ARASH SHIRAZI

KHUZESTAN, IRAN, MAY 1985

Arman says there’s a man like me in every platoon, one Arash in every five hundred men, a me who keeps his horse away from the other horses, who tucks a robe in his rucksack. A long black robe like the hair of a god, robe finer than Moroccan silk, blacker than the black you’re imagining, black like the way your mind goes black, atomic black spinning around the black like little cartoon birds, that robe to wear over all my other clothes, my uniform and gun and scabbard, yes, and even my helmet, a little black hood for that, it goes over everything. Black robe on a black horse at night. With a DC flashlight mounted in the neck beneath the hood. I saw Arman put it on once, he put it on to show me at night how the flashlight lit up his face, how the face isn’t really so much a face in that much dark, just a ball of light, how they painted the prophets in the old paintings with a ball of fire for a head, a ball of light riding around dressed in black, atop a black horse. Arman showed me, he got up on Badbadak, that’s my horse Badbadak, it means “kite” but really it means “little wind wind,” Badbadak like a horse from a picture book, that dark and mighty, with a little extra fur around his hoofs that made the bottom halves of his legs look like they too were wearing cloaks, long robes, Arman on Badbadak like a bit of divine light galloping on a black wind and of course I saw it, the angel of it, of course that was the point.

One man in every five hundred dresses like an angel, like this, lit up like this angel of night, of history and death and of light and relentless fucking war. Everything needs its angel, even war. A man like me in every platoon becomes an angel like this, a man like me who calls his sister once a month and sends money to his parents and eats cold rice and shits once a day like me, a man who dreams of Mira from the market with fluorescent scarves around her breasts, one man like me in every platoon sets out after battle and rides in my robe, rides with my flashlight, gallop around the war dead and the war dying, give them a glimpse of an angel protecting them, being among them. That’s the secret, don’t you think, the amongness, to be among with an angel means you were right all along, all your wincing and kneeling, your fasting, your scowling, that amongness might send you to Jannah, an angel to send you to Jannah and Riswan with conviction in your heart and not fear of pain, suffering, nothingness, conviction, yes, of seeing an angel in black riding the wind, riding the night, conviction to remain as long as suffering demanded, to not end it, not kill yourself.

Arman has been doing it for ages. He reminds me of the hadith about Muhammad and the soldier, the soldier who lay dying on the battlefield, sword wound opened up his side, all his companions gone or dead, dying soldier just dying there, staring at his own insides, alone, more alone than anyone’s been since Hussain, and even Hussain at least had his family with him. And so this soldier dying there, he took his knife, it took some time he had so little strength, but he took his knife and cut his own throat open, it took some time because he was so weak by then, and so lost in agony, the agony that few living will ever know alhamdulillah, and so he died, the soldier died right there half by the enemy’s blade and half by his own, and he goes to Jannah, to the gates of Jannah where he sees the Prophet, close enough to the Prophet’s holy face peace be upon him to step forward and touch him, to breathe on him. And he was weeping, the holy Prophet’s face! The face of God’s final messenger peace be upon him was weeping as he turned away from the soldier, as he turned away the soldier yes, the Prophet peace be upon him sent the soldier away from Jannah, the soldier who had spent his life fighting a war he never understood and lived his final hours suffering so painfully on earth was sent to the other Hereafter, the place-name Arman won’t even say when he tells me this story, like the name of a djinn, better not to even say it. How saying it calls on language to represent it, this sound is that thing, how some things rebuke sound, rebuke representation, we call the sun the sun as if that means anything, call such-and-such person a hero, such-and-such person a coward. The Prophet sent him away because he put his own knife into his own neck instead of suffering like a man, that’s the lesson, that’s the thing Arman wants me to remember.

So there are the men like me peppered into every platoon in the Iranian army, men who ride among the dying men to bolster their resolve, the men sent into battle with keys around their necks, keys to heaven they’re told, and some of them not even men yet, it must be said, some of them boys with men’s names, a child named Nassir, a child named Sohrab, named Houshang named Abbas named Pouyan, children walking around puffed up like men in men’s clothes and men’s names, as if the names made them men, as if wearing a man’s boots could, and I ride around them as they die to keep them from cutting open their throats in their final moments, to remind them to suffer manfully, men like me preserve for them their hereafter. That’s how Arman says it, “preserve their hereafter,” let them be reunited with their babas and mamabazorgs and yes, their prophets, the prophets in whom I can only muster for myself scattered belief, like a light flicking on and off in a room I can see their shapes sometimes but never with any depth, never with anything like depth, or maybe it’s the other way around where I can see their depth but can’t quite make out the shape of them, the prophets, the why or how or even the what of the whole thing.

But what I do or don’t or can’t believe doesn’t matter. Arman believes, his forehead often has the mark of his janamaz indented into it from him kneeling there so long, bowed on the rug so long, but I think Arman suspects I’m a little more confused, I think he knows because he always reminds me I ride for the men, for the dying men, not for myself, not for my country even but for the men and their desperate and spoilable souls. Action will be judged according to intention, that’s what he always tells me, action will be judged according to intention, that’s from the Quran somewhere. And I do, I intend to help these men, if it helps them to see a ball of light riding the wind then that’s what I’ll be.

And I haven’t even mentioned yet the sword, the sword Arman gave me a year ago now, the same sword every Arman gives to every me in every platoon, sword with the end of the blade splitting into two fangs, twin fangs, really they look like demon teeth, this sword of course meant to look like Zulfiqar, sword of Hazrat Ali, an extra little flourish, though it never really totally made sense to me because why would an angel be carrying Hazrat Ali’s sword, or am I supposed to be Hazrat Ali and then why am I personally on the battlefield, or maybe this angel is one of Ali’s guards? Anyway, it means riding Badbadak mostly one-handed because if I keep the sword in its scabbard it just looks like any old sword, like any old sword handle, it has to be out and drawn for the blade’s two fangs to catch the light, which is always moonlight, moonlight bright enough to cast shadows, when there’s light at night that’s where it comes from.

I wish I could see myself or I wish Mira from the market could see me, without the light without the hood but maybe on the horse, maybe with the sword, maybe she’d love me then and throw a scarf behind my neck to pull me closer to her mouth, her breasts, but she’s hundreds of kilometers away from me now, it may as well be thousands, millions, me dressed as an angel traipsing around the mostly dead mostly indistinguishable men who I’ve been sharing meals, stories, showers, with, sometimes even that morning, now I was their angel, galloping around as an angel, angel with a fanged sword in the moonlight.

When he sees me, one man cries ob, ob, water, water—this happens a lot, Arman told me this would happen, the dying take their thirst with them, maybe the only thing they take, their thirst and their dying, thirst tearing open their chests worse than any sword, like a lion might, and I’m not allowed to give them water, absolutely not is what Arman said when I asked, why would an angel be carrying water he said, which makes sense, but so I just have to hear them cry and beg and die and I sit there on my big horse in my little costume holding my fake sword.

At the market Mira with her scarves had a child’s plastic sword hung from her stall, hanging from her stall with scarves draped over it. Hilarious, a child’s toy sword with scarves blue green yellow white hanging from it. Imagine a white scarf out here, imagine Mira out here with her breasts, her lips, her plastic sword. One man begged me so violently for water he began vomiting, first bile and then blood, then he was quiet. Another man offered me a gold wristwatch and then, as I rode away, I heard him calling, “Mehrnaz, Mehrnaz, Mehrnaz,” and I believed he was calling for his wife, his mother, until I remember Arman telling me some men are disgusting, will offer their own wives, their own sisters or cousins to escape the certainty of death. All these men’s faces obscured in the night and mud and dying, their own dying which was like a fog that hung above the fields, death just a cloud lowered over the valley, and a man like me among every five hundred who rides among men who he did not fight with, a man like me too important to fight, that’s what Arman calls it, too important even though probably I was only chosen because I fit the cloaks, because I could ride a horse, because I had no real friends in the platoon, and Arman says it’s too secret to train multiple men in a single platoon to do what I do, too important and secret, so I ride among my dead, look at that “my dead,” how language fails again and again, I ride my horse, my kite, my little-wind-wind among them, the men who fought where I did not fight and died where I did not die.

I try to give them something, faith, resolve, courage, in their final minutes, or final hours for some of them yes, or even final days; a man sees me, his entire right leg is opened and tucked behind him like a strand of hair behind Mira’s ear, his leg open and bleeding, I see him see me and he bursts into tears, bursts yes like a lotus bursting into a tantrum of blades, he bursts into tears and crying, slopping he begins gurgling through Ayat al Kursi, I can barely make it out it sounds so wet but he slops through, I think at me, he says His throne doth extend over the Heavens, the man gargles and smiles, I think he smiles maybe, maybe I’m imagining but I don’t think so, I think there’s a break in the tears maybe, or a break in the gargles, certainly I can’t see him or his lips, I’m just sitting there on Badbadak the horse with my face lit up by a DC flashlight and it’s getting hotter, the bulb burning hot now, it always happens this way, he feeleth no fatigue in guarding them the man says and it’s never sounded so wet, I swear now I can hear him smiling through the gurgling, through the dying, and it really does make sense for that second, gurgling, the horse and the cloak and the hot flashlight, I know he’s smiling and maybe I am too, for He is the Most High, it’s almost funny how hot it is, funny how wet the man’s gurgling, the silly sword in my hand with moonlight curling off its fangs.