The Blind Owl and Other Stories Page 13

  Mirza Yadellah adjusted his glasses, sucked his pipe with an air of relaxation, stroked his greying beard, and said, “All the blessing has gone out of everything.”

  Shahbaz nodded in agreement and said, “How right you are. It’s like the end of the world. Customs have changed. May God grant much luck to everyone – twenty-five years ago I was in the neighbourhood of the holy city of Mashad. Three kilos of butter for less than a rial, ten eggs for a rial. We bought loaves of bread as tall as a man. Who suffered from the lack of money? God bless my father – he had bought a bandari mule, they’re fast and small, and we would ride it together. I was twenty years old. I used to play marbles in the alley with the kids from our neighbourhood. Now all the young people lose their enthusiasm easily. They turn from unripe grapes to fully-fledged raisins. Give me the days of our youth. As that fellow, God bless him, said:

  I may be old, with a trembling chin,

  But I’m worth a hundred young men.”

  Yadollah puffed on his pipe and said, “Every year we regret the last year.”

  Shahbaz nodded. “May God grant his creatures a happy ending.”

  Yadollah assumed a serious expression. “I’ll tell you, there was a time when we had thirty mouths to feed in our house. Now every day I worry about where I’ll find a few rials for my tea and tobacco. Two years ago I had three teaching jobs, I earned eight tomans a month. Just the day before yesterday, on Aide Qorban,* I went to the house of one of the wealthy people where I used to be the tutor. They told me to bless the sheep in preparation for the slaughter. The ruthless butcher lifted the poor animal up and threw it onto the ground. He was sharpening his knife. The animal struggled and pulled itself up from under the butcher’s legs. I don’t know what was on the ground, but I saw that the animal’s eye had burst open and was bleeding. My heart was bleeding. I left on the pretext that I had a headache. All that night I saw the sheep’s head before my eyes, it was covered in blood. Then a profanity slipped from my tongue and I was having blasphemous thoughts… May God strike me dumb. There’s no doubt in God’s goodness, but these helpless animals… it’s sinful. Oh Lord, oh Providence, you know better. No matter what, man is sinful.” He sat lost in thought for a moment. Then he continued, “Yes, if only I could spell out everything that is in my heart: well, but everything can’t be said, God forbid. May God strike me dumb.”

  As if he were bored Shahbaz said, “Just think of important things.”

  Mirza Yadollah replied with an air of indifference, “Yes, what can we do? The world’s always this way.”

  “Our time is over,” said Shahbaz. “We’re done for. We’re only alive because we can’t afford shrouds. What tricks haven’t we played in this base world? Once in Tehran I had a grocery store. I put away six rials a day after expenses.”

  Mirza Yadollah interrupted his words. “You were a grocer? I don’t like grocers as a group.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a long story. But you finish what you have to say first.”

  Shahbaz continued talking. “Yes, I had a grocery store. I was doing all right. Little by little I was building a life for myself. To make a long story short, I married a shrew. It’s been five years since my wife ruined my life. She wasn’t a woman, she was a firebrand. How hard I had worked to marry and settle down: she ruined everything I had accomplished. Well, one night she came back from listening to a sermon. She insisted that she must go on pilgrimage to lighten her burden of sin. You wouldn’t believe how much she harassed me… How silly I was to give my wits to that woman. In any case, man is gullible. I was strong and ruthless, but a woman got the better of me. God forbid that a woman should get under a man’s skin. That very night she said, ‘I don’t understand these things, but I’ve figured it out. I don’t want my dowry back, just set me free. I have a bracelet and a necklace, I’ll sell them and leave. I looked for an omen and I found a good one. Either divorce me or I’ll strangle your child right here by the lamp.’ No matter what I did, do you think I was a match for her? For two weeks she didn’t look at me. She insisted so much that I sold everything I had, collected the money and gave it to her. She took my two-year-old son and disappeared to where the Arabs play the flute. It’s been five years and I don’t know what happened to her.”

  “May she be protected from the evil of the Arabs.”

  “Yes, amidst those naked ignorant Arabs, the desert, the burning sun! It’s as if she’d turned into water and had been soaked up by the earth. She didn’t send me even a note. They’re right when they say the woman is made of only one rib.”

  Mirza Yadollah said, “It’s men’s fault, they raise them that way and don’t let them become worldly and experienced.”

  Shahbaz was wrapped up in his own words. “What’s funny is that that woman was basically silly and simple-minded. I don’t know what happened that suddenly she turned into a firebrand. Sometimes, when she was on her own, she would cry. I wished her tears were for her first husband—”

  “You mean you were her second husband?” asked Mirza Yadollah.

  “Of course,” replied Shahbaz. “Now what was I saying? I forgot what I was saying.”

  “You mentioned her first husband.”

  “Yes, at first I thought she was crying for her first husband. In any case, no matter how nicely I tried to explain and make her understand, it was as if I were talking to a wall. It was as if death were out to get her. I don’t know what she did with my son. Will I ever look into his eyes again? A son whom God gave me after so many prayers and offerings.”

  Mirza Yadollah said, “Everyone you look at has some misfortune. The heart of the matter is that people should be human, should be educated. As long as they behave like mules, we’ll ride them. There was a time when I used to preach from the pulpit that whoever made a pilgrimage to the holy shrines would be forgiven and would have a place in heaven.”

  Shahbaz said, “You aren’t a preacher, are you?”

  “That was twelve years ago. You see I’m not dressed like a preacher. Now I’m a jack of all trades and master of none.”

  “How? I don’t understand.”

  Mirza Yadollah moistened his lips with his tongue and said dejectedly, “A woman ruined my life also.”

  Shahbaz said, “Oh, these women!”

  “No, this has nothing to do with women. This misfortune is my own fault. If you were in Tehran, probably you’ve heard the name of my father. I wasn’t found under a cabbage leaf. My father was so holy that even angels obeyed him. Everyone was always extolling his virtues. When he went up to the pulpit, there wasn’t even room to drop a needle. All the bigwigs were nervous around him. I’m not trying to show off. He’s dead, God bless him. Whatever he was, it was his reputation. As the poet says:

  Even if your father was a learned man,

  It’s nothing to you – you must do what you can.

  “In any case, after my father’s death I became his successor, and I examined our circumstances. He had left us a house and a handful of stuff. I was still a theology student, and I had a monthly pension of four tomans plus fifteen kilograms of wheat. In addition, during the months of Muharram and Safar we were in clover. Our bread was buttered on both sides. Since it was well known that the breath of my father, God bless him, would work miracles, one night I was brought to a sickbed to pray. I saw a girl, about eight or nine years old, hanging around. Sir, I was drawn to her at first glance. Well, that’s youth, with all its ups and downs.

  “Before her I had had two temporary wives, both of whom I had divorced, but this was something else. You’d have to have been me to understand. Anyway, two days later I sent a handkerchief full of nuts and dried fruit and three tomans, and I married her. At night when they brought her, she was so tiny that they carried her. I was ashamed of myself. I won’t hide anything from you. For three days, whenever the girl saw me she trembled like a sparrow. Now, I was only thirty, I w
as in my prime. But talk about those seventy-year-old men with all kinds of diseases who marry nine-year-old girls.

  “Well, what does a child understand of marriage? She thinks it’s all about wearing a sequinned shawl and putting on new clothes and being patted and caressed by a husband instead of being in her father’s house where she would be beaten and cursed. But she doesn’t know that life isn’t just a bed of roses in her husband’s house either.

  “In any case, it took me so much trouble to tame her. She was afraid of me. She would cry. I pleaded with her. I would say, ‘For God’s sake, stop embarrassing me. All right, you sleep at one end of the room, I’ll sleep at the other’, because I felt sorry for her. I really restrained myself not to force her. Besides, I had had a lot of experience and I could wait. In any case, she listened to my advice.

  “The first night I told her a story. She fell asleep. The second night I started another story and left half of it for the next night.

  “The third night I didn’t say anything, until she finally said, ‘You told the story up to the part where King Jamshid went hunting. Why don’t you tell the rest?’ And I – I couldn’t contain myself for joy. I said, ‘Tonight I have a headache. I can’t talk loud. If you let me, I’ll come a little closer.’ In this manner I went closer, closer, till she gave in.”

  Shahbaz was amused. He wanted to say something, but when he saw Mirza Yadollah’s serious face and his eyes full of tears behind his glasses, he restrained himself.

  With peculiar emphasis Mirza Yadollah said, “That story goes back twelve years, twelve years! You don’t know what a woman she was, so nice, so kind. She took care of all my work. Oh, now when I remember… She wore a chador all the time. She washed the clothes with her little hands, hung them on the line, mended my shirts and socks, cooked the food, even helped my sister. How well she behaved, how kind she was! She made everybody love her. How clever she was! I taught her how to read and write. She was reading the Koran in two months. She memorized poetry. We were together for three years, the best years of my life. As luck would have it, at that time I became the lawyer for a pretty widow who was wealthy too: well I hankered for her, all right, until it occurred to me that I should marry her. I don’t know what scoundrel brought the news to my wife. Sir, may you never see such a day. This woman who was apparently so silly and dumb! I didn’t know she could be so jealous. No matter how hard I tried to pull the wool over her eyes with sweet nothings, could I be a match for her? In spite of the fact that the widow owed me part of my fees, I decided not to marry her, and our relationship came to an end. But you don’t know what problems my wife created for me for a month!

  “Maybe she had gone mad, maybe she’d been bewitched. She had completely changed. She put her hands on her hips and said things to me which one couldn’t even imagine. She said, ‘I hope you’re strangled with your own deceiving turban. I hope to see those spectacles on your corpse. From the very first day I realized you were not my type. May my father’s pimping soul burn for having given me to you. Once I opened my eyes I saw I was being embraced by a pimp. It’s three years that I’ve put up with your beggary. Was this my reward? May God spare us from having to deal with unprincipled people. I vow not to make a mistake like this again. You can’t force me. I don’t want to live with you any more. I don’t want my dowry back, just let me go. I swear I’ll go, I’ll go and take sanctuary. Right now. Right now.’

  “She said so much that I finally felt infuriated. Everything went dark before my eyes. As we were sitting at supper, I picked up the dishes and threw them into the yard. It was evening. We got up and went together to Sheik Mehdi and in his presence I divorced my wife three times.* He shook his head. The next day I was sorry, but what was the use, when being sorry wouldn’t help and my wife was forbidden to me? For several days I prowled around the streets and the bazaar like a madman. I was so distracted that if an acquaintance ran into me, I couldn’t return his greeting.

  “I was never happy again after that. I couldn’t forget her, even for a minute. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I couldn’t bear to be in the house: the walls cursed me. For two months I was ill in bed. All the time I was delirious I kept calling her name. When I began to recover, it was obvious that I could have had a hundred girls if I was interested. But she was something else. Finally I resolved that no matter what it took, I would marry her again. The time during which she couldn’t remarry came to an end. I tried everything, but I saw it wasn’t any use. I sold everything I had, even the junk: I got together eighteen tomans. There wasn’t any other choice except to find a legalizer, someone who would marry my wife and then divorce her, so that after the one hundred day waiting period, I could remarry her.

  “There was a clownish good-for-nothing grocer in our neigh­bourhood. Even if seven dogs licked his face, it wouldn’t get clean. He was the kind who would cut off someone’s head for an onion. I went and arranged it with him so that he would marry Robabeh, then divorce her, and I would pay all the expenses plus five tomans. And he accepted. One shouldn’t be fooled by people – that bastard, that good-for-nothing…”

  Shahbaz, pale, hid his face in his hands and said, “He was a grocer? What was his name? What kind of grocer was he? What neighbour­hood was he from? No… No… Nothing like that could happen.”

  But Mirza Yadollah was so involved in what he was saying, and the past events had become so vivid to him, that he didn’t stop.

  “That damn grocer married my wife. You don’t know how hard I took it. A woman who had been mine for three years. If someone had mentioned her name I would have torn him apart. Think of it: now, with my own help, she had to become the wife of that damned illiterate grocer. I said to myself, ‘Maybe this is the revenge of my temporary wives, who cried when I divorced them.’ Anyway, early the next morning I went to the grocer’s house. He kept me waiting for an hour, which seemed a century to me. When he came I said to him, ‘Stick to your bargain, divorce Robabeh, and you’ve made five tomans.’ I can still picture his devilish face. He laughed and said, ‘She’s my wife, I wouldn’t sell a hair on her head for a thousand tomans.’ My eyes were blasting lightning!”

  Shahbaz trembled and said, “No, something like that couldn’t happen. Tell me the truth. God!…”

  Mirza Yadollah said, “Now do you see that I was right? Now do you understand why I can’t stand grocers? When he said he wouldn’t give up a hair of her head for a thousand tomans, I understood that he wanted to get more money. But who had the time to bargain? I was hurting. I was horrified. I was so upset, and I was so sick and tired of life, that I didn’t answer him. I gave him a look which was worse than any curse. From there I went directly to a second-hand store. I sold my robe and my cloak and bought a buckram robe. I put on a felt hat, adjusted my shoes, and set out. Since then I’ve been wandering from one town to the next, from one village to another, like a bewildered vagabond. It’s been twelve years. I couldn’t stay in one place any longer. Sometimes I work as a storyteller, sometimes as a teacher. I write letters for people, I recite the Shahnameh in teahouses, I play the flute. I enjoy seeing the world and its people. I want to spend my life just like this. One gets a lot out of it. In any case, we’re old. We’re flogging a dead horse. We’ve got one foot in this world and one in the next. It’s too bad that we can’t take advantage of the experience we’ve gained. How well the poet said it:

  A wise and skilful man

  Should live not once, but twice:

  At first to gain experience,

  Then to follow his own advice.”

  At this point Mirza Yadollah grew tired. It was as if his jaws stopped working because he had thought and spoken more than usual. He reached out and took his pipe, staring at the ricer and listening to the faint muffled melody which came from beyond the mountain.

  Shahbaz raised his head from his hands. He sighed and said, “Every pair of actions requires a third to be complete!”

  Mirza
Yadollah was confused and didn’t notice.

  Shahbaz said louder, “She’s sure to turn yet another wealthy man into a destitute tramp.”

  Yadollah came to himself and said, “Who?”

  “That bitch Robabeh.”

  Mirza Yadollah’s eyes popped out. Shocked, he asked, “What do you mean?”

  Mashadi Shahbaz gave a forced laugh. “It’s true that life really changes man. His face becomes wrinkled, his hair turns white, his teeth fall out. His voice changes. You didn’t recognize me and I didn’t recognize you.”

  Mirza Yadollah asked, “What?”

  “Didn’t Robabeh have a pockmark on her face? Didn’t she blink a lot?”

  Irritated, Mirza Yadollah said, “Who told you?”

  Mashadi Shahbaz laughed, “Aren’t you Sheikh Yadollah, the son of the late Sheikh Rasol, who lived in the alley with the public bath? You passed my store every morning. I am the legalizer, the same one.”

  Miraz Yadollah looked closer and said, “You’re the one who has made this my life for the past twelve years? You are Shahbaz the grocer? There was a time when we would have fought it out if I had found you in these mountains. What a pity that time has tied the hands of both of us.” Then he babbled to himself, “Very good, Robabeh, you’ve taken my revenge for me. He is wandering too, just like me.” Once again he fell silent, his lips set in a painful smile.

  The person sleeping on the bench opposite them rolled, sat up, yawned, and rubbed his eyes.

  Mashadi Shahbaz and Mirza Yadollah glanced stealthily at each other, afraid to let their eyes meet. Two miserable enemies, with their struggles in love behind them. Now they should be thinking about death.

  After a short silence, Shahbaz turned towards the coffeehouse patron and said, “Dash Akbar, bring us two cups of tea.”

  Whirlpool

  (from Three Drops of Blood)

  (translated by Deborah Miller Mostaghel)