SORAYA SAYS, “Dr. Doostar is sick.”
“Sick?” I say, surprised. “I don’t think he’s sick. Yes, he’s old. It might be his age—late eighties—that has affected him and perhaps he doesn’t look as well as he used to. But he certainly is not sick.”
We were invited to Dr. Farhoodi’s place to celebrate Yalda. Dr. Farhoodi is a physician who’s now retired. We were about eight people. The youngest of our group was past fifty, so we were all of a certain age. Our children were grown up and had their own lives. And as folks say, all of us had experienced both bad and good in our lives.
It was after midnight and we were almost done discussing politics, literature, society, the Iranian community, education, family matters, and anything else that came to our minds, especially our health problems, which currently tend to dominate our conversations. A visible fatigue had spread over our faces. I don’t know how our talk turned to dreaming and its connection to real life. Hamid, Soraya’s husband, who had studied psychology when he was young and was now writing articles about the subject for Iranian newspapers in the city, said, “Dreams in many ways have some connection to the individual’s consciousness.”
Akbar, who is a chartered accountant and works at a well-known company, didn’t agree with Hamid. He argued that dreams had nothing to do with real life and that they only relate to the individual’s unconscious. The discourse between the two was becoming heated; no one else could get a word in.
When Hamid mentioned Carl Jung, the famous psychologist, Dr. Doostar coughed loudly and everyone turned toward him. The entire night he hadn’t uttered more than a few words; he had thanked Dr. Farhoodi’s wife, our hostess, and made a few casual and flattering remarks. His silence was unusual, because at many other gatherings he had always been talkative and witty.
By the time the Dr. Doostar’s coughing fit had ended, Akbar and Hamid had forgotten about their disagreement. Dr. Doostar cleared his throat and with his coarse voice, which sounded like banging on a rusty pot, said, “Do you want to hear a real story?” as if he was addressing a group of his medical students. Dr. Doostar told us that he had been a university professor in Iran, but it was hard to believe him because he didn’t seem to have a medical specialty. Without giving us a chance to respond, he continued, “It’s a story that when you hear it, for sure you will say, ‘It cannot be true.’ Or ‘It was a dream or an illusion.’ But the fact is that this story is true and and it really happened to me. For years I forced myself to believe that what had happened to me had been a dream, to help me to deal with it and not go mad. But my story…” and here he paused for a moment. “I don’t know why I call it a story. The word ‘story’ diminishes the reality of my memory. Yes, I have to say that what happened to me was pure fact. After you hear it, I leave it to you to believe it or not, to think of it as a dream or as reality…”
The doctor’s preamble took so long that Dr. Farhoodi permitted himself to interrupt him, “Dear Doctor, you’re making us impatient. Please don’t fly from one subject to another. We are…”
Dr. Doostar obviously didn’t hear Dr. Farharoodi because he simply continued, “First of all, promise that you won’t interrupt me. It’s true that I’m old and sometimes I mix things up and become forgetful, but the story that I’m going to tell you is one of those…”
Again, he didn’t finish and instead looked blankly at us. It seemed that he didn’t notice us. His expression was distant and his eyes were searching beyond us. He said, “No, I shouldn’t call it a story. But in some ways it sounds like fiction. Yes, it has crossed my mind many times that I could turn this experience into a story. If Sadegh Hedayat were alive, he might have written a fantastic novel based on this story.”
Dr. Farhoodi’s wife interrupted him again and said, “Minoo is a writer, too.” She was referring to me.
To show my humility, I wanted to say, no, I am not a writer yet, but Dr. Doostar, without troubling to look at me, as if I didn’t exist as a writer or even as a human being, said, “No.” His “no” was so forceful that he made me believe I’d never be a writer.
Dr. Doostar, with the same forceful tone, which did not match his wrinkled complexion and crumpled body, said, “Only Sadegh Hedayat could write a novel about what I’m going to tell you.”
Dr. Farhoodi was getting ready to say something again when Dr. Doostar turned to look at him directly and said, “If you could be a little patient…”
Then, for the first time he focused his gaze on all of us as if he wanted to be sure of our presence. He said, “Please, just listen for fifteen minutes.”
We assured him we were listening to his story with all of our attention.
Dr. Doostar cleared his throat and finally started his story.
“I had just become a physician and had started a practice in a small town that was even smaller than my birthplace. I had an office and I dreamt of being famous and rich, which was my motivation for studying medicine in the first place. I even worked till late at night to treat one or two more patients so I could earn more money. I had nothing to do at home anyway. In those days, radio and television weren’t available to everyone. I didn’t have a radio. I didn’t buy newspapers either, reluctant to spend a few coins. I had nothing to do with what was going on in the world. My world was my office and my patients, who were old and young, men and women, and children, occupied my whole time. They were mostly from villages in the surrounding areas of the town, and they sometimes couldn’t afford my fee, despite the fact that my fees were low because I was a novice doctor. I wasn’t the kind of person to examine a patient without charging him or her. If that had been the case, I would have opened a free clinic. When the patients didn’t have money to pay my fee, I sent them home and told them to come back when they had money in their pockets. Those poor people went back to their homes without getting examined or treated. I thought, it’s not my business—either they get through the winter and get well by chance, or they won’t make it to the spring. I was a physician and my only income was from charging my patients. I dreamed of accumulating a large amount of wealth, and I eventually did. That’s how I was able many years later to send my only child to Canada and afford to pay for him to get his specialty in brain surgery. But let us forget about these things.
“The poor peasants mostly came back because their sickness was acute and they needed treatment. Peasants don’t usually see a doctor for a simple cold or a headache. They have to be really sick and feel pain to their bones before they even think about getting help from a doctor. Sometimes when their sickness was serious, they had to sell their poultry or their rations of flour for the cold days of winter to be able to pay for a visit. There was a government hospital which was free for everyone. So, I didn’t feel bad if I sent them there because they couldn’t pay me.
“I wasn’t a social reformer and didn’t even think about rescuing human beings. I didn’t have any illusions. My only aim was to write prescriptions that would heal my patients, of course, but make me some money in return.”
He paused briefly, then continued, “I didn’t mean to talk about such trivial issues. My story is about something else.”
We remained silent, now eager to hear the doctor’s story.
“It was a winter night, perhaps Yalda night. In those years, I didn’t care very much about celebrating Yalda and those kinds of festivities. At the time, I didn’t have any family around me to remind me about them. However, it was a long and cold night, although I had light and heat in my office, but that light was a problem for me. It was about an hour since I’d dismissed my last patient and I was counting my earnings for the day. Actually, it had been a good day for me in terms of income. The fall was always the season of prosperity; not only for peasants, who were harvesting their crops, but also for me, because it was the season of colds, fevers, and diarrhea. Well, diarrhea was generally the result of eating too much junk food and catching the flu was easy with the change in weather. And peasants remembered their own chronic pains, which they didn’t have a chance to think about during the spring and summer, the seasons of cultivation and harvesting. Now, let’s forget about these things.”
I was getting fed up with the doctor’s asides. Once or twice I wanted to excuse myself and leave the room, pretending I had to go to the washroom, but I respected him and stayed quiet. Indeed, the silence in the room was solemn and heavy. We all waited for the doctor to continue.
“Yes, I remember very well that it was a long winter night and I was reviewing my account and happy that I had a good business. Don’t laugh at me when I say business. Being a doctor is a certain kind of business. However, to make it short, when I raised my head, a young woman with a frightened expression on her face was standing in front of me. Her long, black hair was dishevelled and she was covering her breasts with her arms. Her cheeks were crimson, the front of her dress was open and her large breasts swelled beneath her arms with her panting. Then I remembered that I’d forgotten to lock my office door after seeing my last patient out. Believe me, for a few minutes I thought I was hallucinating. The woman didn’t look real. She had dark almond eyes, long, perfectly-arched eyebrows, full lips—half-open and ready for a long kiss—rosy cheeks, and long, curly hair. She looked like one of the women in the paintings in books by the great Sufi poet, Hafiz, or in Omar Khayam’s Rubaiyat. She was, I thought, what Sadegh Hedayat once described as the “eternal woman.” She completely bewitched me. Obviously, she had run a long way and the wind had tangled her hair. She was panting hard. I assumed she had fled from someone or something. It crossed my mind that a wolf or a fox had followed her.
“I was so surprised and so stunned by her appearance that I couldn’t utter a word. Yes, I remember now, she was the first to speak. Because she was still so out of breath, she stammered a little. ‘My dear doctor, please help me, please. My … my husband wants to kill me.’
“Then, I understood what was going on. Her husband, I thought, must be one of those jealous husbands and maybe someone had looked at his wife with lust in his eyes, and he had felt degraded, and then wanted to kill his wife. I wanted to say, ‘Well, my dear, this is none of my business. You should complain to the police.’ But the woman continued, ‘My husband imagines I am a snake, a snake…’
“The word ‘snake’ terrified me. She pronounced it as she were a real snake, making a hissing sound as she spoke—fesh, fesh, fesh. There was a terrible fear in her eyes.
“I don’t know if it was fear, compassion, or temptation…. Yes, I think it was temptation that forced me to get up from my desk and move toward the woman. I looked at her wide, terrified eyes and said, ‘Your husband must be insane.’
“Her eyes widened further as she said, ‘No, my dear doctor. He’s not insane. He’s a perfectly healthy man. He’s the son of the village owner and bought me with a good price from my father and wants to have children by me to keep his property.’
“I asked her, ‘Are you his legal wife or…?’
“She didn’t let me finish. She said, ‘I’m his legal wife. I am his only wife. My husband is a young man—he’s only a few years older than me. But tonight, I don’t know what happened to him. He said that I’d become a snake. He wanted to kill me with an axe, so I fled from him. I ran all the way from the village to the town. Then I noticed that there was a light in your office….’
“You see, it was the light in my office that got me into trouble. The woman bewitched me as a snake bewitches a tiny mouse. I forgot all about the oaths I’d taken as a physician and the restraints I should have exercised while examining a young woman. I had nothing left except empty words.
“I told her I’d have to examine her to determine if she was really a snake. It seemed that the woman didn’t understand what I was saying. I led her to the examination table, and she yielded to me. I made love to her and she didn’t resist, as if she had run all the way from her village to the town to come to my dingy office and go to bed with me. When I was done, I got off the examination table and turned my back to her so that she could dress. I waited politely for a few moments then turned around to face her. To my horror, a large snake was coiled on the examination table where she had been only moments before. It raised its head and its tongue was like a sharp blade flicking out of its mouth.
“I don’t know how I got out of my office, but I fled as fast as I could and was lost in the winding alleys of the town. I must have fallen asleep outside of town at the foot of the town gates. When I awoke, it was morning. Without daring go back to my office or even to my own home to get a few pieces of my clothing, I took a bus to Tehran. I spent a few days in my parents’ house, but I didn’t feel well. I was plagued by visions of that woman’s face, her incredible beauty, her long, lustrous hair quickly morphing into the huge, coiled snake poised and alert on the examination table. I didn’t dare return to my town or go back to work in my office. One day as I was wandering idly in the streets, the headline in a newspaper attracted my attention: A peasant killed his wife with an axe, having imagined she had turned into a snake when he was sleeping with her.
“After reading that article, I convinced myself that what had happened to me was not real but merely a hallucination. I have never talked about it till now.”
Dr. Doostar stopped talking and gazed at us with eyes full of unanswered questions. It was as if he was asking, “Now tell me: what happened to me, was it real, or not?”