Thirty Shadow Birds, page 11
From her vantage point, the metal rim of the balcony glass balustrade separates a sky deepening with twilight hues from a panel compacted with curves of trees and diagonals of buildings. The glass of the panel is spotted with rain and handprints, and she feels guilty for not keeping it sparkling clean. Above the rim, the sunset scene with its cosmic perfection makes her sad. It reminds her of her enduring imperfection, her stale incompleteness. A deep desire for company bursts through her, and she feels heat rise in her body.
“I don’t even have the jinn to keep me company at this time of day,” she says to herself, thinking about the remaining hours of daylight and the degree of her sanity.
When she turns her eyes towards the side table, she notices two glasses on it. Why did she bring two glasses? She knows the second glass wasn’t for Nader, or for the jinn.
“And the guy from Mars is not landing at my place either,” she assures herself with a laugh.
Not giving up on finding company, she sits her cheap IKEA mirror on a chair in front of hers. Raising her glass with a smile, she gazes at herself.
“Let’s toast each other’s good company, my dear.” Yalda puts the glass to her lips without taking her eyes off the image. “And toast to a failed plan as well.”
She sips her drink and resumes her conversation. “Not a real plan, though. Just a kind of hope that looked like a speck of glitter at first, then stretched itself out, filling the space between your cells.”
What she felt was a kind of balloon-like anticipation, but she didn’t really expect it to work out.
“Well, I couldn’t help it, you know,” she continues. “It started with the torrent of news about the presidential election scam in Iran. I don’t remember exactly when Nader first dropped by my room to listen to the news or watch the video clips.”
Yalda puts a couple of mulberries in her mouth and gives herself time to think. Since the beginning of the month, she has been spending hours browsing the internet for the latest news about an ongoing series of mass protests against electoral fraud. She didn’t have much interest or time to join solidarity events and rallies organized by Iranian community groups in the city, so she contented herself with online news.
“But that night, at midnight, I was replaying like mad the video clip showing Neda bloom and die on the hot asphalt of a Tehran street. Then Nader appeared over my shoulder and offered me a single tissue.”
She takes a large gulp of her drink, recalling that, sobbing, she had said nothing. After a second, he went back to his room as quietly as he’d come. That night, unable to pull herself together, she didn’t notice what Nader had done. The next day though, opening up her eyes to the morning light, she remembered it and found a bit of hope deep inside her.
“I wonder if the horrible things happening over there could rebuild the burnt bridge between Nader and me,” she says, looking into the mirror and seeing the desperate desire sparkling in her eyes.
And desire, with or without hope, will grow, Yalda reminds herself.
“Don’t deny what you want!” she says to herself in the mirror, her voice hoarse with emotion. “I’m telling you, it’s okay for you to want such brutal atrocities to open your son’s eyes! You should know, though, that if you stretch your desire too much, it’ll snap and hurt you, just like an elastic band.”
She notices the eyes in the mirror are now shining with tears. Yalda fills the other glass and starts drinking from it. As alcohol washes down the lump in her throat, she blames herself for her obsession with Nader’s plans, reminding herself that numerous youths in Iran are under attack. But her guilt vanishes as quickly as a puff of smoke and is replaced by rationalizing.
“I read your mind, poor mother,” she says, nodding at her reflection. “It makes sense for you to want to keep your son away from both sides of the conflict. Who fights crimes and how is none of your business…”
A wave of doubt, surging through her body, interrupts her. She grabs some mulberries to soothe the bitter taste in her mouth. Avoiding eye contact with herself in the mirror, she hears a string of words in her head: law, order, obedience, public safety, prevention, protection….
“Yes, protection, protection, protection!” She jumps back into her conversation with herself, her tone suddenly heavy with sadness. “This word is always at the forefront for foolish moms like me.”
Yalda is exhausted, and her conversation with herself dies down. She listens to her inner wisdom caution against binge drinking, and refrains from refilling the glass. She brings out her laptop and leans back in her chair, still hoping that Nader will come back home before she goes to bed and has a nightmare. Browsing the internet in search of recent reports on the crackdown and chaos, she lands on a YouTube video of young demonstrators throwing stones at cops, who are chasing them with batons and tear gas.
She pauses it. Over there, she knows, her son could have been a victim of police violence.
“If you carry a gun, dear, the most you could be is a good bad guy,” she moans under her breath.
She hears two axioms in her head:
“Only a naïve idealist tries to escape reality.”
“To beat evil, you need an iron fist, not a velvet hand.”
To dodge the attack, Yalda turns off the laptop and closes her eyes, trying to escape from the here and now. Willing herself to stay awake in the darkness, she makes a tunnel in her mind and steps into it, returning to her memories.
Little Sis was left alone on the sidewalk by her big brother who’d gone to Agha Jun’s office to ask for an “extra bonus.” It was hard to remember if she was in grade one or if it was earlier. It was the time when Mati was sick in bed, coughing and moaning and cursing herself for catching a cold. Not a common cold, as Dadashi explained on the way home from school. That sort of “important ailment” demanded special attention, Big Brain had concluded. The two sympathetic siblings wanted to express their love with an extraordinary gift, a gesture that would not be possible without negotiating with the mighty money-maker. Waiting for Dadashi by a plane tree, she was amused by her surroundings: yellowish leaves hanging, trembling in the chilly October wind, passersby going in different directions, and cars speeding by in the street. A bulky beggar limped along the row of stores on crutches, followed by a skinny stray dog wagging behind him quietly. A raw-boned police officer walked up and down the sidewalk; whichever direction he went, the beggar and his dog chose the opposite way. Later she asked her big brother why.
“The officer has a baton,” he said.
“What is a baton, Dadashi?”
“A baton? Well, it’s the devil’s bloody little finger.”
Although little Yalda likely dreamed of the devil’s bloody finger that night, the story of the devil and his finger was forgotten for a long, long time.
She didn’t remember it until the horrible day when she came back from the morgue.
Piruz, frightened of seeing the corpse, had stayed in the car and then asked, “How was it?”
Still feeling woozy, she heard him repeating the question.
“How the heck was it?”
Bang, Bang, Bang!
“For the devil’s sake, open your mouth, Yalda! What did you see over there?”
“The devil’s bloody little finger on his head.” This crawled out of her memory, rather than her mouth.
“A hole in his head?” Piruz asked in a frightened, deep-throated voice.
No! What she’d seen in the callous light of that December day in 1991 was not a hole in a head—just three thin lines over the head of a corpse that hardly reminded her of her beloved Dadashi.
A couple of days ago, she saw a hole in a head—in the video clip she found that disturbing midnight when she frenetically surfed the virtual world. It captured the aftermath of a night attack on a university dorm. She watched it over and over again that night, but has not found it again since.
A tsunami of words and images flowed out from a land that was bleeding under the devil’s deadly paws; and among numerous faces, among the voluminous cries, among the many shocking scenes, it was this image that stuck in her mind for good.
Narrow, intersecting corridors, constantly shaking, were lit by the dirty yellow of trembling ceiling lights and haunted by shadowy figures running around frantically. In the chaotic merging and re-emerging of horrifying colours and terror-stricken sounds, and amidst the tangle of legs and arms dragging the victim—a Jesus-like face with a blank look and a deep, dark red hole in the head.
AND IT WAS NOT A DREAM.
Yalda opens her wet eyes to gaze into the dark mirror set in front of her.
20.
AS USUAL, THE PAIN HITS HER WITH NO NOTICE, right beneath her left shoulder blade, which is stiff after several hours of slouching over a desk. Whether it will sprawl around like an ink stain spreading over a sheet of paper, or keep condensing within itself, it is a reminder to put her pencil down and take a break.
But what am I supposed to do other than work? she thinks.
Working in her own field gives her solace and pleasure, particularly while the landscape beyond her desk is so gloomy. To mitigate the pain, Yalda counts her immediate blessings: a project, an easy pre-charrette period, a bright summer Saturday, and an empty office that she can imagine is all hers.
To alleviate the pain and boost her imagination, she takes a deep breath and leaves her desk to grab some water. “I’ll need to put in more effort if I want to pretend this office is mine,” she says to herself.
Visualizing the gait of the big boss, who she has only seen two or three times, she decides it’s not authoritative enough. Instead, she makes up her mind to imitate Michael’s walking style, which would give anybody the impression that he thinks he’s the boss. When she passes by his desk, she notices a family picture dangling from a clip rail. Beside his large wife and behind his chubby twins, the pint-sized Michael looks like a modest twig. Recalling his sweet, obedient tone while talking to his wife over the phone, Yalda can’t help but titter.
“Enjoy your time in Dubai, my dear long-distance boss, not far from the massive crown,” she says aloud.
In the kitchen, more like the lady of the house than a boss, she checks to see if everything is clean and tidy. No surprise. Michael’s absence means a mess in the kitchen: mugs and cups and greasy containers left unwashed in the sink, crumbs and stains on the countertops, unhung towels, and a full trash can. Negative Judy’s icy voice echoes in her head. “A messy kitchen is a living kitchen, a kitchen that is alive.”
Yalda avoids thinking of the reason why she finds Judy’s voice irksome. She wonders if such a “kitchuation” legitimizes Michael’s bossiness. She cleans the counter, ignoring the dishes in the sink, and grabs a water bottle from the fridge.
Making herself at home on the only leather lounge chair, she reaches into her Fendi leather bucket bag for a painkiller, but can’t locate it without pulling things out one by one. “Damn fashion for turning a bag into a bucket,” she mumbles.
She has to blame herself for accepting it as a gift from Afi though it’s not to her taste.
It occurs to her that making herself busy searching—setting each item in her lap and then returning it all to the bag—would be an acceptable alternative to her favourite time-killing method, doodling, when she is on a break. It reminds her, though, of the purse-digging habit of her least favourite sister, Eti, and of Maman Ashi’s obsessive practice of taking things in and out of her antique wooden treasure chest.
No time for the dead, least-loved or best-loved, she tells herself.
With delicate care, Yalda arranges the contents of her bag in her lap: nail cutter, nail file, tweezers, lipstick, rarely-used makeup, comb, hair ties, mirror, wallet, key chain, notebook, pen and pencils, Advil, and cell phone. She is interrupted by a stab of pain. She takes the painkiller and then gulps half the bottle of water down afterwards. She no longer has any interest in arranging things, so she goes back to thinking about having her own office. She finds the idea of possession kind of “tacky,” as Piruz used to say about their office in Tehran. He thought it was tasteless and showy, with lots of obligations. For a moment, just a moment, she feels the same.
Nonetheless, this office—with no bothersome people or sounds—is appealing to her and gives her the impression of a temporary haven.
This office, even though it belongs to others, is a refuge for her, while out there, in the city, she never sees familiar faces in the crowd. And home? It feels awkward to be home, where a young man, supposedly her son, wears a weird mask with no eyes, no ears, no mouth.
Yalda dumps everything back into the bag other than her cell phone. An urge to be connected spurs her to turn it on, though she doesn’t anticipate any calls. But there is a missed one.
“Oh, no! Again, Nandita! Another call about Asuntha?” she grumbles. She is not in the mood to call anyone back. But, feeling ashamed for not returning Nandita’s call, she looks for a good excuse.
“Look, Nandita. I got your message. That’s too bad. It’s hard to know what to say,” she says under her breath, picturing Nandita’s dark brown eyes full of questions.
The message, the latest news about Asuntha, is the sort of thing that makes her feel dumb. Yalda replays Nandita’s voice in her head, reviewing what has happened to Asuntha. She was harassed, injured, taken to the hospital, released, and is now stuck in bed like a stone in concrete. Yalda remembers Nandita’s story about the collusion of an evil sister-in-law and a betraying demon. She imagines Nandita scratching her cheeks.
“My goodness! Couldn’t I have some happy people around me?” she murmurs.
Looking for something to brighten her mood, she scrolls up and down her list of contacts. She skips Dan lest she be tempted to call him, and lands with some hesitation on Jimmy. In her mind’s eye, Yalda sees his face; he has clean-cut features, but his odd stare overshadows his beauty. She recalls the vague smile lurking at the corner of his lips when she’d said, “We’re not a good fit, Jimmy.” To avoid calling him accidentally, she scrolls further down, remembering his words: “Not a marriage proposal; a sex proposal.” She’d smiled coldly in response and told him he was disgusting.
It occurs to her now that perhaps she had never been fair to him. Setting aside his obnoxious obsession, Yalda had enjoyed his company, particularly in those rare moments when he was focused on art and architecture. She had not been honest with him, either.
“What would you like to see in me, Yalda?” Jimmy had asked her, using a lower-pitched voice and sliding his hand over the table towards hers.
Her response had been nothing but a low hum of chagrin. How could she tell him about her big expectations? The man she’d wanted to see in front of her was a guy with Jimmy’s artistic sense, Dan’s looks, Marc’s compatibility, Piruz’s self-determination, and her Nader’s noble spirit, all in one package. She would have been ready to minimize her ideals, though, and even ignore the wide age gap, if only Jimmy had not been a womanizer.
“Jimmy, I’m sorry that real happiness has been out of reach for you,” she says, feeling sudden sympathy for him. After all, he was just a guy who was looking for sex with no strings attached.
When she lands on Nader’s name, she feels the pain moving and expanding beneath her breast. When she thinks about Nader, what appears in front of her mind’s eye is the figure of a man tucked up in the fetal position: no face, no familiarity. She sits up straight and raises her chest to lessen the pain. Indifferent to her attempts, it tightens around her torso like a stiff corset. Yalda gets up, her phone in her hand, and paces back and forth.
“Damn pain, you’re not going to scare me,” she groans, forcing herself to ignore it by focusing on Nader.
She has to admit that the more she thinks about her son, the less she seems to understand him. Just a couple of weeks ago, at the peak of the chaos in Tehran, he poked his head out of his stone shell of indifference and gave Yalda a sort of faint hope. It didn’t last long, though.
It was nothing more than a little blink of light on the dull sea of dense clouds, she thinks.
He has shut her out again, but she’s not sure if he’s trying to escape her snooping or if he’s gone back to his habitual mood.
“I can keep pounding on the door,” she says aloud, “but I know I cannot break it down.”
In a surge of helplessness, she scrolls down to Piruz and stops walking for a moment. Without a doubt, she is not going to call him after years of no communication and no news. She doesn’t want to swallow her pride and appeal to him. And she knows there is nothing he could do to help her, even if he wanted to.
She walks towards the window. In the light creeping through the blinds, she pictures Piruz as he was when he was young. Through the eyes of the admiring young architecture student that she once was, she can see the profile of a man in his thirties, one of two owners of a small firm.
It’s hard to imagine what he would look like now, in his late fifties, she says to herself.
Her brain, not listening to her, keeps conjuring images of Piruz from the office in its early days—without Lady Liaison, who came later as a secretary and became the partner’s wife—when it was an intimate studio run by newly-graduated owners and full of student trainees like herself. At that time its wide window, which still had a traditional woven straw shade, let the light through.
The window overlooking the street was her favourite spot to take a short break from the drafting table. The street was not just a busy, noisy main street close to the university campus; it was also a privileged location, at the centre of the revolution that was taking shape, and it bulged with more and more protesters. From the corner window, Yalda would observe the demonstrations below and daydream about her Nader’s anticipated release from jail. She would also cast furtive glances at Piruz, who was an enigma to her.
