Kashan. The city of poets and pomegranates. What a blessing to get away from noisy, polluted Tehran. I head out. I am unfamiliar with the city and end up taking a side road. The air is pure and imbued with refreshing, invisible particles. The wind smells of wet weeds and early-blooming flowers.
“MR. HEYDARI, WHAT is your share in this revolution?” I asked.
He was trembling. His fear of famine and lootings had robbed him of sleep. He had locked the door to his house and kept a vigilant eye on the street from the corner of a window.
“I’m suspicious of the landlord,” my wife said. “I think he has links to the antirevolutionaries.”
The city is tense and alert. Doors and windows open and close. There is the sound of random gunshots and turmoil. Somewhere a building is burning and strangers are chasing each other in dark alleys.
“This, too, shall pass,” says my father, while looking for premiumquality raisins for his homemade wine.
FAR FROM HUMAN commotion, the sky above Kashan glistens like a clear spring. The meadow is abounding with wild rue and red poppies all the way to the hillsides. The mountains, naked and sober, resemble the body of a mythical woman and the desert has a nurturing presence.
In the distance, at the bend of the dirt road, a woman is sitting on the ground, and here, near me, a man is praying in the shadow of a pomegranate tree. The smallest flower in the world has blossomed right next to my feet.
“MISTER POET, WHERE is your historical conscience?” I asked.
“I am still in awe of this flower,” he said.
They have shut down the university and professors are being put on trial in absentia.
My students shout, “Down with philosophy. Down with reactionaries.” They beat their young fists against the walls and run along the university corridors searching for the meaning of freedom.
“Sir, what does ‘unity in words’ mean?” they ask. “Which is more valid, matter or idea? Which bears the truth, God or history?”
My wife believes in the jihad for reconstruction. She has donated her silver bangles to the nearby mosque and on Clean City Day she swept the dirt road in our neighborhood.
“In Islam, revenge is permissible,” she says. And with fear and awe she looks at the pictures of those who have been executed. At night, she rushes off to the Women’s Guidance and Religious Education classes. She believes in the dictates of good and evil.
She has cleaned and cut her long red nails and wiped off her green eye shadow. She covers her hair with a black headscarf and she is especially careful that people don’t see her earlobes. She is restless and excited and her newfound faith makes her heart race. She sits next to me, looks at me, and tells me all about blasphemy and sin, about the devil’s temptations and the need for punishment.
“Don’t you believe in heaven and hell?” she asks.
“No, I don’t.”
She often stays up at night and quietly prays. Her breath is cool and her skin smells of rose water. Every time I look at her, she is smiling and gazing up at the sky outside the window.
“Listen,” she says. “Can you hear the angels singing?”
“No, I can’t.”
I bury my head under the pillow and search for sleep. I can hear shots being fired and people shouting “God is great” on the rooftops in the neighborhood.
Friends say, “We should leave.”
Friends say, “We should stay and fight.”
Friends are in a frenzy to start a newspaper and to organize a political party.
Mr. Heydari has stocked his basement with flour, rice, and kerosene, and he has brought his silk carpets over to our house for safekeeping. He has taken his money out of the bank and he has put his gold coins in a pouch he wears around his neck.
Mr. Heydari is afraid of the enemies of the revolution and has decided to leave the country, but he is also afraid of loneliness in exile.
There is unrest at the university. Someone is giving a speech and the crowd salutes the Prophet and his family. Outside the university walls there are pictures of Imam Khomeini hanging from tree branches and peddlers are selling roasted beets and potatoes. An old woman stops me and shows me a photograph of her martyred son. She cries. The sidewalk is crowded with street vendors selling religious books, jeans, and sneakers. A little farther away, a guerrilla fighter is teaching people how to use an Uzi machine gun, and in the shadow of a tree, a man with his wife and children are sitting on a blanket eating lunch.
A student stops me and asks how I have been. I don’t recognize him. He has wrapped a checkered scarf around his head and neck. I think he is a young Arab from Palestine. He is carrying a machine gun and shoots a few bullets in the air. The women scream and throw themselves down on the ground behind the trees.
Someone is knocking at the door. It is late at night. My wife leaps up from the sofa. My father quickly hides his bottle of arak. It is Mr. Heydari. He has brought us milk powder, canned foods, cheese, and Indian fish oil. He is out of breath.
“There is no gasoline,” he says. “There is no flour. There is cholera and smallpox. Soon people will start eating each other.”
My wife laughs at him. She believes pious people will bring us food. My son angrily pounds his fist on the sack of flour and says that the true revolution has yet to come. He believes that in the end the proletariat will triumph. He goes to the factory every day and he doesn’t know how to make friends with the laborers. He wears dirty clothes and is proud of his dusty shoes. My son loves poverty and is obsessed with the idea of belonging to the working class.
My artist friend is from Kashan. He invited me to visit him there. I was delighted. I set off immediately. My wife was praying. She had just learned how to pray and didn’t know the verses by heart. She read them from a piece of paper she had pinned to the wall.
The landlord was in the courtyard. He jumped up the minute he saw me. He was shaking. He was waiting for someone. He looked at my bag.
“Are you running away?” he asked.
“No.”
“Is your name on the list, too?”
I shook my head.
“They will arrest me,” he said. “Today or tomorrow. They will arrest you, too. They will arrest everyone.”
My father was awake. He was sitting by the window, tuning his sitar. Until recently, he was a sitar teacher, but his students have stopped coming. They are busy singing revolutionary songs. Monsieur Ardavaz is Father’s old friend. Once in a while he comes to visit him and they talk about the past. Monsieur Ardavaz has closed his liquor shop. He has turned a corner of his courtyard into a store and he sells crispy bread and pear preserves. Monsieur Ardavaz is terrified of imperialism and has voted for the Islamic Republic.
They have flogged the landlord; twenty lashes.
My son is against capitalism and says that the landlord should have been hanged.
OH, HOW DISTANT this green meadow is from the hysteria of history. How silent and sober. Far away, on the mountainside, a silent hamlet is sleeping in the shelter of trees, and somewhere in the distance a bird is singing. I feel light, I feel like a dandelion floating in the air. I sing to myself:
I have come searching for a dream
Or a ray of light
Perhaps for a pebble or a smile.
Up ahead, on the elevation, there is a water reservoir next to a mud and straw hut. It is a still body of water full of floating algae. An old man and his donkey walk by. He says hello. His bag smells of fresh bread and his clothes of burnt firewood.
THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of people are standing in congregational prayer. The streets are milling with women clad in black chadors. There is a young man next to me. He is leaning against the wall. He is shaking with emotion. His eyes are closed and tears are streaming down his face.
My poet friend is bedridden. They say he has gone mad. I go to visit him. My heart is heavy. He is sleeping, half-unconscious.
His wife doesn’t understand what is wrong with him. She is distraught, confused. She bursts into tears the minute she sees me.
“Wait until he wakes up,” she says. “Perhaps he will talk to you. He talks to imaginary people. He prays twenty times a day and he is constantly repenting. At night, he goes up on the roof and shouts, ‘God is great.’ He cries and can’t sleep for fear of God’s presence.”
I can’t believe it. He was a quiet and timid man. He rarely said what was on his mind and in his heart. He wrote poems. Lovely, simple poems. When the revolution broke out, he started coming to our house in the evenings. He would sit and not say anything. We would sit in silence and listen to the shouts of “God is great,” to the strange pandemonium in the city, and to the sound of bullets being fired. I would think some building was burning. We could hear the fire trucks and ambulances. My poet friend remained silent the entire time.
My hand still smells of fresh blood, warm blood, the blood of a youth who was the same age as my son. He was restless and excited. He was panting. He was shaking his small fist in the air and threatening the soldiers. I lost him at the bend of the street. There was a fire somewhere. The street was filled with suffocating smoke. Women were running and men were hastily closing their shops. The shooting had started. My poet friend was next to me. He was trembling. He was talking to himself. Death had a familiar face and it was sauntering around the city like an alluring seductress. I caught sight of the young boy. I didn’t know him. He had crouched down and wrapped his arms around a tree. I picked him up. He wasn’t breathing. The bullet had struck him in the chest. I called to a passerby. I stopped a man. I pounded on the door to a house. My poet friend didn’t speak. He was standing next to me, spellbound, staring at death.
THE SKY IS GROWING dark. Where am I? There are no people around. I’m lost. Before me, a silent road creeps toward dark, unknown lands. The wind is my only companion. My heart is pounding. I keep going, aimlessly, with no destination. It will soon be night. A vague fear whirls inside me and strokes the back of my neck. I walk faster. My shoes are hurting my feet. I look around for a tree, a village, a human being. I turn left. The desert glares at me. There is an amorphous cacophony in the air. I see a narrow path that like a magical sign beckons me to an unknown place. I am tired. Thirsty. Stumbling, I drag myself forward. Now and then, the path ends and starts again a short distance away. I think to myself, I will never arrive. My only hope is this rugged path.
I stop. My heart skips a beat. Am I dreaming?
In front of me, in the middle of the desert, in that silent wasteland, there is a secluded garden sheltered by white walls. A half-open door summons me. I peek in. There is no sign of a human being. There are two rows of tall poplars flanking the surrounding walls and four aged cypress trees in the middle of four flower beds thick with wild red poppies and desert flowers. In the middle of the garden there is a pool brimming with crystalline water and the blue of the sky. The cobblestone walkways are coated with a thin layer of dust. No footprints, no signs of disturbance, no remnants of an intrusion. On the north side of the garden, at the top of a stone staircase, there is a sprawling veranda. Above it sits a white, celestial house. It is so dazzling, so pure. Perhaps it is a vision. Perhaps a dream.
Slowly, with cautious steps, I move forward. I am afraid the house might disappear if I take my eyes off of it, or it may crumble if I breathe too hard.
I sit on the edge of the pool and wash my face. What pleasure! The reflection of the house shimmers deep in the water and the green of the trees floats on its marble-like surface.
The water’s cool scent is tempting. I take off my clothes and slide deep into the pool. I open my eyes. The blue sky has spread in the depths of the water. I feel as though I am floating among the galaxies. The water’s breath blows away the thousand-year-old dust from my soul. My spirit quivers with pleasure. It is as if invisible hands are giving me ablution in the spring of eternal life. I lie floating on the surface. The sun has climbed halfway down the wall and in the fading light the cypress trees have grown taller. Again, I turn my eyes toward the house. How simple and unassuming, how noble and immaculate. It reminds me of someone close but forgotten, someone at the tip of ancient memories. At the edge of a sweet dream.
I climb out of the pool. I shiver. Dusk in the desert is cool and refreshing. I get dressed. I pick up my shoes and set off barefoot. I count twelve stairs. Someone had been praying on the veranda and has left behind a prayer stone. I step onto the veranda. It is an empty space with plain, unadorned walls. The windows are framed with modest cut-mirror designs. On either side of the veranda there are two half-open doors that lead into a room that is adjacent to a hidden alcove. Dim, labyrinthine hallways and spiral staircases draw me to themselves.
I am breathless by the time I reach the top floor. From here, I can see the four corners of the world. The sky is only a step away and the desert stretches as far as the horizon. I sit. For a long time. What point in time is this? Where am I? A sweet slumber hovers behind my eyelids, but it doesn’t reach my brain. The stars have one by one appeared. My gaze floats in space and my thoughts, like runaway ripples on water, have no constant or defined shape.
I cannot feel my arms and legs. My body has lost its physical bounds and boundaries. I feel like I am an extension of the house, of the garden, of the desert, and that my eyes are suspended from the stars. I float in space. Weightless. Empty. How removed I feel from everyone and everything, from the geometric relationship of objects and the logical symmetry of things, from the tyranny of time and the exactitude of numbers, from the massive slate of law and the heavy tome of ethics. How far away I am from the validity of matter and the authenticity of history, from the invariable legitimacy of ideas and the conflict between the haves and have-nots, from the rituals of purification and the ceremonies of shrouding and burial.
I wake up. It is dawn. Bewildered, I look around. I get up. I am hungry, yet I feel well. I feel light and rested. There is a pleasant breeze. A rooster is crowing in the distance. A small village, down there, at the foot of the mountain, is awake. I put on my shoes. I hear footsteps. I climb down the stairs. An old man is sitting on the edge of the pool, performing his morning ablutions. His long, bushy beard is white. I say hello. He nods. He is praying.
When I reach the garden door, I stop and look back. In the half-light of dawn, the house looks like a vision, a luminous manifestation of a divine presence. It says something to me, something unspoken. I understand, and a sense of calm and confidence settles under my skin.
The way back is no longer unknown to me. The desert is quiet and still and void of daunting temptations. When I reach the green meadow, I take a shortcut and walk through the fields. Back on the road, a truck stops and the driver offers me a ride. He is a young man with a black beard and sunburnt skin.
There are dozens of pictures of ayatollahs taped to the windshield. I get out at a teahouse near town. Only now I realize how hungry I am. It is morning—a bright, warm summer morning.
I go back to the city and to my room at the inn. There have been several telephone calls from Tehran and from my friend with whom I was supposed to meet last night. He has left a message. Something important has come up. I must return to Tehran as soon as possible. My students have gone on strike and the professors are planning a sit-in. I pack my odds and ends and head out. The circle at the city center is crowded. Trucks are loaded with people going from one village to another. They are shouting slogans and chanting verses from the Quran. They have sacrificed a sheep and they are smearing its blood on the back of the trucks. The young men are wearing black shirts and shaking their fists in the air.
The stores are closed. Half the city is shut down. The thoroughfare is congested and chaotic. It is full of cars and carts and donkeys. Outside Qum, I get caught in a traffic jam. There is a funeral procession. I wait. The crowd is shouting prayers. Women dressed in black are moving in a tight cluster. A beggar boy is hanging from the fender of my car. The air is full of dust and smoke and the smell of gasoline. I’m hot. I’m sweating. I can barely breathe. I pull over and wait for the road to open up.
In front of the mosque, the Revolutionary Guards stop me and ask to see the registration card for my car. They search the car. There is a newspaper on the backseat. They leaf through it. They confiscate it and they let me go. I feel light-headed. I bite into the cigarette butt. I spit. I blow the horn. I yell. A woman beats her fist on the windshield of my car and curses. Her child is crying.
I reach the main road and speed up. The oncoming trucks are driving at breakneck speed. They have no mercy. It will be a miracle if I reach Tehran alive. My throat burns. My mouth is dry. I roll down the window. I need air, a drop of rain. There is nothing but desert and dust and rocky mountains and brick kilns as far as the eye can see.
I have a meeting early tomorrow morning. The article I had promised to write is not finished and as soon as I arrive I have to go to the funeral services for my friend’s uncle.
A car honks behind me. The driver wants to pass. He doesn’t understand that I’m locked in traffic and can’t move aside. He honks again. Consecutively, intermittently, loudly, together with threats and obscenities. I want to get out and slap him in the face. I want to grab him by the collar and shake him. The smell of gasoline and smoke has permeated the air. Heavy, cement-like clouds hover above me. The air is thick and it burns my eyes. I am thinking about the chaotic days to come when suddenly, from deep inside the hazy horizon, the image of the house appears before me like a heavenly gift. It slowly moves toward me. I see it and know that its celestial spirit is hidden behind everything, and I realize that from that moment on, it will occasionally come to me unannounced; that on gloomy, sweltering evenings, on turbulent days and hopeless nights, and at the time of my death, it will be with me, this immortal beauty, this great lady of my soul.