The Blind Owl and Other Stories Read online

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  There’s still an hour left until we eat our supper. It’s one of those printed menus: yoghurt soup, rice pudding, rice, bread and cheese, just enough to keep us alive without starving us. Hasan’s utmost wish is to eat a pot of egg soup and four hunks of bread. When it’s time for him to be released they should bring him a pot of egg soup instead of pen and paper. He is one of the lucky ones here, with his short legs, stupid laugh, thick neck, bald head, and rough hands that look as if they’ve been made to clean sewers. Had it not been for Muhammad Ali, who stands there inspecting lunch and dinner, Hasan would have sent all of us to God. But Muhammad Ali himself is also just one of the people of this realm. No matter what they say about this place, the fact is that this is a different world to the world of normal people. We have a doctor who, I swear to God, doesn’t notice anything. If I were in his place, one night I would put poison into everyone’s supper and give them it to eat. Then in the morning I would stand in the garden with my hands on my hips and watch the corpses being carried out. When they first brought me here I was obsessively watching my food, fearing that they might poison me. I wouldn’t touch lunch or supper unless Muhammad Ali had tasted the food first. Only then would I eat. At night I would leap awake frightened, imagining that they had come to kill me. How far away and vague that all seems now. Always the same people, the same food, the same room which is blue halfway up the wall.

  It was two months ago when they threw a lunatic into that prison at the end of the courtyard. With a broken piece of marble he cut out his own stomach, pulled out his intestines and played with them. They said he was a butcher – he was used to cutting stomachs. But that other one had pulled out his own eyes with his own nails. They tied his hands behind his back. He was screaming and the blood had dried on his eyes. I know that all of this is the supervisor’s fault.

  Not everyone here is like this. Many of them would be unhappy if they were cured and released. For example that Soghra Sultan who is in the women’s section. Two or three times she tried to escape but they caught her. She’s an old woman, but she scratches plaster off the wall and rubs it on her face for powder. She even uses geraniums to make her cheeks look rosy. She thinks she’s a young girl. If she was to recover and look in the mirror she would have a heart attack. Worst of all is our own Taqi, who wants to turn the world upside down. In his opinion women are the cause of men’s misfortune, and to improve the world all women must be killed. He has fallen in love with Soghra Sultan.

  All this is the fault of our very own supervisor. He is so crazy that he puts the rest of us to shame. With that big nose and those small eyes, like a drug addict, he always walks at the bottom of the garden under the pine tree. Sometimes he bends over and looks under the tree. Anyone who sees him would think what a poor, harmless man to have been caught with all these lunatics. But I know him. I know that there, under the tree, three drops of blood have fallen onto the ground. He has hung a cage in front of his window. The cage is empty because the cat has had his canary. So he has left the cage hanging to lure the cats to the cage and then kill them.

  It was only yesterday when he followed a calico cat. As soon as the animal went up the tree towards the window, he told the guard at the door to shoot the cat. Those three drops of blood are the cat’s but if anyone asked he would say they belong to the bird of truth.

  Stranger than everyone else here is my friend and neighbour Abbas. It hasn’t been two weeks since they brought him. He has been warming to me. He thinks he is a poet and a prophet. He says every vocation, but especially that of a prophet, depends on chance and luck. People with high foreheads, for example, have it made even if they don’t know much. Whereas those with a short forehead, even if they are the wisest of all men in the world, end up like him. Abbas also thinks he is a skilful sitar player. He has put wires on a wooden board, making himself believe that he’s built a string instrument. He also has composed a poem which he recites for me eight times a day. I think it is for the same poem that they sent him here. He has composed a peculiar ballad:

  What a pity that once more it is night.

  From head to toe the world is dark.

  For everyone it has become the time of peace

  Except me, whose despair and sorrow are increased.

  There is no happiness in the nature of the world,

  Except death there is no cure for my sorrow.

  But at that corner under the pine tree

  Three drops of blood have fallen free.

  Yesterday we were walking in the garden. Abbas was reciting the same poem. A man and a woman and a young girl came to see him. So far they have come five times. I had seen them before and I knew them. The young girl brought a bouquet of flowers. She smiled at me. It was apparent that she liked me. She had come for me, basically. After all, Abbas’s pockmarked face isn’t attractive, but when the woman was talking to the doctor I saw Abbas pulling the young girl aside and kissing her.

  * * *

  Up to now no one has come to see me or brought me flowers. It has been a year. The last time it was Siavosh who came to see me. Siavosh was my best friend. We were neighbours. Every day we went to the Darolfonoun* together and walked back home together and discussed our homework. In leisure time I taught Siavosh to play the sitar. Rokhsare, who was Siavosh’s cousin and my fiancée, would often join us. Siavosh wanted to marry Rokhsare’s sister but one month before the day of the marriage ceremony, he unexpectedly fell ill. Two or three times I went to see him and to inquire how he was, but they said the doctor had strictly forbidden anyone to speak with him. No matter how much I insisted, they gave the same answer. So I stopped insisting.

  I remember that day quite well. It was near the final exams. One evening, I had returned home and had dropped my books and some notebooks on the table. As I was about to change my clothes I heard the sound of a bullet being shot. The sound was so close that it frightened me because our house was behind a ditch and I had heard that there had been robberies near us. I took the revolver from the drawer and went to the courtyard and stood there, listening. Then I went up the stairs to the roof, but I didn’t see anything. On my way down from the roof, I turned to look at Siavosh’s house from the top. I saw him in a shirt and underpants standing in the middle of the courtyard. I said in surprise, “Siavosh, is that you?” He recognized me and said, “Come over, nobody’s home.” He put a finger on his lips and with his head he signalled to me to go over to him. I went down fast and knocked on the door of his house. He himself opened the door for me. With his head down and his eyes fixed on the ground, he asked me, “Why didn’t you come to see me?”

  “I came two or three times to see how you were, but they said that the doctor wouldn’t permit it.”

  “They think I’m ill, but they’re mistaken.”

  “Did you hear the bullet shot?”

  He didn’t answer but took my hand and led me to the foot of the pine tree where he pointed at something. I looked closely. There were three drops of fresh blood on the ground.

  Then he took me to his room and closed all the doors. I sat on a chair. He turned the light on and sat opposite me on a chair in front of the table. His room was simple. It was blue, and up to the middle the walls were a darker colour. In the corner of the room there was a sitar. Several volumes of books and school notebooks had been dropped on the table. After a while Siavosh took a revolver from the drawer and showed it to me. It was one of those old revolvers with a mother-of-pearl handle. He put it in his trouser pocket and said, “I used to have a female cat – her name was Coquette. You might have seen her. She was one of those ordinary calico cats. She had two large eyes that looked as if she had black eyeliner on. The patches on her back were arranged neatly as if someone had spilt ink on a grey piece of blotting paper and then had torn the paper in the middle. Every day when I returned home from school Coquette would run up to me, miaowing. She would rub herself against me and when
I sat down she would climb over my head and shoulders, rubbing her snout against my face and licking my forehead with her rough tongue, insisting that I kiss her. It’s as if female cats are wilier and kinder and more sensitive than male cats. Apart from me, Coquette got along very well with the cook because he was in charge of the food. But she kept away from my grandmother who was bossy and regularly said her prayers and avoided cat hair. Coquette must have thought to herself that people were smarter than cats and that they had confiscated all the delicious food and the warm, comfortable places for themselves and in order to have a share in these luxuries, cats had to be sycophantic and flatter people a great deal.

  “The only time Coquette’s natural feelings would awaken and come to the surface was when she got hold of the bleeding head of a rooster. Then she would change, turning into a fierce beast. Her eyes would become bigger and sparkle. Her claws would pop out of their sheaths and with long growls she would threaten anyone who got near her. Then, as if she were fooling herself, she would start to play a game. Since with all the force of her imagination she had made herself believe that the rooster’s head was a living animal, she would tap the head with her paw. Her hair would stand up, she would hide, be on the alert, and would attack again, revealing all the skill and agility of her species in repetitive jumping and attacking and retreating. After she tired of this exhibition, she would greedily finish eating the bloody head and for several minutes afterwards she would search for the rest of it. And so, for an hour or two, she would forget her artificial civilization, wouldn’t go near anyone and wouldn’t be charming or flattering.

  “All the time during which Coquette was displaying affection she was in fact unforthcoming and brutish and wouldn’t reveal her secrets. She treated our home like her own property and if a strange cat happened to enter the house, especially if the cat was a female, for hours you’d hear the sound of spitting, moaning and indignation.

  “The noise that Coquette made to announce that she was ready for lunch was different to the one she made when she was being flirty. The sound of her screams when she was hungry, the cries she made during fighting, and her moaning when she was in heat all had a distinct sound and were different from each other. And their tunes would also change: first there were the heart-rending cries, second the yells of spite and vengeance, third a painful sigh drawn from the natural need to join her mate. The looks that Coquette made with her eyes appeared more meaningful than anything else and sometimes she would display emotions of such human nature that people would feel compelled to ask themselves: what thoughts and feelings exist in that woolly head, behind those green mysterious eyes?

  “It was last spring when that terrible incident took place. You know that come spring, all animals become intoxicated and pair up. It is as if the spring breeze awakens crazy passion in all living beings. For the first time our Coquette was hit by the passion of love and, with shudders which moved her whole body, she would sigh with sadness. The male cats heard her sighs and welcomed her from all sides. After fighting and scuffling, Coquette chose for her mate the one who was the strongest of all and whose voice was the loudest. In animal lovemaking their special smell is very important. That’s why spoilt, domesticated and clean male cats don’t appeal to the females. By contrast, the cats on the walls, the thieving, skinny, wandering and hungry cats whose skin gives off the original odour of their species, are more attractive to the females. During the day, but especially at night, Coquette and her mate would bawl out their love in long cries. Her soft delicate body would writhe while the other’s body would bend like a bow, and they would give happy groans. This continued until the coming of dawn. Then Coquette would enter the room with tousled hair, bruised and tired but happy.

  “I didn’t sleep at night because of Coquette’s lovemaking. Even­tually, I became very angry. One day I was working in front of this same window when I saw the lovers strutting in the garden. With the very revolver that you see I aimed at them from a distance of two or three steps. I fired the gun and a bullet hit her mate. It seemed as if his back was broken. He made a huge leap and without making a sound or groaning, he ran away through the passageway and fell at the foot of the garden wall.

  “Blood had trickled all along the path he had taken. Coquette searched for a while until she found his footsteps. She smelled his blood and went straight to his dead body. For two nights and two days she kept watch by his body. Sometimes she would touch him with her paw as if to say to him, ‘Get up, it’s the beginning of spring. Why do you sleep in the time of love? Why don’t you move? Get up, get up!’ Coquette didn’t know about death and didn’t know that her lover was dead.

  “The day after that, Coquette disappeared together with her mate’s body. I searched everywhere, I asked everyone for traces of her. It was useless. Was Coquette sulking? Was she dead? Did she go to search for her love? And what happened to the body?

  “One night I heard the miaowing of that same male cat. He cried until dawn. The next night was the same, but in the morning his cries had stopped. The third night I picked up the revolver again and I shot aimlessly towards the pine tree in front of my window. The glittering of his eyes was apparent in the dark. He gave a long moan and became silent. In the morning I saw that three drops of blood had fallen onto the ground under the tree. Since that night he’s been coming every night and moaning in that same voice. The others sleep heavily and don’t hear. No matter what I say to them they laugh at me but I know, I am certain, that this is the sound of the same cat that I shot. I haven’t slept since that night. No matter where I go, no matter which room I sleep in, this damn cat moans in his frightening voice and calls for his mate.

  “Today when there was no one in the house I went to the same place where the cat sits and cries every night and I aimed, since I knew where he stood from the glitter of his eyes in the dark. When the gun was empty I heard the cat’s groans and three drops of blood fell from up there. You saw them with your own eyes, aren’t you my witness?”

  Then the door opened and Rokhsare and her mother entered the room. Rokhsare had a bouquet of flowers in her hand. I stood up and said hello, but laughing, Siavosh said, “Of course you know Mr Mirza Ahmad Khan better than I do. An introduction isn’t necessary. He testifies that with his own eyes he has seen three drops of blood at the foot of the pine tree.”

  “Yes, I have seen them.”

  But Siavosh walked towards me, giving a throaty laugh. He put his hand in my trouser pocket and pulled out the revolver. Putting the pistol on the table, he said, “You know that Mirza Ahmad Khan not only plays the sitar and composes poetry well, but he is also a skilled hunter. He shoots very well.” Then he signalled to me. I too stood up and said, “Yes, this afternoon I came to pick up some school notes from Siavosh. For fun we shot at the pine tree for a while, but those three drops of blood don’t belong to the cat, they belong to the bird of truth. You know that according to legend the bird of truth ate three grains which belonged to the weak and the unprotected and each night he cries and cries until three drops of blood fall from his throat. Or maybe, a cat had caught the neighbour’s canary and then the neighbour shot the cat and the wounded cat then passed by the tree. Now wait, I’m going to recite a new poem I have written.” I picked up the sitar and tuned it in preparation for the song and then I sang this poem:

  “What a pity that once again it is night.

  From head to toe the world is dark.

  For everyone it has become the time of peace

  Except for me, whose despair and sorrow are increased.

  There is no happiness in the nature of the world.

  Except death there is no cure for my sorrow.

  But at that corner under the pine tree

  Three drops of blood have fallen on the ground.”

  At this point Rokhsare’s mother went out of the room angrily. Rokhsare raised her eyebrows and said, “He is mad.” Then she took Siavosh’s hand and bot
h of them laughed and laughed and then walked through the door and closed it on me. From behind the window I saw that when they reached the courtyard they embraced each under the lantern and kissed.

  The Legalizer

  (from Three Drops of Blood)

  (translated by Deborah Miller Mostaghel)

  Four hours were left before the sunset and Pass Qale* looked empty and quiet in the middle of the mountains. Arranged on a table in front of a small coffeehouse were jugs of yoghurt drink, lemonade and glasses of different colours. A dilapidated record player and some scratchy records stood on a bench. The coffeehouse keeper, his sleeves rolled up, shook the bronze samovar, threw out the tea leaves, then picked up the empty gasoline drum, to which wire handles had been attached, and walked in the direction of the river.

  The sun was shining. From below could be heard the monotonous sound of the water, layer after layer of water falling on each other in the riverbed, making everything seem fresh. On one of the benches in front of the coffeehouse, a man was lying, a damp cloth covering his face, his cloth shoes arranged side by side next to the bench. On the opposite bench, under the shade of a mulberry tree, two men were sitting together. Though they hardly knew each other they had immediately embarked on a heart-to-heart conversation. They were so absorbed in their conversation that it seemed as if they had known each other for years. Mashadi Shahbaz was thin, scrawny, with a heavy moustache and eyebrows that met in the middle. He was squatting on the edge of the bench, and gesturing with his henna-dyed hand, saying, “Yesterday I went to Morgh Mahale to see my cousin; he has a little garden there. He was saying that last year he sold his apricots for thirty tomans. This year they were frostbitten and all the fruit fell off the tree. He was in a terrible condition. And his wife has been bedridden since Ramadan. It’s been very costly for him.”