Recovered 3
Pegah's machine gun monologue started again. She bantered on about everywhere, everyone and everything, continuing as they settled back in their seats with the boat slowly nearing Puttgaarden's harbor. Shahla's mind was jumping in different directions with each moment. When the train began to move again, Pegah wriggled down into her seat and while cramming her doll to her chest, slowly fell asleep.
" ... Those years and stories belong to Sindbad of the Sea. Your fervent depiction of that town of long Fridays and sad sunsets, reads like Marco Polo's memoirs from the Silk Road. Memories and desires which one evening were buried under an avalanche. When you finally understand, you will have torn the sound barrier... and from the other side, there won't come any sound, nor will it be possible to send a message ..."
The drizzle was washing the windows again.
“As you used to say, the world has become wider. We have been so far from each other, and so lonely. As we are getting older the sores get deeper”. It seems there is nothing left of the Shahram I used to know. Or maybe you hide it from me?
A sad smile bloomed to the surface.
"Take Pegah with you and come over for a week or so. My two windows open to a big street with a many-storied building on the other side, blocking my connection to the world. A view of 94 windows the same size and same shape, like frames on a wall. Every day at very special times old men and women appear in their frames, their gaze fixed for a couple of hours or so, then fading quietly again. If it's raining, we sit in front of the window with our cups of coffee and talk about the years of stupidity, and laugh. You have no idea what a good cook I've become. You'd be smacking your lips!"
- "All last year you didn't visit us, not even once," I told Shirin.
- "You don't know how busy I am with the children and their school."
- "Even on the weekends?"
- "Two days? With two children? Hardly a life of leisure! I haven't really found myself yet either; I feel so dizzy and disturbed."
She's right. You can see her hands shake as she puts her cup back on the table. For a second she thought Shirin's hand was going to knock the vase. She moved a little. She thought for a second that the vase was going to break, and then, it rolled over the table, fell on the floor and smashed. They looked at each other for a while, in shock. Shirin leaned back loosely in her armchair.I was ashamed. It was my fault. If I had put the vase back in its place...
She stood up, sat close to Shirin, took her shoulder and held her tightly. For an instant it looked like one of the twins was leaning on a mirror.
- "It was my fault ..."
She moved her hair away from her face. Her eyes were full of tears.
- "Why are your eyes peeing the whole time?"
She broke into a laugh: "It's not because of the vase... The sound of breaking ... it's as if something fell and crushed me..."
Shahla hugged her tighter.
She put her head on my chest and busted into tears. "Damn it, who brought me out of my paper castle. I was a queen there! Here in this ruined mass of waste I'm nothing but one lonely piece of nothingness. I've even lost the power of imagination to rebuild it ... I'm so tired!"
"You have to sleep to relieve the pain of the memories. I have a crazy neighbor with no family or relatives, she has spent fifty-something years of her life, with only two friends. She says knowing three persons is too much. She can hardly remember her mother. Once, years back at her father's funeral, who had been lost for 20 years, she met some men and women who used to be her halves brothers and sisters. But there are also people who put labels on all their belongings, in order not to forget history and the essence of the calendar. An ass with an ID-card won't get lost in the stable!"
She remembered last year's telephone message from Shirin. "Hey Shahla, it's me. Ehsan had a heart attack last night and passed away... I'm alone, come here for a few days ... that is if you feel like it and have the time..."
Shahram wouldn't have anyone to send a message for him.
She was ashamed of the thought, and a drop of tear maybe, slipped on her chick, like rain drops slipping on the window glass. She felt a touch at her knee. Pegah was awake:
- "Aunt Shirin or Uncle Shahram?"
She gathered Pegah's small hands in her hand, looked admiringly at the intelligence flaring behind her eyes, bent and kissed her lips which were opened in a smile, and said:
- "Both!"
Pegah looked up at Shahla before closing her eyes in sleep again.
The countryside was still passing by the window. A sheep was grazing in a field; a man was chewing something, leaning on a fence, staring at a point on the other side of the tracks, his line of focus unmoved by the passing train.
" ... Don't ever marry with these non-circumcised Kaafars, even out of loneliness. The extent of their loyalty is as short as their belts..."
She pulled her eyes from the letter, clenching her teeth; At least they won't flaunt their penis at every flirting dazzler or shift their crotch at each passing smile, while at the same time claiming they are deeply involved with you!
She was afraid she had shouted out loud and looked carefully around. The train was standing in Lübeck station. One hour later they would be in Hamburg. Wolfgang will be there, waiting for us, for sure; I don't feel like speaking German. I wish I could be on my own in the house for twenty-four hours.
"Behind this window, as if sitting in a Jeep or a magnificent Mercedes and whisked off to nomansland, my hungry look takes in the passers-by, all of whom seem so lead such untroubled existences. They absent-mindedly bitted into a sandwich, looked at a shop window, smoked a cigarette or made a joke with their friends.
"Would it occur to any of these souls, passing below this window every day, that a martyr, a fighter of the masses, is languishing up here in this hole?!"
- "Hey Shahla, it's me. Ehsan had a heart attack last night and passed away... I'm alone, come here for a few days ... that is if you feel like it and have the time..."
The swell of emotion gave her little chance to talk. Ashamed, she folded the letter, put it back in her bag and looked around. A few passengers were sleeping. The Danish couple in the seat behind had been talking non-stop since Copenhagen. She placed Pegah's jacket between her head and the window.
How lovely, she is when she sleeps - no expectation or anxiety.
" .... Shirin wrote me that she misses Dad shouting on those summer days after lunch, forcing us to sleep, so he could have the house quiet for his own afternoon nap... what a trashy memory!..."
She heard Dad's voice from the second floor: "Let him go to hell! I don't want to see him any more. He makes me so ashamed. Enough is enough. I never had a son. Every time I wanted to help him, he bit my fingers and made me regret it."
Mother was speaking in a low voice as usual; "Don't shout, the children aren't asleep yet."
- "Everything is your fault. I sent him to university; he went to technical college, because that's what he wanted. Could he find some job, anything, which makes us proud? I found a good position for him, and now after 10 days on the job, they arrest him in front of his colleagues..."
He shouted even louder; "Damn upstart! He can't even keep his trousers straight and now he wants to make a revolution. It's ridiculous..."
She slid a little further down in her seat, stretched her arms and legs, and closed her eyes.
I have lots of things to do. The curtains are filthy. Maybe I should just change them. The colour is so gloomy too. But first the carpet in the sitting room? A light cream that matches the walls and furniture, or maybe it's better to buy a flowery print for the curtains, in a sunlit colour? I must take down that old fabric and the brown frames, off the walls, from on top of the television and shelves. The house looks like an antique shop. A big change is due in the bedroom too. First the doormats and then a light curtain from the window to the balcony... also the bed covers ... and a beautiful bedspread ...
She felt someone was listening to her thoughts and opened her eyes. Pegah was still sleeping. She looked warmly, at Pegah's long deep hair, covering part of her face, smiling contentedly again; “My beautiful child, I never took proper care of you. You are my Pegah - my dawn and I always got up too late!
The late afternoon sky began to close in, sadly.
Perhaps a trip to the sunshine...
She looked at Pegah again.
We'll go to Spain this Christmas on one of those cheap package tours. What do you think? I'm so tired of all this gray weather.
"So, you're visiting Copenhagen again? Has it really been a year since Ehsan, our optimistic comrade, passed away?! Once upon a time he thought that all the problem knots in the Empire could be opened by our tiny fingers alone! and now he's laying there beside Kirkegaard! He wrote to me that he wanted to go back, because here you have to reserve time in advance for love, laughing, mourning and dying. "Kiss Shirin and tell her I really don't feel up to pre-programmed arrangements! Especially not that collection of dull faces without make-up, masquerading bereavement. It's really not necessary to travel such a long way to celebrate the birth of a death. It's been all around me for the last four years; making my little flat even more oppressive. It's lazier and more careless than me; not taking a bath for years, not brushing its teeth. But it's quite sweet in a way. It sleeps with me, dreams with me, walks and thinks with me, only it doesn't laugh ... never together, with me, anyway. It has a shop two streets away from my flat, even more clean and luxurious than Dad's office in the foreign ministry in Tehran. It's secretary is three and a half times more beautiful than Dad's Miss Vajdi. It has a long black Mercedes with white decorations inside and long windows with lit up glass. Sometimes you just long to experience the world through wide panoramic panes such as these. It shaves smoothly for work, puts on fragrance and dresses like a bridegroom: young, fresh and heartbreakingly seductive..."
The train stopped. For a split second she caught Wolfgang's eyes, among the crowd on the platform. Hamburg! Something collapsed slowly inwards; "Take your bag, Pegy. Be careful to not forget anything."
She took her bag and put on her raincoat. They were driven toward the exit door by the rush of people. She avoided looking out again, feeling faintly nauseous; I wish I could stay here. I wish I was home by now.
She was impatient because the queue was so slow. She put her bag on the platform and helped Pegah get down. She began to occupy herself, bustling around the bag and Pegah for no real reason. Someone grabbed her arm. Her body flooded with heat. When her eyes finally met Wolfgang's deep blue eagerness, she leant in feverishly under his warm protection, and long kiss. It took a while before she remembered Pegah. She was placing her doll in her bag a few steps away when Wolfgang grabbed her and lifted her up in the air as they kissed each other eagerly.
All right, she didn't see.
It was wet but fresh outside. You could smell the rain from half an hour ago. She felt more at ease with Wolfgang walking in front of her together with Pegah. She swallowed in the air, looked around, secure and familiar but yet a bit nervous. She took in Wolfgang's profile from the back eyes resting on his neck and shoulders. Whilst they were placing the bags in the car trunk, she saw Pegah crawling onto the back seat and closing the back door behind her. They were not even out of the car park when a voice came: "Shahla, then Wolfgang can stay with us tonight, right?"
She became feverish and dizzy again under the weight of the question, not knowing how to react. She cheered herself up, relieved that Pegah hadn't asked in German.
Copenhagen, 1991
" ... Those years and stories belong to Sindbad of the Sea. Your fervent depiction of that town of long Fridays and sad sunsets, reads like Marco Polo's memoirs from the Silk Road. Memories and desires which one evening were buried under an avalanche. When you finally understand, you will have torn the sound barrier... and from the other side, there won't come any sound, nor will it be possible to send a message ..."
The drizzle was washing the windows again.
“As you used to say, the world has become wider. We have been so far from each other, and so lonely. As we are getting older the sores get deeper”. It seems there is nothing left of the Shahram I used to know. Or maybe you hide it from me?
A sad smile bloomed to the surface.
"Take Pegah with you and come over for a week or so. My two windows open to a big street with a many-storied building on the other side, blocking my connection to the world. A view of 94 windows the same size and same shape, like frames on a wall. Every day at very special times old men and women appear in their frames, their gaze fixed for a couple of hours or so, then fading quietly again. If it's raining, we sit in front of the window with our cups of coffee and talk about the years of stupidity, and laugh. You have no idea what a good cook I've become. You'd be smacking your lips!"
- "All last year you didn't visit us, not even once," I told Shirin.
- "You don't know how busy I am with the children and their school."
- "Even on the weekends?"
- "Two days? With two children? Hardly a life of leisure! I haven't really found myself yet either; I feel so dizzy and disturbed."
She's right. You can see her hands shake as she puts her cup back on the table. For a second she thought Shirin's hand was going to knock the vase. She moved a little. She thought for a second that the vase was going to break, and then, it rolled over the table, fell on the floor and smashed. They looked at each other for a while, in shock. Shirin leaned back loosely in her armchair.I was ashamed. It was my fault. If I had put the vase back in its place...
She stood up, sat close to Shirin, took her shoulder and held her tightly. For an instant it looked like one of the twins was leaning on a mirror.
- "It was my fault ..."
She moved her hair away from her face. Her eyes were full of tears.
- "Why are your eyes peeing the whole time?"
She broke into a laugh: "It's not because of the vase... The sound of breaking ... it's as if something fell and crushed me..."
Shahla hugged her tighter.
She put her head on my chest and busted into tears. "Damn it, who brought me out of my paper castle. I was a queen there! Here in this ruined mass of waste I'm nothing but one lonely piece of nothingness. I've even lost the power of imagination to rebuild it ... I'm so tired!"
"You have to sleep to relieve the pain of the memories. I have a crazy neighbor with no family or relatives, she has spent fifty-something years of her life, with only two friends. She says knowing three persons is too much. She can hardly remember her mother. Once, years back at her father's funeral, who had been lost for 20 years, she met some men and women who used to be her halves brothers and sisters. But there are also people who put labels on all their belongings, in order not to forget history and the essence of the calendar. An ass with an ID-card won't get lost in the stable!"
She remembered last year's telephone message from Shirin. "Hey Shahla, it's me. Ehsan had a heart attack last night and passed away... I'm alone, come here for a few days ... that is if you feel like it and have the time..."
Shahram wouldn't have anyone to send a message for him.
She was ashamed of the thought, and a drop of tear maybe, slipped on her chick, like rain drops slipping on the window glass. She felt a touch at her knee. Pegah was awake:
- "Aunt Shirin or Uncle Shahram?"
She gathered Pegah's small hands in her hand, looked admiringly at the intelligence flaring behind her eyes, bent and kissed her lips which were opened in a smile, and said:
- "Both!"
Pegah looked up at Shahla before closing her eyes in sleep again.
The countryside was still passing by the window. A sheep was grazing in a field; a man was chewing something, leaning on a fence, staring at a point on the other side of the tracks, his line of focus unmoved by the passing train.
" ... Don't ever marry with these non-circumcised Kaafars, even out of loneliness. The extent of their loyalty is as short as their belts..."
She pulled her eyes from the letter, clenching her teeth; At least they won't flaunt their penis at every flirting dazzler or shift their crotch at each passing smile, while at the same time claiming they are deeply involved with you!
She was afraid she had shouted out loud and looked carefully around. The train was standing in Lübeck station. One hour later they would be in Hamburg. Wolfgang will be there, waiting for us, for sure; I don't feel like speaking German. I wish I could be on my own in the house for twenty-four hours.
"Behind this window, as if sitting in a Jeep or a magnificent Mercedes and whisked off to nomansland, my hungry look takes in the passers-by, all of whom seem so lead such untroubled existences. They absent-mindedly bitted into a sandwich, looked at a shop window, smoked a cigarette or made a joke with their friends.
"Would it occur to any of these souls, passing below this window every day, that a martyr, a fighter of the masses, is languishing up here in this hole?!"
- "Hey Shahla, it's me. Ehsan had a heart attack last night and passed away... I'm alone, come here for a few days ... that is if you feel like it and have the time..."
The swell of emotion gave her little chance to talk. Ashamed, she folded the letter, put it back in her bag and looked around. A few passengers were sleeping. The Danish couple in the seat behind had been talking non-stop since Copenhagen. She placed Pegah's jacket between her head and the window.
How lovely, she is when she sleeps - no expectation or anxiety.
" .... Shirin wrote me that she misses Dad shouting on those summer days after lunch, forcing us to sleep, so he could have the house quiet for his own afternoon nap... what a trashy memory!..."
She heard Dad's voice from the second floor: "Let him go to hell! I don't want to see him any more. He makes me so ashamed. Enough is enough. I never had a son. Every time I wanted to help him, he bit my fingers and made me regret it."
Mother was speaking in a low voice as usual; "Don't shout, the children aren't asleep yet."
- "Everything is your fault. I sent him to university; he went to technical college, because that's what he wanted. Could he find some job, anything, which makes us proud? I found a good position for him, and now after 10 days on the job, they arrest him in front of his colleagues..."
He shouted even louder; "Damn upstart! He can't even keep his trousers straight and now he wants to make a revolution. It's ridiculous..."
She slid a little further down in her seat, stretched her arms and legs, and closed her eyes.
I have lots of things to do. The curtains are filthy. Maybe I should just change them. The colour is so gloomy too. But first the carpet in the sitting room? A light cream that matches the walls and furniture, or maybe it's better to buy a flowery print for the curtains, in a sunlit colour? I must take down that old fabric and the brown frames, off the walls, from on top of the television and shelves. The house looks like an antique shop. A big change is due in the bedroom too. First the doormats and then a light curtain from the window to the balcony... also the bed covers ... and a beautiful bedspread ...
She felt someone was listening to her thoughts and opened her eyes. Pegah was still sleeping. She looked warmly, at Pegah's long deep hair, covering part of her face, smiling contentedly again; “My beautiful child, I never took proper care of you. You are my Pegah - my dawn and I always got up too late!
The late afternoon sky began to close in, sadly.
Perhaps a trip to the sunshine...
She looked at Pegah again.
We'll go to Spain this Christmas on one of those cheap package tours. What do you think? I'm so tired of all this gray weather.
"So, you're visiting Copenhagen again? Has it really been a year since Ehsan, our optimistic comrade, passed away?! Once upon a time he thought that all the problem knots in the Empire could be opened by our tiny fingers alone! and now he's laying there beside Kirkegaard! He wrote to me that he wanted to go back, because here you have to reserve time in advance for love, laughing, mourning and dying. "Kiss Shirin and tell her I really don't feel up to pre-programmed arrangements! Especially not that collection of dull faces without make-up, masquerading bereavement. It's really not necessary to travel such a long way to celebrate the birth of a death. It's been all around me for the last four years; making my little flat even more oppressive. It's lazier and more careless than me; not taking a bath for years, not brushing its teeth. But it's quite sweet in a way. It sleeps with me, dreams with me, walks and thinks with me, only it doesn't laugh ... never together, with me, anyway. It has a shop two streets away from my flat, even more clean and luxurious than Dad's office in the foreign ministry in Tehran. It's secretary is three and a half times more beautiful than Dad's Miss Vajdi. It has a long black Mercedes with white decorations inside and long windows with lit up glass. Sometimes you just long to experience the world through wide panoramic panes such as these. It shaves smoothly for work, puts on fragrance and dresses like a bridegroom: young, fresh and heartbreakingly seductive..."
The train stopped. For a split second she caught Wolfgang's eyes, among the crowd on the platform. Hamburg! Something collapsed slowly inwards; "Take your bag, Pegy. Be careful to not forget anything."
She took her bag and put on her raincoat. They were driven toward the exit door by the rush of people. She avoided looking out again, feeling faintly nauseous; I wish I could stay here. I wish I was home by now.
She was impatient because the queue was so slow. She put her bag on the platform and helped Pegah get down. She began to occupy herself, bustling around the bag and Pegah for no real reason. Someone grabbed her arm. Her body flooded with heat. When her eyes finally met Wolfgang's deep blue eagerness, she leant in feverishly under his warm protection, and long kiss. It took a while before she remembered Pegah. She was placing her doll in her bag a few steps away when Wolfgang grabbed her and lifted her up in the air as they kissed each other eagerly.
All right, she didn't see.
It was wet but fresh outside. You could smell the rain from half an hour ago. She felt more at ease with Wolfgang walking in front of her together with Pegah. She swallowed in the air, looked around, secure and familiar but yet a bit nervous. She took in Wolfgang's profile from the back eyes resting on his neck and shoulders. Whilst they were placing the bags in the car trunk, she saw Pegah crawling onto the back seat and closing the back door behind her. They were not even out of the car park when a voice came: "Shahla, then Wolfgang can stay with us tonight, right?"
She became feverish and dizzy again under the weight of the question, not knowing how to react. She cheered herself up, relieved that Pegah hadn't asked in German.
Copenhagen, 1991
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