GLAD TIDING
A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES
BY
MOHAMMAD RAMAZANI

He was a true believer . In the first quarter  of his prayer, he burst into tears out of his burning love for the Lord.In the second quarter of his prayer, a poisoning doubt crept into his heart : Was there a Godto hear his prayer ? In the third quarter of his prayer , he felt sure that there was no God. In the final part of his prayer , he burst into tears once again, out of  his disappointment and died. The believers in the temple, having witnessed his weeping, had a tombstone carved for him with an inscription saying :
He died in the culmination of his love for his God.
 

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Thank you , my son. I'm fitter than I used to be. I have been fasting healthily, thanks to our Benign Lord, these seven and twenty days of the Holy Month of Ramazan.I took too much salt with the potatoes I had for my breakfast before dawn, that's why I am a little...
Thirsty? But only a little? No, extremely and sinfully. This old man is a polite believer in God and with the utmost modesty and innocence, feels that if he said, "Between us, I'm dying of an awful thirst .", his Great God might be offended. He has the impression that an honest believer ought to worship God and obey the religious rules willingly and even delightfully; so, he must not regard his fasting as some sort of irksome task.
He says beamingly, "Well, goodbye son. Remember me to your family. Tell your mother I asked about her health. I pray  earnestly to our Healer God that He restores her to health. I beseech the Lord, the Helper of the miserable, your father does not meet the same fate as mine. O' son, my dear son, you are still too young and you have not seen much of the world yet. So you can't imagine how disasterous it is to lose one's beloved espouse. Anyway, it is high time I let you get rid of my talkativeness ...."
He is walking in a small street.
September is getting over. It is rather hot and too soon for the sun to set and let Muslims like Uncle Ahmad to break their fast. This pleasant and very very desired time is to arrive not in less than two and a half hours. The old man's back is exposed to the treacherous and diabolic rays of the sun which are turning his innocent and saintly thirst into some serpent twisting and curving throughout his flesh.
He is wearing a grey Kurdish suit . Where has it come from? Has it been bought from Second-hand Clothes Bazaar? No, this is some heritage from his old chum, Kak Rashids, the blacksmith, who died of larynx cancer last summer. He was one of the elders of a group of Muslims frequenting Hazart Omar Mosque His death was a shock to Uncle Ahmad and some other believers as the cure prescribed by Sheik Osman as a decisive healer did not do him any good: "Go and catch crabs, my son, and tear off the arms and legs, as a result of which some water-like material will be secreted. Suck that magic liquid and God willing that will be a cure to your disease." The sorrow of the demise of Uncle Ahmad's best friend was alleviated by part of his will leaving him this almost new suit and some money so desirable in this time of painful need.
At the moment, you can hardly see anybody in this clean small street but this old man with blue eyes and rusty hair. He has got almost always a beaming face. Anger and sadness never can dissolve his everlasting smile. He presses with juvenile strength the tip of his stick down on the ground turning round at the same time the bend in a circle the size of a big cake. In his walking with his chest put forward and his head kept high, a keen eye can see a hardly noticeable tinge of lagging. One assoicates his posture with that of a Kurdish landlord now urbanized and having nothing special to do in town but to take a walk in a manner which suits the gentry.
Uncle Ahmad gets to the main street. Some special problem is annoying him. For a man like him, a great problem, a catastrophe, is something taken for granted. On the other hand, a tiny and easily solvable problem is sometimes exaggerated to the extent that it seems to be a disaster. He is thirsty. Can't he stand his thirst until he hears Azan ( the call for prayer and the time for breaking his fast)from the mosques at sunset? He does know that according to the rules of Islam, the old and the sick are exempted from fasting.
He breaking his fast now? Impossible ! Many a time, he had been fasting during the endless hours of spring days working on the farm bearing his thirst and hunger as meekly as a camel. " But then I was young."says he.
He says to himself, "I'm thirsty, terribly and unbearably."
A sudden feeling of remorse bites into his heart: He should not have complained about his thirst. Now he speaks loudly so that the Almighty will hear his justification. "God damn me! Whenever I am penniless, I become as gluttonous as a filthy pig. I'm not complaining about my thirst.O'dear God, what should I do with my rude appetite? Water I don't like to drink. Nor would I like to have diluted yogurt or the syrup of the raisin of black grapes( although this one I will love till the very time I lie in my grave!")
He evokes the vivid memory of a day of his youth. He had boils in his armpits. He had gone to Mahabad to a herbalist called Mirza Rahmat to get some poultice or an herb. It was summer and he arrived in there before noon. In a street, he saw a man selling the syrup of the raisin of black grapes. The syrup was in a king-size green earthen pot fastened with a leather belt to the man's waist. He was carrying, with one hand, a pail with big jugs in it and in his other hand there was a pail full of water for washing the jugs.
-- Cool and sweet is the syrup of black grapes! Have a jug of my syrup and feel freshened up!
A jocose boy of twenty or more, pointing to him, that is the then-young Ahmad, asked the syrup seller," Sa-yed Karim, do you think that this villager can drink seven jugs?"
-- Seven jugs of my syrup? No mother has ever given birth to a man who can drink seven jugs of my syrup!
-- But I say he can. Let's bet. If he drinks less than seven, I will pay you. But if he drinks seven jugs or more, you will be the loser and nothing will be paid to you.
-- I do agree. Upon my word, if he drinks seven or even more, I will ask nothing for it.
They let Ahmad know about their bet. " A bet by two asses! Anyway, I will have free syrup." says he to himself. Having walked kilometers in hot weather, he was as thirsty as today. After drinking the eightth jug he said," I feel that I've drunk not more than a spoonful, not enough even to moisten my lips!"
After three or four jugs more, he suggested," Let me drink directly from the valve of the pot!" The boy and the syrup seller were taken aback. He drank the syrup from the pot in the manner of a baby sucking his mother's breast, or to put it better, like a bat sucking blood from a huge animal.
A bitter day for the syrup seller. He had the same impression as that of a clumsy gambler having lost his children's bread. There began a quarrel between him and the boy. A crowd gathered around them:
-- What's up
-- Sayed Karim, the syrup seller, and Rashid, son of Haji Sadek, have betted that ...
The news spread through the town in the  twinkling of an eye and caused a lot of laughter and joyful excitement among the townsflok.

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Eventually, the crowd sympathetic towards the syrup seller ,"He's a poor guy with almost  a dozen young children " , settled the problem convincing the boy to pay for the syrup , " Dear Rashid, you're son of a wealthy man ..."
Now Uncle Ahmad a sigh full of nostalgia for the joy of that day . He shakes his head thoughtfully with a wistful smile
He is thirsty ,but what does he desire to drink  ? A harsh and niggardly life, has made out of this man, who is not  ungenerous himself, a timid and shy creature regarding his simplest and most feasible wishes . He says in a voice hardly audible for any ear, "would to God I had access to a bowl of pomegranate juice!" He has a feeling similar to that of a polite person who has said something blasphemous in the presence of the zealous believers of a religion and now is feeling remorse. He looks around himself:
Thank Heaven, nobody has heard him or he might be disfamed.
Pomegranate juice, a Heaven's gift. Is Uncle Ahmad acquainted with it? He says, "I was, and hopefully will be again, a construction worker. These folks have to go everywhere and eat in the houses of every sort of people, just like singers and musicians of Bijar wandering in the villages and towns of Kurdistan. Folks like us see much of the hidden side of this world. Various fruits of life we taste, pleasant and unpleasant. We see the upstart too mean to give a dog-biscuit to a dog-tired worker constructing a palace for them. And there are men not less generous than Hatam Ta-e(1). God damn this boring talkativeness! To cut it short, one year during the autumn, we were building a house for Mirza Saleh, the jeweller. Honestly and gratefully must I say that he is a gracious angel, a real gentleman. He would give us the best sheep yogurt, butter and honey, succulent fruits, marvelous jam of

1.An arabrich man of old times famous for his generocity
 

vast diversity in colour and taste, unforgettable spiced fried eggs, and lots of very very good things our dear God had given him. If only I had died at one of the paradisiacal moments when I was having breakfast or lunch at that gentleman's table! His wife Golan is an unequitable cook. Those fingers of hers are of a real artist's. Never will I forget the bounteous cherry jam I devoured with sheep yogurt." The smile on his face shows nothing of gratitude but is rather cunning, having the expression that the naive host and hostess had gone too far. His sweet memory is tinged, very slightly, with some jealous hatred towards a bourgeois employer. He recollects," one afternoon when we were very thirsty, Golan came to us with a tray on which, to my great surprise, I saw big spherical glasses full of pomegranate juice with lumps of snow swimming in it. I am definite that fresh water of  Kawsar(1) is inferior to it. Oh, our hospitable God, what a pleasant day to remember for ever!"

1. A spring in paradice according to the Koran

He is walking in the main street longing crazily for drinking pomegranate juice. He gets to the Askandari cross-roads, turns into Moulawi street, as if being driven by an instinct similar to that of a duckling which guides it towards a river. After a minute's walk , he can see Haji Sadek's greengrocery. His face is flushed with joy.
- God is always ready to help the poor
Now he can see two boxes full of big pomegranates the size of melons.
He has leaned his stick against his abdomen. His hands are searching for money in his pockets. He says aloud, "Nothing, even one Rial, do I have."
He soothes himself saying, " Our Lord is the greatest helper of the poor."
He is passing by the greengrocer's. He stops in front of the next shop, his back to Haji Sadek's, feeling that it is wiser not to look at the intriguing 'prey' so as to think vividly about it. A slight tremor goes through his body. Embarrassed? Maybe. He regards his decision as being ungraceful and not in accordance with his dignity.
"I will take two big pomegranates!"
But he repulses the idea feeling a sudden hatred toward the enticing Satan, "Me, a true believer, doing such a thing, in broad daylight, in this holy month of Ramazan?!"
His burnig desire, strengthened by his extreme thirst, has idealized pomegranate juice in his eyes. This diabolic force is so commanding that it draws a curtain over his religious belief, as the sin is not, so he says to himself , a great one. He remembers that stealing from other people's gardens is fashionable in Kurdistan. It is not regarded as an unpardonable crime.
When he was young, he would go petty theiving in gardens of Uncle so-and-so and Aunt I-don't-know or someone else. Dozens of times he has heard the country folk quoting Mullas as having said that it is not unlawful to pick one or two melons or cucumbers or apples or any fruits in someone else's garden or orchard without permission. But God, they say, will not forget the greedy ones who stuff their big sacks with other people's fruits. Uncle Ahmad himself, however, has never heard a Kurdish clergyman as saying such a thing. He does know too well that urban men and life are not so generous and one must pay for everything. Yet he considers his decision similar to the one to go stealing from other people's gardens.
But now he admits bitterly that this shaky justification will not hawl him up from the abyss of doubt and hesitation. He resorts to a sounder reason, a firm justification which every wise and logic person will agree with without the slightest hesitation:
- This Haji Sadek, this rascal, was building a house not less than a palace four or five years ago. Nine or ten days of my hard work and that of my co-workers and Kak Sa-id, the bricklayer, still remains unpaid. He kept on saying eloquently, "How a God-fearing man like me can deceive you? You are mistaken and that is quite natural for illiterate men like you. I swear by God that I owe you nothing, even one single Rial." But what about Kak Sa-id? He is literate and more
educated than Haji Sadek, isn't he?
Uncle Ahmad wanted to report him to the police then. But his co-workers deterred him from doing such a 'hazardous thing' since he has relations, they said, with the police through which he could make a lot of trouble.
- The money he owes me is as much as the price of dozens of those pomegranates. Yet I mean to take not more than two of them!
There is another justification which, despite its being irrelevant to his problem, can help him 'steal' without feeling any prick of conscience:
- This cunning deceitful fox -please don't be illusioned by his yellow turban, this holy sign of honest Hajis who are and must be true believers - comes from Oshnavieh where he once raised money, "to contruct a new mosque with "the hands of some good believers and me," as he claimed. The good-hearted Muslims paid a lot of money for the mosque. But no mosque was built. He came here with the money in his very pocket and here he was completely unknown. In a very short time, he became as rich as Croesus. These sort of people go to Mecca as pilgrims as a result of which they must be purified and stop wrong- doing on the earth, but, alas, they remain the same filthy creatures as they used to be. The only difference is that now they have each one a yellow turban round their head.
Two men, probably two neighbouring shopkeepers, each with a bowl of water in his hand, are chasing Haji Sadek jokingly. He is running stopping every now and then to move a stick round him pretending to frighten them.
Now the three men are running in the street forgetting the fear that they may be run over by speeding cars and jeeps. A small crowd has gathered in the sidewalk excited by the practical joke, clapping, laughing, whistling and shouting. The two men sprinkle water on Haji's face. This culminates the hilarity of the crowd. The right chance for Uncle Ahmad! He returns quickly, takes two pomegranates, puts one of them in a pocket of his Kurdish trousers, and the other one he thrusts in his sash and hastens away.
He is gripping his stick from the middle of it. No need for it now. He feels quite fresh and young! He is praying earnestly, "Oh, our Almighy kind Lord restore me to the health and strength I used to have last year and the years before so that I can work. I don't want to live a beggar's life."
Last winter, Soleiman, a son of Haji Omar, the draper, ran over Uncle Ahmad with his car near the stadium. He had his left  arm and leg and three ribs broken. He was in hospital for some time. More tha three months his arm and leg were bandaged. During this time, women and girls among his neighbours would help him with the housework. They prepared his meals for him. Haji Omar paid for the medical care. But Uncle Ahmad claimed nothing as a compensation. In the spring when constructing begins, he was too weak to work.Consequently, he ran out of his little saving. Every now and then, some relatives and a few of his friends and co-workers give him some money which he accepts against his will.
Now he is at the door of his house which is adjacent to Hazrat Omar mosque. He takes out of his pocket a worn out piece of string with two keys tied to it. The rotten wooden door opens moaning like an ill old man waken up by a disturbing noise and with a laziness and unwillingness giving one the impression that the old house is yawning. Uncle Ahmad has lived alone during these three years since the death of his wife,his only companions being an old big radio and a rooster, the dear rememberance of his wife. It is a big red brown rooster with dark green feathers here and there in its pompous tail. After moving from their village to this town, the couple kept poultry as a reminiscence of their rural life.
Last summer he was about to miss his dear rooster: One night after saying his last nocturnal prayer, he besought the Lord to restore him to his last year's strength so that he could earn his own bread, " You Almighty God accept my prayer and I promise to give a party to commemorate the Birth of our Holy prophet, Mohammad ( peace be upon him)". Although he knew he could not afford to give the holy party, he was almost definite, within the optimistic philosophy of a firm believer, that the lenience of our Lord is bountiful and boundless. He could see to it as he hoped. He dreamt that same night that Sheikh Osman(1-26)  wearing a big white turban and gray Kurdish suit instead of his habitual cloak, his brows, and his beard and moustache as white as snow, had come to "pay you a visit my son." Uncle Ahmad embraced him, kissed his face, his hands and shoulders and even knelt down to lay his head on his feet. Tears streamed out of this true believer's eyes.

1. Shikh in the title of a leader of mysticism among muslims
 

"May  Our Lord sacrifice my father and I for your sake! I am nothing but a humble dog seeking crusts of bread at the door of your holy house! O' you man of God, you know what a torture life has got for me. I live on alms!! I am not ungrateful to kind-hearted believers. But you know, O' great man of God, a true believer is better to live on his own. Pray for me so that I can regain my health and strength. Pray for me so that our Lord may rank me among His true lovers in the Resurrection, and set my haven beside my blessed wife in paradise. The pray of us, the folk of sinners, would not be accepted without your meddling."  Sheik pointing his stick at the rooster, had said, " my son, slaughter your rooster and divide the meat into two equal parts and give them to two poor families." Uncle Ahmad had waken up by the crowing of the rooster at dawn. He went to the mosque to say his morning prayers. Half an hour later, he came back to his house, still depressed by the thought of killing his beloved rooster. He went to bed again with the hope to see Sheikh in his dream once more and show him a way other than killing his rooster. But his sleep was dreamless. When he woke up, sunlight had heated his room. He got up, went to the yard and hauled up a pail of water from the well to wash his hands and face. Then he caught the rooster. Whenever he wanted to catch it, it fluttered and made a lot of noise. But this time it made no resistance. He pressed it to his chest lovingly, while giving it caresses. He burst into tears, and began to talk to it in a manner he used to his son Hemin during his childhood,  " My eyesight, my heart, our dear Sheikh has ordained me to kill you." The rooster lowered his head obediently as though to say, "Do as you have been ordered in your dream." He stretched the rooster on the earth, facing south and Kiblah, as is a custom among the Muslims when slaughtering an animal. He put the wings under one foot and its feet under the other one. He rubbed, several times, the blade of his knife, made in Zanjan, against the callous palm of his left hand. But at that moment a wandering goat coming from the weekly market entered the yard through the unlocked door. A token of good chance! Uncle Ahmad got so exhilarated that he burst into an amalgamation of tears and laughter. He strongly felt the invisible presence of Sheikh Osman in this fortunate incident. He let the rooster go. So far nobody has claimed the goat which is now kept in a small room with a pit in the middle of it, and here his late wife used to do cooking and bake bread.
He goes into the small hall and then the room which is the bedroom, the dinning-room and the sitting room at the same time, a room with unplastered walls. He puts the pomegranates on the threadbare carpet, takes an earthen bowl, presses the pomegranates with the tips of his fingers until they soften, then pierces and greedily squeezes them until the last drop of the juice comes out. He dilutes the juice with some water. He goes out to water and feed the goat. Some neighbours bring him cakes baked on the occasion of the twenty-seventh of the holy month of Ramazan. It is getting dark. He hears Azan from the loudspeaker of Hazart Omar Mousque. In a few seconds the voices of Azan from the other mosques of the town will intermingle. Uncle Ahmad breaks his fast with the pomegranate juice. In the eyes of good-hearted believers miracles are always likely to happen. During the time when he is drinking lustfully the juice, this thought flashes his mind: " Can't you say definitely that our Benign Lord has sent me this juice as the decisive cure for my weakness?!" He is making for the mosque. He will no longer take his stick.
" I will sacrifice the goat, dear God, in the feast day of Qorban and give the meat to the poor.
 

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1. Iranian famous sculpture who created his statues using metal bars and  wires.One of his works the statue of a goat is now in front of Faculty of Fine Arts of Tehran University. He was an employee of this Faculty and died in 1996.

There was a knock at the door of Bahram's house. The visitors were two young men, each carrying on his shoulders a sack and in his hand an easel. One of them asked, " Will you let two strangers stay tonight in your house?" Hadi was his name.
" Our guests are welcome" was the couple's simultaneous answer. The young men were obviously starved. They picked up a piece of crisp bread lying on the floor of the room and divided it between themselves.
Dinner was served. Mohammad, the other painter, was eating so greedily and hurriedly that he bit his tongue. How delicious was the dinner! What a pity you were not, O'our man of pen, among those people who had such a nice dinner. On the table of Bahram, the man with one thousand jobs, one could find cheese and yogurt got from Mashhadi Esmail's goat.
Hadi and Mohammad were two painters of great abilities driving everyone mad by the magic of their brushes. Mohammad was mad. Hadi was mad. That night, ah yes, on that very diabolic night, the two mad men interfered in my affairs. " I will draw a portrait of you, in which I will reveal vividly your beauty. " Said Mohammad to Bahram. He did what he said. Bahram , as his portrait showed it, had no more the tumour in his forehead. He had a pair of lovely eye-brows instead of his ugly thick ones. " I will draw a portrait of you, in which I will reveal vividly your beauty." said Hadi to Pirouz. He did what he said. Pirouz, as her portrait showed it, was no more squint-eyed. She had got rid of the big hairy mole on the corner of her left eye. The portrait displayed her unrivalled beauty.
Bahram and Pirouz were infatuated with their portraits. How exhilaratedly they wept and gratefully they kissed the fingers of the two painters! Morning came and after breakfast the couple besought the painters to stay some days more. They stayed for another ten days. The painters painted two portraits of Bahram and Pirouz. What shameful interference in my affairs! The couple regained their beauty in the paintings of them. Hadi, that rude mad painter said something blasphemous, " Bahram your eerie voice must be due to tumours of your larynx." "Shame!" I felt like crying.
Mohammad, that disobedient painter, in the
culmination of his rudeness said on the tenth night, Bahram, it is the writer who can restore the beauty of your voice and your face." Hadi, that mad painter, also poked his nose into my affairs. " Pirouz, it is the writer who can restore your beauty." observed he.
On that wintry night when millions of snow flakes as big as cut heads of sparrows were coming down, the two rude and mad painters brought Bahram and Pirouz to the door of the writer's house. When they knocked at the door, our man of pen had a great and cherished guest: His High Majesty, Ekhnaton, the Pharaoh of ancient Egypt. His High Majesty had been teaching the writer the creed of the New Religion, the Religion of the Mad. The writer had received the message thirstily. Our man of pen didn't want to see anybody else on such a holy night. Furthermore, he had a high fever and whenever he had a high fever, no visitors would he like to see.
However, he himself, and not his servants, answered and opened the door. The writer was furious. But as soon as he saw painters, he cooled down. Bahram, Pirouz, Mohammad and Hadi were standing respectfully in front of the iron statue of Mashhadi Esmail's goat. Mohammad was carrying the portrait of Bahram revealing his potential beauty. Hadi was carrying the portrait of Pirouz revealing her potential beauty.
The writer perceived instantly what their coming was for. Bahram was entreating with tears streaming in his eyes, "O'Your High Majesty, Our Leninet Writer, restore me to the same Bahram as the portrait in the hands of Mohammad shows to be." Pirouz besought with tears welling up in her eyes, "O'Your High Majesty, Our Generous Writer who animate with your magic brush the statue of Mashhadi Esmail's goat and milk it and send us the butter, yogurt and cheese made from its milk, please, please, restore me to the same Pirouz as the portrait in the hands of Hadi shows to be."
The writer, on such a wintry night when snow flakes came down as millions of cut heads of sparrows, put his left hand on the iron statue of the goat and replied, " Bahram, Pirouz, it is so facile for me to do what you want me to do but..."
" Yes, everything is so easy for you to do. Besides, I want you to make my voice more charming than any musical instrument." interrupted him excitedly.
" That is also feasible, but... "
"Your High Majesty, Our Great Writer, please do stop saying ,but, but.
If you keep on saying, " but, but" the ink in your pen will freeze, your fingers will go stiffened." Interrupted him Mohammad and Hadi simultaniously.
The writer ran mad. The painters ran mad
The writer took out his pen and made an assault on thepaintings to pierce them. But the painters drove instantly the pen away in defence of their paintings. A fighting between the pen and the brushes flared up.
Do you remember, O'you our man of pen, how furious we had got? " Do stop that obnoxious fighting, else I will take the lives of all the writers and artists of this epoch in a fight which I will cause to start." I said commandingly.
O'our writer, didn't you see that how we restored peace on that wintry night in an instant? The writer struck gently his pen on the back of the iron statue and it came to life and then it sneezed three times. Whenever the iron statue was animated to a real goat, it would sneeze three times, it was a token of our will. We don't care what the literary critic's comments are on these sneezings. Whatever they say, nothing but the hell will be their lot. And this is my unshakable will.
That night we stopped the fighting among the three mad men. If I will, I can turn to stone a hound chasing a hare at the very moment its paws are nearly touching the soft body of the prey. Yes, such is my might!
During the time when the writer, with a copper pot between his knees, was milking the goat, the two painters, as well as the writer himself, saw Ekhnaton, that mad Faraoh, speeding his chariot out of the house and vanished in the twinkling of an eye.
Bahram did not see His High Majesty. He was not such anennobled man yet to see that great monarch. We won't allow common eyes to see our beloved Ekhnaton.
The writer dipped his pen into the milk of the goat and wrote on the painting in Mohammad's hands: " I consent to restore Bahram to the same man which this painting shows to be and this is my will."
And that was what we commanded him to do.
The colour of the writing on the painting turned dark brown. Then the smoke rising from the writing formed a cloud around the painting.
At the very moment, Satan appeared incarnated in an art critic and said to the painters, " Why on earth do you let the writer set fire on your works?"
The painters, in a small part of a second, got full of suspicion toward the writer. They felt like blinding him with their brushes. But very soon they recognized the cursed Satan and drove him away.
I swear by those heavy flakes of snow coming down on that night like millions of the cut heads of sparrows that if those two painters had put one mere step forward influenced and motivated by what that castrated critic said, we would have changed them into tiny men as small as the men in Gulliver's adventures and then would have hanged them from their own easels!
On that wintry night, while the stiffened deadbodies of six wolves were still standing around Mashhadi Esmail's goat, the writer and the painters got united and drove away the notorious satanic critic.
O'you, our writer, our man of pen, another critic or maybe one hundred critics are likely to come and say, " Driving away a critic. What a shameful thing to do! That critic wanted to ask you why the number of the wolves were not four (1) instead of six so that it could be symbolically meaningful.
O'you, our man of pen, say, " No symbolism will we let in our candid tongue! We don't mean to put tea in cans with the label of coffee on them and then sell it to our gullible people. " And say, " Sometimes symbolism is something like a bugle blown by satan."
After a time shorter than eating an apple, out of the painting came out the animated figure. " And here is the Bahram you want, the most handsome man on the earth with a charming voice more elegant than any musical instrument. " said My Majesty.

1. The symbolic number used in Kurdish literary works refering to four parts of Kurdistan among Iran, Iraque, Turkey and Syria.

What about the former seemingly ugly Bahram? He was no more .
Bahram sneezed three times. What the hell does a
literary critic say about these three sneezings? Whatever the critics say, we will send them to hell. This is my strong will.
Bahram began to sing quite a new unheard song with a heavenly voice. During those peculiar moments, the painting in the hands of Hadi started to move in an eerie way. Hadi got a panic. The figure in the painting came to life and went out of the painting in a way which associated an angel on all fours coming out of the small door of a modest hut of a very poor villager. The ugly Pirouz had disappeared. And now Pirouz a symbol of endless beauty.
Pirouz that unrivalled nymph walked toward Bahram with a slouch. Her beauty fascinated Bahram to the extent that he changed into another song with a melody of the most surprising novelty. His charming voice almost brought back all the dead of the graveyard to life ( except one poor forsaken carpenter named Uncle Ali who asked God not to restore him to life in the Resurrection). All at once I stopped snowing lest the hardly audible thuds of the big flakes of snow might disturb the sacred quiet the Mother Nature had prepared for the sake of Bahram's sweet voice, even the stones were all ears. The dead wolves standing around the goat came to life.
Yes, the wolves came to life. The goat smelt the menacing presence of the wolves. The hungry wolves saw the promising presence of the goat. But such peace and quiet was created, thanks to Bahram's heavenly voice, that neither the wolves would and could think of the goat's meat nor the goat had the slightest fear of its natural enemies. O'our writer, our man of pen, we didn't let the blessed soul of Mashhadi Esmail be offended on that wintry night. If we will, a wolf and a goat can drink water from the same stream in a very friendly manner. Such is my might and will.
That night Bahram and Pirouz and the painterswere invited to have dinner at the writer's house. The writer didn't know what to do with the wolves. Maybe it was some weakness of his story. He let them og away. The writer had no idea where they were going. I was aware of their destination. But we will not reveal some of our secrets to anybody even to our writer. Or maybe one day we will disclose those secrets to the future writers.
The writer, with a gentle stroke of his pen on its back, turned the enlived goat once again into the former iron statue. On that wintry night, the writer had a high fever for the second time.
On the table of the writer were some bread and an earthen pot full of honey which His High Majesty, Ekhnaton, had brought as a gift for the writer. The generous and hospitable writer wanted his guests to help themselves to the honey. But our will was against it. In an instance we turned the pot, with the honey in it, into iron. We used the leavings left by Mashhadi Esmail after he had made his goat statue. O'our man of pen, some pedantic critics may say " It makes no difference what iron was used. Anyway iron is iron." Ask them, " But can everyone be a skilful blacksmith?"
Only iron bread and pot the guests saw. The host, our man of pen, was ashamed of what had happened. Mohammad and Hadi, that two mad painters, were hungry. They could hardly believe their eyes. But Pirouz and Bahram were so attracted to each other that they didn't notice what was going on around them. Hand in hand and their looks fixed to each other, you can imagine how much they were burning by the longing for necking and kissing. That night they were to make love in the presence of the others. But I won't let strangers see the making love of two lovers. Nor will I show the opening of a flower to strangers.
The writer asked us not to leave him ashamed of his guests. Once again, on the table of the writer there could be seen bread and a pot of honey. No sooner had the two mad painters touched the food than we stiffened their hands so much that they couldn't move them.
Bahram began to sing a song with a voice more charming than any musical instrument. It was at that very moment that we chose Bahram. They all, the writer himself as well, forgot about dinner under the spell of his song. The writer was no more ashamed of his guests. The song came to an end. As they were gradually coming back from heaven and over the clouds to this earthly world, they heard a knock at the door.
A servant who answered the door, screamed with terror: The six wolves had gone back with a fattened sheep. If we will,wolves can give you their prey as a gift. So mighty we are!
The writer liked neither sheep nor their meat. He wouldn't accept such a gift. " Get the sheep and had it killed. Your guests should eat from its meat. Nobody but you is allowed to have Ekhnaton's honey." I commanded him. I chose Bahram on such a night.
A year passed during which Bahram sang hundreds of songs of dazzling variety of melodies. His voice was more charming than any musical instrument. His fame reached the ears of both the king and the pauper.
Bahram was no more a man of one thousand jobs. He had now no jobs at all. He and his wife lived on milk, yogurt, cheese and butter got from Mashhadi Esmail's goat. His voice healed the sick.
One day a woman from a far-off village came to him with tears in her eyes, " O'you great man who cure the ill with your heavenly voice! My husband, Shirko is dying. We have a dozen of kids. He is the only bread-winner in the family."
As Bahram was nearing  the village, he  began to sing his healing songs. The villagers, young and old, had come out of their huts listening attentively to him.
Shirko, that very dying man, as soon as had heard his song, was cured and now he had run out bare-footed and with his arms open for the healing singer. So great was his joy that tears were streaming down and soaking his cheeks, his moustache and beard. The people were really surprised. This man had been ill for six months and doctors were definite that his end was near.
Upon hearing Bahram's song, cows, sheep and goats underwent a state in which their udders got full of milk in a way that milk oozed out of their teats. The villagers milked their livestock happily and the milk was so bountiful that they filled all the pots, cans, pans, casseroles and even samovars, glasses and cups. The milk would not stop oozing out of the teats of animals and villagers couldn't find one single empty bowl to put milk in.
The floors of stables as well as the yards and even lanes were wet with milk.
That day all the hens laid eggs twice. And all the eggs had got two yolks. That was one of our tokens. We don't care what literary critics say. Whatever they say, their lot will be the hell. That is my strong will.
At sunset Bahram went to the mosque and called on the loudspeaker, with his heavenly voice, the believers to come and pray. For thirty years, Mullah Rashid, a man with a harsh voice, called the believers to come and pray. He did his job without the lightest interest and as a boring daily habit. He was also the prayer leader (imam) but never performed his ablution. He stole other people's hens and turkeys and he had an insatiable appetite for roast meat. He would write amulets for the simple villagers and would charge them with a lot of money. But none of the amulets did them any good and that was a token of my will. He would drink wine, which is forbidden for a Muslim. He never got drunk. He drank just to go to sleep. Nobody knew about his drinking but his wife who was dumb. He had sexual relations with a Turkish woman. He was always morose, as is the habit of hypocritical people affecting to be pious. His fingers were busy moving the beads of his rosary, with the continuous movements of his jaws to show that he was praying. ( But he was not. )
Why did Rashid let Bahram call the believers, on the loudspeaker of the mosque, to come and pray, is a mystery of which nobody is aware but myself.
That night the villagers rushed to the mosque fascinated by Bahram's voice.
Bahram sang his songs at Shirko's until midnight. Remember that this villager had been at the brink of his grave in the morning and now he was quite healthy. Oh, you weren't there to hear those intoxicating songs. Villagers all gathered, in and around Shirko's house. They were all ears.
Bahram's songs impressed even dogs and cats. In an old woman's house, a mouse was crossing the yard in the presence of the tomcat and nothing happened to it. A few minutes later, the same cat walked fearlessly in front of a dog in the lane. If we will, the tyrant paws of a wild animal turns into tender and humane hands to caress the frightened prey. We are such powers!
That night the livestock of the village got fatter.
A peasant family brought a mad son and entreated Bahram to cure him. " I haven't come to cure the mad. I have come to drive the wise mad." was his answer.
At dawn villagers prayed in the mosque having Bahram as their religious leader (imam). Rashid, the mosque's imam, didn't wake up to lead the morning prayers.
Bahram bid farewell to his host. But the villagers insisted on his staying for some days more and although he missed his beloved wife, he agreed to stay. He sang his heavenly songs.
There appeared Rashid, the mosque's imam, cross with Bahram. He accused him of heresy.
- An atheist!
- An enemy of God
-A man with a satanic voice.
-...
 The people turned against him. Now they were afraid of his diabolic voice' . " It is the Satan himself that teaches him those songs." was their comment.
The people threw away all the milk and products got from their livestock that day and the day before: They regarded them filthy as the livestock gave milk under the influence of Bahram's voice.
The villagers flung stones and spat at Bahram. Bleeding all over, with a deep sorrow in his heart and tears in his eyes, he made for his town. He began singing a song so sad that even the birds in the sky were impressed.
On his way home, he came across a group of boys and girls who were coming back from the mountain near the village. They had brought with them plenty of wild herbs, rhubarbs and mushrooms. The romantic sad song of Bahram brought tears into their eyes. They came and kissed his hand. He asked them: " Do you know who I am?" " You are the Great Bahram whose heavenly voice cures the sick and causes abundance in livestock and poultery." they retorted. He said: " So fling stones at me!" We cried: " O'Bahram, those who speak ironically to the young, are not our friends. No irony in our New Religion! Right now apologize to these boys and girls" And Bahram did so. The wisest of them, a boy and a girl by the name of Hemin and Hero respectively made some poultice out of various herbs and put it on his wounds, which relieved his pains immediately. Bahram sang a lot of unheard songs and they danced until noon, hand in hand and in a big circle not feeling tired. We commanded Bahram to coat his face with that poultice for a few minutes and he did so. And one of our miracles happened: Bahram returned to the age of seventeen or eighteen. Now he was as young as those girls and boys.
It was lunch time and every one was hungry. They made a fire and roasted mushrooms. They had bread and mushrooms for lunch.
When bidding farewell to Bahram, they kissed him, one by one. Bahram set out. When he got to the lane where his house was located, he sang his surprising songs which excited not only Pirouz but also all the neighbours who rushed out barefooted to welcome him. The old didn't recognized him but the young did. Pirouz could hardly believe that he was her same Bahram.
Bahram sang songs for three years. So diverse were his songs that one could not find even two songs with the slightest similarity between them. He went to every village, every town and every city of our land. He was more famous than a king. He received a warm welcome in every party. His voice impressed the migrating birds to the extent that they postponed their travell until a later time. Under the influence of his songs, the dead and smelling fish would come back to life. One night he was invited to a party given at a merchant's. It was just a short while he had began to sing. Three or four women rushed out of the kitchen shrieking, panic-stricken and turned pale: Three fish as long as a yard bought and put in the freezer four days ago, upon hearing his songs returned to life and were moving on the floor of the kitchen in a manner similar to swimming in the bottom of a river. The ice on their body had melted rapidly and their sunken eyes had got lively and fresh. The guests saw with their own eyes what had happend. They were astonished.
Among the guests were an old woman more than a hundred years. Her hair had turned as white as snow. She got terrible pains in her knees. As soon as she heard Bahram's songs, she was cured and half of her hair turned blonde as it used to be when she was eighteen. Literary critics may ask, " Why just half of her hair? And what about the eye-brows?" To young children's questions we answer cheerfully but for those of critics we will have no answers but a bitter silence. We don't care what literary critics say as the Hell is their lot. That is my strong will.
Bahram lived seven years more happily with his beloved wife Pirouz. We added, every minute, to their burning love. There came a day when our writer, our man of pen, decided to remove Bahram from his people's eyesight. He went to his people saying, " Look at me and see what I am doing." The writer had a decanter of wine. His people had circled around him. He took something out of his pocket. " What is it?" he asked. " A goblet" they answered unanimously. The writer asked them, " Have you seen a glass more lovely than this one?" " No, by God!" they said. He filled the goblet with wine and drank it. He repeated this until his face turned red and he began perspiring. He sang three songs with a voice much sweeter than Bahram's.
Then he turned to his people and asked them, "Why am I so intoxicated?" The patriarchs answered, "That is the miracle of wine." Our man of pen asked the people, " Did this ornamented gobelt do such a miracle?" A silence dominated. Then the writer repeated his question angrily and said, " Why don't you say anything.Have you got deaf and dumb?" They said, " O'you our wise man, can't you use a simpler tongue? We don't understand your metaphors." The writer cried, " Do you, the literary critics of this nation hear what they say? Please come here to me. I want to look at your eyes. " The critics had fled away. Then he addressed his people with a harsh and fierce voice, "Do you call my clear and simple tongue a sophisticated one? Sometimes I feel I have no people!"
Then the writer revealed what he meant to do, "Which one is more important for you, Bahram's voice or his physical existence?" He asked them. A terrible silence again dominated. The people now knew what was going to happen. They knew that Bahram's end has come. There was an outburst of crying. The writer was also weeping:
- O'mine how different is
  My weeping from yours.
There was no crying.
The writer said to his people," O'you the nation of unbelievers, do you think that with the physical removal of  Bahram, his voice also will be anihilated? O'you hungry and gluttonous cats, you want Bahram's voice just to influence your livestock in a way that they will give you more and more milk and to cause your hens to lay eggs with two yolks. You want Bahram's voice just to cure the sick among you."
The writer, tossed up his pen, in the manner of a sorcerer. It fell down having turned into a stick. Our man of pen beat his people up several times with the stick.
But, O'you our writer, know that in our Religion of Madness we will beat no one with clubs and cudgels.
 

GO UP
 

A big hotel, looking over a lake. The writer has fixed his look somewhere far away in the serene water: A state of meditation. The screaming of a woman disturbs him. Turns his head toward her. She is running to him with open arms. Nears the writer.
She is panting, tears in her eyes, "Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Hozan? Can't you imagine what terrible life we had during these two years? You might as well think of our son and daughter, Simko and Bahara. You stone-hearted son-of-a-bitch! What hell were you keeping yourself in for such a long time? Pummels his chest. Then catches him by his right wrist:
- Get a move on!
The writer is astonished. Says nothing. Follows her a few steps. Says, "Madam, you have taken me for someone else. I am ..."
(Furious) "What? You scoundrel! ( Slaps him in the face) You a rascal liar!"
"No use. She has taken me for God knows who.Not only my countenance but also my voice is the same as her husband's!”

At home. Simko and Bahara , full of joy, run to him.
"Daddy, dear Daddy! ( They kiss him) Daddy, dearest Daddy!"

The writer, sitting alone in a compartment of a train. His look is wandering among the valleys, hills and jungles outside.
"Poor creatures! You can't imagine how I felt those two days! I affected to be the prodigal son. But how could I go on like that. Oh, what a heart-breaking disillusion for the poor family!"

Another city. The writer is sitting at a restaurant. They show a photograph on the T.V, "This man is wanted. He is... . He has assassinated the Prime Minister."
He is shocked,  Oh, Heavens! This is my photograph

At the police station. He is being cross-questioned. He is puzzled by endless strange questions. They don't believe him.

A town. The writer is sitting on a bench in a park. A blonde tall girl, with green-eyes, comes over to him.
Did you forget our yesterday's appointment, darling? What was the problem?...
The writer does not dare to say that she has taken him for his boy-friend.
I thought you must be wih another girl-friend.
He cannot resist. Goes with her. Makes love with
 her at night.

The writer, at his desk. He does not know from where and how to begin his story. Stands up. Starts to walk along his room.
 

GO UP
 
 

      -What a pity, such a real gentleman as Mirza Rahman... How on earth did it happen?
-Oh, that poor Yosef!
Comments by the women in the village.
      - Sometimes even a real gentleman has no option but to fight like a rooster. That unlucky Mirza Rahman...
     - It was that boy's fault. That son-of-a-bitch is as playful as a kitten...
Comments by the men in the village.
Mirza Rahman was a rich farmer. He had acres of land, a tractor and a combine harvester. He had bought most part of his estates from a feudal named Hamasaleh Beig.
His lands were located behind the hill in the east of the village, and his house in the heart of the village by the spring. He bought and added two houses in  his neighbourhood to it, put them down as well as his own house and constructed buildings, one on the right, a two-storey house with six bed-rooms and a large sitting-room on each floor, ( the barn and stable were in the middle) the other one on the left, a building made of cut stones, unequalled not only in the village but also in the whole region. It was designed and constructed by a mason called Khalo Mora-w.
He had come from Ouraman(1)1_A region of Kurdistan to Mokoryan(2)2_A region in Kurdistan in Iran and here people knew him as  Master Morad Hajiji. He was the father-in-law of Rahim, Miraz Rahman's son. This man, they said, used to build stone houses in Ouraman. But here, he had a loom and was weaving. He was a famous and skilful artisan and got orders for his woolen cloth and prayer-rugs from all the  villages in the region.
The building he had constructed for Mirza Rahman was similar to those built in Ouraman. In Mokoryan they make houses out of rough unshaped stones. That is why, this house in which cut stones were put on one another in geometrical patterns became prominant. Some rich farmers would come and ask Master Morad to build a house similar to this one for them. But Mirza Rahman would warn him, "Upon my word if you make another house like mine to anyone else, I will be in no speaking terms with you for good. I will let nobody have a stone house like mine!"
Khalo Morad didn't like to lose his friendship.
The richest as he was, nobody envied Mirza Rahman but a farmer named Kak Fatah the Deaf. There was a feud between the two families. The reason was that one night Fatah found, in the barn of his house, Sadoon, the son of Mirza Rahman and his girl, Naskeh necking and kissing. He gave the boy a thrashing with a spade, breaking his two or three ribs. Mirza Rahman sent, twice or three times, some patriarchs in the village to Kak Fatahto ask for Naskeh's hand for his son, Sadoon. But Kak Fatah didn't give him his daughter.
Mirza Rahman was a helpful neighbour. In fact, he was generous to everyone in the village. Many a time, he or his sons would take a sick person to the hospital in the town in their blue jeep not accepting a single penny from his or her family. Even there were times when Mirza Rahman himself would take an old man or woman to a hospital in nearby big cities, for instance Tabriz or Orumia ( He spoke good Turkish). Farmers in the village and nearby villages would rent his tractor and combine harvester, with his sons driving them, and the money he charged for his service was considerably lower than  what others asked. Whenever he heard that a poor woman was longing for goator kidmeat, owing to her pregnancy, he would kill an animal and send the meat to her. He helped the destitute both in their wedding parties and mournings, paying for them. It was he who encouraged the people to put down the old shaky mosque and construct a new big one. His whole family were giving help to this religious measure. He supplied more than half of the necessary wood and stone which he and his sons, carried on their tractor.
In contrast to his generocity he had an odd habit deep rooted in some sort of selfishness: He was too fond of keeping such personal belongings that were unique, unrivalled and of luxury and he wouldn't stand, the idea of anybody else's having anything similar or comparable to them. He had a gold pocket-watch, Kurdish suits made of English wool, a radio-gramophone as big as a safe, when turned on, the pick-up would move toward the disc in an elegant manner associating a swan's neck. He had also an antique Koran going back to four hundred years ago. In his own room there was hung on the wall a silk rug weaved in Kerman. He was wearing leather shoes made by Mashhadi Sabir, a shoe-maker in Tabriz whose hand-made products were famous for being of beauty and high quality. Mirza Rahman would go every year to him to order a pair of shoes.
He had bought, from Kak Hama Hosein, a piece of land as much as four hectares located near the river. He would grow melons, water-melons, cucumbers and tomatoes in it. When the fruits began to ripe, he told his sons, "My children, be generous enough to let any one who wants just pick a melon or a few cucumbers or tomatoes. I do this so as to please our Gracious God so that He may bless my late parents." The distance between this garden and his main lands was some fifteen minute'swalk.
The sons would look after the garden, taking turns. Although, in Kurdistan, stealing from other people's gardens at night is not  regarded as a shameful action, nobody would go stealing in Mirza Rahman's garden. The sons would bring home, every now and then, a sack of fruits to give them as gifts to the neighbours.
Mirza Rahman, at sunset, on his way back home, would stop a short while in his garden to pick a cucumber or a melon for himself and to give his sons pieces of advice, at home, regarding the ways to look after the garden. One evening he ran into an unnaturally big water-melon in the middle of the garden. He had bought the seeds from a grocer in Boukan named Mirza Kadir. He had offered him, as a special favour, half a dozen of seeds saying, "These are of a variety of water-melons which a Turkish merchant from Tabriz, from whom I buy most part of my dried fruits and different kinds of seeds, has given to me."
The moment when he was planting the seeds, Mirza Rahman did not expect any miracles to happen. But that evening when he saw the round water-melon half a dozen times as big as a football, he was greatly surprised. He got so fascinated by it that in an instance he felt that his valuable personal belongings were no more of any account, in comparison to this King-size water-melon. He reviewed them all, maybe in a fraction of a second: his silk rug, his gold pocket-watch, his expensive excellent hand-made shoes, his Kurdish suits made of English wool, his radio-gramophone, his lovely stone house, his Hollandian bull which he would not let mate with anybody's cows, his Lari rooster which had defeated all roosters in the village, even his silver coins of Qajar dynasty which he always kept in his sash. Again nothing were they in comparison to this very big water-melon.
One knee on the ground, he wanted to lift it. A strong man as he was, it was rather heavy for him.
    - Oh, so much magificence!
He was sitting, with the water-melon on his laps.
He began to caress and kiss it, tears streamed down his eyes out of his great joy.
He began to daydream: He would grow the seeds of it. His water-melons will be famous among Persian, Kurdish and Turkish people. Even in neighbouring countries, Turkey and Iraq, people would recongize his water-melons?”
"How much is a kilo of Mirza Rahman's water-melons?"
"Well done Abbas Aga, you have imported Mirza Rahman's water-melons."
All of a sudden, however, a disheartening thought flashed his mind, "As if you didn't know these people! If they happen to know that there is such a thing, they will find the seeds, no matter how difficult it be, and in one or two years at the most, there will be thousands of such big water-melons in worthless men's gardens, in which case even my children won't know who Mirza Rahman is!" He stood up, disappointed and burning with anger.
He would see all the gardens of the region full of water-melons as big as this one! He was burning in anger. He was dreaming, that he was smashing, with a spade, all the water-melons to the last one.
Content with what he had done, he felt appeased. Then he would see the owners invading him with cudgels, spades and even forks. But he disarmed and beat, in his dream, all of them.
He squatted beside the water-melon as pleased as a triumphant king having returned to his own palace after a decisive battle. He began to caress the water-melon. No need for dealing in water-melons. I don't want to be a merchant. I am a man of fortune and thank God, I have acquired so much wealth that it will be enough even for the grandchildren of my grandchildren. I will keep all the seeds and I won't give a single one of it even to my dear father even if he comes to life out of his grave for the sake of that one seed of my water-melon!
    - Or maybe I will give a party in honour of this water-melon. I will invite Mr.Mohammad Yazdani, the member of parliament, as well as all the officials and prominent businessmen from the town.
Mirza Rahman was crazy about Mr.Yazdani who was his close friend. It was, in fact, Mirza Rahman who encouraged him to offer himself as a candidate. He was widely and actively involved in the propaganda for Mr Yazdani, both in his and neighbouring villages. Since Mirza Rahman was an influential character among the patriarchs of the region he helped a lot. Mr Yazdani himself had become popular among the villagers since the days of land reforms called White Revolution of Mohammad Reza Shah of Iran in 1963. He was one of the activists who waged a struggle for the cause. Many a time, his life was endangered by men of the dispossessed feudals. His rival in elections was, Mohammad Amin Khan Iranpanah. Hardly any villagers voted for him owing to his belonging to the Kurdish gentry.
Mirza Rahman would see, in his dream, that he had a heifer killed for the big party.
Women were cooking in the yard. The scent of roast meat and Iranian rice reached the houses in his neighbourhood. He could see vividly the kind-hearted boys and girls in the village who had come to help his family entertain the guests.
Mr Yazdani was sitting in the living-room among the chief of the police, Captain Farokhi, and the mayor, Mr. Partawian. He saw the chief of the court , the chief of gendarmerie and the manager of Agricultural Bank, some famous businessmen and leader (imam) of the cathedral mosque of the town as well as the patiarchs of the region.
After the fabulous dinner, the very same water-melon is brought in on a round copper tray manufactured in Isfahan with etchings of flora and fauna. The guests are surprised with their forefingers on their lips.
He makes a gesture to Sa-id, his eldest son who gets out his knife to cut the water-melon. But instanly Mr Yazdani raises his right arm with his hand stretched as a sign of protest, " NO, no, that's a thoughtless thing to do." He sees vividly that Mr Yazdani has brought the water-melon to the parliament: All the members of parliament are gazing at it with their fingers on theirlips.
He sees his photo beside his very big water-melon on the front pages of all papers in Iran. Another picture shows the Minister of Agriculture awarding him the Exemplary Farmer Prize. Can you guess what the prize is? A hundred gold coins minted in the memory of Mohammad Reza Shah's crowning.
He embraced the water-melon and began to kiss it, " Oh, my dearest belongings!"
That day Mahmoud, one of his sons who looked after the garden, had gone home earlier than other days.
" What a pity I have come to know it so late. Otherwise I would have taken care of it myself. I would have given the plant ashes of dung and do you fancy what a colossal thing it would have grown to?..." he thought.
"No use regretting about that. What should I do from now on."he decided.
He gathered some straw, dried branches and so on and covered his water-melon.
He went home hurriedly to take a snack. And he didn't let Mahmoud go back to the garden, " It is my own business from now on." His wife and his sons got astonished at the decision but they didn't dare to ask any questions or express their surprise knowing his despotic manners. Mirza Rahman left for the garden leaving his family perplexed with his going in the jeep for such a short distance. He spent the night in the arbour. He would get up every now and then to go and have a look at his water-melon, after which he would feel assured and go back to bed.
Early in the morning he sent Mahmoud to the town to buy barbed-wire, nails and wooden posts.
He devoted himself to the garden and would not let anyone, even his sons, enter it. The villagers were confused by this decision.
Before long a rumour began to go round, among the women who went to get fresh water from the spring, that Mirza Rahman had found a treasure in his garden. The men added many things to it:
   - It is a pot full of gold coins.
   - He saw his late father, Mirza Rahmat, in his dream, one of these nights. " My son there is a pot of gold near the middle of the garden." he said.
   - He has found a lot of precious things of ancient times such as gold statues, pitchers, bowls and so forth.
Each man had his own guesses at it. But they had all one thing in common: They were aware of Mirza Rahman's love for antiques. Some of them went so far as to describe the patterns, in details, carved on the precious things he had found in his garden. Some of the others talked about the miraculous qualities of those things:
   - He has found some beads the colour of which is blue in the shade but they turn red when exposed to the sunlight. And when you put them on your palm, they will begin to move, in one or two minutes.
   - He has found a gold dagger in a sheath woven of silver and gold threads with a lining of deer skin.
Mirza Rahman knew that his son, Mahmoud, did know about his water-melon. " Don't breathe it to anybody or else..." He ordered him menacingly. It was something, as if superstitious, that told Mirza Rahman not to let other people's eyes catch his beloved belonging. " Something may happen to it under the effect of their evil eyes." Might be his reason. For him it was something of grandeur. He called it, " The king of water-melons." But he told nobody about giving it such a name.
Some nights he would see, in his dreams, that a thief has come to take it with him. He would wake and get up promptly and rush out of the arbour, carrying the lantern, and hurry toward " The king of water-melons".
During those ten days he was so absorbed in taking care of his water-melon that he had no time or mood for paying his friends or acquaintances a visit. Even his family wouldn't see much of him. The rumour about his having found a treasure and antiques had reached the ears of his family. But none of them did dare to ask him about it. However, Ba-iz, his youngest son, still unmarried, had asked him on the first day," Why fencing the garden, Daddy? Who on earth will stealfrom us?"
"Say this, you son-of-a-bitch, once again and you will have all your teeth broken for you. I need no advice from nobody in this house! " thundered out Mirza Rahman at his son.
He would have his dinner abstract-mindedly. He had got taciturn and ill at ease. He would no more og to the farm to help and supervise his sons. His wife saw the unpleasant changes in his behaviour and looked at him timidly but sympatheticly. His stern look would let no questions be asked by her. This woman had lived with him obediently for thirty years. ( They were lovers for three years before their marriage). Every now and then, he would beat not only his wife but also his married sons, his daughters-in-law and his grand-children. A tyrant patriach as he sometimes was, all the members of the family liked and respected him and were proud of  him.
On the eleventh day and from the neighbouring village which was half an hour's walk from here, came the news that an old man called Sofi Alias, once a jew who had turned Muslim in his youth, had died.
Mirza Rahman could not stand to leave his beloved" King of Water-melons" and to attend the mourning for several hours. But it would be against the custom for a great and respectable patriarch like him not to og and condole with the deceased person's family.
Mirza Rahman set off along with the men of his village. The patriarchs started a talk tentatively in order to persuade Mirza Rahman to tell something about his garden so as to satisfy their curiosity. But he instantly changed the course of talks to " the late wise man", Sofi Alias, which proved to be successful, since everyone in the procession liked" that God-blessed man". Sofi Alias had had a pleasant presence among the villagers. He was an old man, his hair as white as snow without even a hair of his head having fallen. ( He had a habit of taking off his turban and stcraching his head with his long and callous fingers). The cunning look of his black eyes under his thick white eyebrows, the gentle searching of his fingers in his thick and long beard almost reaching his abdomen, gave him the impression of a witty saint. He used to be a jew who instead of retuning to Israel, after the founding of a jewish state, remained in Kurdistan. He was a lively and jocular character. These people talked about their recollections of Sofi Alias.
They remembered many ofhis witty remarks and laughed a lot. Mirza was so involved in the talks that he forgot completely about the " King of
Water-melons". Seldom in his life, and specially during those recent days, had he laughed so much.
Mirza Rahman had entrusted the garden to Mahmoud, his son, to safeguard it against " burglars". Yousef, Mirza Rahman's son-in-law, happened to be there in the garden when Mirza told his son, " Let no one near there ( he had pointed to the middle of the garden where the "King of Water-melons" was ) " Yes, Dad" had answered the son as obediently as a soldier.
Yousef was the only child of a poor family. His mother had died two years before. During those two years, Rashid Zindabad, his father kept complaining of their lacking of a woman to take care of the family. "Have your son married." Some people would suggest. And Kak Rashid would give no reply and he just sighed sorrowfully. He was angry with them: " These people are so dunderhead that none of them would advise me to remarry despite the fact it is me, rather my son, who am painfully in need of a wife. It is not so hard for Yousef, as he is young and handsome and every family will be happy to give him their daughter."
A bit short as he was, Yousef was regarded as the handsomest boy in the village. He had a pair of large black eyes. His lace-like moustache and beard were pitch-black. He was witty and jocular and would joke with everybody in the village. The villagers all liked him. But " Every family will be happy to give him their daughter" was something just easy to say. Yousef had been in love with Naskeh, the lame Mohedin's daughter, for about two years. Their love ended in disappointment rather than in their marriage, since Hossein, Naskeh's brother, married her, as it is a custom among the Kurdish people, to another boy named Ali, the son of Mam Bra-im in the neighbouring village where Sofi Alias was living, in order to marry Ali's sister, Nasrin, in return.
One day Sofi Marif advised Kak Rashid, " why do you not marry your son to Hanif,  the daughter of Mirza Rahman?" A suggesion which Kak Rashid agreed to think about seriously, although Hanif was a rather thin and tall girl, aged thirty, with a pockmarked face, always frowning, unsociable, treating others too coldly. That's why the villagers had nicknamed her " Hanif the Morose".
Yousef was not delighted at the marriage. But he was driven by the same village-boy's instinct as to ignore the call of his heart when he has no option. He could see the advantages of such a marriage in advance," There will be a  housewife. Besides, seeing that her father is a wealthy man, I guess he will help us...”
His calculations proved to be true. Mirza Rahman sent them, after the marriage, three goats and two sheep as his daughter's dowry. Besides, he gave Hanif a piece of land with the title-deed.
There happened a change in the family life. They didn't have to be other people's shepherds.
Hanif was an old hand at housework. She would milk the livestock and make cheese, yogurt and so on. The father and the son got rid of cooking and washing clothes.
Hanif was too sensitive a woman. She was always nagging at them for every thing. She tortured her husband with her questions-or cross-questionings-since she was too jealous and would not stand his being sociable to the girls and women in the village. Many a time, the husband and the father-in-law decided to beat her. But Kak Rashid would change his mind, " No, my son. Her father would be offended." And his offence would cost them too much: Mirza helped the family in many ways. He had given them some of his woolen Kurdish suits and even his shoes which were made by Mashhadi Sabir. Mirza Rahman's family helped them pull down their old house which was made of adobes and reconstruct it using stones. The new house had one more bed-room.
That day when Mirza Rahman was still in the neighbouring village, Yousef entered his father-in-law's garden. He was still that playful boy before marriage. Mahmoud warned him not to go toward...
Having returned and seen the " King of Water-melons" picked and cut, Mirza Rahman got so furious that he was shaking all over. The culprit was reported to him. He made for Hanif's land where Kak Rashid and his son were working. He beat Yousef with a spade...
 
 

GO UP
 

Laughing and stamping wake me up. Ah, my grand-parents are dancing, hand in hand. My grandfather has in his hand a red handkerchief which he shakes in his excitement. Look at their clothes. Never do I remember, since my early childhood, these two to have dressed so tastefully. Granny is wearing a white dress with patterns of iris flowers and a yellow thin scarf. Grand-pa in his new black Kurdish suit with that white shirt and having shaven, looks younger than his age.
I am sitting in my bed. I look through the window of my bed-room. I can see my parents sitting beside each other in a swing. They are swinging joyfully. Ah, never do I remember, since my early childhood, these two to have laughed so happily. But now! Until " no day in no calendar" grand-pa was a sullen and laconic man. Until " no day in no calendar" grand-ma was a shy and taciturn woman. Every morning I would wake up with her morning-prayers. But now she is singing songs.
I hear our rooster crowing. I look at the clock. Oh, mine, where are the hands? Anyway, it is six o'clock by my watch. The sun must have risen. Why is it dark yet?
The contuinous crowing of the rooster nears second by second.
Ah, why are you gazing at your watch?
Our yellow cat jumps up and sits on the window-sill. The window is open. He comes in without turning his look away from my parents. The door of my bed-room is opened to the hall where my grand-parents are dancing. The cat turns round and looks at them reluctantly, yawns and jumps down into the yard. Go to hell, you intruder!
Again a heavy sleep fills my eyes. How sweet is to feel so sleepy! The voice of my grand-parents singing a duet and the stamping of their dance are getting, gradually, out of my ear-shot.
I can still hear our rooster crowing but as if from a far-off distance. I lie down. During those seconds when I am  falling asleep, I like more than any heavenly music the crowing of that rooster. I feel that my bed is as pleasant as motherly hugging. I fell asle...e...p.
I wake up with Nasrin's morning prayers. She is sitting on a prayer-rug . Why is she in my bed-room? I look at the clock. The pendulum has stopped associating a heart-attack. I look at my watch. It is ten o'clock. I want to say loudly, " Nasrin, it is too late for morning prayers." But I prefer not to disturb her.She finishes her prayers. I ask her, " Why are you praying so late?" I repeat my question as I am definite that she dose not hear me.
She gets up wearing the prayer-rug over her shoulders, walks toward the window, stops and looks at I don't know where or what. She is standing as motionless as a stone statue. She opens her arms ( or maybe her wings?) I don't know why I am so sure that she will fly away. But I feel as long as an earthly creature like me is there, she can't do that. I blush trembling with shame. Never have I been so much ashamed of my sister Nasrin as I am at this very moment. I feel that I have stepped into a temple as an impure creature. I go out of the room not daring to turn my back to her. Now I am in the yard. I don't know whether I will come back to this place or not. Anyway, I will never dare to step into that room again. Ah, I am in my pyjamas. Should I return to the room ( my own bed-room) to dress? No, you can't!
I look at my watch: A few minutes past ten. But the sun is rising. Should I believe my watch seeing that it is a spring day? I must look at my grand-parents' watches.
My parents and garand-parents are watching the fight between the rooster and the yellow cat. The cat makes an  attack on the rooster. The rooster stands still looking menacingly at the cat. All of a sudden, it hits, with its beak, the head of the cat so forcefuly that it gets dizzy and terrified for a few seconds. But the yellow cat musters its strength and strikes its head, with its paws, so angrily that the rooster shudders with fear.
My parents and grand-parents sometimes laugh, sometimes cry. Now they miaow, now they crow like a rooster.
I don't care how the fight between the two animals end. I crouch and look at grand-pa's watch. It has no more the stainless-steel strap. It has a hand-cuff instead. What is the time? A few minutes past ten.
I look at my father's watch, as well. It has no more the black-leather strap. It has a gold bracelet instead. What time is it? A few minutes past ten.
I have looked at the watches. No, nothing is wrong.
My parents and grand-parents turn round. My father is facing East and begins crowing like a rooster. Mother is facing North and bursts out crying. Grand-pa is facing West and miaows as painfully as a hungry cat. Grand-ma is facing South and breaks into laughing.
You can see in the sun lots of cat's hair mixed with rooster's feathers in the air. The animals are both exhausted and bleeding. They stop fighting for a second or two. They withdraw, to a distance of two feet, from each other.
In an instance the rooster turns round and lowers its back as if to encourage the cat, " You can mount me". The cat jumps onto its back. It is about to fall down but the rooster helps it keep its balance. The cat lowers its head, in a slow motion, bites at the rooster's neck and tears off its head.
It is eleven o'clock. Our watches show eleven. The cat has eaten up the rooster and now is licking its mouth and paws. The dark green and brown feathers are shining in the sun.
My sister, Nasrin, still standing near the window, begins to sing songs. Oh, dear God, why did not I know that she has such a heavenly voice?
My parents and grand-parents face Nasrin and begin unanimously to miaow, stamping forcefully, moving up and down their arms and sometimes sticking out their tongues at her. Would to God they were not so rude.
Nasrin's song is rolling everywhere.
My parents break into laughing. In their laugh, far from being similar to the one when they were in the swing, there is something of madness.
Grand-pa has a big branch of tree between his legs making-believe that he is horse-riding and grand-ma is chasing him barking like a dog.
I am listening to the heavenly song of Nasrin. I og out of the yard full of awe without turning my back at her. I don't know whether I will come back to this place or not.
I am passing the lane, still in my pyjamas.
Now I am in another lane. The family of Mirza Hamakarim the herbalist ( eight people they are) are standing in front of their house. They have all covered one of their eyes, each with a piece of cloth wound round his or her head. Mirza Hamakarim offers me an old blue shawl saying. " One eye is enough to see. Take this and cover one of your eyes." I quicken my steps not accepting his offer.
I am passing by the house of Kak O'sman. I can hear the hitting of goblets against one another and drunkardly songs and laughs. They are singing in four languages: Persian, Turkish, Arabic and Kurdish. Yesterday here there was a mourning: His daughter, Narmin has died young. Ah, Narmin, you died while you were standing behind the window of your bed-room wearing a prayer-rug over your shoulders and singing a heavenly song.
Kak O'sman upon seeing me rushes out with a bottle of wine in his hand. He makes an attack on me  meaning to strike me on the head with the bottle. I run by the skin of my tooth.
Another lane. I see that our yellow cat is hanged, with an old blue shawl, from the cherry-tree in the yard of  Kak Hamasharif, the cobbler. I can see stains of cherry juice on its body. There can be seen on the door a piece of paper with a writing which reads, " Kak O'sman we are so sorry about the death of the yellow cat and accept our condolence."
I am in the main street of the town. There is no vehicle, not even a bicycle. I see children on the back of dromedaries, the women riding asses, the old men each having a big branch of tree between his legs making-believe that he is riding a horse with an old woman chasing him and barking like a dog.
Another street. No sound or voice can you hear. Ah, what a terrible silence! Have I got deaf? I clap my hands. A simple experiment. I can hear it.
I am passing by the bazaar. I see piles of old shoes, beside each a sign which reads, " Cheap Shoes". The people here even shoe-sellers, are all bare-footed. I am wearing a pair of galoshes. A shoe-seller, a man called Ebrahim, puts his hand on my left shoulder. Why do not I object? His hand has no weight. Addressing his customer, a man named Mashhadi Rahim, and pointing to me, he says, " I sell this boy with his galoshes."
They agree on the price. Two hundred Tomans are paid for me. I know this Mashhadi Rahim. He is a grey-haired Turkish man. He has dyed his moustache with henna. He has a cudgel. " I have bought your shoes" he laughs at me. I take off the galoshes and hand them to him.
Mashhadi Rahim does not put them on but puts them under his arm instead. He is frowning but says to me in a friendly way, " I have paid fifty Tomans for you. Pay me one hundred and eighty and you will be a free man."
   - What if I don't pay the money.
   - Then I will sell you to Aunt Shamsah
Aunt Shamsah lives in a big old house on the main street. She has no family and hardly any relatives. She employs servants who leave her after a month or two owing to her unchangeable habit of nagging and swearing at them. They say she is rich, having much gold and also money deposited at banks.
   - What does Aunt Shamsah want me for?
   - You?! Oh, she wants you to catch mice, ha, ha.
I give him the money he wants and leave the place.
A back street. I feel hot. Is the sun burning me deliberately? I am perspiring so much. I grasp the flap of the jacket of my pyjamas and shake it to cool myself. But it tears easily. Ah, my new pyjamas ( I bought them the day before yesterday!) are worn out.
Half naked, I go out of the town.
A hill out of the town. I see a cherry-tree and a spring under it. Cherry-juice is dropping into it.
Look at me! I am as naked as the day I was born.
Oh, dear God, I am dying of thirst and so much heat.
I am sitting in the spring in a posture similar to that of the statue of Buddha. I see fish in the water as transparent as glass. I can see inside their bodies.
Now I am sitting in the shade of the tree, beside a box made of the wood of the same tree. I see figures carved into it I recognise them: My grand-parents dancing, my parents in the swing, the cat and the rooster fighting, Nasrin standing behind the window with a prayer-rug over her shoulders, Narmin behind a window, with a prayer-rug over her shoulders, Mirza Hamakarim with one eye covered.
I open the box. I take out a new suit with a pair of shoes. And a piece of paper with a message for me: " Come to me."
What an atmosphere, what an atmosphere! Awe. I feel awe. I step back without turning my back at here. I don't know whether I will come back or not.
I climb down the hill. Can you tell me how many days I am walking? The night is getting over.
At dawn. A garden of various flowers. I pick a red flower and a yellow one.
In the middle of the garden, I hear Narmin and Nasrin singing a duet. I approach them. They are standing behind a window. They have no prayer-rugs over their shoulders. Nasrin has a rooster under her arm. The rooster is holding, in his beak, a red flower and a yellow one. He gives them to my sister.
I go in. Thank God, I am no more naked. I give my flowers to Narmin. Now, I am a rooster in the arms of Narmin. Narmin and Nasrin are singing a duet. Then silence. We, the two roosters, begin to sing a duet. Silence. Then a quartet. And now s-i-l-e-n...
   -...c...
   -...
   -...
   -...
 
 

GO UP
 

What? What? Shout what you want to say,my boy. I am not clever at lip-reading. I don't understand your gestures, either. And no need for it since I am not deaf but hard of hearing. What? You think I look younger than my age? What? Me? Between us, I am more than eighty, ha, ha, ha. Until five or six years ago I was as strong as a bull. I would beat any young man stronger than you, my son, in Kurdish wrestling. Once Ebrahim, son of one of my close friends, came to my shop. He was a footballer ( God bless him). He was much stronger than a horse. He was a jocular and witty guy. So vividly I remember that day, as if it was yesterday. He came and sat in the velvet arm-chair saying angrily, " You have two wives overtly, and three ones covertly as people say, but you old lustful gentleman are not satisfied with half a dozen women so you have asked the mother of Dr.Ahmad Seifi to marry you."
That rude son-of-a-bitch ( anyway God bless him!) wouldn't stop talking. He would not let me say anything. I wanted to say, " I feel younger and more energetic than you, my son!" You can't imagine what a lovely creature that widowed woman was. I asked Ebrahim's mother to go to her and get informed about her personal opinion about marrying me.
That impolite bastard ( anyway, God bless him!) told me so many harsh things that they were more than enough to kill a person. However, I repressed my anger for the sake of his father Karim who was my best friend. But he wouldn't stop. He kept saying," You have one foot in the grave!"
" I will show you Mr. Football-Player." I thought. Anyway I behaved like a real gentleman to cool him down. I told him that I was eating my word. ( I was telling lies, ha, ha, ha! I married the woman at last.) If I hadn't done so, I would have run mad! But after three months her son, Dr.Ahmad, drove our happy marriage to disappointment and failure. He kept on saying to her mother, " Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Mum, to marry after such a real gentleman as my late father?" Nonesense! Was I less gentle and respectful than Hamzah-Agh, Dr.Ahmad's father, who would lose, many a time, even his trousers in gambling? Who was he but an old drunkard dog? Who was he but a lecherous adulterer who would lay all whores, one by one, in the brothels of Urmiah, Tabriz and Kermanshah? Dr. Ahmad would say to his mother, " You are one of the deceived women who satisfy for some time that old dog's lust and then you will have no choice but to divorce him." Ah, he called me  an old dog.'
Yes, me, Uncle Aziz the dentist, the most respectable gentleman in the whole town! That was a pity that there was no wise man in the town to tell that son-of-a-bitch, that snotty doctor, that I was no adulterer like his father, that I married my women according to the sacred rules of Islam. Anyway, his satanic words impressed his mother so much that she divorced me. I wish I had died but hadn't divroced Raziah Khanom! I would be happy to divorce all my wives, one by one, yes all my wives but Raziah Khanom!
I sat at the table in my shop. " Mr. Football-player, let's have a test of  our arm's strength." I said laughing. He came and sat across me. He was no more angry. We clasped each other's right hands, with our arms upright and leaning against each other.
He was wearing a white T-shirt. The strong and thick muscles of his arm were twisted.
Five minutes, no ten minutes, no, no, believe me, fifteen minutes had passed during which each of us had been struggling to defeat the other one.
There was a lapse of  twenty minutes but none of us was loser or winner. I am not boasting: Not every young man could rival me in arm strenth testing or Kurdish wrestling.
To tell you the truth, my heart was beating quickly. My right shoulder and arm were a little tired and painful. A drop of perspiration had rolled into my left eye so it was burning. Ebrahim's eyes were getting red ( which gave me courage and assurance) his face reddened and soaked with perspiration. He was eyeing me, with an eye half closed, in a way that reminded me of one threading a needle.
All of a sudden my arm slipped and I was to lose but in no time, thank Good Lord, I was able to regain my balance.
More than twenty minutes had passed. Ebrahim kept winking. I am not boasting, not every strong man could rival me in strength testing or Kurdish wrestling.
My head was soaked wih perspiration and burning under my Kurdish hat and turban. I wanted to take them off but I would not do that since the rival, I thought, might regard it as a sign of my tiredness!
Between us, I was getting exhausted. I was panting, feeling that I had a handful of dust in my throat and lungs. ( I never smoked.)
I could see Ebrahim's heart beating. Oh, it was only my keen eyes to see such a thing! If only I had at least half of that eyesight today.
Our arms had wound around each other like two snakes. Our palms were wet. An idea came to my mind. I contracted my shoulder a bit and turned my left arm back. In the twinkling of an eye, I knocked his arm on the table.
From that time on he didn't dare any more to say that I was too old to marry another woman.
What? Me? I used to have the keenest ears. An ear-trumpet? No, no, I  will never use an ear-trumpet because it may cause my death! Strange it may seem to you, my son. But if you don't mind I will tell you the story of my late brother, Kak Marif. Then it won't look so absurd. What? All right. Mirza Marif, my elder brother, was the wisest man I have ever known. You can't imagine how talented he was. ( God bless him) Those hands of his were of gold. He was skilled in so many crafts, specially in sewing and carpentry. I told you, son, that he was wise. When he was a boy,the old and young in our village would come to him in emergencies to ask for his advice. Believe me if our great king, Mohammad Reza
Shah had known him, he would have appointed him as his best adviser! He was sociable, kind-hearted and generous. But Kak Marif, among his numerous virtues had a bad habit: He would divorce a wife , every four or five months, and would marry another woman. " to live with the same wife  all your life would turn your life to something absurd and monotonous." he argued. Besides, he would marry widowed women in every region in our town, the thing which he had in common with me! Neither of us would breathe his secret, in this regard, to the other one. Many a time, I would ask for the hand of a woman ignorant of the fact that she was married to my brother! And Kak Marif would make the same mistake. That is why we couldn't get much wealth. I know dentists who began the job ten or fifteen years after us, but now they are ten times as wealthy as we are, despite the fact that the false teeth they make are of such an awkward design that they suit only to be used for curbing horses! The people of the nearby villages come to me. You see, for example, in the porch of a mosque of a village, a villager opening his mouth to show the other men in the village a bad tooth.
" Why don't you go to Mirza Marif, the dentist?" they suggest. ( Although my brother is dead, his name is alive so many people call me, " Mirza Marif".)
My brother's eyesight was getting weaker and  weaker. Was it due to his old age? But he was still so strong that he could pull out the patient's tooth as easily as taking a hair out of a bowl of yogurt, without injecting any ampoules to the gum! But many a time he would pull out a good tooth instead of the decayed one because of his weak eyesight. There came a time when he could not recognize people unless they were very near to him.
In the end he agreed, after Kak Karim and his son Ebrahim had reproached him so much, to go to an eye-specialist. I recall so well the first day when he was wearing glasses. He was as happy as a child of a poor family who was wearing new clothes. He kept on saying, " Oh, I didn't know that my eyesight was so weak!" He was looking around and at every thing in the way a villager's child, who has come to the city for the first time, does. And he was saying on and on, " Thank God, I have regained my eyesight!"
He had been wearing his glasses for ten days or so when an acqaintance of ours came to our shop saying, " One of the men of our village had brought from Kurdistan of Iraq a bag full of dental goods." His village was near Sardasht.
We hurriedly set off. "We can pay our friends and acquaintances a visit. Besides, there may be some beautiful widowed woman to marry me or you!" said my brother.
The goods belonged to Uncle Abdollah, son of Mostafa the Baby Sitter. We bought them at a very low price. There were dozens of sets of teeth, wax, ampoules and other medicine the instructions of which were in English and later on Ahmad Aga, son of the landlord of our village interpreted them and told us how to use them.
Would to God we had returned to the town as soon as we had bought those things. Our friends, however, insisted on our staying with them for some days. And we remained there for three days.
One afternoon I was sitting with the men of  the village on one of the benches in front of  the tea-shop. I saw Kak Marif coming up to us, wearing his glasses but walking  in the manner of the blind, with his right hand and his fingers stretched, his whole face quivering giving one the impression that he would burst into crying in a few seconds.Oh, what an eyesight I used to have! I saw all these things from a far distance. It were my eyes, and not anybody else's, which discerned these things. I was not yet hard of hearing. But my hearing was not keen else I could have heard his teeth convulsively striking on one another.
" Oh, mine, something terrible must have happened to him!" I thought. He came and sat with us. Nobody noticed anything. The men greeted him and began to talk and joke with him. I waited until he cooled down.
I went and sat beside him whispering, " What's the matter, brother?"
" Maryam has come to life!" he said. " Which Maryam?" I asked. " Maryam, the daughter of Master Swarah  the carpenter!" replied he. " After forty years since she died?!" I asked . " Yes, yes, by God!" he affirmed. I smelt his mouth to know if he hadn't drunk. He would never drink seeing that he was an enthusiastic Muslim.
I besought him to tell me precisely what had happened. He had been as Aunt Salmei's. She was very old being one of our late mother's friends who had come, after marriage, to live here. Whenever she reminisced the events as a result of which our parents were killed, like many Kurdish people, by Russian soldiers during the first world war, she would burst into tears, " I wish I had died and had not seen the death of those very dear friends of mine!" The cause of the murder of our parents was that one day they had gone to a house of their relatives. They heard some noise from stable. When they opened the door they saw, to their great surprise, that a Russian soldier had torn the dress off one of the women of the household and was raping her. My parents, without any hesitation, took a sickle and killed that son-of-a-bitch.
Anyway, as I was telling you my brother had paid Aunt Salmei a visit. A family from Kurdistan of Iraq had rented a room of her house. The men of the family were out. My brother had had a chat with Aunt Salmei when all of a sudden a tall girl called Nargiz from the household of the Iraqi family entered the room and sat beside them. My brother was not wearing his glasses. But he felt her voice was very, very familiar. He wore his glasses. " What did I see? You can't believe. The girl was the same as my beloved Maryam!" said he.
What? Why did she die? Yes, yes, I will tell you what happened.
She was the daughter of the carpenter of our village, I told you, Master Swarah. He was a stone-hearted, ill-tempered, ill-mannered and revengeful guy.
My brother, when young, was the secretary of Ali Aga, the landlord of our village. Before that he had attended religious schools for a few years. But there came a stage in his schooling that the Mullahs refused, under the influence of Master Swarah's propaganda, to give him any lessons. I am definite that Mullahs were afraid of his talent. I saw one day that my brother was asking his teachers ( or masters), Mullah O'mar and Mullah Farouk, sophisticated questions about Islam and those awkward asses could not answer his clever questions. They knew too well that if that student had his education in Islamic studies, in near future no
Mullah would rival him. Yes, they were jealous of his gift.
That was how, Kak Marif, gave up his studies. Besides, those rascal creatures were turning the rustic people against him. Mullah Omar and Master Swarah, his father-in-law kept on saying everywhere, " Marif is an atheist." Or " Marif is a renegade and an enemy of Islam." they claimed, " Marif is an idol-worshipper."(My brother made out of wood lovely statues which he gave them as gifts to his friends. Even Mullah O'mar himself had one of his statues: A farmer  crouching with a scythe in his hand.)
Ali Aga had told my brother, " Marif I will employ you as my secretary. Even if the whole of these crazy Mullahs and villagers regard you as an atheist, I am and will be definite that you are a true believer and the most honest man in the village." My brother had been in love with Maryam for three years and he had kept it a secret and had not breathed it even to me, his brother. A wintry night I dreamt a dream. ( why are some people so silly as to think that there is no sense in our dreams?) I dreamt that Maryam was sitting beside the spring of  our village. She was crying. Her earthen pot had broken into two pieces. " Are you crying for your pot, Maryam? Would you like me to get you one from our house?" I asked her. " Tell your brother, Marif, that we can no more make appointments to see each other here beside this spring!"
Next morning, I told my brother about my dream. He embraced me and burst into tears. I cried too in sympathy. The very night I had dreamt that dream Haji Abdollah, in the company of the patriarchs of the village, had gone to Master Swarah's to ask for Maryam's hand for his son, Khedir. And Master Swarah had agreed to give his daughter to him.
That day, just like now when we were sitting in front of the tea-shop of that village, Kak Marif had turned as pale as a dead man. He was walking absent-mindedly and in the manner of a somnambulist, saying every now and then, " Aziz, you tell me what hell I should do?"
Nothing could be done about it. If my brother escaped, with his beloved Maryam, from the village, he would lose the friendship of that family which was so dear to us because Haji was the best friend of our late father and after our parents were murdered, he looked after us ( viz, Nazanin, our sister, Mirza and me). On the other hand, if my brother sent all the patiarchs of Kurdistan to the house of Master Swarah, he would not agree to their marriage. That pimp hated my brother who was a real gentleman. Maryam was forced to marry Khedir. But there was no wedding party since Maryam took her life ten days before Now Rouz ( the first day of spring) hanging herself with a rope from the roof of the stable in their house. Mullah didn't let her dead body be buried in the cemetery(1) .
1- According to religious rules and customs in Kurdistan those, who commited suicide, would be buried somewhere far from cemetery Her grave is somewhere on the hill in the west of the village.
After that tragic happening, we could not stand remaining in the village and we moved to the town, despite the fact that Ali Aga entreated my brother to change his mind. Ah, but nobody, even our relatives and close friends didn't know why we moved.
My brother was depressed and ill for six months. But after that, thanks to our great prophet Muhammad ( peace be upon him) and our saints, he gradually recovered. During these six months, it was I who earned our living. You know when I was a farmer I worked five times as much as any man in our village and with a sickle I reaped faster than a combine harvester! And in town, first I was a construction worker and the wages then were five Rials. But they would give me ten Rials since I was more energetic and active than ten workers. At last our Benign Lord before Now Rouz ( the first day of spring) hanging became apprentices to Master Issac the dentist,who was a jew, and in several years we bought a shop in town, by the money acquired from selling our lands in the village and began the profession and as a result of our industry we became famous very soon.
It was on the day when we were sitting in front of the tea-shop of that village that I realized the reason for my brother's numerous cases of divorcing from and marrying to women. After Maryam he could not love any other woman. That is why he would get fed up with a wife after a short time and would change her for a new one!
That day the glasses of my brother proved to be a means by which an incident happened. To my brother's great surprise, that girl, that Nargiz I mean, was precisely similar to Maryam. If I didn't see the girl with my very eyes I wouldn't believe Kak Marif. I swear by the holy Koran that she was ( perhaps!) Maryam who had come to life! Her blonde hair, her green eyes and her little lovely mole in the left corner of her mouth were the same as Maryam's. Well, there was one difference: this girl was wearing a dress of black satin while Maryam, as I recall so vividly, was wearing, before her suicide, a dress of yellow muslin with patterns of dark blue flowers.
Oh,you should have seen my brother the next day!
He had shaved and was dressed like the young (from whom had he borrowed that new Kurdish suit?) No one was as handsome as my poor brother when young. Those days when he used to be the secretary of Ali Aga, he was wearing a Kurdish suit made of fustian and when a stranger happened to see him he or she would think, " There he is, the very landlord of the village!"
Ah, that day, that day! Never will I forget that day. My brother behaved like a young man. He had turned a talkative, jocular and too sociable a boy! Even his voice had changed noticeably. I swear by the graves of my martyred parents who, I am definite, are residing in the paradise, his voice was now of a boy rather than of an old man his age. He would embrace me, every now and then, and would kiss me delightfully, as if I had given him the good news of reviving of his youth! " No care will I have from now on, I am the same young man now as I used to be!" he kept on saying. But I was instinctively afraid of what he said. " Maybe he is running mad!" I thought. But I didn't like, or dare, to get him disillusioned.
He goes to Aunt Salmei that same day and asks her how he could ask for that girl's hand. " She is enganged, my dear son, to her cousin." replies she.
In the afternoon, Marif comes across the girl in the yard of Aunt Salmei's house and in a fit of excitement embraces and kisses and entreats her " Please, please, do marry me! Divorce your cousin!" the girl is taken aback. But then she regains her presence of mind, " Away with you, you old dying ass!" Two children are witnessing the scene. They run and report to her fianc what they have seen. And the jealous fianc , accompanied by his relatives, rushes home to beat Marif to his death.
When I heard the news, I was at Hama Ali's house, playing draughts with him. When we arrived, we saw Kak Marif lying in the yard with Aunt Salmei sitting beside him with tears in her eyes. She was washing the blood off his mouth and face. He was bleeding all over.
We took him to the hospital of the town. He was in a coma for three days and would say, in his delirium, " Maryam don't kill yourself! Don't kill me!"
I don't know which one caused his death, the words of that stone-hearted girl ( " you old dying ass!") or the thrashing those sons-of-a-bitch gave him.
Would to God my brother had not been wearing his glasses to see so clearly his end! That is why I don't use an ear-trumpet, hard of hearing as I am. I fear that I may hear something to cause my death!
 
 

GO UP

Shirko is still conscious. He knows that the ceiling is white but he sees it to be cream. His blue eyes are fighting a heavy sleep. Hiwa, his intimate friend, is lying on a bed next to his. Hiwa has thrown up . Vomit and blood are mixed. Three or four nurses in cream ( or white?) are going out and coming in.
The past, in Shirko's eyes, is now an album full of coloured pictures which are passing by quickly.
Their friendship goes back to their early childhood, some forty years ago.
Shirko is looking at a nurse. " She is similar to Zeinab" he thinks. He recalls everything so vividly: He is a child of four or five, seeing himself in the mirror of the kitchen, sitting on the lap of his paternal uncle. It is early in the morning. They are all at the table ( all but he and Uncle O'sman). His mother has the yellow Russian Samovar in her hands blowing into the charcoal to liven it. His aunt, the wife of uncle O'sman, says," The poor Zeinab, died young. Her mother went into grave worrying about the fate of her daughter. " I am not sorry about my death but my poor daughter will have a hard life."she said. " There is a silence." The poor girl was tortured by Aysheh, her tyrant step-mother. "says Shirko's mother." They say that one night the poor girl falls down in a fit, from the window of a room into the lane. Neither the stone-hearted step-mother nor her good-for-nothing father had asked where she was. In the morning, the neighbours saw her dead body. The dogs had eaten the flesh of her arms and legs and her face."
Shirko's father says, " Better she died. A dog's life the poor girl was living. So many suitors she had. They would not let such a lovely girl marry."
Shirko's mother, as if she was jealous about the beauty of Zeinab to be mentioned by her husband, said, " Both the ugly and the beautiful are the same in the eyes of death. Anyway, every one must die, sooner or later."
Shirko is shocked by her mother's comment, " Will I also die, Mum?" "Yes, my son, that is our Lord's will that everyone must die."
"But I will not let myself die. I will run and run and run... I won't let myself die!" he objects. They all laugh at his naive remarks.
His clothes are soaked with blood. Blood is oozing out from the corner of his mouth, forming a line: The road of death. His ears are singing " The Russian samovar was singing like that."
 Now the ceiling, the walls, the uniform of nurses are of the same colour of the Russian Samovar. " I will run and run and run... I won't let myself die!" is echoing in his ears. Nobody laughs at him, neither does himself. He wants to look at Hiwa, but he can't move. " Is he breathing?" he wonders. What has happened has killed any hopes in him, but still there remains in his heart the affection of their friendship. " Hiwa I wish to die instead of you."
Doctors and nurses are busy.
A framed-portrait is hanging on the wall opposite. " It must be Mohammad Reza Shah" thinks Shirko. That reminds him of the office of Shahpoor High school.
He had finished the first grade. They wouldn't give him his certificate. " Bring your father.", they told him.
His father is standing in the office, with a big basket full of pop corn in one hand and a vegetable oil can full of sun-flower seeds in the other one. The clerk puts his fountain pen on the table and looks up at him. Above his head, the framed portrait of Mohammad Reza Shah is hung. The wall is old with the plaster having peeled off here and there.
Two teachers are sitting, with an empty chair between them, one of them a lank young man from Sanandaj, the other one a fat man in his forties. When breathing, which seems to be hard for him, his cheeks get puffed reminding one of a frog. He addresses Shirko's father, in the manner of  a wise man talking to a foolish one, " You want your son stop his schooling? But that is a pity that such a gifted boy as yours... Anyway, you want the poor boy to earn his own bread..."
" If you let him continue his education, he will get his diploma in three years' time. The cleverest boy he is ..." interrupts him the thin teacher.
 Shirko's father, as if tired of carrying a burden much too heavy for him, puts down the basket and the can. Drives back his turban, as he often does in a fit of anger or excitement. Says, " The blockheaded boy has made his decision. Believe me, I have tried my best, and in vain, to change his mind. It is my nephew's fault, Sir, who goes every year to Chah Bahar and Abbas ports and works with the foreign constructing companies. Then he comes back in the end of the year with a lot of money in his pocket. He is dressed like a boy from a well-to-do family. This year he has bought a car. Besides..."
" Stop it!" says the clerk coldly. " Don't you think he is  too young to work and live far from his parents? It is you who are to blame and not your nephew." " A family of nine depend on this can of sun-flower seeds for their daily bread. Yet I have no objection to pay for his education." says his father.
Then the father and the son look at each other in a way the words" I have no...:"reveal the father's dishonesty behind them.
The fat teacher says" We are more catholic than the pope..." His father explains guiltily that it is not his fault.
His friend, Hiwa, did the same thing as Shirko did.
Shirko closes his eyes. He is still bleeding. Blood is your body's guest. Blood means thousands of drops hand in hand to dance in a party of your life. Now the party is over. No more dancing. Where are you going blood drops? To a funeral? Whenever blood drops are in mourning, call a drummer and a trumpet-player.
 Shirko dosen't open his eyes. His hearing, on the other hand, has got very keen. He can hear his wife as well as Hiwa's crying.
That year when Shirko and Hiwa were leaving for Chah Bahar and Abbas ports, their mothers and sisters were crying.
Earning money, each one buying a car and the end, are three steps which led the two friends to a big iron gate. I want to open it to show what there is behind it. E-e-e....Ah, I am afraid I can't. Shirko and Hiwa worked, in the Southern ports of Iran, some years with foreign constructing companies.
  The Philippine doctor says something in English to the Indian one. Shirko does not understand it. He has learned, from Belgian engineers whom he was working with in the ports, how to speak French.
The engineers treated him in a way different from other workers being aware of his efficiencies and honesty in working. The workers envied him." If only we had blonde hair and blue eyes like you to be treated like Europeans, ha,ha,ha,!"they said.
 Once, one of the engineers was angry with the workers because of a mistake they had made in the concrete of some foundation. The workers tried to avoid, that day, meeting him. They saw Shirko go up to him but he shouted at him, " Va-t-en!" (Go away!), which caused a lot of rejoice among other workers:
"Monseur the engineer insulted Shirko."
"They have spoiled that sissy boy, letting him dine with  and dress like them."
And he overheard those comments.
Shirko and Hiwa are breathing hard, as if from the eye of a needle. The nurses take off their clothes. Shirko wants to open his eyes. But his eye-lids are too heavy to be raised. Shirko, pull down the blind of your window. Death is now displaying her naked sexy body. Are you ogling her? Why don't you listen to the call of religion?
 Your eyes are two dying embers, but enlived, now and then, by the breeze blowing from your memory. Can't you see Shirko? No problem. A camel consumes the fat in its hump when hungry. Your memory...
Shirko recalls the time when he and Hiwa had finished their military services. They entered into a partnership to smuggle such goods as tea, material and soap between Iran and Iraq, having the money earned in southern ports and deposited at National Bank as their capital.
Then they started a safe bussiness: A supermarket at the corner of municipality cross-roads which proved to be a great success.
Now they were well-off. Each of them married his beloved girlfriend. Then they bought each a car.
And today Hiwa was giving Shirko a ride in his car only to crash into a Volvo on their way to neighbouring city.
Shirko is hearing the doctors and nurses." Hell, let them tear me over with their scalpels." he thought.
Hundreds of scissors, pliers and pruning-shears are invading him, batting their beaks like hungry wild birds. Now they are biting at and chewing his flesh. They turn round and see a folk of saws rushing toward them, like a group of barbarian warriors. The tools stand aside to make  way for them. And now they are sawing my bones and joints. Let them cut my limbs. I ask you a question: When you called me by my name, Shirko, what did you mean? Did you mean my limbs or my bones or my head or...?
Doctors and nurses are disheartened. The room smells of blood and medicine.
The Indian doctor is washing his hands. The nurse who looks like Zeinab is looking through the window. She can see in the yard two women rocking and crying, with a few people consoling them. There are four willows with their leaves motionless at this moment as if thousands of green eyes are gazing, for the last time, on the earth.
Shirko is dreaming: He is standing on the shoulder of a high mountain. Hiwa is climbing a large rock. "Don't leave me Hiwa."
Hiwa is now sitting on a boulder, taking a rest. From the foot of the mountain, Shirko can hear two women crying. But no one can be seen.
Hiwa stretches down his hand to Shirko," Give me your hand."They set off again. Suddenly Hiwa stops," Look up !" He is shocked and is pointing to the sky. The sun has neared the meridian but is conspicuously coming down to the east! Shirko remembers what his grandmother had told him in his childhood,"On the eve of resurrection, the sun will come back to the east. Hiwa's forefinger comes down as a little bird shot all at once. They both lower their eyes as if to see the earth for the last time.
They are still walking along a streamlet. He is thirsty,  kneels down to have a handful of water but Hiwa stops him," No, no wait until we reach the spring. If we drink up this whole brooklet, our thirst will not be satisfied. Water is better to be drunk from the very source."
The sun is more and more coming down to the mountain. The mountain seems to raise up its peak. "The attraction between two bodies..... Newton's rule of attraction...Oh, our physics teacher, Mr. Aminzadeh..." recollects Shirko.
Shirko is hurrying Hiwa up in case it should get dark before they reach the spring. But they are walking heavily as if their feet fettered. Shirko feels that his legs are numb and deadened. He is terriblly sleepy. They are slouching along the brooklet. Shirko is too thirsty. A huge rock. A cascade. The water is jumping down as if to take its life, turning into driplets to fill a large atmosphere.
And here they are near the very spring. They lie beside it in a prone position. They drink in the manner of a thirsty beast.
They still hear the crying of two women  from the foot of the mountain. Hiwa and Shirko are each lying on a stone, face downward like two lizards.
A purple light dominates the scene, similar to the one from a lamp-shade.
The doctors and nurses look at the dead bodies in the same way as a bored clerk looks uninterestedly at the documents and papers on his desk.
The women are crying, tugging at their hair, pummeling their heads and chest and scratching their cheeks. A crowd has gathered. They remind one of a flock of flies on a mirror put on a floor of a room. They have not come to look at themselves in it but to consume the sugar on it. The branches of the willows are shaking gently." Wave bye-bye to Uncle Shirko and Uncle Hiwa."
 

GO UP
 

I do believe all the nonsenses the old witches say.I must frankly say that superstitions are not so superstitious as you think to be! Perhaps you are misled by the fact that I am a woman." Superstition is in a woman's blood". you might think. But if I tell my love story, however dogmatic you may be, you will revise your judges.
Hawreh and I have been loving each other for a few months. In our land it is a custom that everyone gets in love stealthily. Why? I really don't know. Here men are the powerful and bully sex. Our fathers and brothers are allowed to fall in love but in the case of their daughters or sisters, it is regarded as an abnoxious sin to love. It has been decreed by our gentlemen, who are powerful than monarchs, that we must stop loving!
The love between Hawreh and me, was kept a top secret, having an old woman, Aunt Naskeh, as our match-maker help us change love letters, send each other messages and make appointments. The greatest help as she was, she asked no money for her valuable pieces of advice. She guided us through the entangled woods of love, seeing that she, once, had been an experienced lover. Under her instrucion, I wanted to test Hawreh to see how much and how far he loved me. So I asked him to buy an apricot tree and to carry it on his shoulder, no matter how heavy it was, through the lanes and streets of our town, until he reached the woods in the north, where he was to plant it.
My Hawreh passed this test. Bravo, Aunt Naskeh! If I could, I would found a ministry, called the Ministry of Match-Making. Under the apricot tree was our rendezvous. We looked after the tree until it leaved and bloomed.
Hand in hand, we looked at each other's eyes as much as one thousand years. His lips would burn mine. No lust was there.
I felt there was no more any need for a match-maker. I had learned, I thought, all about love.
" Not yet, my daughter, you still need me. Wait
until the tree fruits!" grinned she self-assuredly.
 Days and nights passed. The sun which was not hotter than our lips, ripened the apricots.
Oh, on that cursed day  Hawreh lowered a branch of the tree, in order to reach an apricot. He bit at it. The juice in his mouth put out a great fire in him.
We came here, thereafter, as two intimate friends. We were necking and kissing. But most of the time, Hawreh busied himself eating apricots. One day Aunt Naskeh saw me and from my yellowish demeanour noticed what she had foreseen. " High time for bidding farewell. No need for my help any longer.
 

GO UP