Sketching

WHEN WE ARRIVED, there in the approaching bend, a woman riding a bicycle was passing by. She passes still, her torso following a curved line, garbed in a shirt, short-sleeved and white. She pedals on, her hair wafting seaward on her shoulders, looking toward the street we later saw, when the woman was no longer there; the street that parallels the harbor, and then turns left into a place that exists still, but which we never got a chance to see. She was gone. It was not our fault that we did not see her again, though when I saw that she was not there, I thought perhaps Shirin had intentionally prevented it. Nevertheless, I see her still, with the corner of her shirt floating in the air. Her pants were of black cotton. I can also see the sandal on one of her feet, the one with the back lace untied. She pedals and holds her face straight into the wind and she goes. For a moment, we parked near the sidewalk, so that Shirin could step out and light us both a cigarette, and I could only get a glimpse of her slightly bent torso and her uptilted head, facing into the wind, with her brunette hair, all with the backdrop of a calm blue sea. Later, when we reached the corner we forgot about her, for, hearing the whistle of a boat, we looked toward the sea. The ship was docking and Maziar and Zohre were standing on deck, holding onto the rails with their hands. They weren't waving. Then I remembered the woman, and I saw that the street was empty clear to the bend. But at the harbor, there were some people waiting; they had parked their automobiles bumper to bumper, and had now, like Shirin, gotten out of their cars and were waving. On the pretense of parking, I tried to go forward a little. "Can't you see there is no place?" Shirin said, "Stay here. We'll be back soon."         At the end, near the bend, there was an empty place. I thought there was still a chance that we would return together. Shirin did not come. So she had not seen her pedal and move on. She is still going, even if she's gotten old, like me or even like Shirin, and every morning she goes to the veranda of one of those two-story houses facing the sea, with her white shirt and dark cotton pants, and puts one hand on the railings and turns the other hand into a shade for her upright seaward face so that she could see which of the newcomers on the deck seemed familiar.         It always happens like this, like me now on the veranda overlooking a deserted avenue and my vista is mud rooftops whose uniform color is only disturbed by the turquoise twelve-sided dome of Baba Ismail, and I am waiting for the spring again and the arrival of a post-card from Shirin with a week or ten days' delay. She also remembers the date of our wedding anniversary and every time sends the same postcard of green pine trees with a small yellow dot sitting in for the sun, as if she had bought ten or twelve of the same card, or maybe even twenty or more, if of course she is still alive by then, or still remembers. The kids, Maziar and Zohre, only write two letters a year, both now in English, and each time they apologize for having forgotten their Persian. And I send neither postcards nor write letters.         Yes, that's more or less the way it is. You search for one thing but end up finding something else, like the early days of the war, when if in the condition of red alert you happened to be outside, you walked around with hands clinging to the walls, and the darkness was so dense that it was as if it led us, or like the two of us who went to greet the kids and stay together for about a month and gradually explain to them why we want to separate, or like me trying to tell them why I want to return, but now I am here and every time I remember something that is there, or when a letter comes, or one of those uni-size and uni-design cards arrives, I only see the bend of that street and the sun, great but cold, rising from the sea, turning the horizon into yellowish orange. No, when we were going up that street, the sun was not visible, only the yellowish orange of the horizon could be seen and in the street and even on the beach, when I looked again there was nobody. But there is somebody, like a film of repetitious takes of what I have seen. That's why, every morning from six-thirty, when I eat a bite, I send this Karam, son of Nane Rubab, to go anywhere he wants till about noon, hoping that I can work and maybe this time it will come out right. And when it doesn't, I come to this veranda, so that at least for half an hour, I can lay back in this leather chair and think of nothing. It can't be. Man can not be alone; even a stone, or a piece of clay, is not alone, or even that clothesline on which now only a white shirt sways back and forth, and every ten minutes, a scarfed woman comes to turn the shirt over once again.         If I had told Shirin the truth, she probably would have agreed to stay one more night, with the kids, even in that same desolate motel. They had said there was only one room. There weren't more than three streets anyway. One we did not see, and one paralleled the harbor, lined with homes of sailors and harbor employees and the post office and the bank. Around the first part of the last street, we found the motel. We could return there again, and once we had convinced the kids, we could stay one more night so that the next morning I could once more see her at a quarter to nine, coming up from the beach, and watch her pedal the whole bend with her back bent and her head upright, moving into the wind. Our Maziar agreed to stay. But then Zohre kept asking, "Why did you come together? Is there something wrong?"         She is there now. She is twenty-two. She has a husband and a pair of twins whose picture I have. It was just last year, no, the year before, that she sent it with a letter. They had just been born and the first is sleeping on one side of her skirt, and the second on the other side, and David is bent over them, his head resting on Zohre's hair, which takes after mine. She is a bit fatter than when she knew a bit of Persian, "Papa, here I am fatter, but I will become skinnier like the time you were here."         Lank and dark-complexioned she was, with long black hair. I don't think she has finished college. I said, "How about staying here tonight?"         She put her hands on Shirin's shoulders and said, "Fine, let's do it." Shirin simply shrugged. Now every year she is someplace new. First she was in London, then she went to Germany, where she bought the postcards. Later she sent New Year greetings from Canada. Now she sends them from New York, sends German postcards from New York. For New Year she only writes two lines, "Dear Mr. Javad Behzad, On the occasion of these ancient rites, a cherished legacy of our ancestors, please accept my greetings to you and your esteemed family. May the Good Lord grant you happiness."         Every year her handwriting deteriorates, as if she were copying from something, and each time a period or a "t" or a "d" is missing. The kids write during Christmas and summer vacations, in Persian in earlier days. When Maziar's letters began to arrive from Australia, they were alternately in Persian and English. Now he writes only in English, and occasionally asks for books, in Persian, lest he forget the language. Occasionally, he even asks a question. For instance, he sees references to "arabesque" and then wants to know how we say it in Persian, or what word we use for "miniature" or for "tile." He is a mining engineer and has married a Japanese woman, and now they have several children. I haven't counted. At the end of each letter, Sachico and I don't know who and who else, send their greetings to their grandfather. At least this one hasn't forgotten. And unlike his sister, he never complains about why I don't write back. What can I write? What work should I send when I haven't finished anything? Shirin wrote that I should come. I went. It wasn't even a month before I returned. I said, "All that is here, you can have. For me, my pension and my parental home is enough. And occasionally, I draw a line or two and sell it." I can't draw, it doesn't work, it is like stemming the tide of darkness. The most important thing is the center of light and the direction and intensity of the shadow. In the morning, the sun was already out, but maybe she was moving in the shadow of the ship. Yet her face is light, and strands of her brunette hair seem golden on her neckline and around her shoulder. The ship too must be there and the sun, big and cold, for sure, hanging on the horizon. And the kids must be there too. And when they finally saw Shirin, they waved. And Shirin waved back. She is now the cashier in a children's clothing store in New York, and each night she takes the train to 27th Avenue, and walks to a building whose exact address I don't know, and climbs five floors to an apartment that has only two easy chairs and a couch that turns into a bed at night, and every six months she must undergo chemotherapy or permit them to remove another part of her body. I haven't seen it. There is a reading light by her couch or nightly bed, and when she takes her pills and puts on her blindfold, she reaches over and turns the light off, and in that boundless darkness of no halos, she does not even think about why I again said, "I think it would have been better if we had stayed there another night."         Shirin said, "What for? Didn't you see it?"         "Maybe he could have found another room for us," I said.         He only had one vacant room. We arrived late. The row of yellow street lights were on. There was also fog. It was not heavy. In the distance, we could see the lighthouse. The motel's marquee was not on. The entrance had a double door. The curtains were drawn too. The entrance was lighted by the streetlamp. We parked the car there, toward the left, and got out, Shirin from the other, and I from this side. All the way from London to there we had talked as much as two strangers who are forced to travel together would talk. She couldn't come. She was going to Germany, and I, after a six month wait in Turkey, had only received a two-month visa to visit. She had sent the kids to Holland, with their classmates. We didn't quarrel. She said, "I won't come. You see that I can't."         She even showed me. It was flat, with two horizontal lines cutting across. I put my head down, but when I decided that I must say something to at least try to console her, and raised my head, I saw her standing in front of me with what seemed like two full breasts, buttoning her checkered blouse. She still had hair. Such is the stuff of our work, and there is even more, but I don't want it, and every day from six thirty to this very hour, I only draw sketches of the scene in front of me, so that maybe after a respite of half an hour, I can go back and finish it, but all I can finish by noon is her hand, or her golden wavy fine hair, a symbol of the blowing breeze or the sun that from somewhere, maybe next to the captain's cabin, shines on her face, moving into the wind, pedaling on.         Had we stayed, I would have seen her again. When I persisted, Shirin said, "It's no use, but if you want, you can go." Even then, I said I had come only to lie next to her on that narrow single bed. She had her blindfold on. They had only one vacant room. When he finally opened the door and let us in, he said so. He had a flashlight in his hands. It was lit. I saw his eyes when he finally turned the light on in the stairway. Chubby and redfaced he was. He asked for the money upfront. There was a wool cap on his head and an overcoat on his shoulders. He gave Shirin the key and said something. I couldn't understand. Shirin too bent forward and asked again. This time he only mentioned the room number and pointed at something. Shirin asked, "Do you want us to get two rooms?"         "First see if they have any," I said. The man looked at us. My passport was in his hands. He also took Shirin's passport. He didn't turn the pages. Now, on top of everything else, Shirin doesn't have a passport. The man said something. In the stairway, Shirin said to herself, "What kind of accent was that?"         The man looked at the keys hanging on the wall behind him and said nothing. We understood. The room was small with beds on either side. A small bedside table stood between them with a reading light and a glass of water, stale water. There was also an ashtray. Shirin took off her raincoat, then her shoes and socks and finally, when she took her pill and put her blindfold on, she lay down with her pants and her striped shirt, with her back to me and said, "Good night."         I turned the light on and said, "Will it bother you if I smoke?"         "Then open the door a little bit," she said.         I asked, "What should we tell the kids?"         She said, "Why? We haven't had a fight."         I said, "But they'll eventually find out."         "So what," she said, "Isn't that why you've come?"         She turned and reached out and gropingly found the switch, turned the light off and said, "Good night."         I got up and opened the door to the balcony. It was small and overlooked the same street on which only some yellow lights had been visible. There on the sea there were a couple of lights, too. The lighthouse I could not see. The sound of a ship could also be heard. She had sent the kids for a holiday to Holland so that we could first have our talk. Then she said, "Stay for a month." It didn't even take a month before I returned. Zohre had said, "Stay here, Dad. Mummy will work.         You can go home once every six months and collect your pension."         "It's impossible," I said, "I already told you."         I didn't tell them everything, not even Shirin. When I arrived in Istanbul, I called and told them I had arrived. From the city of Van to Istanbul I had traveled by bus. No, there was no need to tell them everything. I should have told them only of the night when the four of us squatted amidst a flock of sheep and we ran out of cigarettes. The blisters on my feet were stinging. From our guides to every villager who came in contact with us, they were all named Ali. Then a young man came who knew enough Persian to tell us "My name Ali!" and "Run, the guards!" and "Run, the barn!" and to offer us some cigarettes and tell us the guards suspected something, and that we have to pay some money to get rid of them. At first he was very greedy. Eventually the four of us paid ten thousand toumans and he left. Then before dawn, a new guide arrived with two horses and once again we took to the side road. We rode in turns. We could smell the fragrance of the flowers, though we could not see them and mud was what we walked on and one of us had diarrhea. Occasionally, there was even the small glitter of a brook. This Ali knew Persian and said, "Thank God it's cloudy." Finally we reached a pass below which a road curved by. We waited for a couple of hours, and we popped our blisters, and then the truck arrived. It was loaded with furniture and we each hid under a table or in an armoire and then they pulled a tarp over it all. Shirin too had suffered this. She only showed me her left breast. She did not come. She said, "Haven't you suffered enough?"         I returned. This time I came through Koveyte. They said it's easier. They brought tractors across the border overnight and on the return trip hauled sugar. They're bringing it, I mean. I didn't see any. The guide and I walked and he said, "They don't bother old men."         They didn't. They only kept me for two weeks. After that it wasn't important. Now I am here, with this Karam, son of Nane Robabe and his wife, who is down there pounding on some meat in a stone pestle. She always begins about the same time. She says Shami Kabab turns out better this way. There are other things as well, particularly for me who doesn't even play music when I pick up the brush, lest it add to the heaviness I already feel. It can't be done. I can't just see the one who was going, and not see this one who is coming yet again to turn over the man's shirt over on the clothesline. I don't write letters either. What's the use? The kids can't even read them. Maziar has written, in English, asking for a complete edition of the Shahnameh so that, he says, he won't forget. He also writes of his mother. He writes that she asked for a divorce so that I could be free. And Karam too is now coming. I know it from the sound of his slippers and of his grumbling about the long lines. He has again bought vegetables and a couple of boxes of detergent or bars of soap. I scream. "Karam, tell your wife, it is enough. Can't you see I'm working?"         I close my eyes. How can you stem the tide of darkness? The lace of her sandals was leather, dark brown. Under the sun it looks light brown as she pedals on. Before they turn, they usually signal with their hands. I didn't see her stretch hers out. I only saw that she moved into the wind. From the flapping of the corner of the man's shirt she is wearing, I know there is wind. And there is no fog. But there is, there is everything, everything that has ever occurred anywhere and anytime is still there, at least it is for me. My son writes, in English, "Why have you forsaken us?"         But how can I write and tell them that "here, maybe our problem is that we never throw anything away?" I lay by Shirin and put my hands on her shoulder. I said, "Are you sleeping?"         She said, "Hum?"         I said, "Let's go back."         "No," she said.         "Should we take the kids back also?"         "No," she said.         I said, "You can find it there, too."         "I'm sleepy," she answered, "Didn't you see me taking a pill?"         "I beg you," I said.         She said, "You saw what happened."         I said, "It makes no difference to me."         "I know," she said, "But this time I'll lose my hair. I don't want you to pity me."         "Why pity?" I said, "You are the mother of my children."         "Is that all I am?" she asked.         I wanted to say it, but I could only say it if I was looking at her face. She didn't want me. She hadn't let me all those seven or eight nights. She said, "Later they might have to do a mastectomy on the other one, too."         "There are things there, too," I said, "Besides, you can come back every six months."         "With what money?" she asked, "Here I'll have insurance."         She didn't want me. She said, "Please go to sleep."         There, facing an invisible ceiling, I lay down and tried to create the shape of darkness, and once again it didn't come out. It can't be done. The slapping of Karam's slippers doesn't let me. He has also bought some pomegranates, and his Kokab has peeled them. A plate of colors. And this on top of everything else, particularly for me who, in deference to the margins of my canvas, or at least the frames of my easel, must not add to the agonies of she who pedals and moves on. Then noon is already around and I go downstairs to grab a bite to eat and take a nap, and in the afternoon a friend will come, and together we will come to the same veranda and he will incessantly talk of his wife and children. And when night comes, he leaves, with a hunched back and shoulders that seem to carry the weight of a mountain, I must go downstairs and lie down, hoping that tomorrow I might wake earlier and again draw a new margin, and maybe this time it will work. That's all there is. It must work. Otherwise in a day or two, or else on the sixteenth or the seventeenth of December, Shirin's card will arrive, with its cold weather pines and that yellow dot sitting in for the sun, and the foreground of cultivated land, with a little brook on the edge, and no telling where its blue waters are flowing to, just like the way she moves. And her profile is bright, just like a halo that envelops the whole of the human body, even if parts of it have faced mastectomy. Maybe that's the talisman that prevents her from getting ready and going where she must, just like me, who must return to my room and once again face my easel and see how I can place outside the halo of the frame all that I have sketched and much of what I have crossed, so that only she will remain, pedalling into the wind.

Translated by Abbas Milani