Zaman Zamani

A young Walnut tree on the Messiah's Grave

by: Fatemeh Abtahi

The Messiah is born.  I must give my blessing, I must perform a vow and make an offering.  I must pray.  I will light tall candles for the messiah.  I will light candles in every mosque ad church.  Now I am like other women.  How worried I am!  I feel his forehead several times a day.  I want to protect his innocent little body from the filthy heat coming from the outside.  I look at his skin, check his pulse, watch his breathing. Isn't this a miracle? How can a dull, dejected woman like me become so affectionate and glowing  I have given birth to the Messiah.  No one will erect a statue of us.  I kept thinking I was going to give birth to a rock.  How could I have given birth to something with veins and vitality?  How good it smells! Pieta. I 've blown life into marble.  He must live and I must pray for him.  I'll pray for all children, even those who'll grow wicked.

That day in the dim light of the Isfahan Bazaar, how sad I felt behind my eye-glasses.  I walked alone, not looking for anything in particular.  Dismally, I carried the weight of my body around.  I saw a quilt-making shop.  In one corner, there was a huge mound of cotton.  An old man was sitting between the cotton and the colorful satin quilts; he reminded me of God.  I sat on a pink satin quilt.  The old man's needle moved incredibly fast.  I took my glasses off.  The light of his lamp, gliding down satin quilts, made me sadder.  I tried to remind myself that outside the sun was shining on the blue tiles of the mosques.  "How long does it take you to make each quilt?" "Has the price of cotton gone up?"  "Has the satin factory closed down?"  He offered me tea.  I 'll buy a blue satin quilt for the Messiah.  I 'll always keep it clean and spread it in the sun once a week.  I'll clean the windows.  The Whole house should shine.  I'll show the sun and the snowy mountains to the Messiah through a spotless window.  I'll show him the pigeons, the ringdoves and the sparrows that conquer the city in the autumn.  "Where's the chick?"  "it's gone.  It flew away."  "Where do sparrows come from ?"   Hopefully this autumn I 'll be more cheerful.  That day, in the Isfahan Bazaar, I wanted to bury my head under the pink quilt and cry aloud.  I wanted to go outside where the sun and the blue of the mosques were, and scream my lungs out.

Cries for no reason, like the onrush of sparrows.  Autumn is supposed to be the season of fruition.  I always cry more in the autumn.  Women's black and deadly long veils.  Pale and skinny children who have to live hidden under their mother's long veils, who have to go to religious and wedding ceremonies hidden under their mother's veils, and who always cry their unhappy hearts out. Slimy drinking fountains and crooked white candles.  "How many candles do they light each day?"  I also lit a candle.  For what?  I escaped the mass of the women gathering in the shrine.  I reached the square and lost myself in the midst of the blue.

If Nanah Masuemeh had not left, I would have gone to Saint Abdullah's shrine with her this year.  She always used to take her offerings there; offerings in the name of her daughter Pooran, in my name, in the name of her grandson, and in the name of a canary whose name was Masumeh's Nanah, who had died because of my neglect.  She used to wear her elegant velvet jacket and cover her hair with a white embroidered scarf.  Her shoes used to shine like the ruby gem of her ring, too.  I always felt better after she gave her offerings.  Through her massive eyeglasses, I could never tell whether she was crying.  In spite of her bad eyes, she had made me a doll.  A doll with turquoise earrings and a velvet dress.  With a cloth cut from her own jacket, she had made this dress for my doll.  If Nanah Masoumeh hadn't left, I would also make a doll and give it to the girl who was sitting and crying all by herself on the road to Saint Abdullah's shrine  We would go together.  I would buy a huge candle for the Messiah.  I would carry the candle on my shoulder.  When Nanah Masumeh watered her young walnut tree or looked at it in the garden, the sight of sun rays passing through her thin scarf was fascinating.  Now the young tree is growing.  I know this time it's not because of Pooran.  Nanah Masumeh is gone and won't come back.  She won't even miss her walnut tree.

She was always dancing and laughing, always dancing and crying.  She was always making dolls for all the children.  She always watered the flowers and caressed the leaves.  She loved the sweetheart flower and became filled with joy when a flower blossomed out of season.  She always prayed and gave her blessings, and even before Pooran was born she was her mother.  She drank tea and ate very little.  She always went to the baker's and the butcher's cheerfully, and cleaned the vegetables with great care.  Sweeping, she always looked out the windows at the garden.  her clothes were always and smelled of heaven.  Sometimes she wore her ruby ring.  She frequently told us, "My father, God bless him, made me a red and blue wooden horse."  She laughed and cried, and I could never tell whether she was crying or laughing even when she was dancing.  Sometimes she said, "I have promised God a gift of a hundred tomans for my grandson.  I am crazy about him.  He is going to school now.  He is becoming a real gentleman.  May God preserve him from the evil eye!  I'm going to buy him a real car.  Have you noticed how lovely the vegetables have become?  Such a delight!"  She had made a small satin quilt for my canary, Masumeh's Nanah, and every evening she placed is cage in from of the television and sat next to it to keep it company.  She would say, "Lady Pooran, sing!  Lady Fati, twitter!  Look at that cat....I won't let him eat you, don't you worry!"

When she hadn't heard from Pooran, she would get quiet and solemn.  She would water the flowers slowly. Her face would look as sad and heavy as the air inside all the shrines.  "Nanah Masume!  I've shown your doll to everyone." - She was quiet and didn't seem to notice me.  She didn't notice anyone.  She was looking at some distant spot.  Maybe it was the death.  Her smile resembled the expression of a helpless infant.  Her dress and thin scarf seemed giant waves in the ocean and she herself a mere coral at its bottom.  She didn't seem to hear me.  Finally Pooran's letter would arrive and Nanah Masumeh would dance, laugh and cry again.  On hot summer days she made hand fans, offered us sherbet, and drank tea.  "I used to bake walnut and date pastries and make iced desserts  I used to use be able to do anything.  I made baklava better than anyone, and I used to weave colorful socks for Pooran and all the relatives' children.  But now I 've gotten old and can't do anything.  'When you're old, Hafez, leave the tavern for good.'" I hadn't seen her in her velvet jacket for some time now.  Ammeh Kanom said Nanah Masumeh had given it to a poor soul who had nothing to wear.  Now they've given her one of Khosrow's jackets.  One day she showed me her ring and said, "If you look closely, you'll see the picture of that red and blue wooden horse I told you about." - I know she will never return.

This autumn I'll hold the Messiah in my arms, and at dusk we'll watch the sparrows through the stained windows together.  I won't take him out.  The crowded streets have become a nuisance.  The noises depress me.  And Nanah Masumeh and the peaceful air she had about her are gone.  -  I know she will never return again.

Last autumn and winter Nanah Masumeh didn't have the time to make dolls.  She stood in line for bread and kerosene for hours.  She had never been talkative like that before.  She recounted for us all the rumors she had heard:  "They say His Eminence Khomeini is returning to Iran.  They say the cruel Shah's time is up.  Today when I was at the baker's, I heard gunfire.  I was shaken with fear.  The soldiers arrested a young boy before my very own eyes.  What a nice looking young boy he was!  Tall as a box tree.   He started to run and thy shot him down.  He became a martyr.  Martyrs will go to god's Heaven  I +hope the soldier who shot him doesn't live to see tomorrow's daylight!  And I hope his death will permanently wound his mother's heart!"

"Dear Fati, let me tell you about the dream I had: I dreamed that I was going to visit His Eminence Khomeini.  I didn't know how to find his house, and you were with me.  His Eminence wasn't there, but his wife was.  She offered us chairs and a thousand other courtesies and brought us tea.  I told her that the soldiers bothered me at the line in from of the baker's....His Eminence had arrived and was about to receive us, when ....I woke up.  I wasn't lucky enough to have the honor of meeting him.  I wasn't good enough to see His Eminence's graceful, blessed face!  Why should His Eminence' appear in the dream of a disgraceful soul like me?  His Eminence is a very busy man.  He has to attend to everyone's problems."

She bought a glass kerosene lamp which was painted red.  She set it in the kitchen window.  It was always lit.  She said, "Until His Eminence Khomeini's return and until this mess is straightened, I'll keep this lamp going." - She guarded it against the wind and naughty children playing in the alley who threw stones at people's windows.  She now card more for the lamp than for the trees.  "When His Eminence comes, everything is going to be all right.  there will be an abundance of everything.  We'll be rich.  No one will freeze.  His Eminence will come.  Roses will grow under his feet.  The air around him will smell of rose-water.  His face will light up the world." - When Nanah Masumeh talked about His eminence, everything glittered like gold: her eyes, the lenses of her eye-glasses, all he windows, and my heart.

One day Nanah Masumeh, Ammeh Khanum, and I went to the Behesht-e Zahra ceremony.  Mothers were not crying for the loss of their children.  Instead, they were singing revolutionary hymns alongside of their graves.  We also sang, while sharing the small amount of halvah we had brought.  The graves stretched to the horizon.  We sat quietly by a stoneless grave covered with flowers and watched the sparrows peck at the wheat and the millet seeds sprinkled for them on the graves.  If I died, Nanah Masumeh would plant a young walnut tree, and every Friday she would recite the fatehah from the Koran, and sprinkle wheat seeds on my grave.  Mothers sat peacefully by the graves.  I stared at the pieta statue: how beautiful death was!  I also wanted to die.  Death without mourning was beautiful.  Death for the sake of the soil.  From the ground I would smell the sky through soil and stone.  I would smell the bitter smell of the walnut that reached for the sky.  They were bringing a corpse.  They had made a banner with his blood-stained shirt and were singing a hymn.  We joined them in the singing of the hymn, following the corpse and the blood-stained shirt.

Nanah Masumeh wanted to plant the entire garden with roses.  She had posted pictures of His Eminence Khomeini on all the walls.  The ruby lamp was lit.  I was constantly daydreaming in anticipation of the birth of the Messiah.  When the Messiah is born, I will tell him stories:  "Once upon a time, before you were born, in a land very far from here, there was a fiend who had made everyone miserable.  He didn't allow children to play and bothered the grown ups.  No heart could be happy and no face could smile."" I would put on a grim face and the Messiah would purse his lips, but before his little heart could feel the pain, I would move on with the rest of the story and say, "But one day, a glowing man appeared, equipped with a sword to kill the fiend.  He went and stood right in from of the fiend, drew his sword from its sheath, called upon God, and hit the fiend on the neck so fiercely that the sky suddenly filled with thunder and lightning, and the fiend went up in smoke.  Then the sky blackened and it began to rain.  The rain washed the blood from the soil and made it fertile.  Smiles replaced tears and the whole world regained it gaiety."  The Messiah would laugh with his mouth, his eyes, and his heart.

The day His Eminence Khomeini came, Nanah Masumeh asked Ammeh Khanum to take care of her lamp; and looking neater than ever, with henna-treated hair and hands, and holding a bunch of flowers in her hand she left to welcome His Eminence.  She wiped her tears with the piece of cotton she had soaked in tea.  She was wearing a new velvet jacket.

When my canary died, Nanah Masumeh's grief-filled voice snapped at me.  She blamed herself and wouldn't look at me.  She wrapped the small satin quilt in a piece of plastic and put it in the cage.  She filled the cage with ornate flowers and placed it in a chest.  Then she buried my canary next to a geranium seedling in a pot, and with a sad voice she murmured some song from her native village. 

I became lonesome again.  Sometimes I had nightmares, and sometimes I dreamed of the Messiah kissing my face and trying to console me.  The Messiah would be born at dawn; at dusk, a number of grim-faced men clad in mourning clothes would carry his little coffin away on their shoulders.  I was scared.

Nanah Masumeh's face wore and unfading gloom like a veil.  He new velvet jacket was oiled with oil satins. Though still lit, the lamp's red paint had been gradually peeling off and disappearing.  she had buried her ruby ring at the bottom of her bureau.  Her voice had become hoarse again, like when my canary died.  She never mentioned the His Eminence anymore.  Early in the winter days, before dawn, she would wipe the snow off the young walnut tree.  The snow and the Messiah made me pensive.  Anxious, I busied myself with sewing and weaving his clothes.  At night I woke shaking with fear.  Every night they would bang on the door and try to take my Messiah away from me.  Men who didn't speak.  Men who had covered their faces and wore long black robes.  They banged on the doors with the stocks of their rifles.

One day Ammeh Kanum was telling Khosrow:  "Naneh Masumeh has become possessed by the devil again.  She won't touch her food."  No one watered the flowers.  Spring had come but the garden was dry and gloomy.  Only the pine tree was green.   Nanah Masumeh was lying down covered by a soiled quilt.  She didn't have her glasses on and the gaze of her red, inflamed eyes was fixed to the ceiling.  I knew that she had recently heard from Pooran, so that wasn't what had caused her present state.  She was altogether different.  The henna that she always used to stain her hands had faded away.  I held her bony, cold hand; she withdrew it.  She didn't see or hear me.  She didn't

t hear Pooran either.  Her unkempt red and white hair stuck out of her dirty scarf.  "Speak, Nanah Masumeh!  You'll feel better if you speak.  Shall I get you some tea?"

I went to get tea and noticed that the lamp was out.  It was soiled with dirt and grease and its chimney was smeared with soot.  It was surrounded by dirty dishes.  I cleaned and lit the lamp.  Looking out the window, I saw the children trying to hide under their mother's long veils.  They looked frightened.  Nanah Masumeh didn't drink her tea.  With her inflamed eyes and chapped lips, she was staring at nothing.  She had turned her back to me.  I sat quietly next to her and kept caressing her cold hands until she saw me and felt my warmth.  She broke into tears.  A graceful, quiet cry, very different from my usual shrill cries.  She wiped her tears with the corner of her scarf.    Her tears dried up all the gardens:  the gardens in which the Messiah and I had strolled every evening.  - Desert, the burning desert, the salt marsh of the lips that refused to drink tea.

She put her glasses back on.  With trembling hands she re-arranged her hair and covered it under her scarf.  From her bed, she looked at me and said, "Forgive me for troubling you."  I took her another cup of tea.  This time she drank it.

The next day she got out of bed.  She dressed in clean clothes and sat by the parched garden.  Then she went to the kitchen and put out the lamp.  I knew she was crying and shivering.  How depressed she was!  She packed her belongings in a bundle and said good-bye to us.  She got into a cab at the street corner and left for her village.  How I wish she could be here when my Messiah is born!  I wonder if she can still make dolls for children.

How exhausted I feel!  Women holding their pale and skinny children in their arms are going to shrines and mosques to make offerings.  I 'll stay right here in this room.  The throng of the streets annoys me. Autumn is upon us.  No one will make a statue of me showing the sparrows to the Messiah.  Pieta, how dejected I feel.

The Messiah will grow up in this room.  Maybe one day, when the city is not so crowded, I will go buy him a wooden horse.  The Messiah will grow up, and I will grow old.  I 'll keep praying.  But one day they'll knock on the door: men who have covered their faces will enter and take him away.  I 'll remain in this room behind soiled windows, alone.  I'll pray and utter my blessings.  In the evening I'll water the geraniums on the veranda and sprinkle seeds for the autumn sparrows.