Parinaz and the Apple Tree

By Firoozeh Khatibi
Translated into English by Khashayar Mohammadi.

The bell rang for the lunch break, so I skipped down the stairs from the third floor. I stretched my short skirt further down when I passed by the principal’s office to avoid any trouble. The Smell of Qormeh Sabzi climbed up from the basement cafeteria and onto the staircase. All the kids who didn’t leave school for lunch began hurrying down. As soon as I descended the stairs of the main entrance, I found Parinaz, waiting for me by the giant metal gate, wearing a black leather jacket with a thick chain dangling under. While clearing the path from children, the school caretaker gave her a look. Parinaz was a Mathematics major and we played together on the volleyball team.

Parinaz’s younger sister, Ladan-who was in 9th grade, started tailing us too. As we were passing the Christmas trees leaning on the wall outside school, Parinaz took her French Gitanes cigarettes out of her brown leather bag, offering it to both of us. Then the three of us began puffing on cigarettes. We heard a few classmates whispering from behind, but when we got to the end of the street, they walked towards “College Inn” for some burgers. We took a back alley to the main street and entered the “Andre” sandwich shop.

The heat, the smell of garlicky cold cuts and dill pickles warmed our cold noses. Outside it was freezing and the windows of the Sandwich shop were sweating. The cacophony of the high school boys and the horde of customers meant our voice could not reach “Monsieur”. We had to wait and stare: at the dill pickles, pickled peppers, and an entire crowd yelling “A Sandwich please, Sir”. Finally when our cold cut sandwiches were in our hands with dill pickles sticking out of them, Parinaz gestured “Let’s go outside”. We were walking on Pahlavi Street, biting on our Sandwiches. Under the barren trees of midwinter, Parinaz suggested we go to our friends’ boutique right around the corner to listen to some music. When we crossed the intersection, we saw Kami, oblivious as always, crossing the street with his guitar case. My heart almost stopped beating. My feet felt cold. Whenever we passed this intersection, I dreamt of seeing him. Parinaz began laughing at my pale face and maliciously said, “I’ll call him right now!” I begged her not to, blushing. She called him “Kami! Wanna come to the boutique?” as she was laughing. Kami gestured to his watch to indicates he’s late and can’t come. I hid behind the news kiosk, counting my heartbeats. Parinaz yelled out my name and Ladan followed, keeling over laughing. Parinaz took my hand. I peeked at Kami getting farther and we started walking in the frozen streets again.

Shahram was standing by his boutique’s entrance, inspecting his new motorbike. When he saw us, he smiled and nodded. We entered the store and he came inside with us. Mehran-The singer from “Koolaak” Band was under the rack of corduroy trousers, rolling a Joint with Hashish. I took out my new record I had received from New York from my backpack and showed it to him. Saeed brushed his long hair away from his eyes and said, “Is it Bee Gees? Wow! I love them!”

Shahram snatched the record from my hands and put it on the record player behind a row of Ray-Bans. The singer’s voice filled the dimly lit store:

I started a joke which started the whole world crying

But I didn’t see that the joke was on me oh no

I started to cry which started the whole world laughing

I’m looking at the garden from Parinaz’s window. It’s a gigantic multiplex. Most days we come here on lunch break to listen to records. It’s a huge building in one of the streets behind Pahlavi Street with several rooms and a serpentine staircase.

On every level there’s a window that opens onto the front garden. Parinaz walks in front, leading me up the staircase with her long, toned legs. No one can beat her on the volleyball court. She’s the team champion and, as her pony tail flails to either side, she follows the ball, punching it into the opponents’ court with a clenched fist. From one side she’s a descendant of the Qajar dynasty, and from the other she’s a descendent of the Bakhtiari tribe. She’s brave, sometimes even a bit of a bully. She has even formed the school’s “female task force”.

I don’t enjoy being involved in arguments or trouble, but I like to be naughty. According to Parinaz we need to escape from the school caretaker at least once a week to go to the Ferdowsi Cinema, and spend the afternoon watching foreign films instead of studying jurisprudence and ethics. To join the group we must scare younger kids into giving us their pocket money; even bring some along to buy us sandwiches and Pepsi. We must close the classroom door on break time and smoke inside the classroom. We must carry brass knuckles and keep chains under our skirts. I like Parinaz’s devil may care attitude. She swims against the current and crosses every line. There’s a strange sense of liberty and self-reliance in her actions that enchants me.

In her room, Parinaz sits behind an antique, gilded desk, in front of her mirror. She takes out a golden tube of lipstick from its tiny drawer and paints her lips peach colored. Her large blue eyes sparkle in contrast to her walnut-brown hair. She turns on the record player and finds a single record among her LPs. The voice of Cat Stevens fills the room. Ladan says, “we’ll be late for school,” but we just laugh.

We smoke the last Gitanes together and listen to Cat Stevens on the couch.

Oh very young

What will you leave us this time

You’re only dancing on this earth for a short while

And though your dreams may toss and turn you now

They will vanish away like your daddy’s best jeans

Denim Blue fading up to the sky

And though you want him to last forever

You know he never will

And the patches make the goodbye harder still

Oh very young

What will you leave us this time

There’ll never be a better chance to change your mind

And if you want this world to see a better day

Will you carry the words of love with you

Will you ride the great white bird into heaven…

 Ladan complains that we’re late for school. Parinaz says she’s not in the mood. Neither am I. Who wants to sit through social studies? I get up from the couch and sit on the cushions on the floor and, as Jim Morrison starts singing “you’re lost little girl,” Parinaz and I smoke an Ushnu cigarette that we’ve taken from the maid. When we finally descend from the staircase the crows on the tree branches have already begun to caw. The sky foretells another snowfall. I’m dizzy from all the smoking. The smell of Sholeh Zard has filled the street.

There has been a lot of snowfall today. When the lunch bell goes off we’re behind the school gate again, waiting for it to open. The caretaker gives us a look as we slide through the half-opened gate and run across the street. In front of the Cinema, Soheyla shows up with two of her classmates. Parinaz gets money from them and buys us all tickets. The film starts an hour later than we thought it did. Parinaz says since we’ve paid for the tickets we must stay and watch, but Soheyla and her classmates are scared and are exchanging looks with one another. Parinaz gestures with her hand and we follow her up the staircase and to the balcony where we can see silhouettes of the boys from Alborz high school. Sohayla waves at Ali and Shahab, and goes ahead with the other girls to sit right next to them. The first show is Bonnie and Clyde.

The film’s made quite a stir in the US. Faye Dunaway, the bank robber in a beret, tight clothes and a machine gun! We’ve forgotten school and are lost in the adventures of the protagonists. A few minutes before the ending, we see the Usher’s flashlight who is looking for school kids with our school caretaker . Parinaz puts on her brown beret and sinks into the seat. The flashlight stops right on my face. I close my eyes from fear, mixed with the pleasure of disobedience. The groundskeeper yells over the sound effects: “This is one of them” and tells me to get up and go. Parinaz is silently sitting, still watching the film. The caretaker doesn’t recognize her. I follow hism outside the theater where Soheyla stands, scowling. The other girls are crying.

After a few days of suspension, I open the iron gate to my house. Snow has covered the entire downward slope of Darband street. My boots slide on the early morning ice and my feet are freezing in my thin nylon socks. Underneath the overcast sky of early morning, I line up for the Shemiran shuttle in front of the Halim seller . In the shuttle I feel the heat on my face. My nose is defrosting in the heat. The trees are pristine white. I get off the shuttle and walk to College Street from a back alley. I slide past the school caretaker who is giving me an intense look. From afar I can spot Parinaz, standing under the schoolyard’s apple tree with her red scarf and wool cap covering her eyes. A few paces behind, the school principal is arguing with a beautiful tall brunette woman wearing a chic navy-blue coat. Their argument can sometimes be heard over all the noise. Parinaz looks at me and smiles mischievously. As I walk into the school building I can see her exiting the schoolyard with the woman and a middle-aged man in astral military uniform. The man gets into the back of a black Mercedes and gestures for Parinaz and her mother to get in as well. The car disappears behind the curves of the backstreet.

It’s been a few days. We have no news of her. Some say she’s been expelled. Ladan isn’t coming to school either. One day after I get off the Shemiran shuttle, I walk past their house. Their windows are closed and the lights are off. The rest of the winter appears rather gray. Sometimes I spot Kami crossing the street with his guitar case. One time I think about crossing the street and talking to him in Parinaz’s memory, but I can’t find the courage. I just watch him from afar, walking away with his head down. I choke up, maybe from his lack of attention, or maybe even from loneliness. Without Parinaz, our school is quiet and dull. A new girl replaces her on the volleyball team. In French class, we’re all supposed to bring a single record of a French song to translate the lyrics into Farsi. I don’t feel like it. Madame calls me up, so in Parinaz’s memory, I play “je t’aime” with all its erotic connotations. The kids laugh at me. Madame angrily removes the record from the record playe, and among the children’s piercing laughter, she tells me: “get out. You’re suspended till further notice”. I’m freezing in the corridor. I’ve left my jacket in the classroom.

That same afternoon at Shahram’s boutique, the kids are smoking and listening to music. Someone says Parinaz and Ladan have been sent to a Swiss boarding school. From the window, the trees appear a grey-ish purple on the cold Pahlavi boulevard. On the way home, I walk past Parinaz’s house one more time. Her lights are turned off, as if forever.

Khatibi is a Los Angeles-based writer, playwright, independent journalist, actor, director and radio host. She has worked as an art critic and cultural correspondent with news outlets such as VOA, Radio Free Europe and British Broadcasting Co. Born in Tehran, studied at the New School and the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York City. She is the director of the Parviz Khatibi Cultural Foundation, publishing works of the late author and has worked as a writer, director, actor and production designer on countless Iranian and non-Iranian productions.

Khatibi’s highly acclaimed and notable works include p- “Maah Dar Ayeneh”- a musical play about Ghamar ol Molouk Vaziri which opened at Wilshire Ebell Theatre in L. A., “Breach of Taboo: From Ghamar to Golshifteh”, a Monologue and Dance in collaboration with Anna Djanbazian for Internationl Women’s Day and “The Reign of Zamankhan Boroojerd”, a multimedia installation for the annual Iranian theatre and film festival in 2013. She is the co-founder of the Iranian Theatre Society of L.A. Her latest play about the historic “Lalehzar”, was staged at Skirball Cultural Center in June of 2019. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary publications including “jonge Zaman”, “Avaye Tabeid” and “The Persian Book Review”. 

She is currently hosting a two hour weekly art & culture program on Radiohamrah, a Los Angeles based Iranian radio station on 94.7 FM HD3.

In Between Empty Hollows

By Peyman Esmaeili
Translated by Ati Everson

It’s been a week since my arrival. It’s extremely cold. I have to adapt, otherwise even these few months will turn into hell. This is close to the border. I am certain I mentioned it to you, but I wasn’t expecting it to be this close. When you pass the white snowy mountains, you will find yourself in Kirkuk.

People here keep to themselves, they are not warm. The clinic keeper doesn’t speak Farsi. He startled me on my first day here. His name is Karim. He is of slim build. He has a slight lisp. One day when I was deep in sleep, I sensed that someone was shaking me. I opened my eyes and he was standing right in front of me.

“Yes? What do you want?” I asked.

He mumbled something in Kurdish, which I didn’t get at all.

“Don’t you speak Farsi?” I asked. He just disappeared.

At night, I fill the old kettle and place it atop of an ancient looking Arj heater. Salah advised me to do this. He is the driver ferrying passengers between here and Paveh. As soon as he unloaded my luggage, he turned on the heater.

“Bring some water to boil for yourself, or else you will freeze,” he said.

The water wasn’t even half-boiled, when I heard cries and screams. I rushed out of the toilet, only half finished. Karim was shouting whilst gripping the door frame. A boy of seven or eight was at his side.

“Huh? What’s wrong with you?” I bellowed.

“He is saying you shouldn’t sleep here,” the little boy said.

“Who are you?” I asked.

Karim was so frustrated and hostile. Here they easily lose their temper. Maybe this cold weather is to blame for.

“You should sleep in the other room, the other one you see,” the little boy insisted.

“You are his son?” I muttered.

“Who let you stay here? You should pack and move to the other room right away!” the little boy added.

“This one or that one! What’s the difference? Two bare, empty rooms are not worth all this hassle!” I said.

The boy’s head was clean shaven. There were a few marks on his head. Psoriasis perhaps! I’ll take a photo and send it to you. Let me know what you think.

I ditched Karim and the boy. Guys back home warned me I’m headed for Salamanca! Who first made a tradition of using the word Salamanca? Sadegh? How the hell does he come up with this?

Apart from the cold and locals, this area is all about mountain ranges.

You won’t believe it! As if you have stumbled upon the hiking training site for major climbing competitions.

Here, work is really slow, they don’t have a habit of checking into the Clinic. They avoid me at all costs, regardless of what disease they come down with.

“It’s in their blood. They don’t let outcasts in.” Salah consoles me.

Salah is different from the rest. They respect him. I don’t know why, but he looks out for me. He’s tall and thick. He can flatten four of you in a heartbeat!

He never removes his turban. If it wasn’t for his loose baggy pants, he would have fooled me for a Mullah!

“Well, I am kind of a sheikh and Mullah here,” he chuckles.

There is an old bullet wound on his chest. Few days back he said he sensed a sharp pain in the centre of his stomach.

I barely convinced him to let me examine it. I spotted the wound the minute he lifted his shirt. He didn’t fess up how he got it. He keeps to himself.

Yesterday, we got out to explore  around the village a bit. When it gets cold even the men stay indoors. End of spring and during summer, they smuggle goods to Kirkuk.

That’s how they make their living. They always anticipate spring, desperate for some good weather, so they can head for Kirkuk.

Literally within two minutes of putting the village behind, you come across a mountain. The mountains here bore no similarities to the ones close to where we live. They are all made of bare rocks.

If I wasn’t planning to return shortly, I would have invited you all to come here.

Though, I am not convinced you can handle climbing real mountains and cliffs!

They have built a shrine or something similar, on the foot of the mountain. It’s built with rocks. They are arranged in circular formation, spreading in an area around seventy to eighty metres.

I will take a photo and send it to you. Salah tells me tree soldiers are buried there. Most of Salah’s family live in Kirkuk. He has asked his cousin to bring me back a set of American hunting binoculars from the other side of the border.

They say mid-spring, when cold will ease off. I will be back by then. Pray for me that my time here will be up soon. Give Baran a kiss for me. Actually a big smooch. Just like the ones Sadegh plants!

Here, time hangs heavy on my hands. This crap of a clock kills to do its job! I shut the door at three and waited for Salah. You remember Salah, right? Few days ago we made our way to “Posht Band”. It’s on top of the mountains where water pools in holes in summer time, then from there, it flows to the valley.

On top of the cliffs there are few openings. Like caves. They are facing the rocky cemetery.

I told Salah, I am an avid climber. He couldn’t believe I would be into these kinds of things. Remember? You couldn’t believe it either.

“Just through these frozen cliffs, I will climb all the way up to the caves,” I told him.

At first he laughed. He thought I was joking. I started climbing just then. He started yelling, leaped and grabbed hold of my ankle.

“Do you know how many have tried to climb these cliffs before you? How many have fallen into the valley? That’s what happened to the town army teacher!” he snapped.

Two summers ago, the poor lad was trying to climb, but lost his grip and fell.

“They never retrieved his body,” he adds.

“Don’t fret, I hold national medals for rock climbing!” I said.

He wouldn’t let go. “For six months, people from the city kept coming and searching for him, interviewing everyone. They put so much pressure on Karim, he lost his mind. He has gone mad!” he said.

Looks like this fella was staying in the same room as me.

First they were suspicious of Karim, thinking he might have harmed him.

Now the little boy minds him. He is Karim’s youngest son. I believe you’re right.  The marks on his scalp aren’t psoriasis. They might have something to do with this cold weather.

My only joy here are the cliffs. Before my return is arranged, I will have a crack at climbing this one! I will take a photo and send it to you. Salah must know the way up. It’s not so much that I can’t climb it on my own, it’s just that it will be safer if he accompanies me.

My father has spoken to someone in Kermanshah’s Imam Hussain Hospital to arrange my transfer.

For now I hang around the Clinic and kill time.

Salah hasn’t taken my letter to town. He’s forgotten.  He said he left it in the car. He only spotted it today.

I fetched the letter back and added these few sentences so you know I am not absent minded or have forgotten to write to you. Saturday, He has to drop someone at Paveh. He will mail it then. Ever since he has worked out my plans for climbing the cliffs, he avoids me.

“Don’t go up there, these two caves are sacred to local people,” he told me.

He takes me for a fool. Locals have named them “Dou Eshkaftah”, meaning two empty hollows!

I haven’t been well for two days. I’ve caught a flu. I went to “Sar Band”. , I thought I had found a way to climb it through the southern ridge.  I have sent you the photo.

After only 50 meters, the path was blocked. I was trying to cross towards the eastern ridge when I got caught! Can you believe it? I truly got stuck. I possibly couldn’t set a foot forward!

I was stuck up there for two to three hours. I thought I would freeze to death. You can’t picture the cold till you are here and feel it for yourself. It’s biting cold, so harsh. It peels your skin off.

I have no clue as to how Salah found out I was up there. I saw him passing through the rocky cemetery and walking towards the cliffs. You wouldn’t believe your eyes! He was climbing the cliffs so swiftly and smoothly, as if he was flying! As if he was soaring on the rocks. I’ve never seen anyone climbing like this! Not even in the movies.

He threw me over his shoulders, and descended through the eastern ridge. The path is etched in my head. I will take some more photos for you when I recover.

He wouldn’t speak to me for a few hours. He was utterly sour.

“What were you doing up there?” he snapped

“What’s it to you? Are you my babysitter?” I replied.

“If you only knew! You would have never dared!” he said.He bit his lips to the point of bleeding.

“How did you even realise I was up there?” I muttered.

Then he got talking about the tale of the ones buried in the rocky cemetery. He said a few years ago, towards the end of the war, some army men arrived in town. Precisely four of them.

It seemed they were headed for Kirkuk, only passing through these mountains. As they were crossing the village, one of the locals recognised one of them. They get into a brawl!

They killed three of them. One fled towards the cliffs and climbed them. From the exact spot I was climbing! Few put up a chase.

“He climbed so swiftly and hastily that they couldn’t catch him,” he added.

They hung around for two days, hoping he would climb down but he didn’t. From there on, Karim’s eldest son climbed up and entered the caves.  None of them ever returned!

“Colonel wouldn’t go without his rank, he would seek his soldiers!”  He murmured.

I first didn’t get it. “What will he seek?” I asked.

“Soldiers,” he said.

“He must have closed in on Karim’s son up there!” I shrugged.

“Be wary of these things. Have you forgotten the teacher?” he asked impatiently.

“But you said he fell into the valley!” I replied.

“They couldn’t retrieve his body!” He reminded me.

I ridiculously miss our climbing group. I dream of being back, resting in the chair next to the statue. Ask Sadegh to set aside some of his rolled cigars for me. I want to close my eyes, cross my legs, and let the smoke hang in the air.

“They had to build shrines for those soldiers as a way of honoring Colonel. No one else is buried there, apart from those three soldiers,” he added.

I have to climb thecliffs and hoist our flag between the cave openings! I want to make sure it’s visible from the village. Ask all members of our climbing group to sign our flag and maile it out to me.

I’m going to include you all in this honour! Then I will quit and return to Tehran.

It’s all done and dusted. Our proud flag is now hoisted atop “Dou Eshkaftah”. I only returned a few hours ago. I’m at loss with myself as to why I hadn’t noticed this path earlier. Apart from it there is no other way up. You have a good look when you develop the photos.

I checked out everything up there. “Dou Eshkaftah” is a deep cave, the end isn’t visible.

It’s not two different caves at all, only two separate entrances. Each one meter by one meter. You have to kneel to get in. When you move inside a few meters, the path opens up into a hall similar to a vintage spacious house, only made of rocks and icicles.

I took photos of everywhere, at least wherever there was just enough light. When I crossed the hall, the path got that narrow, I had to crawl few meters.

There is a spring on the north side of the hall. Surprisingly water here is not frozen.

Can you believe it? In this cold, water is running through the rocks and pours over the caves floor, then a few meters ahead it disappears once again between the rocks. Apart from this spring there is nothing of interest around. There is no sign of Colonel. I shouted after him a few times: “Where are you, Colonel?”

The echo sounded as if his whole rank were searching for him, from his Captain and Major to even his recruits!

I have to tease Salah, question him as to what sort of Colonel leaves all his troops in the cave and flees himself.

There were no writings, signs or addresses carved into the walls. Only sleek, smooth rocks. I sat quietly for half an hour in the middle of the big hall. It’s h got surreal stillness to it. I still haven’t told Salah that I’ve been in the caves. He will most probably lose his temper. Maybe by now he’s caught a glimpse of our flag.

On my way down, I passed Karim, sitting in the middle of the rocky cemetery. Staring at me, his hands placed on his head.

“How are you doing Karim? You want to join me for a climb?” I joked.

He was whispering some words while rocking his body.

“Who are you praying for?” I asked.

“Naser is up there,” he replied in Farsi!

I actually had bought Karim for not being able to speak Farsi. Clever lad!

“So you do speak Farsi! You just wanted to poke fun of me, hey?” I added.

Send me a copy of the photos once you’ll develop them, I want to hang a few of them here on the walls.

Show it to the rest of our bunch as well. If it’s possible, please also send it to the monthly university magazine. See if they’ll publish it. Just ask them to add these sentences as description or footnotes:

“Dou Eshkaftah is one of the caves located in the west side of Iran. The distinguishing feature about this cave is its spectacular rocky formation, consisting of sedimentary rocks and silica. Unfortunately, as a result of its unique geographic position, this cave has not attracted the attention it deserves from national and international climbers. This has played a major role in keeping it pristine and natural. These photos might be the only ones ever taken from the inside of Dou Eshkaftah”

Looks like my father’s friend in Kermanshah has sorted everything out. I only have to hang around here for a few days till my portfolio makes it to Imam Hossein Hospital.

Thanks for the magazine and photos. I wasn’t expecting the magazine to publish my photos so quickly! The only problem is that Dehnavi has manipulated and changed my footnotes. Why has he omitted the last sentence? When I say no one prior to me has ever taken photos from inside these caves, I mean NO ONE HAS!

I can’t understand why this scum gets to run the show!

Karim hasn’t shown up for a few days. I don’t want to tell Salah I’ve seen him (I ran into him???) in the cemetery that day.

His behaviour has changed, he is not pissed off or angry or anything.

He has become more sympathetic, softer! He brings me food.Doogh, local yoghurt and butter. Even barbequed chicken.

Can you believe it! He brought me chicken kebab placed in between fresh local bread, all arranged nicely on a huge round tray.

He has been coming  to the medical centre for a chat.

“Did you come across anything up there?” he asked the other day.

I wanted to show him the pictures, but he refused.

“You shouldn’t show these pictures to anyone, it will scare people,” he said.

  “Your Colonel wasn’t up there. I thoroughly searched for him,” I said.

He’s sent a young girl over to wash my clothes. She is only thirteen or fourteen. Her name is Heeva!

“Why weren’t you coming before?” I asked her.

“Mr Salah has sent me over,” She replied.

“Okay but why sending you now?” I asked.

“Because you were not like this before,” She answered.

“What’s wrong with me?” I insisted.

“You are into climbing the mountains to visit Colonel It’s our tradition to wash clothes of people like you,” she explained.

I am not certain if by tradition she means the nonsensical superstitions they believe in or something else? Recently the locals’ have been spying on me. I woke up at midnight to use the toilet, saw a few of them leaning against the wall in a line. One of them was smoking a pipe, then passed it on, I asked them why in this cold they were sitting there. They bent their head low and didn’t reply. I am certain they speak Farsi. But they act as if they can’t understand me.

They were all wearing long scarves as turban and long loose black robes with wrapping scarfs around their waists.

They all had the same exact ochre American style overcoats on. Can you believe it? It’s strange as to how they’ve got hold of so many identical overcoats.

I’ve asked Salah to bring me newspapers to cover all the windows.

Someone has climbed “Dou Eshkaftah” and has removed the flag. It was there till yesterday, but it’s missing this morning. Not to worry. I thought they wouldn’t tolerate it up there.

The weather is still poor. I can’t predict how long it will be snowing.

Salah has unexpectedly gone to the city. I went to look for him. His mother was home. She is about eighty. “Where is Salah,” I asked. “He is gone,” she replied.

I stayed to ask if he would return. She came in with a few plates of food on a round tray. I insisted I wasn’t hungry, she cornered me and was pressing the tray against my chest. I barely freed myself.

I descended the mountains and came back to the valley yesterday. It wasn’t hard at all. It’s so much easier than climbing.

100 meters below, I reached a flat area. Then 50 meters down, I reached the bottom. There is a narrow path down underneath. If you follow it, most probably it will take you to Kirkuk.

Maybe Karim has done the same, descended into the valley and fled to Kirkuk.

It’s so chilled down there, more icy than up here. There’ll be no hope of him returning if he has headed to Kirkuk.

I touched the branch of one of the dwarf trees. It shattered like a piece of glass and scattered on the ground. I saw a rabbit too. I couldn’t tell when it had died. I brought it back to the medical centre with me. One more thing. When I was returning, there were a set of footprints,in the snow just next to mine. Larger than mine. They looked like a set of mountain climbing shoes.Someone must have followed me all the way to the bottom.  I haven’t seen anyone around here with this sort of shoes. I wish there was a phone I could use to call you. It’s so unbearable being disconnected.

Salah hasn’t returned yet. It’s been an interesting turn of events. The locals don’t follow me at every corner anymore. I don’t know why, but it’s been some time since anyone has spied on me at the medical centre.

I went out this morning; the weather hadn’t improved. It was snowing heavily. I went to the village, all the doors were shut. I couldn’t hear a peep from anyone as if they were all dead.

I am not sure when you’ll receive my letter. There is no sign of Salah yet. I discovered something today. About the shoeprints in the snow. Early this morning, as I was heading to the medical centre, I checked them more closely. I originally thought they were from mountain climbing shoes, but they weren’t. They are from army boots. They have the zigzag pattern of the soles of those boots. They are around the size forty five. Wherever I go they follow me. The prints are there but I can’t spot anyone.

Every day, food is placed for me outside the door by someone who hides away. It has been about one week since I’ve spotted anyone. Do you know what I think? I think I’m like those Japanese soldiers. The ones who are bound to keep a lookout at a certain spot their entire life.

Everywhere is laden with snow. Salah is yet to come back. I’ve searched all the houses. There isn’ta single person left in the village. There are boot prints everywhere. Sometimes they approach me. When I run fast, they chase me closely. I have locked all the doors, tied all window handles together with ropes. I can’t possibly see “Dou Eshkaftah”. Heavy fog has settled on that area.

I have taken a photo of myself. Develop it!  

Peyman Esmaeili was born in 1977 in Tehran. He graduated in Electrical engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) in 2000 and penned his first short story collection in 2005 with Qoqnoos Publishing House: Search Your Raincoat Pockets, which won him the Isfahan Literary Award in 2006. His second book, “Snow and the Cloudy Symphony” a collection of seven stories was released in 2008 by Cheshmeh Publications and won: – Houshang Golshiri Literary Award for the best collection of short stories in 2008 – Mehrgan Award for the best collection of short stories in 2008 & 2007 – The Critics and Journalists Award for the best collection of short stories in 2008 – Rozi Rozegari Award for the best collection of short stories in 2008 – “Isfahan Literary Award” and “The Book City Award” for the one of the short stories in this collection Animal Disease and In Between the Empty Hollows.

“Let’s go back to night” has been published in 2018 by Cheshmeh Publications which won “Ahmad Mahmoud” literary award for the best short story collection in Iran in 2018. 

The Quest to Mount Qaf
(An excerpt from the memoir titled – The House on Sun Street)

By Mojgan Ghazirad

Thou must know that the lord Solomon committed this castle to my charge and taught me the language of birds and made me ruler over all the fowls which be in the world; wherefore each and every come hither once in the twelvemonth, and I pass them in review: then they depart…

The Story of Janshah – The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night

One afternoon in early fall, my Persian literature teacher, Ms. Talebi, took us outside to the schoolyard to hold the class under the mulberry tree. To stretch her height and overcome her short stature, she always wore high heels in school. She was the only teacher who would wear those prescription shoes, since at that time in Iran, just a few years after the Islamic Revolution, women could only dream of wearing high heels in public.

She asked us to write a passage about an accident we remembered. “Be specific and use details,” she said and her plummy cheeks became more prominent as she smiled. I scribbled down the words floating in my mind. My story was about a girl in our neighborhood who died in a car accident. I had seen her a few times, but I heard the story of her death from Mamani, who had heard it from our neighbors.

It started to rain before I finished my piece. Rain drops disrupted the class and the girls chuckled about being outside, getting wet under the mulberry tree. Even though I was the last girl to put down my pen, I raised my hand to share my writing with the class. Ms. Talebi silenced the chatter and asked me to read before we moved our stuff back inside. The girls became silent as I read my piece. The bustle of returning to the class came to a halt. Ms. Talebi walked toward me and took the paper from my hands. Drops of rain that had fallen from the mulberry leaves made small bumps on my paper, dissolving letters here and there. She glanced at my writing and said, “I need to see you after the class.”

I dreaded to go to the school’s administrative building. Most often there was a problem that needed to be rectified, once a student was summoned to that part of school.  From the moment Ms. Talebi finished her sentence, I worried I’d written something wrong in that piece. I blamed myself for volunteering to read when everyone wanted to rush back to the class. My heart began racing as I got close to the administrative building, which was located on the opposite side of the schoolyard. I stood near the teacher’s lounge and hoped Ms. Talebi would see me once she’d finished talking to another teacher.

“Come in, Moji,” she said out loud as soon as she noticed I was standing at the door. “We were talking about you!”

I slogged my way through the lounge and kept my eyes sewn to the tiles. Teachers were holding glasses of tea and talking about different subjects during the refreshment period. A big circular table occupied the center of the room for tea and biscuits. Some teachers sat in the armed chairs that were placed against the walls and some were standing around the table. I wished Ms. Talebi was closer to the door and didn’t holler my name across the lounge. She asked me to sit next to her in an empty chair.

“Ms. Shirin came to me the other day and asked for my recommendation for the Dawn Ceremony project.”

I stood in front of her in silence, hesitating to sit in a teacher’s seat.

“You’re writing well, Moji,” she said. “All of us in Persian literature group have noticed this. Ms. Shirin wants to direct a play and she’d asked us for recommending someone who can write the script. I had you in mind, and today, after hearing what you wrote in the limited time you had, I think I can recommend you with confidence.”  She rose from her seat to take a glass of tea from the large tray the school caretaker just brought in. Her high heels clacked as she paced toward the center of the lounge. She came back with a steaming glass of tea in hand. “You like the idea?”

“Oh, I, I’d be happy to help, but I’ve never written a play in my life.”

“You think we expect you to be a writer from the time you were in a crib?” she burst out, the tea in her glass tilting, almost spilling on her manteau. “Don’t worry, we can help.” She took a sip of her hot tea and said, “Do you remember the book of poetry called Mantiq-ut-tayre by Attar? Don’t you dare say no, since I’ve talked about it in the History of Persian literature class many times.” She jolted with laughter.

“Yes, Ma’am, I do remember.”

“She wants to create a play based on that story. So, you need to read that book, if she decides you’re going to write the play.”

“I haven’t read anything from Attar,” I said.

“I know. I don’t think you can read that book on your own.” She slurped the remainder of the tea in the glass and said, “Start reading the book and skip the prologue and epilogue for now.”

The drizzle that had started during the literature class turned into a storm. The frenzy wind whirled the gold and amber mulberry leaves around the trees and piled them up against the rusty brick wall. I was enthralled by the exciting news. The confidence my literature teacher had in me elated me. I was chosen to write the play with my beloved counsellor, Shirin. I had known her ever since I got accepted in Derakhshan high school, first as the young librarian who encouraged me to read books, and then as a counsellor who oversaw our extracurricular activities. With her soft, straight hazel hair, up-slanting eyes with honey-colored irises, and thin bony stature, she reminded me of a princess from the East. Like the leaves falling from the trees, I wanted to twirl in the rain, spin until I drenched, and drop completely soaked under the mulberry trees. To work with Shirin on a script was like a dream.

***

A week after my conversation with Ms. Talebi, Shirin introduced the idea of the play to our class. She summarized the story as the journey of thousand birds to Mount Qaf and their quest to find Simorgh, the majestic king of the birds. “Out of one thousand birds that started the journey, only thirty birds reached Mount Qaf, and only in unity they were able to find Simorgh.” The concept of the story and acting as a bird in the play intrigued the class.

Nadia raised her hand in utter delight and asked, “Have you thought of what we should wear?” She was a fashionable girl among us and always wore á la mode dresses in private parties. We knew that from the photos she sneaked into the school.

“Of course!” Shirin said. “For such a huge play, we need to have attractive makeups and shimmering dresses for the actors. As charming as the birds look in nature.”

“Can we bring makeup to school?” Nadia gaped in astonishment. Cosmetics had become a great taboo after the Islamic Revolution. Beautifying the face with colors was considered seductive and girls were forbidden to use them in public in Islamic Iran. The school administration repeatedly told us it was shameful and disgusting for a Muslim woman to paint her face when she appeared in public. A devout young woman was expected to use makeup only at home, for her husband. No student was allowed to bring them to school, let alone wear them in class.

Shirin laughed. I felt she didn’t expect such a question at the beginning of her talk. “I know you’re all interested in makeup,” she said. “You can bring your moms’ Revlon eye shadows and Lancôme lipsticks, with my permission, exclusively in preparation for the play.”

Girls cried in excitement, some snorting in surprise.

“But this doesn’t mean you carry them in your bag from tomorrow.” She laughed. “Or the next thing you say to the principal is that I permitted use of cosmetics in school.” She paused for a few moments, and then said, “Listen, you girls! This play is not about cosmetics and costumes, even though I know you all love that part. The story of the birds is an allegory, and I want you to delve into the meaning as you prepare for the play.”

“How did you come up with the idea of this story?” a girl asked.

“Aha! I knew you smart girls would ask this question. You’ll soon realize how the story is applicable to the current situation we live in. For now, I would recommend you to buy Mantiq-ut-tayre, Attar’s book of poetry, or borrow it from school or a public library and start reading it. Many of you might even have it at home.”

“A book of poetry?” someone asked in surprise.

Shirin squinted as if she was puzzled by the question. “I believe your literature teacher has already introduced Attar and his work to you. Hasn’t she?”

“Yes, Ms. Shirin,” the class answered.

“It’s difficult to read,” a girl said.

“I surely understand. That’s why I want you to prepare the book and do your best. You’ll read and memorize the script for the play, which we’ve decided to ask Moji to write.”

The class filled with awe and wonderment.

“How did you choose her?” Nadia asked.

“The Persian literature teachers recommended her. She writes well, don’t you agree?”

“Yes, Ms. Shirin,” the girls said.

 I blushed at that moment. I shied away from being conspicuous among the students. It made me uncomfortable to be praised in class. I lowered my head and stared at my shoes, trying to avoid their heavy looks. I felt the burden on my shoulders, not knowing how I would write the play. A sense of bewilderment engulfed me as to whether I should have accepted the offer. It was the first time in my life I was going to be seriously challenged, and I was not sure I would succeed.

***

The weather was still pleasant in Tehran and I could still spread a straw mat on the terrace of my grandfather’s garden and read under the pines’ shade. Clutching a pitcher of ice water and cucumber slices, I began Mantiq-ut-tayre by contemplating the first appearance of Simorgh, the majestic bird, in a moonless night. It was in China, Attar said, that a feather from Simorgh floated in the air and the rumors of his fame became known to man. Since then, every man kept a duplicate of that feather in his heart, thinking he possessed the genuine one for himself. How could a single floating feather create such chaos on Earth? How could all the beauty be derived from that single fallen feather of Simorgh? I read Mantiq-ut-tayre that afternoon and many afternoons to come. The ice cubes in the pitcher would melt and disappear. Fine drops of water would surface the glass pitcher and magnify the cucumber slices floating in the water. But it was not easy to fathom the hidden meaning of the verses in the language of birds.

Even though Ms. Talebi helped me with the questions I had, the content of the book was beyond my novice understanding of Islamic mysticism. I wondered why Shirin had picked that story for a junior high school play. The more I probed into the arguments the birds brought to excuse themselves from the journey to Mount Qaf, the more I got surprised by their wayward explanations. The hoopoe, leader of the birds in the journey, fabricated stories from real life to convince the birds. People in those stories responded to the circumstances in stupid ways. The hoopoe could never convince me, I wondered how he could satisfy and move the birds. After reading the book for the third time, I began to feel the terror that fretted the birds. I gradually absorbed the dreadful ambience of Mount Qaf, the Simorgh’s abode.

Wednesdays when we had free time at the end of the school day, I went to Shirin’s office to read and edit the scenes I’d written during the week. I struggled with the hoopoe character in my script. Every time I went to her office, she would pull a chair beside her desk and offer me to sit. I would read the hoopoe’s lines and she would shake her head and ask me to erase and rewrite his sentences.

 One time, I became so frustrated that I threw my pencil on the paper and crossed my arms. “Ms. Shirin, I’m not sure if I understand what you don’t like about the hoopoe’s dialogue. What’s wrong with his answers?”

Shirin stared at me and nodded. She leaned back in her armed chair and observed me for a while. “I am afraid you didn’t grasp the concept of hoopoe’s leadership.”

“I’ve read the book three times. I am not putting anything in his mouth? that is not expressed in the book.”

“I know. But something is missing in your lines of dialogue. One that shows the essence of his role in the journey.”

I sighed and gazed at the lines on the paper. “I wish I’d never accepted writing this script.”

“Moji!” Shirin said in a raised, irritated voice. “You’re disappointing me. I thought you had the perseverance to perfect any work given to you. Am I wrong?”

“No,” I said. “But honestly, I don’t know what you’re looking for in hoopoe.”

Shirin shook her head a few times. “That’s a different discussion! We can talk about hoopoe as long as you feel it’s necessary. But to bring excuses in the middle of the task is what I don’t expect from you.”

The desk lamp had created a golden circle of light on the table. My pencil’s shadow darkened half of the birds’ names who said the dialogues. The hoopoe answered the birds on every other line. I stretched my hand and grabbed the pencil. The shadow disappeared from the lines.

“Let’s read the verses where Attar talks about the hoopoe again.” She hunched forward and reached for Mantiq-ut-tayre at her side. Her scarf was pulled back on her head and once again, I could see her hazel highlights. The strands of hair glittered under the desk light as she flipped the book. She’d attached dozens of small notes to different pages to mark them, and she’d written in tiny script in the margins. She found the page where a bird asked hoopoe why he was the chosen one. The bird’s main objection was the leadership position that was bestowed upon the hoopoe, in spite of him having the same creation as other birds. How come we are the lees and you get to be the purest of wine?

“But I thought…” I said, interrupting her reading, “I thought the hoopoe was elected by the birds because of his capabilities. He was not chosen by the divine. There is a clear section about the selection process in the book.”

“True. And that is what exactly I want to tell you.” She rose from her seat and scanned the bookshelf beside the window. The books were neatly organized on the shelves, starting from the thick, glossy hardcovers to thin paperbacks. Some of them had English titles. I always wondered how well she knew English language. Most books had small papers jutting out of their top edge, like flat birds sitting on a slanted power line. She kneeled to check the bottom shelf closer. She pulled out a couple books and pushed them back in their spot. “It used to be here,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t find it now.”

“What are you looking for, Ms. Shirin?”

“I wanted to show you an image of the hoopoe I had in one of my books.” She suddenly knocked her head with both hands. “Oh, I remember now, I’d taken that book home.” She came back to her seat and said, “In that calligram, which is basically calligraphy in the shape of a bird, Allah’s name, the word Bismillah, is depicted in the hoopoe’s beak. It is referring to the Koranic verse about the hoopoe. In King Solomon’s story in the Koran, hoopoe is the king’s messenger. I’m sure you’ve come across the relation between the hoopoe and King Solomon as you’ve read the poems.”

 “Yes. That’s his given name in Attar’s book. ‘The Solomon’s bird.’ But what does that calligram have to do with —”

“On some occasions, Moji, an image can tell you a thousand words. The divinity, my dear, is something that is bestowed upon certain individuals and not achieved by human effort.”

“What do you mean, Ms. Shirin?”

“I mean it is true that the birds choose their leader in this story, but they could have not chosen anyone but hoopoe. The divinity had fallen upon the hoopoe from the day he was born. The birds only acted to reveal his true identity.”

I must have had the most puzzled gesture on my face, hearing the explanation from her. “I know it is surprising for you,” she said. “But what you are missing in your lines of dialogue is this. The process of election in the Islamic theocracy is totally different from the election process in the Western societies. We only cast our votes to reveal the one that is already chosen by Allah.”

“So who is choosing the leader? Allah or us? I am confused.”

“We are and we are not. Allah reveals His choice through us. The hoopoe in the story of Attar is the chosen one, the flawless and the perfect bird who is capable of leading the flock to Simorgh. The birds only happen to unveil his destined role.”

She opened a whole new world in front of me at that moment. I wondered if all I’d learned about the role of human effort in pursuing perfection was wrong. “Is that why you said this story has never been as relevant to our society as today?”

She smiled. “You got it, Moji. You got it just right. We are the birds, Imam Khomeini our hoopoe in the quest for Allah.”

I remained silent for some time, gazing at the golden streaks of her irises. The question of Ayatollah Khomeini haunted me again in her office. I never identified with the people who loved Khomeini so much. I believed there was a sort of derangement in their emotional perception and their chain of thought, loving this man to the point they sacrificed their whole lives for him. But at that moment, I could see why millions of Iranians revered this cleric, this Ayatollah. He was the ultimate leader who was destined to guide them in their quest to Allah. And didn’t Ayatollah mean sign of God?

***

I was so behind with the revision of the play that Shirin invited me to her house to finish the script with her on Friday. Besides visiting my fifth grade teacher for her daughter’s birthday—who happened to be my classmate—I’d never stepped foot into my teachers’ homes. Mamani was aware of the writing process, so she gave me permission to go to Shirin’s house. To my surprise, she offered to drive me to her apartment, even though it was located in the western part of Tehran. She lived in Ekbatan, one of Tehran’s newly built apartment complexes at that time.

We arrived early in the morning. Mamani parked the Beetle in the parking lot in front of the building and pushed the doorbell button beside her apartment number. Shirin answered the buzz and opened the door to the lobby. As the elevator ascended, I could hear the throbbing of my veins in my ears. I tried to stay composed, not making a show of my anxiety to Mamani. But how could I keep calm when after all those years, I was about to see Shirin in her house?

Mamani clapped the door knocker, and after a few seconds, Shirin appeared at the door. She was wearing a snow-white floral dress without any head scarf. Mamani had never seen Shirin in person. All she knew about her was my scattered anecdotes of the encounters I had with her. She eagerly accepted Shirin’s offer to come inside. I was certain she wanted to inspect the house and the people living there. Shirin appeared warm and welcoming, and offered a glass of tea.

We stayed in the living room while she went to the kitchen to prepare tea. Right in front of us, framed photos of two army men hung on the wall. One of them appeared younger than the other, but there was a striking resemblance between the two. They both had bushy beards, one grizzled and the other as black as hot tar. I noticed the LA insignia on the chest pocket of both men’s uniforms.

Mamani pointed at the pictures and asked in a hushed voice, “Her family members work for the Revolutionary Guard?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

Shirin returned with two china cups of tea and a sugar cubes bowl in a serving tray. I glanced at her as she stooped and held the silver tray in front of me. The brilliant blue roses of her tea dress matched her oval zircon earrings. The dress had a tight waist and its godet hemline kissed the naked shin above her ankles.

“Thanks for bringing Moji here. I am sure it’ll help her immensely to finish the script.” She placed the empty tea tray on the wooden coffee table and sat in front of Mamani.

“You’re welcome, Ms. Shirin. I hope everything goes well with the play.”

“Hopefully it will. The girls are enthusiastic about it. They can’t wait until we start rehearsing the act.”

Mamani finished her tea and placed the empty cup in the saucer on the side table. She started playing with the edges of the silk scarf she’d placed on her lap. “Hopefully we haven’t disturbed your family this early in the morning.”

“Oh. Not at all,” she said. “Nobody is home except me. Mother goes to Behesht Zahra every Friday morning. She wants to talk to her martyred husband and son.”

“I am very sorry, Ms. Shirin,” Mamani said in a low tone.

“Thank you,” she said. She stared at her father’s photo. “He died three years ago in Kurdistan. My brother was beheaded one month after him, same Kurdistan.” She bit her lips, her hands squeezing the blue roses of her dress.

“How horrible!” Mamani said. Her gaped mouth and her fixed gaze on the photos cried her utter surprise. “I’m so very sorry to hear this. It must’ve been terribly hard for you and your mother.”

The corner of Shirin’s lips quirked up in a bitter smile. She turned her eyes toward the window and looked at the bare chinar trees outside. Not even a speck of the golden streaks was visible in her irises. “Mother misses them a lot. She spends every Friday with them. That’s her way of coping with their absence.”

“So hard, so sad.” Mamani shook her head.

I had never heard Shirin talking about her family. I was shocked to find out she’d lost her father and brother. She had never made a reference to their martyrdom. All those years, in every single ceremony we had about the war between Iran and Iraq, she had remained silent, not even a drop of tear filling her eyes. I wondered how she could be so resilient about such horrifying disaster in her life.

“Would you like some more tea?” Shirin asked to change the subject.

“Oh, sure. Thank you,” Mamani answered. She was dying to find a private moment to talk to me. As soon as Shirin left, Mamani rose from the sofa and came to me. “What a horrible story!” she whispered. “Did you know any of that?”

I didn’t know anything.

“Most probably they’ve been killed by the Kurd secessionists in a guerrilla combat. They were devout members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. Not everyone goes to those areas of the border.” She cupped her face with her hands and sighed an audible sigh. She regretted why she’d brought me to Shirin’s house. “I don’t want you to come here again,” she said in a hushed tone.

I nodded and said nothing. My jaws were locked. I heard Shirin’s footsteps coming back to the living room. Her wooden sandals clacked on the parquet floor. Mamani rushed back to her seat and grabbed her scarf. Shirin had fresh cups of tea in the tray.

“Ms. Shirin, I have to pick up Moji’s sister from her volleyball practice. I’m afraid I can’t stay for another cup of tea.” She tied her scarf around her neck and picked up her purse from the sofa.

Shirin placed the tray on the coffee table. “Bashe, that’s fine. Thanks for bringing Moji here today.”

Mamani hurried to shake hands with Shirin and kissed my forehead before she left. “Call me as soon as you’re done!”

I hadn’t spoken a word since I’d come to Shirin’s house. Even after sipping the tea, my mouth felt completely dry. I pressed my hands against my thighs to keep them from trembling and revealing my anxiety. I rose from the sofa as soon as Shirin returned to the living room. She stretched her hand and asked me to sit. The silence in the room was suffocating. I could hear the cars that parked outside and turned off their engines. I didn’t know what to tell her. What word of condolence could spring out of my mouth? Did she even want me to refer to those frames hanging on the wall? What about Mamani’s warning? Why didn’t she want me to come to her house again? Was she scared of something? Or was it because of them being radical revolutionaries?

“Are you done with the final scene?” Shirin tore my chain of thoughts and brought me back to the room.

I nodded.

“Then let’s go to my room and start.”

I followed her down a murky corridor that led to her bedroom. Nothing decorated the corridor and I couldn’t guess the color painted on the walls. We passed a bathroom and a bedroom. From the half-open door of that bedroom, I saw a picture of a young couple in wedding gowns hanging on top of an oval mirror. The dark violet bed cover was neatly done. Her mother must have woken up early to make the bed and tidy up the room before she left. At the far end, as soon as she twisted the door knob and opened the door to her bedroom, bright light flooded the corridor.

I could have never imagined what I saw in that room. Intricate work of Persian calligraphy adorned every inch of the walls. Birds in different shapes perched on tiny tangerine twigs, each bird brought into existence by curved Persian alphabet letters that spooned one another with compassion and care. Drawn in delicate pen and ink, the birds possessed every possible shade of blue. No doubt Shirin had spent hundreds of hours depicting those letter-made birds, singing poems on the boughs. On her gul–o-morgh carpet, books were strewn like bowls of ambrosia for the heavenly birds. Mantiq-ut-tayre nested at a higher level, on the royal blue and ivory quilt of her bed.

She pulled out the chair behind her desk and pushed the ink pen collection away to create space. A stack of calligraphy stencils occupied the corner of the desk. Ink jars lined up in a row along the edge, almost touching the wall. From lapis to lazhuward to irtyu, her room brimmed with blue. How come I’d never noticed so much blue in her before? Pungent aroma of henna and brown sugar wafted from a ceramic bowl covered with a plastic wrap. The henna paste looked fresh, being made early that morning.

“Sit here, Moji. I hope the scent of henna doesn’t bother you.” She took the ceramic bowl from the desk and placed it on the bed stand.

“Not at all,” I said. “I’m used to it. My grandma colors her hair with a mix of henna and coffee powder. I love the aroma of coffee in her mix.”

She sat on the quilt, squeezed the pillow between her torso and the wall and rested her head on the pillow. “My ears are yours.”

I read the last act out loud. Every word I uttered brushed the anxiety off my chest. I felt peaceful and pristine once again. We worked all morning and a couple of hours after lunch. She believed the unification of thirty birds to become Simorgh at the end of the quest was well dramatized in the final scene.

“I love how you pictured hoopoe as the foremost part of Simorgh. Oh, I remember…” She jumped down from the bed and fetched a book from the floor. “I wanted to show you this the other day.”

The book was about the Islamic art of calligraphy. She placed the book on the desk and flipped the pages to find the image. On what appeared to be a straw-colored, ahar paper, an outline of a bird was drawn in black and gold ink. A small crown of feathers characterized the bird as hoopoe. Head craned backward, he was glancing at his black, bold wing. Inside the wing, three cedars had grown in different directions—a symbol of the hoopoe’s abode. Tiny golden curls embellished the torso and the long curved neck, and the word Rahman—the merciful—stretched like his back bone all the way to his eye. The feathers on the tail flared ostentatiously in every direction. The word Bismillah, as Shirin had stated in school, was written on his beak in fine black ink.

“Amazing,” I said.

She nodded and came closer to the desk. She leaned over me to reach the stack of stencils at the corner. The blue roses on her tea dress kissed my cheek. From among the stack, she pulled the stencil copy of the hoopoe image she’d just shown to me. She had carved out the curved alphabet on the torso of the bird. I suddenly remembered the tattoo of the mysterious rooster I saw years ago on her neck.

Her waist rubbed my shoulder. She didn’t make any attempt to stay farther from me. “I learned this art from my paternal aunts. The years we visited them in Abadan.” She sighed and slid her long fingers on the inner curves of the stencil. “They used to draw paisley patterns on my hands. But I animate my calligraphy and draw birds. It’s soothing to bring verses to life by carving them out like birds. Nice body tattoos they become.”

She stared at my neck and chest for a few moments, measuring the sizes with her eyes. “This hoopoe pattern is new. Would you like to have one on your chest?”

I was wearing a turtleneck shirt that day. Mamani always insisted we cover our chest from cold by having tight collars. I was astonished by her offer. To have a tattoo by my counsellor was a bizarre incident I could have never imagined in my dreams. At fourteen, I haven’t even pierced my ears, how could I have a tattoo of any pattern on my body? I’d never even tried my grandmother’s henna on the tip of my nails, how could I let her draw a whole tattoo on my chest?

“I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you!”

“Come on, Moji. Why don’t you try something new? It’s temporary. It’ll fade in a few weeks.”

She reached for my fingers and gently turned my hand to glance at the palm. A sharp, tingling sensation traversed my nerves as she mapped the crossed lines with her fingertips. She uncovered my forearm with the other hand and patted my bare skin. “You have a nice skin tone, Moji,” she whispered. “The color of henna will turn to an attractive auburn on your skin. The cold, clammy feeling when it dries is relaxing.”

I was trapped. I didn’t know how to respond to her offer. What if Mamani accidentally found the tattoo on my chest? What if a feather revealed itself under the first undone button of my blouse? I didn’t understand her insistence, but I also didn’t dare to ask. I was scared to paint the tattoo on my body.

Shirin sensed my doubt. She retracted her hands and distanced herself by re-organizing the collection of the stencils on her desk. She closed the calligraphy book and embraced it in in her bosom. “You need to step in, Moji,” she said. “The road to Mount Qaf is arduous and challenging. Remember the first valley of the seven valleys to Simorgh?”

My eyes were fixed on the row of blue inks. I remembered: The Valley of the Quest. It all started with a wanton desire. She was standing on my shoulder like a God-sent angel, holding a book to her chest, waiting for me to start the quest. I tilted my head upward and looked at her eyes. What mystery lied in those golden streaks that I could never say no to her? I nodded and surrendered in utter silence.

She grabbed the henna bowl from the bed stand and left the book of calligraphy in its place. From her closet, she brought a wooden box that contained the necessary tools for henna tattoo. She unfolded a cotton apron that had many amber stains on its front and wrapped the strings around her neck and waist. With strong, measured strokes, she mixed the henna into a smooth paste and poured the paste into a thick plastic bag she’d cut its corner before.

“You want to undress while I moist the cleaning towel?”

The hardest part for me was to become topless in front of her. Except for the time Mamani scrubbed my skin in the bath, I’d never become naked in front of anyone. I always wonder how I overcame the sense of shame in Shirin’s bedroom and let her stare at my naked breasts. She collected my curls and created a bun on top of my head. No strand of hair was allowed to fall on the breasts. “Ready?” she whispered into my ears.

I nodded. I felt her icy fingers through the stencil paper when she pressed? her hand to my breast to keep the paper in place. I don’t know if she sensed the throbbing of my heart. Every minute I expected her to ask, “What’s wrong, little bird? Calm down.” But she didn’t say anything and spread the henna paste in absolute silence. I struggled with shame and my nipples became erect because of her touch. Every time her fingers accidentally nudged my nipples, I felt a sharp needle prick. But to my utter surprise, I didn’t want her to stop. I enjoyed her soft touch. Unlike what she had claimed, there was no cold sensation of henna as it dried. Anywhere she spread the paste burned as if she’d placed a hot iron on that patch of skin.

After half an hour, she gave me a hand mirror to see the bird. The body parts of hoopoe appeared one by one as she rubbed off the dried clumps of henna with the damp towel. He perched audacious and lively on my breast. The word Bismillah was imprinted on the beak, on the spot above my heart. I was ready to tread on the Valley of the Quest. I was marked to become a soldier for Allah.

Mojgan Ghazirad, a native of Iran, graduated from Tehran University of Medical Sciences and studied pediatrics at Inova Children’s Hospital, with a Neonatal medicine specialty from George Washington University. She currently works as an Assistant Professor of pediatrics at George Washington University NICU in Washington, DC. She has published three collections of short stories in Farsi in Iran and Europe: A Lover in White Jacket in 2012 in Iran, Turquoise Dream in 2014 in Germany, and her last collection In the Solitude of Suitcases in 2016 in the UK. Her English essays have appeared in The Best American Travel Writing 2020, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Idaho Review, Longreads, The Common, etc. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Southern New Hampshire University. Her memoir, The House on Sun Street, depicts her memories of growing in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and eight years of war between Iran and Iraq after the Revolution. She lives with her family in Great Falls, Virginia.

The Suicide Note

An excerpt from Grasp of the Moon, a novel
By Azarin Sadegh

Most people didn’t know the woman I called Mimi wasn’t my mother. My real mother died in Kerman when I was ten.

I was told it was impossible not to fall in love with her.  But, going back to my most vivid memories, I couldn’t recall her scent, the contour of her eyes, or the rhythm of her laughter. Instead, I could only envision her crackling whisper at night when I couldn’t fall asleep, her obsession with little things that didn’t matter, and the oddity of her brief moments of stillness, because she always seemed to be in a rush. Since the day she chose to die without writing a simple note of explanation, all my memories of her became flawed. In this sense, Mother transformed into this mysterious creature I hadn’t truly known, and, after her passing, we all wondered if her constant cheerfulness was real or just an act.

Soon after her suicide, my father declared he could only handle his five sons. “Girls need a mother, Zora,” he said, before giving me away to my childless Auntie Maryam in Tehran. I called her Mimi to grant her the vague status of a mother, aware this could be misleading. Her husband had left her unexpectedly, a few years after their marriage, and everyone in the family assumed she planned to assuage her loneliness with a daughter.

Mimi became my guardian, but I never let go of Mother, always trapped in the disquiet of an image.

In this image, Mother looked at me with disbelief right before her fall. But every night, in my dreams, she died in different moods, different attitudes. Some nights she pointed at me in an accusatory fashion; on other nights she cried that she forgave me. Sometimes her jumps were cheerful, filled with hope and relief, sometimes mad and punishing, sometimes fearful. On especially moonless nights, she fainted and dropped silently to the ground. But in every dream, she jumped, and I never woke up before it happened, nor before she looked up from the mess she had made on the ground and blamed me for her shattered knees. ribs, and bones.

No matter what, our lives and death intertwined: I didn’t let her die and she didn’t let me live.

***

The Iran-Iraq war, which had started two years before Mother’s fall in 1980,  continued, . I met Sheerin in 1984 on my first day at school in Tehran, and almost instantly she became my best and only friend.

Together, we grew up, lived through the war, while imagining a life that didn’t resemble reality. We read books, watched movies, played games, and spent a good chunk of time dreaming.

At first, the war looked nothing like the images we’d seen in the movies. The mountains north of Tehran didn’t vanish behind fuming columns  of smoke. Trees didn’t grow burnt leaves or dead dangling legs. An expanding mushroom cloud didn’t rise on the horizon to give us incurable diseases, and hunger didn’t bloat our bellies. The school bells didn’t go silent, and Mrs. Principal, unfortunately, didn’t disappear. Our war martyrs looked just ordinary in photos displayed in newspapers, on tree trunks, on street lamps, and in all the windows of Daryani chain of grocery stores as if their pictures had been taken a long time ago before the war.

At the beginning of winter, after the first Iraqi missiles destroyed a six-story house and killed everyone inside, panic settled in. All young men were sent to the frontiers, even Sheerin’s beloved Sohrab. I wasn’t sure about the true meaning of falling in love, so when Sheerin told me they loved each other to death, I could only think of why not loving each other for life. But I believed my friend. Sheerin wasn’t the same girl anymore.

The war emptied park benches of old men. The children vanished from playgrounds. And I spent my mornings in lines, monthly ration coupons in hand, waiting, or exchanging my coupons. Inline, we all talked obsessively about the food we missed, but to tell the truth, this was nothing but a ruse. We wanted to distract ourselves from what was really on our minds: Those who had lost their lives.

Sometimes when the electricity was cut, Mimi and I sat on the sofa, our legs propped on the glass coffee table. She told me stories she knew by heart while I kept looking at her until it was too dark to see her face, my mind drifting, remembering Mother and Father and all my brothers in our old house in Kerman. Slowly, Mimi’s tales overlapped my own memories, and everything blended into the monotony of her voice. She made up tales and fables just because we couldn’t stand the truth anymore. As long as the war kept on, we were going to read happy-ending stories where the hero lived a quasi-eternal life.

Sheerin and I were lonely. We had nothing to do, yet so much to imagine. Loneliness was a space we could shelter inside, living imaginary lives, having imaginary friends, going to imaginary places. We built cities with names that rhymed with Machu Picchu and discovered moons so small we could hold them in our hands. Our loneliness was sometimes round like a small moon, sometimes thick like night, and sometimes jarring. Sometimes it wrapped around us, and other times it was dragged behind, like a shadow. Loneliness was fun. It became our most precious friend.

We were told to smile so the world would smile back at us. But this new world didn’t have lips or teeth, so it couldn’t grin. That’s how we grew up, by going along, but there were days we just couldn’t. Days we skipped school and dinner, stayed in our rooms to hide inside a dream.

Even so, we knew we were peerless.

True, we hadn’t done or experienced anything extraordinary. We just knew we were invincible, because of our  suffering. Imbued with the resilience of our hopes, we had no doubt of our magnificence, able to rise and to fall beyond any measurement.

***

One day I was zapping TV channels when the front door swung open. Keys rattled in the ashtray on the entry table. A heavy purse dropped on the floor beside it, and the wet overcoat found its usual place on the coat rack.

Mimi stood still in the hallway, keeping her scarf on.

I turned the TV off. “What’s happened?” I asked, noticing her red eyes. But Mimi never cried in front of me or anyone else. Crying was only permitted when nobody could watch or question or console.

Mimi took slow steps to join me on the sofa, our shoulders meeting. I rubbed her arm gently. But how could she be so reckless? Her role, as my guardian, was to calm me, to uplift me. I couldn’t take more terrible news. Another war, another revolution, another boyfriend leaving her. “Mimi, tell me. What’s going on?”

She leaned towards me, almost as if she still expected me to comfort her. I listened carefully to understand her barely audible voice. “I just heard that Sohrab, Sheerin’s boyfriend, got killed at the frontier.” She hid her face in her palms. “God. Only nineteen.”

No. No way. “Who told you? How do you know for sure?”

“A neighbor, just now.” Mimi got up, untying her headscarf, leaning over me. “It’s too late to call her anyway.” She placed her hand on my shoulder. “Come! Help me with dinner.”

But I couldn’t move. I watched Mimi walking to the kitchen, remembering the day after Sohrab’s departure.

The ground of the deserted Golestan Park was drowned in dead leaves. Sheerin had curled up on the pink wooden bench next to the empty playground. “What if Sohrab never comes back?”

“He will. He won’t leave you.”

“But what if he does?”

“No. He can’t.”

“If he loses his life, I’ll die.” Sheerin was looking at me like she truly meant every word.

That day, our only reassurance lay in the hope that nothing tragic would ever happen to Sohrab. But now, it had. Sohrab was not any more of this world.

I rushed to the kitchen. Mimi was peeling an onion. “How do you know Sheerin hasn’t yet heard the news?”

Mimi cut the onion in half. “I hope she hasn’t.”

I wiped my eyes, pressing my cheek against Mimi’s shoulder. Sohrab’s death was no more only Sheerin’s nightmare, but mine too. I hugged Mimi tightly, imagining my best friend’s lifeless body in different forms:  It was crushed; it was hanged; it bled; it was drowned; No. She couldn’t die. She couldn’t kill herself

I was the one talking about suicide all the time. I was the desperate, the dark, the unhappy, the one who was supposed to die young. 

I felt betrayed.

I was robbed of my own tragedy.

No. Sheerin, my only friend, couldn’t do this to me.

***

The next day I woke up late, hurried to the phone, and clutched the receiver so hard that my fingers felt numb. What friend would I be, if I didn’t give her the terrible news as soon as I could?

The phone rang only once. “Yeah,” she said.

“Do you know that–”

She interrupted me. “I know.”

Sheerin wasn’t crying. She didn’t even curse.

“Sohrab … A martyr for fuck’s sake,” I said.

The phone went silent.

I dropped the receiver, took my overcoat and umbrella, and ignored Mimi’s attempt to reason with me. I left the house and ran like the bearer of a Greek tragedy.  The sky shone silver, the grass grey, and the ground brown and pregnant with spring, everything colored with a color that didn’t suit the youthful life we lived. The wrong colors painted the world.

Sohrab was dead, a boy I didn’t even love, but his tragic destiny made obvious the absurdity of who we were, and who we couldn’t be.

Sheerin’s mother admitted me to their apartment.

I held Sheerin and whispered: “Don’t be scared. I’d never leave you alone.”

She was silent, tears dripping off her chin. We smiled at each other, both pretending not to know what this was all about. I couldn’t be the one reminding her of our pact at Golestan Park. What if for her that was just a dream of dying like Romeo and Juliette, a childish imitation of an imagined romanticism. Did we have real guts to kill ourselves? Did I really want to die? I wasn’t sure anymore. How could I let the world go on without me?

Sheerin stepped back. “I’m scared.”

“Me too,” I said, while slowly the idea of dying a spectacular death morphed into the desire for surviving this impossible life.

***

We spent the following days away from one another, as if we were intimidated by our suicide pact. Maybe she too had changed her mind. But after one week, she showed up at my door, with a suicide note in hand.

“This is my last letter to you, the living! You’re going to regret what you’ve done to me for the rest of your miserable little lives!”

Sheerin made me read her ridiculous note twice. “Why would you accuse your parents? They haven’t done anything wrong. They don’t deserve to live with this kind of guilt.”

She glanced quickly at the mirror, removing her scarf. “The note is addressed to the whole world. Anyone who reads it must feel angry for our absurd death, for the irrationality of wars, and Sohrab’s loss.”

I crumbled her note and threw it in the trash basket. “But this is not it.”

“God, it’s hopeless.”

I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. “We’re all hopeless.” I walked to the window.

Sheerin joined me, hanging onto my arm. Together, we looked outside. I had scratched off most of the tin foil covering the glass, so we could watch the rows of balconies facing us.

“We’d better come up with our final version soon.” She drew hearts on the foggy window.

“I’ll work on the note tonight,” I said, remembering Mother and how her non-existent suicide note just hurt me, nothing more. Maybe our note could never be perfect. I hid my rising doubts about this whole affair, but I couldn’t break my promises. “It’s going to be perfect,” I said.

Dark clouds shadowed our view of gray buildings and blue sky.

Sheerin stepped back and threw herself on my bed. “We also have to decide how.”

And we spent another hour talking about different ways to die. Throwing ourselves under a train like Anna Karenina or eating arsenic like Emma Bovary. We thought of lighting ourselves on fire like monks, but we didn’t want to be copycats.

“How about pills?”

“Pills are a coward’s choice for suicide . Painless is never spectacular.”

“We’ll look peaceful. It will trick them—until they read the letter.”

I didn’t have the strength to tell her about the impossibility of writing a perfect suicide note. “I’m not convinced.”

“It’s symbolic. Rest for those who have suffered when alive.”

I kept quiet, watching her get up.

She walked from one corner to the other. “I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I’m tired of pretending I’m fine. My mom is driving me crazy since she found out about Sohrab. She watches me. She picks me up from school and doesn’t let me breathe. Not that I care about breathing.”

Sirens blasted. Sheerin checked her watch. “Time to go.” She wrapped her scarf about her head and shoulders and left in a rush.

I looked out the window. The city rested, waiting for falling bombs. I covered the window with tin foil and turned on the light. I sat behind my desk and stared at the white page in front of me. Bombs didn’t worry me, nor did my terrible grades at school. Or the laws forcing girls to hide their curves and beauty under layers of dark fabric. I didn’t care about dangerously empty streets or curfews. What I couldn’t take anymore was this amorphous zone of torment where we stood. How abruptly our natural optimism, this belief in reaching for elusive happiness, which somehow had endured the ceaseless news of random deaths, faded when someone we knew was taken from us.

The words of anger, hatred, despair, accusation, and agony marched in arbitrary order in front of my eyes, but I didn’t need any of them.

I pressed the pen to paper. “For years, I wondered why my mother chose death. But now I know. It’s not about hating life. We only choose to die because we hate this life,” I wrote, reading it at the same time over and over until the rain began and the thunder broke. The light waned, and once more sirens blared. Darkness leaked into my room and crept over my page, and my sentences lost their clarity and power. The city hid under an instant layer of prayers, and our collective suicide became irrelevant.

Azarin Sadegh was born in Iran. She studied computer science at Bourgogne University (France) and years later moved to California working as a software engineer in IBM and a few other firms. Passionate about writing, she completed parallelly advanced novel writing courses through UCLA Extension Writers’ Program where she was a student of late Les Plesko. As a writer, she was a 2011 PEN America Emerging Voices fellow and a 2010 UCLA Kirkwood Award nominee.

Her work has appeared in Place Art Magazine, Scoundrel Time, LA Review of Books, Chicago Sun-Times, Coast Magazine, Iranian.com, and various anthologies.

I came to believe Anders never truly loved a woman, or a man, for that matter, but he loved the piping plover. He would die or kill for his beloved endangered species. He showed me a faded, aged video of the piping plover, chirping, and complaining on the lakeshore, the sandy beach along Hanlan’s Point on the Toronto Islands. I helped him, virtually a computer illiterate, upload the video, duplicated from his original Betamax videotape, from his university research database to his smartphone. I thought the bird, with patches of grey, was slightly bizarre, rather ugly and unphotogenic, a squat, jerky creature, the size of a sparrow, overrated. I couldn’t believe Anders had devoted his personal life and academic career to learning the intimate habits, nature, and essence of this rare bird. What, I thought, if the piping plover did go extinct—would the world truly be a worse place? At an intellectual and moral level, I realize I am wrong in the grand scheme of things, but, in practical terms, which was how I lived my life and survived from day-to-day, I couldn’t see what difference the rare bird’s existence made to the world.

In any event, I served Anders in the coffee shop, The Campus Circus Café & Gourmet Diner, his favorite café in Bloor Street West, not far from his house on Brunswick Street, where he lived alone. I thought he was a fortunate man to own and live in a house in the fine midtown area of Toronto, but he had been a tenured professor at the university and the cosmopolitan metropolis was his hometown. His career, while sounding rather boring, was a success, even, if, say, he didn’t have a spouse and children. In fact, he hardly ever mentioned any family to me, except in the context of an alcoholic sibling, who passed prematurely, and estrangement. I couldn’t see how a woman would be so interested in loving and living with someone who devoted his life to the piping plover, but I am a woman who loves people and urban adventure; I’m not an enthusiast of the outdoors and nature.

At the café, I always enlivened his evenings with my conversation, liveliness, enthusiasm, vivaciousness, and a bubbly personality—or this was how he described me. I possessed the endearing and fundamental features and qualities of a woman he had been indoctrinated to dislike, he joked, as an academic, a biologist, a zoologist, an ornithologist, specializing in the piping plover. Even though he retired several years ago, those research efforts, the field work, and academic activities seemed to have occurred as long ago as a lifetime. Although he was a leading expert on the piping plover, he felt as if he had forgotten his academic papers, published in academic journals, and research papers, full of statistics, annotations, and footnotes, which I saw at his house, stacked in his home office, and even the university campus, when we dropped by the library and his former departmental office, which we visited at night, on the sly, with his old keys, which still fit the locks, and online when I happened to Google his name out of curiosity.

Anders started to blame his memory losses and the disappearance of a large bank of memory due to potentially premature dementia. He simply could not be certain, he said, whenever he spoke with me, at the Campus Circus Café & Gourmet Diner, located near the University of Toronto campus. He felt he could not deny he had experienced memory and cognitive decline. He also expressed worry about hand tremors, the twitching of his eyes, grimacing. Now he spent most of his free time on researching investments, as he built up a stock portfolio, moving away from bank savings accounts, with term deposits, and guaranteed investment certificate’s into riskier assets, technology stocks.

Meanwhile, he drank the finest coffee ever brewed, he said, alongside his favorite barista of all time, whom he tipped generously. I flirted with him, joked with him, laughed at his nerdy, geeky jokes. Meanwhile, I pondered how even he managed to remain single after all these years. Of course, I managed to provide myself with a ready-made answer; he was a leading expert on the nearly extinct and endangered species, the Piping Plover. Still, he reminded me he felt he had practically forgotten everything he had learned, remembered, discovered, and taught as a wildlife biologist and ornithologist. He blamed what he joked was senescence and potentially some form of premature dementia, or cognitive decline, memory disorder, or psychological disorder, although it was interesting to note his ability to learn, I surmised, hadn’t been impacted as he continued with passion and conviction to invest in the stock market.

So, I dismissed his concerns about memory loss, especially when he went overboard and bought with whatever cash he had available, declining stocks during a bear market, which then quickly rebounded, so that his paper profits were considerable. He seemed to be thinking straight; in fact, he struck me as still sharper than many of the academic types who dropped by the café and diner I knew. I said I thought if he could learn new subjects, then he probably wasn’t suffering from any form of dementia, but some psychosomatic phenomenon. “I majored in psychology,” I said, although I didn’t add that I dropped out because I couldn’t afford tuition. I enjoyed the study of psychology and I enjoyed the active social life, being popular among young men, in residence, because I was outgoing and had a womanly figure, but I wasn’t as smart as some of my friends—I didn’t have their sharp memories—beautiful people who could socialize and party and then sit down to write a complicated multiple-choice exam and score in the ninety percent range. 

I invited him to dinner at the apartment I shared with my boyfriend, who worked in investment and portfolio management for a public schoolteachers’ pension fund. I needed to be secretive about the invitation and dinner date, though. I told him not to tell anyone because if he found out he would kill me.

“Lynn, why are you with someone who will kill you for being with another man?”

“Because it’s the flaw in our society, it’s manly thing—because even in Toronto, even in Canada, in contemporary times, it’s what expected of boyfriends, to be overprotective of their girlfriends.” 

“And you have no problem with it?”

I didn’t explain how much I was in love with the man, despite his nagging jealousy and recurring bouts of simmering anger and paranoia, which boiled over into rages, during which he burst into violence and started breaking furniture, ripping, tearing, and cutting my clothes, and even spitting in my face, and hitting me and choking me. I didn’t want to burden him with my personal problems, my insane loves and passions; I didn’t want to explain I didn’t think I could afford to live in my own apartment. I was tired of renting basement or attic rooms from friends of friends or hard-working families, who didn’t speak English as a first language, good hard-working people with conservative lifestyles and cultural notions of privacy imported from overseas. Instead, I glossed over my own personal problems, even though I believe I had attained a certain level of intimacy with Anders.

“It’s the price you pay, if you want to keep the boyfriend who let’s you live in his big expensive apartment downtown for free.”

“You could live with me. It’s a big enough house, with three bedrooms, one I converted into an office.”

“You’d let me live with you?”

“I wouldn’t have made the invitation, if I wasn’t serious.”

“If he starts slapping me around again, I just might.”

“What?”

He was extremely disturbed to hear my boyfriend had been getting physical with me, even though I believed his psychological abuse was worse; but I tried to reassure Anders there was nothing that should leave him disturbed. Then I wished I hadn’t said anything; there was a time when I wanted our relationship to be strictly professional, since he was a generous tipper, the best customer in terms of gratuities, but that we were far past that stage and had become friends.

“Eat,” I encouraged.

We ate the best wholesome gourmet meal he had ever eaten in as long as he could remember. He took to the Madeira wine I served him, although normally he never drank, since his brother, who led him to being estranged from the rest of his surviving family, was an alcoholic, chronic, unremitting, whose abuse of alcohol eventually led to his premature demise and death. He vowed he would never take the route his brother took in life and became abstemious.

“Where did you get this Madeira? It tastes simply divine. I can’t resist its rich essence.”

“Drink up, connoisseur,” I urged and encouraged, “it came from Martim—he’s a native of Madeira. He was born on the island, but immigrated to Canada as a child. He thinks I love him because I treat him with respect. He’s a lawyer, the first person in his family ever to go to college. Despite his success, he’s abused and put down by his family, particularly his mother. He still lives with his mother and doesn’t have many friends. He doesn’t know the true meaning of friendship, so when he meets someone like me, who treats him well, he automatically falls in love. He thinks I’ve fallen for him because I show him the respect he deserves. I don’t know how to tell him how to back off and stop showering me with affection and gifts.”

“Does he do estates and wills?”

“I think he’s a jack of all trades lawyer.”

Since Anders insisted, I found myself in the awkward position of sharing personal information, Marti’s full name, phone number and business address, between friends, which, as a practice, I usually compartmentalized, and preferred to keep separate. I had to admit, though, the number of friends I had became fewer in number since I started living with my boyfriend. In fact, I carried a handbag Martim had given me, having told my boyfriend I bought the luxury accessory with tip money, and Anders happily accepted one of his business cards I found in a hidden compartment. He continued to sip the Madeira, when I invited him, slightly tipsy, into the hot tub.

“But I didn’t bring a swimsuit.”

“Naked is best,” I said.

With some encouragement and cajoling, he stripped off many layers of clothes, his blazer jacket, his cardigan, his button-down shirt, his t-shirt, and a wifebeater, and then his trousers, his pair of long underwear, his short underwear, boxer briefs—or were they cycling shorts?—and slipped into the hot tub naked beside me. He was well endowed, and when I joked “size matters,” he laughed so heartily he started sputtering and coughing, and I worried he was suffering an asthma attack or even a coronary.

“You’ve never been married?”

“No, for the umpteenth time,” he replied. 

“Why not?”

“Relationship with women have never been a priority,” he confided. He gazed directly in my eyes. “I was worried they would be a distraction or I would badly hurt a woman’s feelings.”

“You’ve so devoted yourself to the behavior and mating habits of the nearly extinct piping plover—you were married to your work—that’s the reason,” I said. “But now you’re retired.”

“Yes, I’m finished, at the endgame.” 

“And—don’t be offended—but you’ve never even had a boyfriend?” I asked.

“Why a boyfriend?”

“Sometimes boyfriends work better for men.”

“Agreed, but not this guy.”

I reached over across the hot tub to touch his private parts, but he recoiled. With my face turning crimson, I rolled back my eyes, and gazed at the poster of Arnold Schwarzenegger from “Pumping Iron,” which my boyfriend had taped to the ceiling. “Sorry,” I murmured. 

“No reason to be sorry. You’re the best,” he said, and gently touched my shoulder. “It’s like you say,” he said, his voice trailing off.

Warm water dripping from my naked flesh, I stepped out of the hot tub. With concealed pleasure, I noticed he was staring at my breasts, the soapy sudsy water dripping from my erect nipples and my pierced navel. I found the second bottle of Madeira, which my lawyer friend, my unrequited lover, had given me. I gave him the bottle of Madeira and urged him to take the fortified wine home since it was far too sweet for me.

Several weeks later, I scurried along a dark, abandoned Bloor Street, fleeing outside my apartment building past Honest Ed’s discount department store with its circus lights and bargain signs. I rushed down the side street of aging houses on Brunswick Avenue and visited Anders’ house. Earlier, Robert, ranting, raging, started slapping me. I feared he might close his fists and started hitting and punching me. Precisely that happened, as he broke one of my teeth, a molar, in the back of my mouth, near my wisdom teeth, and that was when I made the decision to flee.

“Robert was angry….” I said, my voice trailing off. 

Anders insisted on calling the police, but I seized the cordless handset from his hand and hung up the telephone, in the middle of his bumbling call. I protested the police would destroy my boyfriend’s career and reputation and disrupt and upend my life. He replied maybe my boyfriend needed to have his reputation ruined, if only as a deterrent, but he sadly acknowledged my problem.

“What triggered the whole episode?” Anders asked.

“He found out I had you over for dinner.”

“So? It was perfectly innocent.”

“But he set up a hidden GoPro camera above the hot tub and showed me the video after he started drinking.”

“You don’t need to explain.” 

Then, another time, yet again, I sought shelter at Anders’ house. In an oversized button-down shirt, cutoff denim shorts, and flip flops, I scurried out of the glow from the street lights in the drizzle, rain, and chilly wind gusts. I had bruises on my face. He again asked me if I wanted to call the police. Looking distraught, I said nothing, but when he started to dial the emergency number, I again took the phone from his hand.

Later, the police followed my boyfriend one evening, as he commuted home from an office tower in the financial district, after he had been drinking and flirting with the servers in short shorts and tight tank tops in Hooters. The police officers started questioning him, since he carried a fine bottle of vintage wine, which he shoplifted from the liquor store, in a brown paper bag from which he drank, as he commuted on the subway train to Spadina station near our apartment building. My boyfriend became even more suspicious and paranoid. He talked with his friend, my boss, who owned the Campus Circus Café & Gourmet Diner, where I was gainfully employed as a server and maître d’. So, as if I had no choice, I felt compelled to give Anders the cold shoulder. 

Then, as Anders continued to research the stock market and financial news online, on his laptop, he noticed when he checked his e-mail, I had unfriended him on Facebook; I was perturbed, angry with everybody. But Anders was disappointed—far more than I ever expected or anticipated—I unfriended him on Facebook, at a time when he started to get the knack and gist of social media. My actions must have struck him as cruel, petty, and vindictive since I helped him set up a Facebook account, after I encouraged him to buy a smartphone.

I showed him how to set up a Facebook account, posting selfies of us together, which I snapped on his newly purchased smartphone in the bar and cafe. I gave him tips and pointers on operating the smartphone. He groused the smartphone would waste his time and money. I gently laughed since, as I subtly reminded him, he was retired, no longer preoccupied with the piping plover. Now I assumed he possessed plenty of time and money to become social with women, or if he preferred men, but, when I entered his name in the internet search engines, the extent of his devotion and research on the piping plover amazed me. 

“But I only want to be with you,” Anders said.

“I’m flattered,” I said.

One night I left my medication, antidepressants, and antianxiety medication, when I stayed over in his house on Brunswick Avenue. When he reminded me, I had forgotten my pill bottles at his house, I said, he could dispose of the medication, throw the tablets of impramine and lorazepam into the garbage. Besides, I admitted, I was trying to go pill free. I left unmentioned my fear I might sometime use the medication to harm myself or end my existence. Still, he sensed my vulnerability and trepidation, and advised me to seek counselling. He then asked me why I had unfriended him on Facebook, why I had given him the cold shoulder at work and wouldn’t speak with him at the café, which he continued to visit for early morning breakfast and evening coffee. I immediately responded to his fresh request, accepting him as a Facebook friend. He messaged me, “Can I come over?”   

That was so unlike him, taking the initiative with a woman, I said, yes. I had already told him my forever jealous boyfriend was away on business, having travelled to San Francisco to meet with the management of Silicon Valley companies in which the pension fund wanted to invest. Anders strolled his jaunty walk down Brunswick Avenue and Bloor Street West to my apartment building. I buzzed him inside the lobby through the intercom. I hugged and kissed him at the door.

He awkwardly tried to reciprocate, asking, “What happened?”

“The boss doesn’t want me chatting with you, fraternizing with you. He says it’s a distraction, affecting my productivity, but he’s close friends with my boyfriend.” I explained my boyfriend was close friends with my boss, going back to their freshman years at The University of Toronto, where they shared a room in residence and belonged to the same fraternity. Then my boyfriend helped my boss find the money to buy and run the café and diner, lending him money for the down payment, helping him obtain bank loans and lines of credit for upgrades, renovations, and operating costs. “So, he’s forever grateful. Anyway, I think my boyfriend’s jealousy has gotten the better part of him again.”

“You should leave.”

“Where will I go?”

“You can stay with me.”

We talked for hours about hope, dreams, and aspirations. Finally, he interrupted me, while I dreamed aloud about us living in a house together, in a small town, near Guelph or Peterborough, where we could enjoy the peace, quiet, the solitude, and a rural lifestyle, even a farmstead, with an apple orchard, and some goats. 

He said a certain issue was plaguing his conscience. He wanted to tell me about an incident that happened when he started as a researcher for the piping plover. The incident forever after changed his life and made him, partly, in effect, the person he was today. If he had the chance, to turn back time, he would have reversed his actions. In the early eighties, he said, he found a nesting area for the nearly extinct bird along the stretch of Hanlan’s Point Beach when he initially started his field research for his doctorate. He set up an observation blind with tripods and a thirty-five-millimeter camera, with a long telephoto lens, and rolls of high-speed color film, near the nesting area, which was clearly marked and delineated with warning signs and signs and information placards. He debated and argued with the city recreation staff about whether they should post the warnings since a park supervisor who observed plenty of vandalism on the island feared it might attract the wrong element. Then—then, he said, he realized he wasn’t ready to make a revelation. 

This issue must have been bothering him for some time, plaguing his mind. I urged him to drink more Madeira, and, eventually, he opened up to me, about the truth, leaving me astounded. After he set up an observation blind with camera near the nesting area, he observed towards sunset a solitary teenager exploring the nesting area. He assumed he was a local resident, a rare Toronto resident fortunate to find residence in a house on the island. But the youth totally disrespected and disrupted the nesting area and eggs, vandalizing the site. Angry, out of control, Anders attacked the teen, a college freshman, judging from his varsity jacket, with the tripod. He raged at the death of prospective chicks, since the delicate eggs were smashed, using physical force against the young man. When the youth retaliated and attacked him in return, he struck him badly with the heavy tripod, inadvertently injuring him, striking him in the head, knocking him unconscious. When he desperately tried to rouse him, he discovered he was dead, certainly not the outcome he desired, not what he intended. He ended up dragging and dumping the young man’s body in Lake Ontario. The youth’s death remained a mystery, although he felt a few islanders and park employees had their suspicions.

I didn’t know whether to believe him until he pulled out yellowing clippings he had glued into a scrapbook—articles from the Toronto Star, dated from the early eighties. He carried the neatly clipped and underlined and annotated articles in his leather portfolio case. 

“You see what the piping plover has meant to my life.”

How could I express skepticism and discord towards such passion and devotion? I marveled at his role as confessor and mine as confidante, yet fell asleep on his lap, as he tried to explain he was sorry for his impulsive, angry actions. When he woke in the morning, he realized he had never had a woman fall asleep on his lap before. Before he left, he carefully and quietly moved himself and gently covered me with a quilt comforter. He left me a note on the kitchen table and carried the Madeira home.  

When he arrived at his house, an hour later, at dawn, he felt serene, peaceful, blissful, grateful, and blessed for the life he had lived. He poured himself a glass of wine, the Madeira, as he sat on his comfortable chair on the porch. He swallowed the imipramine and lorazepam tablets, which I had forgotten at his house, one by one, as he sipped the entire bottle of wine leftover from our visit. He continued consuming antidepressant and anxiolytic tablets until he was drowsy and lethargic, and the wine bottle was empty. The pill bottle toppled over, spilling what little was left over of their prescribed contents. Feeling at peace, he listened to his favorite Motown songs from yesteryear on a vinyl record as the sun rose and the light flooded the patio. He drifted into a deep sleep as his finger twitched. Then his entire limbs and body flailed and convulsed in a rhythmic seizure.

When I heard from my boss Anders had passed, I had my suspicions about what happened, reinforced by the memory of the last time he saw me, about the issue plaguing his conscience. I felt cheated and at a loss; I wanted to see Anders happy; I wanted to take him to a night club and I wanted to dance with him. I thought it would be cool to make him giggle as I prodded him to smoke some pot. Time might have healed my wound and made me forget Ander’s demise, and I would have forgotten him; my experience as a server, where tips alone were sometimes enough to pay the rent, taught me there are dark and sclerotic places, scar tissue, in the most innocent hearts.

Several weeks later, Martim called me. Anders had indeed visited him, consulted him for legal advice, and drafted a will. Martim provided me with a briefing in regards to Ander’s death and his estate. Then he couriered me a copy of Anders’ last will and testament. When I took the will to Martim’s law firm, Martim told me that he felt as if he was in a conflict of interest position because he knew me personally and drafted Anders’ will. Martim urged me to seek legal advice from another firm, but he told me off the record he believed the will would pass scrutiny by a judge, in the unlikely event it ever went to court was or was challenged by a potential heir or beneficiary. He told me he had already made additional deeper inquiries, wanting to be certain no one was excluded unfairly—at least according to tradition. He went above and beyond the usual due diligence, since the circumstances were unusual. After he made further investigations, and phone calls, he discovered the retired professor had no other heirs, no surviving nieces or nephews, no cousins, nobody, who would come forward and contest the will, which he figured was valid, airtight. After probate and clearances and a decent interval, the red brick neo-Victorian house on Brunswick Avenue became my home, and Anders found a deep place even deeper in my heart.

The long-ago death of the youth, who vandalized the nesting ground of the piping plover, remained a mystery. When I tried to explain the situation to Martim he warned me to be careful and reminded me he didn’t want to hear about any cold case files. He feared I would ruin his career with my revelations. If I couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie, he urged me to find a more experienced criminal lawyer, who, he warned, would probably bankrupt me since I wouldn’t be eligible for legal aid. I realized I was severely challenging my friendship with Martim. I never mentioned the dark secret to him again. Instead, I researched the case alone extensively, tracing every lead, clue, and tip, often from blogs, databases, archives, and websites online, on the Internet. I even searched the archives and morgues of the Toronto Star, after I met a reporter who worked there, who became a regular at the Campus Circus Café & Gourmet Diner. But I could never betray the trust of my benefactor. In fact, to keep the peace Anders helped establish, I visited yet again Martim, who finally helped me with the paper work to take out a restraining order against my former boyfriend. 

Several months later, I visited Hanlan’s Point and the long narrow stretch of beach, to visit and explore the setting where Anders claimed his actions led to the inadvertent demise of the youth. I reenacted the scene he described, using a long stick of driftwood, a perfectly natural pole, I found on the beach as a substitute for the tripod. In the dawn along the lakeshore, before the sun rose above the horizon surrounding the abandoned beach, with the CN Tower barely visible through the tree line, I attempted to stage a reenactment. I went through the motions, feigning the blows he described, trying to gain some insight into his actions and the youth’s fate. As the morning progressed, I realized I had become obsessed and stopped from mental and physical exhaustion. Determined to relax and forget, I strolled to the part of the beach where I left my blanket and towel and picnic basket and backpack. I pulled off my top, since the beach was clothing optional. After I tanned and rested and felt as if my mind had cleared, I discovered I was sunburnt. I felt dry and thirsty and sipped from the chilled canned vodka cooler and juice boxes I packed, and then I became restlessness and energetic. I decided to take a stroll along the beach in direction of the island airport, near the site where Anders’ misadventure occurred decades ago. As I strolled along the shoreline, I came across what looked exactly like a piping plover, the rare, endangered, nearly extinct bird. I stalked the round, chubby bird, following along its erratic trail. I took out my smartphone and tried to takes pictures of the small bird with grey, beady eyes, and a short, stubby beak. But I could only get close enough after quietly and stealthily stalking the bird, with reddish-orangish legs, because the wide-angle sense of the smartphone and the diminishing light as sunset approached made photography difficult. I began to believe the piping plover was a reincarnation of Anders, mocking me, as he ran off and stopped, tweeting, before he jerked and jumped and scurried ahead. The bird, a dark stripe across his forehead from big beady eye to big beady eye, allowed me to approach nearly near enough with the smartphone camera before he ran and flew, taking off in abrupt short flight. Finally, when I thought I managed to take a final picture of bird I was confident was the rare, nearly extinct piping plover, it took off again. When I uploaded the pictures to my computer later that evening, no matter how I enhanced the images with photo editing software on the monitor of my desktop computer, I could never make the dark blurred images clear enough to positively identify the piping plover. I glanced at the bird identification handbook, turned to the section on the piping plover. My dripping tears blurred the blue fountain pen ink from extensive annotations in Anders’ handwriting.

John Tavares’ previous publications include short fiction published in various alternative magazines, literary journals, quarterlies, and anthologies, online and in print: Blood and Aphorisms, Plowman Press, Green’s Magazine, Filling Station, Whetstone, Broken Pencil, Tessera, Windsor Review, Paperplates, The Write Place at the Write Time, The Maple Tree Literary Supplement, The Writing Disorder, Gertrude, Turk’s Head Review, Outside In Literary and Travel Magazine, Bareback Magazine, Rampike, Crab Fat Literary Magazine, The Round Up Writer’s Zine, The Acentos Review, Gravel, Brasilia Review, Sediments Literary Arts-Journals, The Gambler, Red Cedar Review, Writing Raw, Treehouse Arts, The Remembered Arts Journal, Scarlet Leaf Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, Mgversion2>Datura, Riverhawk, Quail Bell, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Grey Border’s Magazine, Free Lit Magazine, Montreal Writes, Yarnswoggle, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Westview, New Reader Magazine, Event Horizon, IO literary Journal, Fishbowl Press, Otherwise Engaged Journal, Mobius, New Texas, Qwerty, Oddball Magazine, BlazeVOX, Celestal Review, Bombay Review, Nude Bruce. His short stories and creative nonfiction were published in The Siren, then Centennial College’s student newspaper. Following journalism studies, his articles and features were published in various local news outlets in Toronto, including community and trade newspapers like the East York Times, the Beaches Town Crier and Hospital News, where he interned as an editorial assistant.

 

Born and raised in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, John is the son of Portuguese immigrants from the Azores. His education includes graduation from 2-year GAS at Humber College in Etobicoke with concentration in psychology (1993), 3-year journalism at Centennial College in East York (1996) and the Specialized Honors BA in English from York University in North York (2012). He worked as a research assistant for the Sioux Lookout Public Library and as a research assistant in waste management for the SLKT public works department and regional recycle association. He also worked for persons with disabilities at the Sioux Lookout Association for Community Living.

It would be a short walk. One just had to step out the door, walk past the busy sounds of prayer, and find oneself in full presence of the divine, so Mr. Gopal Rajan told himself that he’d take a detour. He wanted to enjoy the early morning breeze rustling the peepal trees as he crossed the neighborhood over to the Santhome Cathedral, from where he would walk briskly along the sea, all the way to the Adyar Estuary, and back. 

Before he set out, his wife told him that he was a good man with a good heart. She said that, although she knew that when he returned, she would smell not piety upon his person but sea and salt, and the sachet of sacred ash he’d offer her would be from a vendor and not from the temple. But nevertheless, she told herself that she would ask him, upon his return, like she always did, “Did the priest do the ritual in Latha’s name?”, to which he’d reply yes. They both would then look towards the dark corridor at the back of the house, to an old room where one probably stored dusty furniture or defunct appliances that one didn’t have the heart to throw away. She would sigh and say that someday she would join him on his walk, but for now someone had to be home at all times, for Latha’s sake.

There’d been a storm the night before, and the sea was a study in contrasts. The breakers were stirring, while the Bay of Bengal, extending to a far horizon, was a sheet of glass. The fisherfolk were up and about later than usual. Mr. Rajan watched the strong, dark men arranging nets, dragging their catamarans, muscles straining with effort, pulling wet ropes and hauling heavy sails as they prepared themselves to go out onto the watery expanse. Mr. Rajan found himself wondering why Rama summoned monkeys to cross to Lanka when he could have done just as well with these fisher-people who looked like they could swim the Palk Strait with Rama’s entire army on their backs. 

When the men and their boats had gone, he walked some more and thought of how wonderful it would be to walk in the Theosophical gardens that ran along the banks of the estuary, to see how the mangroves, short and hardy like the fisherfolk, had withstood the storm of the night before. In his youth, he’d swum across the narrow bay where the Adyar river met the sea. In more recent years, a narrow sandbar had formed, bridging this stretch at low-tide. But he had little hope. After a storm such as this, it was likely the tide was high, the breakers restless, and he had little chance of wading or swimming across. He thought of his wife at home, and Latha, and wondered what would happen to them should he be pulled out on a rip tide and forever lost to the sea, or flushed into the river by the waves and drowned in the sluggish waters, heavy with sewage, of the Adyar river. 

His plan was to walk to the end of the beach, look across the bay at the mangroves growing on the other side, at the continuation of the sands beckoning to him like in a dream, then turn back. But to his surprise he saw a strip of the sandbar, a soon-to-disappear island, water lapping at it from all sides. And there was something on it. Someone had been there that very morning, earlier than him, for there, deposited in a heap was something bright and colorful, not trash but a prized possession, perhaps a ladies’ bag or a shawl that had been forgotten there by its owner. Mr. Rajan was feeling brave. He loved the world then and wanted to rescue this left item from the mercy of the waves, and return the object to the rightful person.

The sea was deeper than he expected. Before he knew it, the water was up to his thighs, and although he hitched the cuff of his trousers as high as was decently possible, he felt the garment become heavy as he waded across, and he worried about a sudden shelf appearing on the seafloor. He traveled inch by inch to the sandbar, growing steadily more ashamed at the thought of the hardy fishermen who were by then probably a mile away from solid ground, bracing themselves against the elements, while he couldn’t even keep his fear of danger at bay when there was a mere 20 feet of thigh-deep water to traverse. 

 He was so focused on the crossing, and on his fear, that he failed to look up at the object that had beckoned him over in the first place. When he finally planted his feet on the sand above water, he saw staring up at him a young girl crouching on the sand, her elbows on her knees. She was dressed in cheap bright colors, which was why he’d mistaken her for an item of clothing, and she had a smirk on her face as if she’d read his humiliation, his self-hatred at the cowardly way in which he’d crossed the short strip of shallow sea. 

But by then, all sense of self had fled Mr. Rajan, who exclaimed loudly at the sight. What was a child doing there, all alone, with the waves threatening to engulf her any minute? Had her mother tragically drowned? Had God himself pulled this girl from the sea and deposited her here at an opportune moment to be found by him? He didn’t know how old she was, for that skill at guessing children’s ages was not available to him, now that his own child was grown and he was without any grandchildren to speak of. He fell to his knees, no longer worried about his wet trouser cuffs or his wife waiting at home or Latha behind the padlocked door or even of the sea carrying him away should he remain on the fast-disappearing sandbar a moment too long. He scooped the girl into his arms and, somewhere in his subconscious, registered that her body was painfully thin and weighed nothing more than a shred of thin cotton fabric flapping in the wind. As unhesitating as he’d been gingerly, he hurried back to the Foreshore Estate beach and to the fishermen’s village to return the child to its family. 

All these years of beach-walking, he’d barely glanced at the settlement, keeping his face turned towards the sea, but now he noticed a row of huts punctuated by some modest dwellings and, rising behind the beach promenade which was lined with rubbish heaps and seafood stalls, towers of shabbily-built community housing, a vertical slum. There were no trees, the only green in sight being a small church painted the color of pistachio ice cream.  Some of the boats were already back, owing to the choppy seas, and the women folk were mending nets, sharpening knives, preparing the catch to be sold at the market. At first no one took notice of this Brahmin running towards them, carrying a small, bright object and flailing wildly, although it was rare that men like Mr. Gopal Rajan ventured into their midst. But once they recognized him as the man who walked past their village every morning and saw the bundle in his arms for it was, they shook their heads. 

None of them had laid their eyes on this girl before. The child didn’t understand Tamil, which meant she was not one of theirs. Maybe another colony would know, someone said, gesturing north, then south. The girl could be from anywhere. She could be anyone, the product of an illicit relationship, a child placed here by the beggar mafia, a burden that a poor, migrant family had cast away, a victim of sex trafficking, a runaway from abuse. There were so many reasons why a girl child would be abandoned in this country, someone said.

 Mr. Rajan looked around him at the squalor, the discarded fish scales, bloody entrails, and little sea creatures writhing on fishing nets. The admiration he’d had for the hardiness of the fishermen turned not to pity, for he wasn’t so outside caste society to feel anything so alien as pity. But what he saw was the evidence of a hard life, a life different from his own. It revolted him, but then again, hadn’t Gandhi himself marched to the sea and sifted evaporated salt with his bare hands? 

He imagined the fisherfolk shaking their heads, unwavering in their belief that he would exercise his birthright, passed down by ancient law and still operational in the minds of many. Wouldn’t the girl would be better off with him than she would be at any orphanage? So many girls, unwanted. Wouldn’t God punish him for sending another one to the same fate? He would continue looking for her family, but the chance to bestow upon her his home, his family, his caste even, why, that would beat a lifetime of visits to the temple. So taken he was by his plan that he didn’t consider what bringing this child into his household would mean for him and his wife, that there would be two helpless creatures in need of care. Latha was far from his worries when he, with joy in his heart and lightness in his step, walked home, the child beside him, her hand in his, ready to present to his wife not offerings from the temple this time, but their new ward, their new everything in the world. 

***

Even Mrs. Rajan couldn’t guess the age of the girl. She was small as a whisper and seemed to have no language to call her own, so they put her down to two, maybe three years old. Yet her large, knowing eyes were the eyes of an adult, the way they quietly observed the couple as they went about their day, how they bore into Mr. Rajan as he sat and read his paper, or how they followed Mrs. Rajan as she was fixing to go for her morning bath. But it didn’t seem to matter. They’d made up their minds that they would care for her for however long they were allowed to, to not have her want for anything in the world. 

But they kept some distance, if not between themselves and the girl, then between themselves and the idea that she was all theirs. Mrs. Rajan told the maid servant that it was a cousin’s granddaughter visiting for some weeks, and the old woman, who seemed to have little interest in anything beyond relieving the pain in her knees and her monthly salary, took little notice of the child. They didn’t allow the girl to leave the house even for a second. They told her it was to protect her from the sun, but actually they were fearful that neighbors might enquire about her and that the authorities would be notified. So the child spent all day indoors, where she was plied with toys and games and television—all kinds of distractions to ensure that she wouldn’t feel the need to go looking for pastime elsewhere. 

The truth was that there wasn’t much the Rajans had to do to keep the child’s presence a secret, so used they were to this sort of thing. But they told themselves that they were not trying to hide her like one would a hostage, held under lock and key, a silent victim in a corner of the house. After all, Mr. Rajan still took his beach walk every morning looking for answers. He nodded to the fisherfolk as he passed by, in the understanding that they had been inadvertently complicit in his decision to adopt, albeit informally, the child. He dropped in at the police station and checked thoroughly the missing persons report, not only for Mylapore but for the whole of Chennai. Every morning, after he’d come home, his wife would ask him, “Did you find out anything about the child?”, and he’d reply, “No, not today.”

The girl passively accepted all that was happening to her. She was quiet and tiptoed about the house, trying to make her presence unnoticed. She didn’t utter a word, as if afraid to let the sound of her voice carry in the air. She wouldn’t even say her name when they pressed her to, so they reluctantly continued calling her “child”, superstitious as they were to not give her a name of their own choosing lest one day her real parents came looking for her and they’d have to give her up. They’d wait to name her, they agreed, till she was fully and forever theirs. 

In a way, they were glad for the child’s quietness, for that meant they could keep her separate from Latha. Mrs. Rajan still entered the corridor that was kept in the dark, she still opened the Godrej lock barring the steel door and let herself in to clean or air or change the bedding, but all concern for Latha, all the fretting done all those years, faded. It was true that since the arrival of the girl, life within the four walls of their home had taken on a new meaning for them. Every morning, Mrs. Rajan bathed her in sandalwood and rose water and dressed her in fresh, sweet-smelling clothes. They worried about her thinness, so they encouraged her to drink cups of warm milk sweetened with honey and fed her almond cakes and creamed rice. They made a bed for her in their own room should she be visited by night terrors in the middle of her sleep and need a comforting touch. They wanted to right whatever wrong had been done to her in the past and hoped to erase any unpleasant memory. 

By and by, the child started to change. Her eyes lost the haunted look, and when she started gaining fat around her middle, on her thighs, on the apples of her cheeks, she started resembling a chubby toddler. She also started making sounds in a language of her own. There were giggles and chortles, and soon her feet could be heard pitter-pattering around the house. Mr. and Mrs. Rajan delighted in the change, joyful to have a baby they could pull into their arms and rain their kisses upon. They were given a chance again to love a creature and mold it to their own liking, in their own image, and this time they weren’t going to let anything go wrong. 

As days passed, Mr. Rajan stopped roving the beach listening for news of a missing child. He felt that if he stopped looking for the child’s parents, they would stop looking for her. Mrs. Rajan wanted to name her and had some names picked out, and once they felt comfortable enough that she wasn’t going away anywhere, he resolved to bring her out of the house, to introduce her to neighbors as a child they’d adopted, perhaps from a faraway place like Bihar or Jharkhand. Perhaps they could even make some legal documents appear, but it would probably have to be through paying some fat bureaucrat a hefty bribe so as to bury the fact that he’d actually abducted her (it was debatable whether Mr. Rajan thought of himself as a kidnapper, but he was aware that what he had done was illegal, even if his own sense of moral law had ordained him to do so). And once that was done, the girl could start school, make friends, come home with stories of how her day was as she sat with them and ate her dinner. While the road to that life lived in the open felt long, they were confident that they could achieve that with focused effort, and just from the fact that they wanted it so much. 

Meanwhile the child was growing up. She became curious, feisty, like children who get a lot of care and love often are, and she started exploring the house with some gusto. She got into Mr. Rajan’s drawers and scattered paper clips all over the floor, opened Mrs. Rajan’s closet and pulled out all the saris, let herself into the bathroom and splashed water everywhere so that all the towels were found sopping wet. Her antics only brought smiles to Mr. and Mrs. Rajan’s faces, slightly teary-eyed smiles, and they told themselves to enjoy this phase, that it wouldn’t last for long. 

But something worried them about the child’s adventurous mind, her roving feet. It was the fear that one day she would discover the dark corner of the house. Although Mrs. Rajan kept the steel door under lock and key, she worried that the child might slip into the room during unguarded minutes. Mr. Rajan once caught her wandering alone in the corridor that they deliberately kept unlit, to ward off any spying eyes. He gave a start to hear a sound behind him, thinking the worst, but it was only the girl, feeling her way by touching the walls around her and inching towards the locked door. He swooped quickly towards the child, picked her up in his arms and nearly gave her a smack to warn her of the danger. He shuddered to think what would happen to their precious little girl. 

Children being what they are, the girl’s curiosity only increased with this admonishment. Mrs. Rajan caught her the following week back in that corridor. This time, the girl had made it to the door and was fingering the latch. She lifted the heavy brass Godrej padlock and let it fall back onto the door, and Mrs. Rajan jumped from the unearthly clang of metal upon metal, and felt her soul escaping her body. She fell upon the girl, placed her onto her hip and ran into the main, well-lit part of the house, happy that there had been no reaction to the sound, yet her pulse racing like the devil itself had been chasing after her. 

The child, clever to the reactions of these two people, caught on to the game. She ventured into the dark part of the house whenever she had the chance, for in her mind, the richest of sweets, the prettiest of silks, the most coveted toys were all stashed in there. She learned that Latha was in possession of these precious things and felt mounting resentment to the person who lived behind that door and was given the most delectable things in life. Perhaps Latha got laddoos and halwa for every meal whereas she was only allowed boring things like rice and vegetables and lentils, and Latha was presented with a new sequined silk dress every day while she wore simple cotton. Why, couldn’t she start calling herself Latha? That ought to make the people understand that she deserved no less than Latha, that they were equal and should be treated the same, fair’s fair.

Imagine Mr. and Mrs. Rajan’s distress when the girl started referring to herself as Latha! They wondered how she got that name into her head and panicked, thinking that at some unsupervised moment, the two girls might somehow have communicated through the closed door. They wondered what had been said. They blamed themselves for not having named her much sooner, and started calling her Shanti, peace, for that’s what they wished for her. But the little girl’s mind was set. She refused to take to this unasked-for name, for now she was Latha. “Latha wants ice cream”, she said, leaving her lunch untouched on her plate and fixing her eyes upon the two adults. “Latha wants the party dress,” she insisted when Mrs. Rajan tried to put a cotton frock over her head. “Latha wants to watch more TV,” was her response when they tried to coax her to go to bed. How horrifying they found this appellation! Did that mean that nothing in their life had changed? To avoid feelings of discomfort, they let her have whatever she wanted, and that reinforced the girl’s conviction that whoever was named Latha got everything good in life, whereas the unnamed were cheated out of what was their due. 

No one knew how it happened. Perhaps it was a moment of forgetfulness, a misplaced key, a loose screw in the latch. Mr. Rajan was out that day buying a new toy for the child Latha, for by now the girl’s chosen name had more or less stuck, and a box of the buttery almond squares she liked so much. Mrs. Rajan was alone at home, the servant having left after her chores, and she hummed to herself as she prepared the morning meal. Latha, she knew, was splayed out on the living room floor practicing her ABC’s that Mrs. Rajan had started teaching her. She felt that since Latha had started getting what she wanted whenever she asked for it, the girl’s fascination with the dark corner of the house had waned. Mrs. Rajan was starting to relax and let the child be on her own for short but regular times during the day to instill a sense of confidence and self-worth, all of which she felt would serve her well when she started school. 

She kept telling herself that it was only a matter of time before they could venture out with Latha, take her to the cinemas, sit with her at a restaurant and order tomato soup with fresh cream for her, even bring her to all the famous music recitals and tell their friends of the precious gift God had bestowed upon them in their middle age. But until then, the girl, like her predecessor, had to remain indoors, just as they themselves were forced to.  

Mrs. Rajan, thinking of the two Lathas, suddenly noticed that no sound was coming from the living room. A slow sickness came upon her and she raced through the house, entering the corridor that looked like a long, musty canal in the dead of the night. The worst had come to pass. She saw that the steel bars were opened, the door ajar. A slim sliver of pale light shone forth, illuminating the shadows around her. She didn’t know whether to run and barge into the room or to creep forward noiselessly, both seemed impossible in this situation, but she somehow made it across to the other side, and, for a split second, an unexplained second, the curiosity of a bystander overwhelmed her human concern for the safety of the child. She peered in, unnoticed, into the room, and the terror of what she saw would stay with her for the rest of her life. 

When Mr. Rajan came home later that morning, he saw the child Latha on the floor, still with her pencils and papers. She sat tracing out the outlines of the alphabets and he felt proud of her abilities. There was a sense of delight in his heart as he bent down in front of her, about to share the presents he’d brought home, when he saw the ashen face of his wife confront him from across the room. Just looking at her, he saw what she’d seen, he knew what had happened, and an unspoken exchange coursed between them, and he knew what he had to do. 

***

The beach in the mid-day sun is not a place where anyone wants to be. Mr. Rajan, though, kept walking, determined to make it past the fishing village, to the end of the strand where land met the waters of the estuary. None of the fisherfolk were in sight, and he imagined that the men at this late hour had come back with their wares, that the women had sold whatever they would sell for that morning and then had closed up shop. He dragged the girl along, and she ran behind him breathless and confused as to why she was pulled out of the cool, comfortable home to go wandering about in the heat under a cloudless sky. If she recognized anything about the place, she gave no clue of it, and simply said, “Where are we going, Appa? Why are we here?” That was the first time she’d called him father, and Mr. Rajan’s heart broke. He wanted more than anything to wrap her in his arms and tell her that it would all be alright. 

When they reached the edge of the beach, he picked the girl up and waded with her across to the sandbar. The water barely tickled his ankles and he felt they had some time to figure things out before the tide rolled in. He set the girl down where he’d found her all those months ago and wondered with astonishment how she seemed to have no recollection of the spot, no memories whatsoever of anything except of the life she’d been leading with him and his wife, and of the dark corner of their home where the other Latha was kept. How was that possible, even in such a young child, that she would not remember? 

He got down on his knees and held her by the shoulders, marveling at how much they had fleshed out since he’d felt them, bird-like, under his hands, at this very place. He looked into her eyes and said, “Latha, tell me. Where do you come from? Is your home that way?” He pointed north-west, to the fishermen’s colony, and she nodded and pointed in the same direction. He breathed a sigh of relief. So, she was one of them after all. He’d solved the mystery. But he felt he had to try something else. “Is your home that way?” he asked again, pointing, this time, south, towards Besant Nagar beach, and Latha nodded again and pointed there along with him. “Is it there?” he asked, pointing to the mangroves, and he got the same reaction. “Is it there?” he pointed back to where they’d come from. “Is your home there?” and she nodded. “Yes.” Finally, he pointed towards the wide waters of the Bay of Bengal. “Is that your home?” and she laughed, said yes, and held her hands out to the sea. 

She soon grew tired of the game, as children tend to do. She shrugged from his grasp, sat on her haunches and started digging in the sand, taking great wet handfuls and piling mounds upon mounds to make some towering structure—a wasted effort, he thought looking at her. It would soon dissolve when the waters moved in. A great weariness coursed through him just then and he straightened. He knew that they’d have to leave this place soon, leave before everything from all corners of the world came crashing at their feet.

Vidya Ravi is a writer. Her work has appeared in Slow Trains, in the Bangalore Review, and, most recently, in the Spring 2020 issue of Out of Print magazine. She spoke at an event organized by the Bangalore International Centre on writing sexuality in contemporary India, and her story in Out of Print will appear as part of a short story anthology later this year. She has a doctorate in English literature from Cambridge and worked in academia for several years; however, she is currently training to teach high school English. Vidya is from Chennai, India, but is based in Bern, Switzerland.

“Here Chotu, xerox everything up to the folded page. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Keep it ready.” 

The student slapped the notebook down on the counter without as much as looking at Sunil and rushed out to catch up with his friends. 

Sunil frowned at the pages full of sloppy, spidery handwriting. The student had obviously skipped class, but couldn’t he have at least got some better notes to copy? He opened the lid of the photocopier, pressed the notebook flat on the glass and pressed the copy button. With a click and a whirr, the machine came to life. With practiced ease, he offered A4 sheets into the machine’s maw, which it regurgitated, covered with mathematical formulae and equations. 

In the background, a popular Hindi track was playing: 

“Dil hai ke maanta nahin…Mushkil badi hai rasm-e-mohabbat yeh jaantaa hi nahi…”

It was a slow melodious number, but one would never have guessed, playing as it was at comic speed on the shop’s dual-deck tape recorder. The shop was L-shaped and the back was an alcove whose walls were lined with audio cassettes—Bollywood songs, ghazals, bhajans, some international pop and rock. There was always music playing in the shop, except you couldn’t actually listen to it, since it was always running in high-speed dubbing mode, being copied to the blank tape in the other deck. 

Up front, along the side wall was a row of benches leading up to a small glass-paneled phone booth, where every evening, students lined up to make STD calls back home. The STD booth, the photocopy machine, the cassette alcove, and the milkshake counter near the entrance manned by his mother– these formed the four branches of their family business, all run from within the confines of the 800-sq-ft shop. His father had planned the enterprise well, meaning for each element to complement the others. The students coming to photocopy notes or call home would inevitably order a milkshake or be tempted into buying the latest audio cassette.  At twelve years, Sunil was already as adept at handling all four businesses as his parents. He enjoyed working in the shop after his school hours. Through the long summer months, the university campus had lain silent and deserted but for the occasional elderly resident professor riding along on his bicycle at a glacial pace that seemed to suit the mood of the slumbering campus. But now at last, a new semester had begun, the students were back, and the campus was abuzz with voices and laughter and heckling and fun and games and all manners of activity again.

“Excuse me, can you please copy the first chapter of this book?” 

Sunil glanced up at the slightly accented Hindi. A South Indian. And the polite tone only meant one thing. “First year?” he asked. It never lasted, that tone. Soon, the first-years too would be calling him “Chotu” and ordering him about with proprietorial tones. 

The bespectacled boy who stood at the counter nodded absently, looking around nervously. New students often had hunted look, always on the lookout for predators – the seniors, whose main recreation during the first months of the new academic year was ragging juniors.   

Sunil took the book. “Microprocessors. This is fourth year, no? Why do you want to copy it?”

The boy looked at him in surprise, and Sunil felt a twinge of smug satisfaction. His memory trick always caught them by surprise the first time. Now he had the fellow’s full attention. 

“It’s not for me,” the boy said. “You know this book?” 

“I know them all,” Sunil said grandly. “First-year or fourth-year, every book on campus comes here once at least in its lifetime to be Xeroxed.” 

The boy smiled and held out his hand. “I’m Vikas. I’m studying Computer Engineering here.”

Sunil shook his hand, feeling important. “Sunil,” he said. He wondered how long the boy would bother to remember the name. Most didn’t. ‘Chotu,’ the all-purpose name for any kid his age, sufficed for them. He hated the name. 

He finished with the notebook and began photo-copying the first chapter in the Microprocessors book. 

Vikas strolled over to the back of the shop and gazed at the stacks of audiotapes in the wall racks in the alcove. 

“Quite a collection you’ve got here,” he said. 

“They’re all for sale,” Sunil called from the photocopy machine. “Or you can choose songs, and we can record a mixtape also for you.” 

“Nice…” Vikas said, busy browsing through the cassettes and plucking out a few to check the songs listed on the back cover. 

“Hey, there he is! Fresher, come here!” 

Vikas spun around and Sunil saw him visibly blanching. He turned and sighed inwardly when he saw them—Siddharth Arora and his cronies, Rishi and Purab. Over the past three years, these three had built themselves quite a notoriety around campus. They liked nothing better than to pick on nerdy toppers, easily identifiable from their ID numbers which were based on their ranks in the entrance exam. Other seniors soon tired of ragging and often became good friends with the juniors they had ragged, guiding them and helping them find their way around campus life. But with these three it was different—they hooked onto some poor soul and hounded him all year just for laughs, until the next year when some other unfortunate newcomer would replace the victim.

***

The older boys went over to the back and surrounded Vikas. Rishi smacked Vikas on back of his head, knocking his spectacles awry. 

“Hey Sid, didn’t you give the boy some work to do?”

“Sure, I did. And here he is, loitering around like a useless duffer.”

“So, what should we do with him?” 

“I…,” Vikas stuttered, pointing vaguely at the photocopier. “I came for that only…”

 “So, you’re saying we’re wrong?” Siddharth knocked him on the head again. “You’re not a useless duffer?” 

Vikas kept his eyes on the ground. 

“Okay, I suppose we should remind you once again about the three golden rules of this great institution?”

“I r-remember.”  

“Good! Recite them for us, fresher. Let’s hear them. Rule number one?”

“Seniors are always right,” Vikas mumbled. 

“Louder, please. I can’t hear you.”

“Seniors are always right.” Vikas said.

“That’s better. Rule number 2?”

“Juniors are always wrong.” 

“Correct. And Rule number three?”

“What’s going on here?” Sunil’s father had entered the shop. He headed towards the back, looking at the boys warily. “I’ve told you before. I want no trouble in here.” 

“Yes, sir, Sharmaji!” Sid said, giving him a mock salute. “No trouble, Sharmaji! We’re just having a friendly chat here.”

“Then take your ‘friendly chat’ out of my shop,” Sunil’s father said. 

Sid sighed dramatically, then stood aside and swept his arm towards the entrance of the shop with a flourish. “After you, fresher.” 

They followed a terrified-looking Vikas to the entrance of the shop. 

“I didn’t quite catch Rule number 3,” Sid said, prodding him from behind. 

“When in doubt, refer to Rules 1 and 2,” Vikas muttered. 

“Good!” Sid plucked a glass of milkshake from the counter and upended it on Vikas’s head. “Remember not to answer back next time.” 

***

Sunil had always been told that the year he’d been born – 1982 – had been lucky for the town. That, in his opinion, should have made him the most important person in town. However, that position belonged to A.K. Agarwal, the late multi-millionaire industrialist whose traced his humble origins to the town. For a long time, however, all that had existed of that connection had been the Purani Haveli, the family mansion, on a sprawling estate, both going to ruin from neglect because the Agarwal family was now spread all over the globe and rarely visited their ancestral village. But the year Sunil was born, the family had decided to donate the estate to a deemed university they wished to start in their father’s name. The foundation had been laid when Sunil was a suckling infant, and by the time he was a toddler, several department blocks had come up and the first students were starting to arrive. Over the last decade, the university and its prestige had grown by leaps and bounds, the most popular being its affiliated engineering college that had always managed to stay at the cutting edge of technological advances. It was one of the first in the country to introduce a new degree course in the foundling field of Computer Engineering a couple of years ago, and students flocked to it from all over the country. 

The university had changed the fortunes of the town, too. It had morphed from a modest agricultural village into a bustling town, growing around the university and catering to its myriad needs. Sunil’s family had benefited too. The university marketplace was just coming up – a dozen or so shops in a corner of the campus that catered to the food, tailoring, grocery, stationery, and other needs of the students in the university hostels. Sunil’s father, who had hitherto eked a living working a few rocky acres of land, had sold the unproductive land and with the money from the sale, he had taken up the lease on a shop in the market square. He had been running the shop successfully for more than eight years now, and Sunil had been helping for the last four. 

Yellow mustard fields stretched out on both sides, as Sunil walked down a narrow lane from school on his way to the shop, whistling a tune from the latest Bollywood hit Baazigar. The cassette had arrived at the shop a few weeks back with the latest stock his father had ordered. And Sunil had listened to it incessantly till the movie itself had finally arrived in town to be screened at the small makeshift theatre rather grandly called Sri Hanuman Talkies. The theatre essentially consisted of a projection screen and a few rows of plastic chairs, and was run in a pretty ad-hoc manner by Surajchand chacha. Tickets were priced at Rs.15 each (The usual price was ten rupees, but this movie commanded a premium because it was a box-office hit). Sunil had been delighted to have gotten front-row seats for the movie, but minutes before the movie started, people started streaming in, bringing their own chairs. Surajchand chacha was happy to let them in as long as they bought a ticket, and by the time the movie had started, there were three new rows of seats in front of Sunil, blocking his view of his favourite star, Shah Rukh Khan. 

Sunil was shaking his head at the grave injustice, when he spotted a familiar figure wheeling a cycle up on the road ahead. 

He hurried to catch up. “Vikas bhaiyya, what are you doing here?” 

“Sunil!” Vikas said. “You gave me a start!” 

Sunil was happy to note Vikas still remembered his name. 

“I had just come up here to do some reading,” Vikas said. “But then, it looks like my cycle tyre had a puncture. All the air’s gone.”  

Sunil wondered why he had to come all the way out here to the fields to read when he had the entire campus to do it. But he kept silent. 

“Are you going to the shop?” Vikas asked. “Then, you’re just the person I wanted to meet.” With his free hand, he pulled out a sheet of paper. “I’d been planning to come to the shop for a mixtape, but now that you’re here, can I just give you the list?” 

Sunil took the list and looked at it. “Forty rupees for an empty cassette, and fifteen rupees for recording,” he said. “The forty rupees for the cassette has to be paid in advance.” 

Vikas nodded, fumbling in his pocket for his wallet. “Do you have all these songs?” 

Sunil looked at the sheet. “I know only Hindi songs,” he said. 

Vikas looked at him. “Those are Hindi songs.” 

“Oh,” Sunil said, reddening a little. “But they’re written in English.”

“You can’t read?” Vikas asked, surprised.

“Of course I can,” Sunil retorted, with a flash of anger. “I can read Hindi perfectly. That’s what they teach at school.” 

“Of course, of course,” Vikas said quickly. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that…in the shop, you knew the books…”

 Sunil looked away, still red-faced. “I know them by the covers.” 

“You know the names of all the books, and which course they’re for, and in which year the course is taught?” Vikas asked, amazed. 

Sunil shrugged. “I’ve grown up around those books. I see them all the time.” 

Vikas gave him a long look. Sunil walked on in silence. Vikas knew he had hurt the boy’s feelings but didn’t know what he could do to make things right. They had reached the campus gates by then. On an impulse, he said, “Have you seen all the university buildings?” 

“I’ve known them since the time they were being built.” 

“But now? From the inside?” 

Sunil shook his head. “My father says to stay away from them and not cause trouble.” 

Vikas grinned. “But would you like to see? I can take you.” 

Sunil’s eyes brightened. He nodded eagerly. 

“Come on, then.” 

It was the first time Sunil had entered the main university blocks. They seemed like a portal into a different world. 

Everywhere there were vast, dignified spaces, walls covered with the words and pictures of the wise, and it seemed like every nook sported some model or sculpture. And the library! Three levels of wood-paneled rooms, their walls all lined with books. Sunil gazed at them, in wonder. To think he had lived in the vicinity of all this all his life, and never been aware of its existence! 

The classrooms were nothing like the ones in his school either. They passed one which had seats rising on all sides around a semi-circular dais where a professor was explaining something Sunil couldn’t comprehend. 

“That’s one of the popular courses,” Vikas whispered, as they walked past. Sunil’s eyes lingered on the rapt students. The seating reminded him of the movie theatre he had once been to in Delhi with his parents. And he had always assumed that it was only at movies that people paid attention like that. It had never occurred to him that studies could be so interesting too.

Vikas smiled, seeing him pivot this way and that and take everything in. “You can come in here anytime, you know. If anyone asks you questions, just say you have some delivery for Professor Alok Pandey. No one will stop you then.” 

Sunil grinned. Everyone knew Professor Pandey. He was among the senior-most professors on campus, involved in every major management committee. He was also Chief Warden of the university hostels. Known for his no-nonsense strictness and mercurial temper, he was feared by students and staff alike. Not many would believe Sunil if he told them the Red Panda, as he was nicknamed by the students, was a music lover. Certainly, it was hard to imagine him listening to Rafi or yodeling with the Kishore Kumar cassettes he purchased at the music shop. 

They now came to a set of blocks with labs—Electromechanical lab, Digital electronics lab, and on and on— large rooms filled with machines and gadgets and electronics and all sorts of equipment. 

“Mine is the newest block,” Vikas told him. 

Everything about the Computer Science block looked new and shiny, air-conditioned unlike the other blocks. But when they reached the lab, the security guard outside gave Sunil one look and said stoutly, “Only students allowed inside.” 

Sunil glared at him. The man lived in the village, an acquaintance of his father. 

“He’s with me,” Vikas protested. “He only wants to see what it’s like. We won’t take more than a minute.”

The guard would not budge. “Only students,” he repeated. “That’s the rule.”

Vikas sighed and led Sunil back outside. “You know, the days when technology could be fettered and kept within four walls are fast coming to an end,” he said. “Things are going to be very different very soon. The world is going to be different. Computers will break all barriers and emerge from these closed-off labs and into the hands of ordinary people. Just you wait and see.” 

Sunil looked at Vikas, noting how his face changed as he spoke of technology, the passion palpable in his tone. 

Could it really be true, what he was saying? 

They walked down a tree-lined avenue towards the hostel blocks, Vikas still wheeling his cycle. Sunil was familiar with the hostels since he often came to deliver mixtapes and photocopied notes to the students’ rooms. The hostel blocks were all named after thinkers and philosophers. But if the university blocks were spic and span, the hostels were anything but. The corridors were littered with buckets, basketballs, cricket bats, shoes and what-not, and the rooms were usually the same, if not worse. 

They passed a graffiti-covered compound wall of one of the boys’ hostels. 

“What does it say?” Sunil asked. 

Vikas glanced at the wall.  

Born Free—my dad’s an obstetrician.

I can change the world, just give me the source code. 

Schrodinger’s Cat—Wanted Dead or Alive. 

Hey girls! You don’t have to be nuts to ask us for a screw—

“Um, nothing important,” he said. “Come, my hostel’s that way.” 

But by the time they reached Vivekananda Hostel, Sunil noticed that Vikas’ mood had darkened perceptibly. His infectious sense of wonder and excitement during the campus tour was gone, and the hunted look was back in his eyes. 

***

Sunil sat at the small desk near the STD booth, doing his homework. 

“Dad, really, I need the money urgently for a project!” 

The glass of the STD booth was broken and the conversations from within were audible for all to hear. Sunil found them very entertaining as he worked. 

“No, it’s not like last time, I swear. This one is 100% real. It is part of my elective course.”

Sunil grinned. The student meanwhile was frantically glancing at the billing meter whose red LED digits scrolled at an alarming rate, much like a runaway taxi meter. 

“No, I swear my grades will be good this sem. Just send the money, dad. At this rate, I won’t even have enough to cover this phone bill.”

Sunil shook his head in amusement and turned his attention to the English workbook. A couple of days after they had met, Vikas had come to the shop and handed him a small bundle of books. They were basic English language guides for Hindi speakers and a few children’s story books. 

Sunil had never told anyone, not even his parents, about his longing to learn the language, to decipher the conversations of the students in the shop, the words on the notices and posters all over the campus, the pages he photocopied all evening. He knew what his parents would say – that he should not get too big for his boots. What was good enough for everybody in town was good enough for him. But Vikas had not only guessed at his interest, but also tried to help. What surprised Sunil even more, though, was that the books were not difficult at all. Once he had got started and deciphered the symbols and sounds of the alphabet, he found he had an instinctive feel for the language and was making rapid progress with the books. Already he had built up a small vocabulary of words.

He had just begun reading one of the children’s storybooks when his father came in. He collected the money from the student who had finally finished his STD call and put it in the cash register. Then, he went to the back of the shop to look over the orders for mixtapes. Soon, music was playing at the back of the shop at the usual double speed. 

“Sunil, did you go to the university buildings last week?” he asked, coming over to where Sunil was working his way through the English-language children’s book. 

Sunil did not answer. 

“Ramcharan was saying you were trying to get into the computer lab.” 

Sunil gritted his teeth. 

“I don’t want you going and poking your nose where it doesn’t belong, do you understand? If you break something there, who will bear the cost? God know how expensive all those machines are. All those things not for people like us.”

Sunil looked up, eyes flashing. “Why not?”

“Arrey, it’ll only cause trouble. What do we know about those things?”

“If we don’t know, we should. The world is going to be a very different place soon, Baba.”

 “Oh, so my son is going to start lecturing me, now?” He bent and looked straight into Sunil’s eyes. “I am thrice your age and I am telling you nothing’s going to change. Not here anyway. Real change takes lifetimes to happen. Look here, Sunil, I don’t want you going there anymore. I don’t want any trouble.” 

Sunil looked stubbornly down at his books and didn’t respond. 

***

“Vikas bhaiyya, I’ve brought the mixtape you ordered,” Sunil said. 

Vikas’ room in Vivekananda Hostel was tidily kept, the books lined up against edge of his study table, the clothes folded and stacked in the cupboard, the bed made, the razaai rolled up. 

“Oh, hi Sunil,” Vikas looked up, with a smile. He was at his desk, working. A small sheaf of A-4 sheets filled with his neat handwriting was at his elbow. 

He took the tape, looked it over and popped it into his Walkman. “It’s come out well. You want to listen?” He held out one of the earphones. 

Sunil shook his head. “I hear them all the time.”

“Yes, you do,” Vikas laughed. 

Sunil took a stack of books from his schoolbag and proudly put them on the table. “I’ve finished with these.”

Vikas stared at him. “You managed to read all of them so soon? I only gave them to you a couple of weeks ago!” 

Sunil shrugged, hiding his pleasure. 

“I always knew you’re one sharp kid. I couldn’t find much here, but I’ve written home and asked my mother to send more books for you. They should be coming soon.”

Sunil grinned, delighted. “Thanks, Vikas bhaiyya.” He looked at sheets on Vikas’ table curiously. They were in English but did not look like normal notes – the writing was indented and punctuated with parentheses and square brackets and semicolons which seemed all out of place. 

“What’s this, bhaiyya?” he asked, never one to hold back a question. 

Vikas smiled at him. “It’s a computer program. We use programs like this to speak to computers and make them do what we want them to do.” 

“You speak to computers? And they do what you want them to do?’ Sunil was intrigued. 

“Yes. Just like us, computers have languages they understand, too. This one I’m using here, for example, is called C.” 

‘And you learned this language like any other?”

“Absolutely,” Vikas said. “So can you, for that matter. In fact, given your flair for learning, it should be pretty simple for you.” 

Sunil looked away, hiding his blush. Vikas always managed to make him feel intelligent and special. 

Suddenly, the door banged open, startling them both. 

Sid and Rishi entered the room. Vikas rose to his feet slowly, warily. 

“Hey, what’s up, fresher?” Sid looked at Sunil. “Making friends with the locals now? Rather desperate, no?” 

“Hey, it’s Chotu from the photocopy shop,” Rishi said. “I think we sent the fresher there once too often, eh, Sid?” The two laughed. “Too bad Sharmaji doesn’t have a daughter, then things could have gotten interesting.”

“Speaking of photocopies, fresher, did you get those notes I wanted from Prakash and xerox them?”

“I’m sorry,” Vikas said. “I was planning to go, but I have this assignment I have to hand in tomorrow, so…”

Sid stepped right up to him, his face inches away from Vikas’. “So…? Are you saying you didn’t do it?”

“I…I didn’t have the time.”

Siddharth’s eyes hardened. “Ok. If you haven’t got them photocopied yet, maybe you should write them by hand, instead. If you get started right away, you’ll have just enough time to do three copies for Rishi, Purab and me. What say you?”

Vikas said nothing. 

“I didn’t hear you, fresher.” 

“I have this assignment—”

Sid looked at Rishi in mock astonishment. “Hey, what’s this we’re seeing? The fresher has grown a pair overnight.” He turned back to Vikas. “I completely understand, of course, fresher. You’re busy. You don’t have the time to help your seniors.” He picked up the sheaf of papers from the desk. “But we’re not like you. Here, let me help you. This is the assignment that’s keeping you busy?” He tore the sheets in halves, then quarters, and flung them into the air. “See, assignment done. Easy!”

Vikas stared at the sheets in dismay. His mouth worked, but he didn’t say anything. 

“Fresher, you know, I’m getting really tired of explaining how things work around here.” Sid reached out and took off Vikas’ spectacles and folded them neatly on the table. “When are you ever going to learn?” 

“Leave him alone,” Sunil rushed forward, mustering a courage he didn’t know he had. 

Sid looked at him annoyed, as though only then remembering his presence.

“Chotu, you stay out of this if you know what’s good for you.” He gestured at Rishi. “Get him out of here before he gets hurt. We don’t want any trouble with the locals.” 

Rishi stepped forward and grabbed Sunil by the collar and pulled him out of the room. Sunil struggled hard, but Rishi kept a tight grip on him and hustled him down the stairs. 

***

Sunil raised his hand in greeting from the back of the shop, but Vikas avoided his eye and went straight into the STD booth. 

He spoke softly into the receiver, conscious of being overheard. But gradually, his voice increased in volume.

“No, Amma, I’m telling you, I can’t stay any more. I want to come home…No, nothing’s the matter…no, no, I told you nobody said anything, I told you a million times, it’s the coursework, I can’t cope with it…yes, I know that, but that was school and this is college, things are much harder here.” There was a long pause. Then, his voice raised further in alarm. “No, NO, Amma, I don’t want either of you to talk to anyone here. Just convince Appa, okay. Please make him understand. I want to come home.”

He put the phone down with a bang, and rushed out of the shop, leaving the money for the call on the counter. 

Sunil ran after him. 

“Vikas bhaiyya!” 

Vikas didn’t stop. “What is it, Sunil?” he said, not looking back and walking at a brisk pace. 

“Your change…”

“Keep it!”

“Wait, you can’t just leave!” Sunil ran forward and caught up with him. “You can’t… can’t you complain or something?”

Vikas let out a laugh. “Complain to whom?”

“I don’t know. The warden, maybe?”

“Hah! The warden!” Vikas gave a bitter laugh. “And who’ll back me up? How many people are willing to cross Sid? Nobody. It’ll be his word against mine, and he’ll have enough people to back him up, you can be sure of that.” 

“So, what’s your plan then?” Sunil demanded, tears of frustration filling his eyes. “To leave everything and run?”

Vikas turned on him, his face flushed with angry humiliation. “What’s it to you, anyway?” he snapped. “You’re just a kid. This is none of your business. Go back to your shop.” 

Sunil turned and ran back towards the market square, knuckling the tears from his eyes furiously. 

He found his father in the shop. “Where were you? Why did you leave the shop unattended?”

Sunil did not reply. He went inside and pretended to root in his schoolbag for his books.  

His father followed him. “I have told you time and again, don’t get involved with any nonsense that does not concern you. The world of those city boys is very different from ours. Remember, they are only here for a short time. Four years later, they will be gone. But you and I have to live here forever.”

Sunil said nothing. 

“Sunil, do you understand?” his father demanded, in a tone that Sunil knew meant business. 

“Yes, Baba,” he muttered, sullenly. 

***

It was a week before he saw Vikas again. He was at the back of the shop, recording a mixtape of Kishore Kumar songs when Vikas came in, a bundle of books in his hand. 

“Hi Sunil,” he said. “Here are the books I was telling you I’d asked my mother to send. They arrived in a parcel from home yesterday.” 

Sunil took the bundle of books and looked at the titles. The joy he would normally have felt, however, was muted. 

Vikas sighed. He put a hand on Sunil’s shoulder. “Look, I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted at you. I know you were only trying to help.” 

Sunil looked up at him. “So, you are leaving, then?”

Vikas shook his head, ruefully. “My father won’t allow it,” he said. “In fact, that call home did more damage than good. It appears my father called up Professor Pandey and spoke to him. Thank God I told them no names. But yesterday, Pandey called all the seniors in the hostel and read them the riot act—” He stopped abruptly, his face going pale. 

Sunil turned to see Siddharth, Rishi and Purab enter the shop. Siddharth’s face was a mask of barely concealed fury. 

“There you are,” he said, striding into the back of the shop. The other two followed, blocking off the exit. 

Sid pushed Sunil out of the way, barely noticing him.

“It was you who squealed, wasn’t it?” He caught hold of Vikas’ collar and hauled him up to his toes. 

“No…I haven’t done anything…” Vikas stammered. “I didn’t—”

“Just when I was thinking you’re finally beginning to grow a pair, you go squealing to daddy dear. Did you really think you would get away with it?”

He backhanded Vikas across the face, sending his spectacles flying. 

“Hey, hey, Sid,” Rishi said, looking over his shoulder nervously. “Take it easy. And no marks, remember?”

Yes,” Sid said, menacingly, “I’ll remember to leave no marks at all.” 

He balled his fist and punched Vikas hard in the stomach. Vikas doubled over with a grunt and crumpled to the ground. 

“Sid, come on, man,” Purab said, his tone too betraying nervousness. “Not now. Not here. There are too many people around. Somebody will see—”

“I’m not letting this little snitch get away so easily.” Siddharth kicked Vikas’ curled up body, once, twice. 

“Shit!” hissed Rishi, suddenly. “It’s the Panda! He’s just stepped out of the grocery store…shit, how did we not see him.” 

Purab grabbed Siddharth by the shoulder. “Come on, Sid, we have to go. He’s headed this way.” 

“This is not over, you understand?” Sid gave Vikas a final contemptuous kick and followed his friends out of the shop.  

Sunil hurried to Vikas’ side. “Vikas bhaiyya! Are you alright?” 

Vikas groaned, still curled up in a fetal position.

“Hello? Anybody there?” A voice came from the front of the shop. 

Sunil rose to his feet and peered around the wall of the alcove. 

“Hello, young man. Is your father around?” 

Sunil shook his head. 

“Oh, should I come later then? I had ordered a mixtape…” 

“Yes, the Kishore Kumar tape,” Sunil said. “It’s ready, Pandey-ji.” He took the tape out of the recorder and headed to the front of the shop. 

By the time he returned with a glass of water, Vikas had managed to sit up on the floor, leaning weakly against the wall, his brow furrowed with pain. He sipped the water gratefully. 

“Are you okay, Vikas bhaiyya?” Sunil asked again.

Vikas nodded. He managed a weak smile at Sunil, then looked away. Sunil could see he was struggling to hold back tears. 

Sunil sat beside him in silence till he had pulled himself together somewhat. Finally, he said, “Vikas bhaiyya, you said it would be your word against his if you complained. But what if there was proof?”

“Proof…?” Vikas said absently, gingerly probing his side. 

“Like it was all recorded on a cassette or something?”

Vikas let out a short laugh and winced in pain “You think Sid would just stand by and let me record what he was doing? What do you—” He stopped abruptly, staring at the open deck of the tape recorder on the wall behind Sunil. Eyes widening, he said slowly, “Did you just…?”

***

“Thank you for talking to the campus news channel, Mr. Sharma,” the young Mass Communications student said. 

“My pleasure,” Sunil said, with a smile.

“I heard you spent the day with students at the local school?” 

“Yes. I enjoy mentoring the students there. Someone did it for me once, and it’s only right that I pay it forward.” 

“It isn’t every day we have a CEO on campus. But this is the fourth consecutive year you’ve come in person here for your company’s campus placement interviews.”

“Oh, I never miss a chance to come here,” Sunil said. “You forget, this happens to be my hometown.” 

“Yes, of course. And it’s such a wonderful coincidence that this coffee shop we’re sitting in happens to be run by your family.”

“Yes,” Sunil said, with a laugh. “Though this must be the nth avatar of this shop. It was a photocopy and STD shop once, then it sold CDs, then it became an internet café. But even that became passé. Finally, my father decided that the only thing technology can’t change is the appetite of young adults and converted the whole place into a coffee shop.” For someone who had once claimed things would never change, his father had been quick to adapt to change.

The student laughed. “Sharma aunty,” he called. “Is it true that milkshakes were once sold here for ten rupees each? Can’t we go back to those good old days?” 

“Why not?” retorted Sunil’s mother from behind the counter. “Just as soon as you children return to the good old days without Internet, Wifi, mobile and all those things you’re always hooked to.” 

“Touché,” grinned the student. 

Sunil laughed. “It’s hard to get the better of my mother. I have tried all these years and failed.”

“Oh, he was always such a precocious child,” his mother said. “Always talking big, dreaming big, beyond his years. We were always worried about what would happen to him.” She looked at Sunil affectionately. “As for the university, we always knew he had some special connection with it, though we never dreamed he would one day graduate from it. It was started the year he was born, you know.”

The student smiled and turned back to Sunil. “Mr. Sharma, your music-sharing platform has grown exponentially in the few years since its inception. There are millions of users on the platform by now. MixTape is among the first tech unicorns to emerge out of the Indian startup ecosystem. Where did it all begin?” 

“I guess you ould say it began right here.” Sunil got up and walked over to the wall at the rear of the shop where his father had preserved the racks of audio cassettes and the double-deck tape recorder to add to the retro feel of the coffee shop. “We used to make mixtapes here once, you know. The original mixtapes. On audio cassettes.” 

The student followed him to the wall. “MixTape, unlike many startups, managed to scale up at a rapid pace that matched the growing interest in the platform. Would you say the turning point came when top angel investor Vikas Swaminathan backed you with such a big investment in MixTape?”

Sunil grinned. “Vikas has always been an astute technologist, always able to sense the direction of the future. He picked up the stocks of today’s tech giants when they were going dirt cheap, when no one believed anything would come of them. That’s how he’s made his fortune, you know, apart from being an entrepreneur himself. And I daresay he’s not regretting his investment in MixTape.” 

“Mr. Swaminathan is an alumnus of this university, too. Did that connection help?” 

“Yes, of course it did.”  

“But you couldn’t have known him from his college days? He must have graduated years before your own batch, right?”

Sunil laughed. “You forget again that I used to live here. I’ve been here as long as the university itself, as my mother never tires of reminding people.” 

“You knew him when he was a student here?”

Sunil nodded. 

“Still, at a time when the startup ecosystem in India was almost non-existent and every small company was starved for funds, it must not have been easy convincing Mr. Swaminathan…” 

“Oh, it wasn’t I who convinced Vikas. It was he who approached me with the investment offer.” 

“Mr. Swaminathan approached you…?” the student repeated, confused. “How come?”

 “Well, I always answer that by saying Vikas saw the potential in MixTape right from the beginning,” Sunil paused and ran his fingers over the contours of the old double-deck tape recorder, “but if you ask Vikas he might say it was because he owed me one.” He turned back to the student with a twinkle in his eye. “Like I said, we go back a long way.”

Vrinda Baliga is the author of the short story collections ‘Name, Place, Animal, Thing’ and ‘Arrivals and Departures’. Her work has appeared in The Best Asian Short Stories 2018 (Kitaab International, Singapore), Asia Literary Review, Himal Southasian, The Indian Quarterly, New Asian Writing, Commonwealth Writers adda, Coldnoon, India Currents and several other literary journals and short fiction anthologies. She is the winner of the 2017 Katha Fiction Contest and has also won prizes and recognition in the FON South Asia Short Story Competition 2016 and New Asian Writing Short Story Competition 2016. She is a Fellow of the Sangam House International Writers’ Residency. Vrinda Baliga lives in Hyderabad, India, with her husband and two children.

(Translated from the Danish by Thom Satterlee)

She was sitting on the stoop when I got home. It must have rained while she sat there because her hair and shoulders were soaked. She sat all crumpled up with her head between her knees and her arms slack at her sides.

I stood for a second wondering if I should ignore her. Maybe just try to walk around her, let myself in quietly, and leave her sitting there. If she woke up early the next morning to find she hadn’t been let in, then she’d probably just go home.

But maybe she needed help. It was hard to tell.

I walked onto the stoop still not sure what to do. I had my key in my pocket and slowly drew it out, to keep the keychain from making any sound. But as I placed my left foot on the stoop, I very nearly stepped on her, and the change in the air around her made her body list to one side. Her head hit the wall, not hard, but her body just didn’t stop falling until something stopped it. Her head was tilted back and I could see the white in her eyes underneath her eyelids. She had a bit of drool in the corner of her mouth, and crooked, yellow teeth.

But she didn’t wake up. I squeezed in closer to the door, carefully, so I could reach the keyhole. The door opened with a little click, and for a moment I stood quiet as a mouse so as not to wake her. Then I slipped inside as quickly as I could and gently closed the door behind me.

I figured the family that lives below me would take care of her if she was still there in the morning.

Once I got into my apartment, I opened the bedroom window and carefully leaned out. She was still sitting there, propped up against the wall. I took off my clothes, brushed my teeth, shut off the light, and climbed into bed. 

At two in the morning I got up to pee. As I was coming out of the bathroom, I stopped to look at the sky, but then went back to bed. The next time I was up it was four o’clock. I crept over to the window and looked down. It was raining again. A heavy downpour that splashed against the asphalt driveway. She was no longer there, but you could tell that she’d only recently gotten up because there was still a dry spot where she’d been sitting. I scanned the garden to see if she was out there. But I couldn’t see anything besides tree shadows. I stepped away. I wasn’t sure if she was maybe standing there staring up at me.

I couldn’t sleep. Maybe they’d let her in downstairs. Maybe she was sitting on their couch, that very moment, with a towel around her head and wearing the dad’s bathrobe while the mom ran her clothes through the dryer. I perked my ears up. Wasn’t that that a rumbling noise in the basement? Maybe at that very moment she was getting up off the couch and heading for the bathroom, saying she had a stomach ache. Maybe she was locking the door and opening the medicine cabinet. Maybe she was talking about me.

The next morning I slipped down to my neighbors. I put my ear to their door but couldn’t hear anything. I didn’t feel like knocking, so I slipped out to the garden then around the house so I could peek in the kitchen window. All four of them sat at the breakfast table in their bathrobes. The children laughed, the dad monkeyed around, and the mom stood over by the stove fiddling with something or other. There was no trace of the woman. But maybe she was still lying on their couch, maybe they figured they’d let her go on sleeping before calling the authorities.

The family hadn’t seen or heard anything at night. Had there really been a woman sitting on the doorstep, an old tramp? They looked at one another with concern. What did she want, was she someone you knew? I shook my head. I’d just seen her out my bedroom window when I got up to pee, but just as I was about to call the police, she’d vanished.

I went out to get the newspaper from the mailbox, and on my way back I took a walk around the garden to see if she was lying somewhere, passed out in her own vomit. It’s a big garden with tall spruce trees that hog most of the sunlight in summer and attract mosquitoes. At the far end there’s a small, steep hill that slopes down to the lake. Each time I got close to one of the tall trees I had to stop for a second and catch my breath. I didn’t have anything with me, no pepper spray, no stick. I scanned the ground to see if there was anything I could use. A branch creaked. I spun around but didn’t see anything.

I stood at the top of the small hill and looked down at the boathouse. What if she was hiding in there? Maybe she had a boat hook raised over her head and was just waiting for me. I gathered my bathrobe around me, turned, and ran stumbling back to the house.

The first time I saw her she was sitting on a bench in front of the grocery store where I do my shopping.  I knew right away it was her because she was such an obvious drunkard: booze in a bag, greasy hair, oversized wooden clogs. I walked over to my car and drove away. I don’t know why, but when I’d left the parking lot and rounded the corner, I had to pull off to the side. My heart was racing, and I saw dark spots dancing in front of my eyes. It was as if she’d been sitting there waiting for me, not that we’d looked at each other or she’d said anything to me, but there was something in the way she sat and stared. She sat with a beer in her hand and constantly shifted her gaze between the clock over the watch shop and the windows of the grocery store.

That wasn’t the only time I saw her in front of the grocery store, so I quit shopping there. Instead I started shopping at store close to where I work. I could fit it in over my lunch break, then stay at work later. 

But one day she was sitting on a bench in the park that I pass through on my way to the station. I always take the same route, even though I don’t feel entirely safe there. Especially now that it gets dark earlier and earlier, and I’ve started to leave the office and go home later and later. There are rumors of all sorts of things happening in that park at night, and even though I’m not someone to go around worrying all the time about getting raped, I don’t exactly feel like witnessing anything ugly either.

And there she sat, just like before, with a bag at her feet and a beer in her hand, looking like she was waiting for someone. I saw her several times in that same place, not every day, but frequently. I tried walking down a different path, but then she showed up on a bench along that one.

One morning I headed off to work as usual, but even before I reached the station I noticed something was wrong. Several times I turned around because I was sure I saw her sitting behind a hedge or on some garden stairs. Down at the station, an elderly man came up to me and asked me something. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I only saw his mouth, full of bad teeth, opening and closing like a fish gasping for air. He grabbed the sleeve of my jacket and I suddenly realized it was her.

I don’t remember much else. All of a sudden there was a crowd off people standing over me. A lady bent down, touched my shoulder, and said, “Just relax now, we called an ambulance.” 

I was in the ER for only a short while. Nothing bad had happened to me, and once they’d run an EKG they released me with a handful of meds a referral to a psychologist. 

I called in sick to work and haven’t been back since.

Yesterday I saw her for the first time in weeks.

I am sitting in the front seat of a taxi holding a sack of black currant rum, whiskey, and four cans of strong beer between my legs. They clink together each time the driver goes over a bump, and it makes me feel jumpy. I stare out the window, not wanting to talk or explain things to him, but still feeling his eyes on me every time the sack makes its clinking noise. She is sitting in the back with her head slumped against the window. Her mouth is open and she’s snoring a little. She stinks. I can smell her sweaty, old-person body odor even though I’ve rolled down my window. I let her drink half of the whiskey before we got in the cab. And I’ve promised her that when we get to where we’re going she can have the rest. She just stuck the bottle to her lips and guzzled half of it. Then she stood for a moment holding the bottle before giving it back to me. “You’ll be wanting the rest of it now, won’t you?” she said. “Else you’ll get mad.” I nodded, took it out of her hand, and screwed the cap back on. Then I got her to sit on a stoop while I tried hailing a taxi.

The driver and I had a hell of a time getting her in the car. All of a sudden she didn’t want to go and resisted us by making her arms and legs go slack—like a sleepy child who refuses to get into her snowsuit. Like a ragdoll. She only got in when I let go of her and grabbed the bag of booze, tempting her with it. The driver said, “If she throws up in the car, I’m gonna be pissed.” I promised I’d pay for the cleaning.

We headed south on the freeway. I’d found a place down that way. We’ve been on the road now for an hour and she hasn’t woken up yet. I don’t know what I’ll do if she wakes up and starts acting funny again. I’ll probably have to give her the rest of the whiskey.

There’s a big wrought iron gate where we turn in, then a long avenue of linden trees. Leaves fall off and tumble to the ground like little helicopters in the autumn wind. It’s starting to pick up, and the sky behind the main building at the end of the lane is dark and threatening. I turn around in my seat, and she’s still sleeping. She woke up for a second when the driver stopped for gas, mumbled some nonsense, then sprawled herself across the seat. There’s a dark spot in the upholstery under her cheek where she drooled.

The tires crunch over gravel in front of the next iron gate. You can see the estate in the background.  A long, tall wall of boulders surrounds it. In the wall next to the gate there’s a speaker system, and above that a laminated sign screwed into the wall. It says that the gate won’t be opened unless you have an appointment and give your name. I don’t have any appointment, and I’m not giving my name. I don’t want to have anything to do with this place. No one even needs to know I’ve been here.

I ask the driver to wait for me while I have a look along the wall. I don’t know what I have in mind—that I’ll find a hole in the wall where I can stuff her in? I make it halfway around before it occurs to me that it’s asking too much. The driver is sitting in the car with his door open having a smoke. “What do you want to do?” he asks.

I tell him I’ll tip him an extra five hundred kroner if he helps me out. We maneuver her out of the backseat and over to the gate. I put the bag of booze beside her and tear a page out of my diary. I write, “I need help” and stick the note halfway under her coat, so it can still be seen. 

Even though the driver has aired out the taxi, I can still sense her presence when I get back in. Her smell lingers in the seats, my hair, my clothes. The palms of my hands feel strangely filthy, and when I pull out a moist toilette, the driver asks me if he can have one too. He says something else, but I’m not really listening. I sit and stare out the window at the trees we passed by a half hour ago. As we near the main gate, I’m suddenly aware that my breathing is freer and easier than it’s been in weeks. 

The driver turns to me and says, “You don’t have to give me the extra five hundred. It was nice of you to help her. Who was it anyway? Someone you know?” I shake my head.

I think it was my mother.

Henriette Rostrup is a Danish writer of both adult and children’s fiction. Her novel – A YEAR OF FUNERALS (2015) was longlisted for the European Union Prize for Literature in 2016 and chosen as Aller Favorite in 2016. The graphic novel The Lake was nominated for best debut at the Ping-prize in 2018. Henriette’s short stories have appeared in Coal Hill Review, Parhelion Literary and The Write Launch. Her short story The Final Chapter was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

“Even in the next world, I will marry you again,” Biyi, Titi’s beloved husband, said to her.

Titi smiled, breathing in and allowing the words to sink into her heart. She looked away because she didn’t want him to see her blushing. The only light in the room was a dim lantern. They had not had power supply for five days which was all right. Expecting power two villages away was like expecting snow. Those people did not use mobile phones because there was no power to charge them. Those who could not afford the old pressing iron folded their clothes neatly and placed them under their mattress to straighten, at least one week before it was to be used.

“I just want you to get off this sickbed.”

“Surely! It is just a broken bone. The doctor said it will be fine,” Biyi, her beloved husband, replied.

“Yes, but you cannot move the leg. You cannot walk.”

She loved the way he carried his shoulders high when he walked. It made her confident. She recalled when she met Biyi, her beloved husband. Well, not when she met him — as in seeing his face for the first time — but when he first talked to her. Biyi, her beloved husband, though an orphan, was the delight of all the beautiful girls in Katija. Though he had the required height, aura, and body-build, he did not have enough money. The girls would not mind dating him, but they all dreamed of marrying a rich person who lived in Ado-Ekiti. Titi had the same dream too. She was born in Katija; a change of environment was not too much to ask. But then, Biyi, her beloved husband, happened. Though ten years her senior, he treated her like a queen. He worked so hard to make her comfortable. She might not have the luxury of Ado-Ekiti, yet, but she would make Biyi, her beloved husband, move to Ado-Ekiti when the time was right. She held on to that dream when she married him. She held on to that dream when she was in labour. Even when the pain seemed unbearable, and the nurses whispered that her eighteen-year-old body might not endure the pains any longer, Titi refused to die. Biyi, her beloved husband, would take her to Ado-Ekiti one day. She must live. With that resolve, she pushed one last time and her son, Femi, slid out faster than honey would from a plastic can.

Femi was two already, but Titi still held on to her dream. Biyi, her beloved husband, her handsome, hardworking, loving, caring man, would relocate to Ado-Ekiti. Who knows, she might one day become the first lady of Ekiti State. It was possible, at least in her dreams. She felt Biyi, her beloved husband, tap her. She turned to look at him.

“Where is your mind?”

What would she reply? That she was imagining herself dressed as a first lady and lounging in the government house? She smiled.

“My mind is here with you, my love. What were you saying? Sorry.”

“I said that the fall is temporal. I fell just today, and you know palm tree falls are always bad. The doctor even recommended me for breaking only a hip bone.”

“All these local doctors! Do they know what they are saying?”

“He does not know, but he fixed the hip back, abi? It will heal do not worry.”

She rubbed his arm. “I just want you to be okay. I have never seen you ill before.”

“I am not ill. It is just a broken hip bone.”

She sighed. Her only child, Olufemi, slept peacefully by the corner of their room. He did not give so much trouble again before sleeping. She looked around the room for unsuspecting mosquitoes. She slapped one, splattering blood all over her palms and looked around again for another. She viewed past their clothes — that were supposed to be in their ghana-must-go bags but have buried the bags over time — scattered all over the place. She and Femi always slept on the bamboo bed that had a weak mattress on it. But because Biyi, her beloved husband, who slept on the floor, had a broken hip, he had to sleep on the bed while she and Femi would sleep on another weak mattress on the cemented floor whose potholes were as large as those on the federal government road around Ajaokuta steel industry.

She loved the peace and serenity of Katija. She loved her life. Even if she did not have all the money in the world, the love and happiness she enjoyed were priceless. Everyone in her town knew everyone and everyone’s child. They did not have addresses. They would just call their parents’ or grandparents’ name and their house would be placed immediately. Not just their houses, even their farms. “My farm is near Fayemi’s house.” That was enough description. Farming was their famous occupation, so food was cheap. Recently, however, an occurrence which was becoming the new norm, and which bothered Titi so much, herdsmen and their cows destroy their farms and products. The cows fed on their corns, uprooted their yams — whether the herdsmen helped the cows uproot the yams or not, no one knew — ate their vegetables and everything else they planted, except pepper. Food became expensive and scarce. They complained to the police, but, just as all the other times, the police collected statements and did nothing. She was glad that just a few weeks ago, Gbenga, one of the irate farmers — who was also a hunter — took matters into his hands and attacked the herdsmen and their cows as they destroyed his farm, killing one cow while they fled. He gathered the town’s young men who carried the cow to the village square where they victoriously shared its beef with everyone. Gbenga became everyone’s favourite. Titi still had her share, smoking in her sieve-basket, hanging above her fireplace in her kitchen. She had used some and saved some for another day. She just hoped Gbenga had taught those schmucks an everlasting lesson because they had not been back since.

The village was silent and peaceful. Titi knew the routine. Every family must have finished eating supper, turned off their lanterns, and gone to bed one by one. She was still awake waiting for her husband to sleep, enjoying the peace and the silence. It was suitable for her daydreaming.

Unexpectedly, she heard faint screams.

“Did someone scream or what?”

“I think I heard same,” she replied, suddenly alert.

There was another scream before a full-blown babel of voices. She got closer to the window. The sounds became louder and closer and her neighbours trickled out of their homes.

“Kilonsele? What is going on?”

The answer came running towards them in a face covered in blood. He fell in their midst and leaped up. They gathered around him, asking for news.

“Run for your lives! The village is under attack! They are killing people and burning houses. They are coming this way. Run!”

Chaos erupted. Titi ran back into her house, and in a state of severe trepidation, broke the news to Biyi, her beloved husband.

“Titi,” he held her hand tightly. “Be strong. Take all the money I have here from that trouser, take Femi and run. Take my wallet too. My debit card is inside. The pin is…”

“I cannot,” she burst into tears. “What about you?”

“Titi, I cannot move.”

Tears rolled down his eyes. “I will delay you. Run! Save yourself and our son.”

“I cannot. I cannot leave you.”

She heard her neighbours running out in a panic. Titi was torn between the devil and the deep all-colours-of-sea.

“Titi, go, don’t waste any further time!” he screamed at her bringing her back to life.

She wiped her eyes. “Get up let me help you. We can escape together. We are running en masse. There will surely be people who will join me in helping you.”

“I cannot get up. I will be a burden. My love, please go. Take Femi and run or you both will die here too.”

“I want to die with you. I…”

“Titi! Take that boy and get out of here! Now!”

She saw everything in his eyes: anger, fear, love, but most especially, death. She shut her mind, quickly retrieved the items and two lappas. She secured her son firmly on her back, took one last look at her husband, and fled into the night along with the other villagers, weeping all the way.

She heard voices and that of her crying son. She opened her eyes, sat up and looked around her. She was lying on the grass. Why was she not on her bed? Why were people seated everywhere? She hugged her son still looking around perplexed. That was when she remembered. She recalled running up a hill. She recalled crying uncontrollably. But she did not remember when she slept off. She tapped the woman closest to her, her buttocks spread all over the ground, and asked her whether they were still to keep running.

“We are waiting to hear from the men,” she replied.

“But do you think we will go back home?”

“We might, but we risk those herdsmen coming back again to finish us up.”

“Herdsmen?” Titi asked, shocked.

“Yes, the Fulani herdsmen. They were the ones that ravaged our town yesterday, and from the rumours I now hear, they killed a lot of people. I do not know what we did to those people. Why did that useless Gbenga kill their cow?”

Whatever provoked the herdsmen was immaterial as Titi just wanted to know if her husband was safe.

“Have they gone? Are they still in the village?”

The fat woman snapped. “I don’t know.”

Titi carried her son. She went to meet one of the men standing at the peak of the hill, where they sought refuge, looking down at their village.

“Ekaro, sir. Please are they gone?” she asked, looking at the smoke emanating from their town at the foot of the hill.

He did not look at her. “There’s no sign of them anymore.”

Titi took off, running down the hill, clutching her baby. The man called after her to come back, but she paid no attention. She ran even faster. He ran after her, and soon, a lot of other people followed in the pursuit. Titi got to the village and saw the gory ruins. Everywhere was black. Corpses were littered all over the place. Titi saw Wale, the two-year-old son of the plantain seller, with a slit stomach lying beside his dead mother. She saw Ogundiran, the blacksmith, with an arrow in his neck — that apparently stuck him from behind. He must have been running when he got hit with the arrow, and he fell and died with his eyes and mouth open. Ironically, he died from the tool he played with at work. There was Temileyin, the newlywed and pregnant woman, whose stomach was slit so deep that the hand of her dead baby was visible. There was Popoola, Adeniji’s boy of not more than eight, who was stabbed in the heart, and he had dried blood all over his face and mouth. He must have gotten lost while they fled. His mother threw herself at him, painting herself with what liquid was left of his uncongealed blood. She saw Ronke, the pretty ten-year-old daughter of Jade, the carpenter, her didi cornrows were neatly plaited, and her hair was very long. She was naked, and her neck was slit so deep, it almost separated from her body. Lying dead beside her was her father, Jade, the widower. Titi shook her head, burying her son’s face on her chest to protect him from those frightening scenes. Her leg kicked a stone, and while she leaped in pain, she realised it was not a stone but Dele’s head. His dead eyes stared at her as if angry that she kicked his head. She screamed, covering her son’s face the more.

The people’s wails deafened her. They rolled on the ground, screaming. Nobody could console anybody. Titi walked slowly to her house, shaking, afraid, weak. When she approached, she saw the place looking black. She still moved closer hoping to get there, and it will not be her house. But it was her house indeed. She held her baby tight and ran in. Still lying on the bed was her beloved husband, Biyi; only that he was crispy black. His arms were outstretched, his legs still straight, his teeth were visible and brown like a roasted goat. She could not stand it. She could not let Femi see it. She ran out of the house, threw herself on the ground and let out a loud ear-piercing scream that could reach her dream town: Ado-Ekiti.

Kasimma is an alumna of Chimamanda Adichie’s Creative Writing Workshop, IWP workshop, and SSDA Flow workshop. She’s been a writer-in-residence in artists’ residencies across Africa, Asia, and Europe. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming on The Book Smuggler’s Den, Jellyfish Review, Afreecan Read, Orbis Journal, The Puritan, Kikwetu Journal, Kweli Journal. Her collection of short stories is forthcoming by mid-2021 in the United States.

Romeo and Juliet of the East

… and then the hungry joggers 

sweating on empty stomach 

behind the bars 

around the fence.

Pavement heaves, 

dims with pandemic. 

Parc Monceau.

It’s time to dream. 

The birds and the trees 

look through the gates, 

my room, only steps away,

becomes a sanctuary, 

Leyli’s room in Arabia!

She’s fallen ill

beside her husband.

Feverish,

“virgin love” for another man.

 her would-be lover,

Majnūn (his tribe Banu ‘Amir called him thus)

possessed,

mad!

room swirls, spirals, slides,

sickness spreads, 

Leyli’s confined.

Majnūn worships,

his legs take him round and round.

A pilgrimage, 

not God, but something real. 

His lips

open, close, meet,

move apart, close, 

open, gasp for air,

recite, shout, weep.

Leyli’s heat 

melts in the walls, 

but cannot escape

husband, father,

protectors. 

She breathes.

They remove the steaming cloth, 

press a fresh one

cool and wet

her skin,

fresh coal

burns, burns,

and burns.

In the evening,

they bury her 

in Père-Lachaise.

No investigation,

died of a broken heart

case closed.

Majnūn, 

his tongue stuck in his jaw, 

begins to sound like a crow. 

He may well be a crow,

pecking at the tombstone 

(lit from within)

and as his lungs, arms, eyes 

keep hardening,

isolated, in the 

brute heart of the grave,

he caws.

Mariam Saidan is Iranian/British and has worked in the Human Rights field, studied Public International Law in Tehran, Human Rights Law at University of Nottingham, and Creative Writing at Kent University. Her recent most publication can be found at ‘inksweat&tears’.