Recovered 1
Drenched green fields; wet, gabled roofs over half darkened windows with half drawn curtains; cows munching here and there; the cloudy autumn sky, emerging now and then among the trees along the tracks, extending like a bright umbrella above the fields; stations, empty of bustle save, one or two waiting as exhausted shadows in the corners; filling up and vanishing from the window frame. Shahla was somehow quite pleased to be on the way back to Schultzstrasse.
Tomorrow morning there is hospital again and in the late afternoon she will be back in her little flat on the 7th floor, sitting in front of the window, zipping her warm coffee slowly, watching the green silence of the park down there along the Elbe and the drip drip of people with their dogs. Is there anything else she should think about?
Returning to the flat and the city where she had spent the last 10 years of her life, made her feel more spirited than usual. Shahla was searching for something. She took Shahram's letter out of her bag again.
From now (end of September) on we're speeding towards the shorter and darker days and then until April everything will be gray. The streets will swell with movement, pleasure and even a whisper of soul, until New Years, and then...! For the next three months people are buried in themselves, sullen and isolated again, until the short spring comes, days grow brighter and warmer and a smile breezes by... "What a life!"
"... In the past year, that we've been out of touch with each other (it's what you wrote), there is nothing to speak of, nothing to see. Everything sleeps. Day and night are almost the same here. No matter! My calendar is the white hair on my pillow every morning. The things you write about the past, seem like a dream. The years of achievement! Don't make me laugh. In children's playroom the world is one out of three hundred and sixty five dreams, but beyond this window there is no spring any more. There is no more time for us to wait for Mehdi, the Imam. No rider will appear down these furrows of snow ..."
The train drove slowly onto the boat. Pegah, with her new doll in hand, was standing there, ready to go on board.
Baby, please! Keep your energy for days like mine. There are the very same people on deck, sitting in corners, pouring things into their stomachs and thinking their lives had changed.
Pegah with her doll in hand was still waiting there.
I wish there was also someone else pushing me as gently to do things I don't feel like. She stood up reluctantly and stroked Pegah's face and hair.
- "Be careful with that trust. It doesn't come back too easy, if you lose it."
- "What?"
- "Don't lose that doll. I'm not in the mood for tears and tantrums".
The deck was not crowded. She bought a hot chocolate for Pegah and a coffee for herself and sat in a corner by a window. The harbor was covered in a light fog. With the pressure of the boat engine, the water in the docks boiled, lathered and turned in on itself. Seagulls flew happily over the mass of fish, churned up to the water top, their clamouring tearing at the curtain of mist over the harbor.
" ... we ended at the land of birds. Do you remember the sparrows and pigeons in the yard of the Tehran palace coffee shop? Do you still ask, how is it possible only to eat, sleep and still remain so beautiful? Or have you found your answer among so many beautiful, exotic warblers?! We must close our eyes and join the birds. Back there, if you are not close to that guy Reza's Shrine (Mashad) or to his sister's, Ma’sume (Qum), then you have to search every garden and rubbish can for a single loaf, (if you don't in your endeavors become bread yourself for another hungry soul). Here, birds eat cookies. They get an exemption from flight at around forty. Then they spend their days behind windows, sharing their coffee and cookies with their dog or cat for charity's sake, smiling at times while gazing out at the coming and going in the street. There are ninety-four of them, all framed in their windows on the opposite wall of my own. Their smile is terribly beautiful.."
A bitter smile came onto her lips. She took a pen and a small notebook from her bag.
What are you grumbling about? Are you resentful because you spent your youth childishly trying to break boundaries and remove borders? Or do you feel guilty because you rescued your body, unharmed, from the hands of Rostam, and hid behind the snow?
She thought of Pegah and jumped up from her seat, looking around the deck. Pegah was playing with other children. Her breathing returned to normal. A woman took her white notebook from the floor and gave it back saying something in Danish. Shahla thanked her in German and turned to the window.
I am not in the mood to talk in another language.
The sea was calm. The light autumn sunshine was stitching the water. Shirin is growing up slowly.
- "I got lost. In spite of all his kindness, I can't forgive him for all his taking care of me, thinking, deciding instead of me, giving ideas instead ..."
- "Could everything be different?"
- "You know very well how different Ehsan was with other men... "
If I told her that all of them are the same shit, she'd get offended again. I said:
- "Didn't you want it that way, really?"
- "Me?!"
- "All of us..."
- "No way! You know very well how I always hated confinement. And I've always fought against it too."
It was on the tip of my tongue to say, you are lying, even to your twin sister. You gave up every thing to him, like a handicapped child. But instead I said:
- "We all say the same but in fact we loll in their stupid confidence, and enjoy it as well..."
She looked at me for a few seconds in disbelief.
- "You are very unfair! You know how Ehsan always regarded me..."
Yes, I remember at least twice, you were crying, lamenting all his involvements; you simply accepted them, like every other woman, carrying on, "because of my children!" And how you, once, yourself spent a short period of time filled with "love and revenge"! A smile lit up on Shahla's face. She could read my face.
- "Do you think I'm lying?"
- "No, no. I just remembered something".
I was surprised when she said:
- "What"?
- "Nothing, go on. It wasn't important".
I had to drop the subject. She had lost the thread of what she was saying. It had made her upset that I perhaps didn't believe her. She leaned back in the armchair.
- "The madness between Ehsan and I was a recurring theme among our friends..."
I looked directly in her eyes.
Yes dear Shirin, load me with all of your old desires and dreams as much as you need. I will keep shut up and listen. It's only a few days, after all, not a whole lifetime. But what about you? As long as you remain in that lion's coat, you're going to miss out on all the joy of being a cat. You need a secure fortress and a pair of strong hands around you, pushing at your bones with love and desire.
Our problem is all these glass windows, and doors without locks and those invisible eyes and ears which lie in wait to ambush behind our stupid minds. If I say I was thinking about your brief, wild love with that beautiful man, your colleague, you will deny it, find every excuse to become angry with me, destroying our few days together, until I kiss you and apologize, saying that you were right after all. But I'm sure that now the chains are fallen, you are no longer refusing to let yourself think about a trip back to Iran, to test the air once more,... and taking Roozbeh with you as well! Idiot! How I always envied your strong headedness!
She shifted in her seat and looked around. The Danish woman was not there any more. Out there, as far as one could see, was water and more water, quiet and calm.
There would be no hope of survival, even if you were Hercules, it would swallow you as easy as if you were a mosquito. The cloud bank had moved right down to touch the waves.
What a burst of sunshine that was! I wish though that I'd given her a long hug that last day, kissed and told her how much I loved her...
She shook her head and turned her face from the water. Shahram's letter was still in her hand.
"... that time we were sitting in a cafe, planning the world's future, is gone. 'Be careful how you fart - the ceiling has a crack in it!' That's life! All that fervent planning, only to be washed away moments later, and again and then again,... and then one day everything is over. You have to go, or you get taken away. But you still hope and hope until the very last moment that it will be all right, all right! I'll make it! Fuck this life (as you used to say). Or maybe you think the same as Shirin that, if only the storm had come a couple of days later, if Dad had sold the orchard a little bit later, if the dog was not barking at that moment, the soup would not have gotten cold and the bird would not have flown away!? ...."
- "Have you heard from Shahram recently?"
Shirin looked at me suspiciously:
- "No, why?"
- "His last letter to me didn't seem very happy".
- "He's ok".
From her quick, off hand reply, it seemed she was annoyed at him.
- "He has never been in despair like this before. I'm scared he's become an addict ..."
The colour changed on Shirin face when I said that. She looked directly at me and my lips, doubtful: "I'm not sure".
She became a bit relaxed:
- "Shahram is always grumbling and mumbling; he's so cynical." She said this, to calm herself.
- "Shahram?! My goodness, have you forgotten? The whole world was too small for him. He was so heated and full of energy. He had the entire household resounding with his exploits..."
Shirin didn't want to be involved in this. Something unpleasant had must have happened between them. I asked inattentively: "Don't you keep in touch?"
She looked at me as if I knew everything yet prying it out of her anyway; "No, it's been months since he last wrote to me."
- "It seems like he doesn't really want to visit us either," I mumbled.
- Good, when he's around, he makes me nervous. He criticizes everything, teases me, curses at Dad, blames the poor old man for his own bad luck..."
Shirin was still talking. Shahla looked at the china vase on top of the television, close to her. A "happy mask" in dirty blue, protruded from the white porcelain. She took the vase and looked curiously at the other side, which was against the wall. It was a "sad mask" in the same pattern.
- "... he was the reason Dad got his heart attack!"
I looked at her; not believing Shirin would say such a thing. She insisted: "It's true. Because he's so damn stubborn."
Shahla put the vase calmly on the table in front of herself: "He just didn't like Dad deciding instead of him. That was it. He didn't want to be the crown prince ..."
- "You are repeating his words...Crown Prince... !"
- "No. It's not Shahram's words. That's the way it was! I think I was a bit angry."
- "The way it was! Dad..."
I couldn't take another round of her sarcasm.
- "Yes, the way it was! Dad wanted his son to study law, to become a real gentleman! I was to study medicine because nursing for him was a glorified form of service. He was pounding all of us, exactly what he was doing with his subordinates.
- "Things hurt me too sometimes, but..."
Shahla bared her teeth: "... for example selling the orchard...."
I couldn't take this old shit once more: "Oh don't bring that story up again! It was nothing compared to the other things he did."
- "But he was no real harm to Shahram...."
- "Please Shirin! Why do we have to escape the reality of it? Dad wanted everybody to be like him. Let's be honest for once. Our marriages were also exactly what he wanted. Love was a romantic fantasy we dreamt about as schoolgirls. That was why when he chose a piece of bone and threw it before us, we believed it was the prince on a white horse. I hated every single day of those eleven years I spent with Keyvan, I detested the whole thing".
For a moment Shahla didn't recognize her own words. She realized she was sitting on the edge of the armchair with her whole body lurched towards Shirin. She pulled back slowly, put one leg on top of the other and locked her hands on her knee, keeping her eyes on her hands so that Shirin would not notice the tears.
She was looking at me astonished. It was maybe unnecessary to let it all out so hastily. For one moment she thought she didn't know the woman sitting in front of her. She seemed about to ask, in disbelief, where my generous nature had gone, but instead she just kept staring at me.
Shahla controlled her outburst and looked out through the window. Her voice was less bitter: "I know what are you thinking, but no, I haven't lost my feelings. I don't hate Dad, but I do hate the pathetic false pride, honors and glories."
Shirin was still looking at me strangely, but benignly, like our mother. I thought maybe a shock would wake her up: "We meant absolutely nothing; we have never been, ever more than..." But I was afraid of saying the rest out loud. She has been leaning on this for years. I didn't want to remove it all, from her broken/tired body.
To be continued
Tomorrow morning there is hospital again and in the late afternoon she will be back in her little flat on the 7th floor, sitting in front of the window, zipping her warm coffee slowly, watching the green silence of the park down there along the Elbe and the drip drip of people with their dogs. Is there anything else she should think about?
Returning to the flat and the city where she had spent the last 10 years of her life, made her feel more spirited than usual. Shahla was searching for something. She took Shahram's letter out of her bag again.
From now (end of September) on we're speeding towards the shorter and darker days and then until April everything will be gray. The streets will swell with movement, pleasure and even a whisper of soul, until New Years, and then...! For the next three months people are buried in themselves, sullen and isolated again, until the short spring comes, days grow brighter and warmer and a smile breezes by... "What a life!"
"... In the past year, that we've been out of touch with each other (it's what you wrote), there is nothing to speak of, nothing to see. Everything sleeps. Day and night are almost the same here. No matter! My calendar is the white hair on my pillow every morning. The things you write about the past, seem like a dream. The years of achievement! Don't make me laugh. In children's playroom the world is one out of three hundred and sixty five dreams, but beyond this window there is no spring any more. There is no more time for us to wait for Mehdi, the Imam. No rider will appear down these furrows of snow ..."
The train drove slowly onto the boat. Pegah, with her new doll in hand, was standing there, ready to go on board.
Baby, please! Keep your energy for days like mine. There are the very same people on deck, sitting in corners, pouring things into their stomachs and thinking their lives had changed.
Pegah with her doll in hand was still waiting there.
I wish there was also someone else pushing me as gently to do things I don't feel like. She stood up reluctantly and stroked Pegah's face and hair.
- "Be careful with that trust. It doesn't come back too easy, if you lose it."
- "What?"
- "Don't lose that doll. I'm not in the mood for tears and tantrums".
The deck was not crowded. She bought a hot chocolate for Pegah and a coffee for herself and sat in a corner by a window. The harbor was covered in a light fog. With the pressure of the boat engine, the water in the docks boiled, lathered and turned in on itself. Seagulls flew happily over the mass of fish, churned up to the water top, their clamouring tearing at the curtain of mist over the harbor.
" ... we ended at the land of birds. Do you remember the sparrows and pigeons in the yard of the Tehran palace coffee shop? Do you still ask, how is it possible only to eat, sleep and still remain so beautiful? Or have you found your answer among so many beautiful, exotic warblers?! We must close our eyes and join the birds. Back there, if you are not close to that guy Reza's Shrine (Mashad) or to his sister's, Ma’sume (Qum), then you have to search every garden and rubbish can for a single loaf, (if you don't in your endeavors become bread yourself for another hungry soul). Here, birds eat cookies. They get an exemption from flight at around forty. Then they spend their days behind windows, sharing their coffee and cookies with their dog or cat for charity's sake, smiling at times while gazing out at the coming and going in the street. There are ninety-four of them, all framed in their windows on the opposite wall of my own. Their smile is terribly beautiful.."
A bitter smile came onto her lips. She took a pen and a small notebook from her bag.
What are you grumbling about? Are you resentful because you spent your youth childishly trying to break boundaries and remove borders? Or do you feel guilty because you rescued your body, unharmed, from the hands of Rostam, and hid behind the snow?
She thought of Pegah and jumped up from her seat, looking around the deck. Pegah was playing with other children. Her breathing returned to normal. A woman took her white notebook from the floor and gave it back saying something in Danish. Shahla thanked her in German and turned to the window.
I am not in the mood to talk in another language.
The sea was calm. The light autumn sunshine was stitching the water. Shirin is growing up slowly.
- "I got lost. In spite of all his kindness, I can't forgive him for all his taking care of me, thinking, deciding instead of me, giving ideas instead ..."
- "Could everything be different?"
- "You know very well how different Ehsan was with other men... "
If I told her that all of them are the same shit, she'd get offended again. I said:
- "Didn't you want it that way, really?"
- "Me?!"
- "All of us..."
- "No way! You know very well how I always hated confinement. And I've always fought against it too."
It was on the tip of my tongue to say, you are lying, even to your twin sister. You gave up every thing to him, like a handicapped child. But instead I said:
- "We all say the same but in fact we loll in their stupid confidence, and enjoy it as well..."
She looked at me for a few seconds in disbelief.
- "You are very unfair! You know how Ehsan always regarded me..."
Yes, I remember at least twice, you were crying, lamenting all his involvements; you simply accepted them, like every other woman, carrying on, "because of my children!" And how you, once, yourself spent a short period of time filled with "love and revenge"! A smile lit up on Shahla's face. She could read my face.
- "Do you think I'm lying?"
- "No, no. I just remembered something".
I was surprised when she said:
- "What"?
- "Nothing, go on. It wasn't important".
I had to drop the subject. She had lost the thread of what she was saying. It had made her upset that I perhaps didn't believe her. She leaned back in the armchair.
- "The madness between Ehsan and I was a recurring theme among our friends..."
I looked directly in her eyes.
Yes dear Shirin, load me with all of your old desires and dreams as much as you need. I will keep shut up and listen. It's only a few days, after all, not a whole lifetime. But what about you? As long as you remain in that lion's coat, you're going to miss out on all the joy of being a cat. You need a secure fortress and a pair of strong hands around you, pushing at your bones with love and desire.
Our problem is all these glass windows, and doors without locks and those invisible eyes and ears which lie in wait to ambush behind our stupid minds. If I say I was thinking about your brief, wild love with that beautiful man, your colleague, you will deny it, find every excuse to become angry with me, destroying our few days together, until I kiss you and apologize, saying that you were right after all. But I'm sure that now the chains are fallen, you are no longer refusing to let yourself think about a trip back to Iran, to test the air once more,... and taking Roozbeh with you as well! Idiot! How I always envied your strong headedness!
She shifted in her seat and looked around. The Danish woman was not there any more. Out there, as far as one could see, was water and more water, quiet and calm.
There would be no hope of survival, even if you were Hercules, it would swallow you as easy as if you were a mosquito. The cloud bank had moved right down to touch the waves.
What a burst of sunshine that was! I wish though that I'd given her a long hug that last day, kissed and told her how much I loved her...
She shook her head and turned her face from the water. Shahram's letter was still in her hand.
"... that time we were sitting in a cafe, planning the world's future, is gone. 'Be careful how you fart - the ceiling has a crack in it!' That's life! All that fervent planning, only to be washed away moments later, and again and then again,... and then one day everything is over. You have to go, or you get taken away. But you still hope and hope until the very last moment that it will be all right, all right! I'll make it! Fuck this life (as you used to say). Or maybe you think the same as Shirin that, if only the storm had come a couple of days later, if Dad had sold the orchard a little bit later, if the dog was not barking at that moment, the soup would not have gotten cold and the bird would not have flown away!? ...."
- "Have you heard from Shahram recently?"
Shirin looked at me suspiciously:
- "No, why?"
- "His last letter to me didn't seem very happy".
- "He's ok".
From her quick, off hand reply, it seemed she was annoyed at him.
- "He has never been in despair like this before. I'm scared he's become an addict ..."
The colour changed on Shirin face when I said that. She looked directly at me and my lips, doubtful: "I'm not sure".
She became a bit relaxed:
- "Shahram is always grumbling and mumbling; he's so cynical." She said this, to calm herself.
- "Shahram?! My goodness, have you forgotten? The whole world was too small for him. He was so heated and full of energy. He had the entire household resounding with his exploits..."
Shirin didn't want to be involved in this. Something unpleasant had must have happened between them. I asked inattentively: "Don't you keep in touch?"
She looked at me as if I knew everything yet prying it out of her anyway; "No, it's been months since he last wrote to me."
- "It seems like he doesn't really want to visit us either," I mumbled.
- Good, when he's around, he makes me nervous. He criticizes everything, teases me, curses at Dad, blames the poor old man for his own bad luck..."
Shirin was still talking. Shahla looked at the china vase on top of the television, close to her. A "happy mask" in dirty blue, protruded from the white porcelain. She took the vase and looked curiously at the other side, which was against the wall. It was a "sad mask" in the same pattern.
- "... he was the reason Dad got his heart attack!"
I looked at her; not believing Shirin would say such a thing. She insisted: "It's true. Because he's so damn stubborn."
Shahla put the vase calmly on the table in front of herself: "He just didn't like Dad deciding instead of him. That was it. He didn't want to be the crown prince ..."
- "You are repeating his words...Crown Prince... !"
- "No. It's not Shahram's words. That's the way it was! I think I was a bit angry."
- "The way it was! Dad..."
I couldn't take another round of her sarcasm.
- "Yes, the way it was! Dad wanted his son to study law, to become a real gentleman! I was to study medicine because nursing for him was a glorified form of service. He was pounding all of us, exactly what he was doing with his subordinates.
- "Things hurt me too sometimes, but..."
Shahla bared her teeth: "... for example selling the orchard...."
I couldn't take this old shit once more: "Oh don't bring that story up again! It was nothing compared to the other things he did."
- "But he was no real harm to Shahram...."
- "Please Shirin! Why do we have to escape the reality of it? Dad wanted everybody to be like him. Let's be honest for once. Our marriages were also exactly what he wanted. Love was a romantic fantasy we dreamt about as schoolgirls. That was why when he chose a piece of bone and threw it before us, we believed it was the prince on a white horse. I hated every single day of those eleven years I spent with Keyvan, I detested the whole thing".
For a moment Shahla didn't recognize her own words. She realized she was sitting on the edge of the armchair with her whole body lurched towards Shirin. She pulled back slowly, put one leg on top of the other and locked her hands on her knee, keeping her eyes on her hands so that Shirin would not notice the tears.
She was looking at me astonished. It was maybe unnecessary to let it all out so hastily. For one moment she thought she didn't know the woman sitting in front of her. She seemed about to ask, in disbelief, where my generous nature had gone, but instead she just kept staring at me.
Shahla controlled her outburst and looked out through the window. Her voice was less bitter: "I know what are you thinking, but no, I haven't lost my feelings. I don't hate Dad, but I do hate the pathetic false pride, honors and glories."
Shirin was still looking at me strangely, but benignly, like our mother. I thought maybe a shock would wake her up: "We meant absolutely nothing; we have never been, ever more than..." But I was afraid of saying the rest out loud. She has been leaning on this for years. I didn't want to remove it all, from her broken/tired body.
To be continued
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