying on the ground, Ahmad felt that his hot face was melting the ice, now dappled with red spots. Sounds came to him: cars in the street; a bus that clanked past; two light-footed kids running; then some softer footsteps.

  “Get up.” The order came from above him, but it was not Jamaal. A pair of women’s shoes appeared before his eyes. “We should put some Mercurochrome on your eyebrow.” Ahmad expected his mother to help him up, but she stood there with a faint smile on her face. “You could have gotten them all. Your punch was good.”

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  AHMAD CANCELED HIS AFTER-SCHOOL PATROLS until the scabs fell off and the bruises had almost waned. Then one day as he walked past the same bakery, he saw the girl in the line again. Without hesitation, he walked over and stood in the men’s line which was shorter than the women’s. With little difficulty—though not without receiving a few suspicious looks—he let a couple of men slide past him. He threw furtive glances at the women’s line, trying not to be caught gawking. She was covered in her black chador that revealed no more than her face, but Ahmad vaguely imagined a perfect body underneath. She was worthy of all the praise he had bejeweled his poems with. And myriads more. One thousand nights would be too few to extol her beauty in his verse. Thanks to his calculations, the two of them got to the bakery door almost at the same time: first Ahmad, and after the woman in front of the girl left, the girl herself. As luck was with him, the baker threw the hot bread on the wooden table in front of Ahmad and shouted, “Finished for the day.” It was at that moment, when the smell of the last freshly baked sangak bread wafted between them, that Ahmad found himself eye to eye with the girl of his poems. Amid the shouts and grunts of frustrated people and arms extended to grab the bread, Ahmad offered it to the girl and felt a hollow opening inside of him as her eyes widened in amazement. She would not accept it at first, but when one woman’s hand flew to grab the bread, she changed her mind. Ahmad did not take her money; he was chivalrous. The girl could not insist too much in public, talking to a strange boy.

  Ahmad’s mother had not seen him that happy in a long time. He smiled from time to time as he wrote poetry after dinner. When she asked what he was doing, he mouthed homework. She was not upset about him hiding something from her because whatever it was, it was a warm and bright secret that brought out the spark in Ahmad’s eyes. There was no mistaking it. She had seen the same glow in Nosser’s eyes long ago when for a short time she had felt light in her heart. In her son’s eyes was the splendor of love: the immature, immaculate love of youth.

  9

  HMAD KNEW THE GIRL wanted to see him when she appeared at the bakery line at the same time the next day, after school was dismissed in the afternoon. She did not say a word, but Ahmad caught a flitting smile flash on her lips. The day after, they ended up at the bakery window at the same time again, a feat that would have been impossible without some pushing and cutting in. As the girl leaned over to reach for the bread on the table, her head straight, her eyes not straying from the window, she whispered to Ahmad: she would be at the grocery store down the street the next day. Brief and low, so no one else might hear, the whisper made Ahmad shiver.

  Store after store, they enjoyed being in the same place together for a few, short-lived minutes, the girl talking to the shopkeeper, Ahmad looking at her; Ahmad asking a silent question about a good he did not need as she stole a peek at him, sometimes even helping the man decipher the demand of the tongue-tied customer, laughing with their eyes at the show they put on, trying to prolong the theater to its realistic limit. Exploiting the shopkeepers’ momentary distraction, the girl would get close enough to whisper the location of the next rendezvous.

  One day Ahmad slipped a small
piece of paper into her basket. He knew she did not go to school and guessed she could not read or write, but he hoped curiosity would make her find a way to decipher the writing. And he was right. Although the decorum dictated that she not express her feelings openly, Ahmad could read the eagerness in her eyes when at the dairy shop she turned from the counter—holding in her hand cheese wrapped in brown paper—and whispered, “I love poetry,” as if it was a way of saying, I love you. That was when Ahmad realized his future was not in the army. Nor did he want to achieve greatness by sending cart after cart of his family’s apples to cities near and far. Putting words to page, that was what he was good at.

  Ahmad wrote a new poem for the girl every day. After a while he attached a second piece of paper to his poem and asked her if she could read. While examining a spigot, she shook her head. The day after, as the shopkeeper steadied his stool to grab from a top shelf a large china bowl, Ahmad passed his note: How do you know what I write for you then? The next day a woman asked the shopkeeper for sumac and dried shallot when the girl whispered she had a friend who read for her. The day after Ahmad asked her name. The next day she whispered: “Raana,” and when she asked his name, Ahmad had the paper ready to attach to his poem of the day and slip into a bunch of basil in her arms as she left the shop.

  They soon exhausted the meeting locations in the vicinity of Raana’s home. She would rarely use the same shop more than once, only when she had heard that a certain shopkeeper was away, the store run by a temporary hand. Ahmad was becoming a known face in that neighborhood, and many prying eyes and eavesdropping ears were prepared to spread word about the suspicious visitor. Raana and Ahmad ventured out into other neighborhoods.

  Eager to hear the new poem, Raana would rush after her meeting with Ahmad to her friend’s house, two streets down from her own, where she would unfold the paper and wait for the hieroglyphs to be deciphered. Then she would talk about her day’s adventure in detail and answer questions about Ahmad: what had happened during the meeting, what Raana had said, how Ahmad had reacted, what he had been wearing, how he had walked up to her, and the one strand of hair above his left ear that stood straight out like a spike. Raana was grateful for having found a friend, two years before, with whom she could share her secrets; a confidante who even helped her find the next rendezvous.

  “I only wish Ahmad was older,” Raana said to Sara, fearing the day a suitor would knock on her father’s door asking for her hand. Her family would not only accept the request, but inwardly revel at having one fewer mouth to feed. At the same time, a consoling voice whispered in her head: no one in their right mind would marry in these times of famine and hardship. That was why her father and two brothers let her go out alone; they hoped someone might see her on the way and like her. That was why her mother took her to the public bathhouse every week—even though they had a shower at home for her father who could not walk anymore without a cane—so that other women might see her long black hair cascading down to her hips, go back to their homes, talk to their husbands, and take her for their sons. Sara dismissed her worries.

  “Life’s more complicated than you think,” she said, brushing Raana’s hair that hung as low as the seat of the chair. “Think about me,” she said looking into the mirror, that flat world in front of them. “Who would have thought they would marry me to the first man to ask my father and I actually fall in love with him?” She studied Raana’s elegant, slender face, her white teeth, her pointed chin, her small ears. Above Raana’s face hovered Sara’s own: gap toothed, cheeks protruded, eyebrows thick. She was even more anxious than Raana herself to hold the next note in her hand, to unfold it and discover the handwriting she was so familiar with. The nights before Raana’s shop dates with Ahmad, Sara felt paralyzed. She wiped her sweaty palms on the mattress, trying to hide her feelings from her husband who nipped at her breasts before going to sleep. Writhing and panting, she repeated Ahmad’s poems in her head. Images marched before her closed eyes of his hand curving letters on the paper one after another for her to copy, of him springing to his feet as the door flung open, of Khan looking at them in his heavy silence.

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  LIKE A LOST BOY SURRENDERING to the futility of his search, Khan retreated into his house, brooding and waiting for a sign to arrive, something to show him the way, tell him who he was and why he lived anymore, something to reassure him that there was something left of his life other than a roomful of money. What he should do with his life and his family in those times of uncertainty was something Khan did not know. When his beard was so long he could hold it in his fist, he decided his asceticism had not been enough. A sign would not come to those who sat. If there were ever going to be an omen, it was he who had to seek it. One gray morning when a sparrow swayed on the bare branch of the persimmon tree in the cold breeze, Khan stepped onto the veranda and put on his shoes. The walk to the bazaar was long, but he would not use anything other than his feet.

  In the roofed corridors of the old market, the decline and destruction caused by the famine assailed his eyes: many stands and stalls were left broken and deserted. The number of stores whose bankrupt owners could not afford to replace the smashed panes seemed to double with each step Khan took farther into that maze. In the small mosque, built deep within the labyrinth of narrow and winding corridors, he took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and performed the ablutions. With cold water dripping from his face and arms, he joined the sparse rows of men standing behind the mulla, ready for noon prayer. It was his first prayer inside a mosque since his migration from Tajrish. He did not remember the last time he had stood not right behind the imam, but further back among the ordinary people with their old shoes—sole touching sole—in front of them on the rug, lest they get stolen. In unison with dozens of afflicted, Khan listened for God as he stood still with his arms hanging by his sides and his head bent down, as he bowed, dropped to his knees, and rested his forehead on the ground. With eyes and ears open, Khan waited for an answer from God. He listened to the mulla’s speech after the noon prayer and the one after the afternoon prayer. But God did not speak to him. Khan returned for the sunset prayer. He stood perfectly still and listened intently but to no avail.

  “I’ll make you talk to me,” he held up his face and said to God as he left the mosque that night. On his way back, he stepped into several groceries before he found one that had forty dates to sell: dried and shriveled, five times the fair price. With each step he took toward home, the dates rattled against one another like rocks.

  “I’ll start tomorrow,” he said to himself, blowing a white cloud into the night.

  It was the first time Khan climbed down the four steps into the house’s basement. A rusty, broken padlock hung on the narrow metal door. Inside, light from the cloudy sky shone through the two high windows onto the junk: a big wooden table nicked around the edges and blanketed under a thick layer of dust; a broken spade and some wood in one corner; a ladder lying on the floor with three rungs missing. On a rugged ledge on the wall, a rusty mirror reflected almost nothing through black spots and its coat of dust. Khan blew at the ledge and set the bag of dates next to the mirror. He climbed up the four steps back into the yard, then the other three onto the veranda. In his room, he bent over and lifted a bag of money into his arms; it was lighter than a crate of apples. He walked back into the yard, stood at the edge of the drained hoez, and emptied the bag. Bills flew down circling and swaying like many leaves detaching themselves from trees in a wild wind. The second bag was slit open and shaken empty. Green, rectangular money twirled down and rested on the dark slime at the bottom. Water seeped through the precious fibers. When Khan threw aside the last bag, the hoez was half full.

  Then he started his fasting.

  On the first days he stared at the faded green walls and saw the faded green walls. During the day he recited the Quran and stood in prayer until he saw from his window an orange light in the sky and knew
that somewhere behind the innumerable houses that sat between him and the horizon, the sun was going down. He broke his fast with a date after looking into the mirror at his face, then prayed at night until the first rays of the sun broke the darkness. The flesh melted off of his body. His bones jutted out from under his thin, cracked skin. But his head was light and his vision clear. He no longer felt the need to relieve himself. The bonds that had held him down for his whole life had vanished. Every date that came out of the bag reduced his dependence on the mundane. As his eyes began to sink back into their sockets, his vision became keener. His look penetrated through the flaking layers of paint and plaster to observe the bricks and mortar underneath. When only one date was left, he had obtained the faculty to see beyond solid objects.

  He stepped out into the street on the forty-first day and witnessed that the curtain had been pulled. The contents of pockets, what happened behind closed doors, and what people tried to hide from others were all clear to him as day. His joints creaked as he placed one painful step after the other toward the small mosque in the bazaar, hands deep in his pockets. The water that slid down his arm seemed to freeze the blood in his bulging veins, but he saw the red fluid flowing up the dark tubes. He saw his beating heart. He saw that he was fine.

  More people were waiting for the prayer than forty days before. Like in Tajrish, hunger and misery had made the rows in the mosque longer. Lank and haggard, too skinny for his raincoat, Khan no longer stood out from the rest of the congregation. Like them he dwelled in the proximity of death, but in a different manner: he resurrected from it, they very close to be devoured by it. Anxious in the head and serene at heart, Khan positioned himself right behind the imam in the first row just like he was used to, the closest person to the leader of the prayer, connected to God by the shortest possible link. His most prudent spot. From the moment the prayer began, Khan gave his heart and soul to it. He closed his eyes to see better, to not be distracted by the two men who walked and laughed in the street behind the walls of the mosque. His whole body became one large eye, his ears alert to hunt for the faintest sign from Him. Hunger had opened an inner void that buzzed with need. The first prayer ended. The second prayer followed. Both regular praises of the Creator, but without Him doing anything but listening, without sending down a message.