The Persian
© 2006
When I rode my bike through the sun baked streets, the wheels molding gently into the melting tar as if gliding over some type of sticky water, she would be there too. Her doe like eyes, whispering softly that I was to be the one who would always take care of her, provide for her; stating wistfully that I would always be the number one in her collection (where the girls would sit on cushioned salt bags and adeptly crack the roasted watermelon and cantaloupe seeds between their sharp but glossy white teeth and wait for their man to come home from a dusty day’s work among the poorer peasants. They would come to read poetry.).
She was there too when I saw her married off. Sitting on the throne in the center of the garden in front of the elevated patio. Sitting there. Looking at me, as if to say “It should have been you this time. How long should I wait, then, huh? You think you’re going to be forever young?” Her to be consuming husband chomping on dried chick peas in his rented tux – a measure too small – already drunk on the wine and beer hidden in the other room behind the maid’s quarters. Covered in a lace white wedding dress she was, as if SHE were the Queen and that that Diba too was the usurper’s usurpress. She made me believe even then that she was the only legitimate heiress to the glories of the Empire and the world. Heiress, she was, with her cow-like eyes, rounded. And later, in the stillness of her room she lay there awaiting the penetrating and repeated sharpness of union to last into the dark recesses of promised wedding bliss.
She was there, too, when I was looking down at the mounds of centuries covering Istakhr and Firouzabad, the wind blowing across the parched and dusted soil with conk-shell whispers gliding over the long-now buried monuments. Gliding to her – looking down for coins or shards or relics. Once, up on the table mountain when I pulled out the corner of the grain pot from the ashen white soil, she too was there, marveling at what I had dragged out – the pot marked with the measure of what she was to receive; the ear of wheat that was to be hers and that now was mine to dole. Yes. She was there on those reliefs, silently etched behind the King, awaiting with fixed certainty the promises and abjurations of the Princely and his ministerial Honesty: “Yes, your Highness. I swear. We all left her untouched. Her fruit is as fresh as it was before you left our Homelands on your mystery campaigns.” Smile she did then, and oggled me she did, with that her antelope-like gaze.
She was there, again, in the early morning, as Venus still hung in the sky and the dawn had not begun to change its shading from purpur-lilaced royalty to its daily novel redness. There, after her nightly sharing of the waters, there after her watchful gaze, there after her gentle stroking of my hair. There – her lover and beloved, her crazy little boy, her warden and her guard – the one who provided for her in her present future, the one to whom she brought what he needed when his mouth just thirsted for more – there, even when he didn’t quite yet know what more there could ever have been. Yes, she was there as we rose from the plain into the still cool mountains, on our way to fortresses still standing watch over meandering canyon walls. She was there under the pomegranate trees, the orange blossoms, and the persimmon. Sharing her watermelon with me as we hung our feet into the cool waters of the brook and spewed out our seeds with the wisdom of true love. Many years later, when we finally held hands, I didn’t need to look into her eyes anymore. I just knew it was her. That one. That girl who had fidgeted with me as our parents sat on the carpet and mimicked world leaders with their importance. Back then we just looked at each other, knowing that union was our certainty but uncertain of its achievement. Yes, even then, she was there. Like the morning Dew, spread on freshly watered leaves of grass in the well trimmed plots that surrounded the gold fish pond in our garden.
My father sensed it always of course. He sensed that she was there. When I looked at myself in the mirror recently, I could see his cool green eyes staring at me; as if to say: “You, my friend, are nothing like me and I will never permit you my pain – that pain that made me see how it was that she couldn’t be there for you, ever, even if she promised to be. Because? Because I will make it so that no one can be better than me, nor can anyone have it better than me. I. I will assure it. Me. For I am. The King. The King of Kings. The Emperor. The Divine Royalty, who looks over the good of His peoples, as long as they are not of his family.” It was that same attitude that brought the lizard eaters and camel milk drinkers into the palaces that had been built for eternity. Once, an Empire would last for a thousand years. Then it became 500. Then 100. And then there were only Empires in the imagination of souls, descending down the ladders of the deepest recesses of pleasure, palaces built on our lines of poetry – dreams that never were reality.
In those gold-encrusted days, whenever guests were over, we ate caviar . We scooped it onto crackers and sprinkled it with a slice of lime. Caviar, our appetizer, would be followed by Shirin and Zeresk Polo, pieces of chicken, cucumber and yoghurt. A slice of bread. Butter. For breakfast, we tended to follow the poor man’s regimen: Goat’s cheese with bread and radish, or quince jam and butter. Our bread, though, was always toasted. And it was after we had feasted and then, the morning after, sleeked into the kitchen to prepare our breakfast sandwiches standing up to a glass of hot jasmine tea, that we would head out of town, while it was still dark, while Venus was just beginning to hang in the sky, while the milky way was slowly fading.
Even though my father didn’t want me to be like him, he took me with him everywhere. To the ruins, to the fortresses, down river valleys, and up narrow gulley and deep shadowed canyon paths. He wasn’t in search of her. Rather, he was in search of her past. Where did she live? Behind the treasury, of course. How did they bring her water? In channels hewn out of limestone and marble, quarried by prisoners of war from distant campaigns of pacification and indoctrination. What did she eat? Those same goat cheese and quince jam sandwiches you made for yourself this morning. He would analyze it all even though he was standing in front of the wavy-haired stalactite Emperor pointing to the valley below, brightened out of the cave’s dark mouth as if it were only a movie screen and we the temporary observers.
My father. My father wasn’t interested in the bakeries, so he would send me to get the bread once I was old enough. There, a few buildings down from our house, was the hollowed cavern and a large counter where I would reach my few rial to and ask for three lengths of bread. Behind the baker, standing next to the fully-stoked and roaring oven, stood the day laborers (they were always silent men): One grabbing the baked and bubbled bread off the ceiling of the oven, the other shuffling it in. I can still feel the fresh smell of well baked dough waft first past and then through my nose. “Ah!” Yes. Even in that bread line, as I reached out for the lengths that the baker had slid into some sheets of newspaper, she would line up behind me, her head covered with a pattern of slight, paisley-like, miniature flowers, a lock of hair curving carefully toward her bow-like eyebrows. She would smile – but only with her eyes, her youthful curiosity wondering whether one day I would ever keep my promise to recognize her for who she was – more than just the next girl in line.
Many years later, when we were finally together, my father didn’t accept that her and I could be together and neither did I allow it to last. And so it was with all the girls. Until he died. He. He died in the diaspora of his homeland surrounded by those in the diaspora of theirs, them all watching plays inspired by Layla and Majnun and Omar Khayam. “Tell me. Where is he now?” “Tell me.”
But for those brief days. Those brief days when we were together. When our spirits touched. When she lay her self-naked back on the edge of the bed for me to take. For those brief days when we were together and Her completeness bent to receive me – me. I Her Emperor. To sit on Her Throne. “Mmm.” We, when we were united, we were the lovers hewn into the Heavens, glittering in spheres above – beyond our own experience – sparkling shadows of our own lumination.
We. We felt as no other lovers felt. We were certain of our destiny. Certain of our presence. Of our divine role as those chosen to be more and better than others. We would sit in the evening on the porch of my working class home and I would see her slink forward, compelling her eyes to refuse to see the utter poverty in which I compelled my student mind to rest. For her, despite the way we held each other any time we made love, despite the way we embraced each other each time we needed consoling, and despite the way we were professionally certain of our convictions each time we solved a problem, it was just not good enough. “Not good enough.”
Many years later when a judge called me up and had his secretary whisper that into my ear, I remembered that stinging condemnation. “Not good enough,” she was whispering. Whispering: “Don’t you remember when I looked at you in the bread line? When we hung our feet into the cool waters? When we stood in front of the hunting scene hewn into the rocks of Hamadan? Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember how you dreamed of me forever when I asked you to come to me in the maid’s chamber? I didn’t care then how old you were then. I didn’t care because I knew you already were royalty and I knew you were destined to be a King. I knew it with a certainty. But this? This is your empire?”
Oh I. I was completely oblivious. My eyes had become glazed by images of Socialist Realism. I had come to the thought that the meek were the ones who really inherited the earth. I had come to the idea that royalty and riches were all good, but true love would make the difference no other would be able to make. “You can’t purchase love,” I remember telling her. “Oh yes you can,” she replied with great certainty. “Yes you can.” And she bent her head away remembering that she had been promised by someone else to a rich man, a man on his way to being an urban planner, and that she was betraying him for me. She too, had come to forget.
Forget. Those instances when we woke up in the slums instead of in each others arms. Those moments were uncomfortable to both of us. It was in those moments where the young buds of wild roses that had begun to grow along our pores were quenched by the gushing waters of could have beens and “This is not how it should have been.” My kingly manners belied the realities around me. I had come to assume the role but to refuse the inheritance. She of course, wanted the inheritance too. The inheritance of a certain destiny among the classes that she knew she should be a part of. But that was not enough for her. No. Nor, it turned out, for me.
Soon I found myself alone. I found that our fleeting touch, our pedestal, had been pulled away from under us by the dreams of the poor and impoverished. We were becoming them, and they were becoming us and she couldn’t accept that. Not with me. Not through me. Not under me. No. She didn’t want the ticket to happiness that I offered her. And I? I wouldn’t give her a green card. That’s what had come of our love. I remembered all that as I sat on my barely sheeted mattress and smoked my Pall Malls and Benson & Hedges. I remembered that as I wished for the sweet, dark, tobacco from the highlands. And I knew what she was unwilling to accept. The promises made to us when we were tied as spirits; those promises were gone. Our throne had been taken. Our palaces were pillaged. Our lawns had become staging grounds for soup kitchens.
And so I sat. I sat and wondered. I wondered and I remembered. And in my ear I heard the waters of the poems. The admonition: “Sit on your hands, and lose everything.” And the call: “Listen down into my core and hear the song of lovers and of truths.” But, I couldn’t do anything else but sit. I sat. I sat and I read poetry. I sat and I read poetry and I smoked. I smoked more and more. Each puff, each inhalation, was an addition. Each puff, each inhalation, was an affirmation that the beautiful scents of her dew that had come to rest in my lungs during the morning of my life were now burnt away; as if I had been the audience in a movie theatre and my lungs the stage in a play that was bent on being terminated for the benefit of the poor. The coals on my pipe glowed under the noon-day sun and they turned burnt orange in the middle of the night. They were light. And me, I was eternally feeling the fire of emptiness, of loss, of unkempt solitude.
I started to wander the bleak and empty streets. Whether it was Paris, or Bilbão, or Tokyo, or Philadelphia; I wandered. I spoke to speak to the birds. I imagined the clouds painting what could only have been for me. Battleships and star fighters, palaces and honor guards. I stood there under the flag waiting for the time to be where my promised destiny would be fulfilled; where I would be King. The dogs barked messages in morse-code ordering me to fulfill my destiny. “Be our King! Be our President! Be our Emperor! Be our Father! But, why don’t you just Be!”
I found among the newspapers hints of my destiny’s past and I couldn’t accept it. Generals killed, prime ministers rounded up and shot, soldiers marked to duty and sent to the gas fields. Meanwhile, among the silent red oaks, the Honor Guard would continue its march; protecting quiescently the empty sarcophagus which continued daily to fill with the souls of lives wasted on other peoples’ ideals and dreams. Lives unfulfilled. Loves lost. Emptied. Bereft of meaning. Silent. The click, click of thirteen steps; the sliding drill and turn of boots; the slow but certain slap of rifle and hand. Dark, dank, eyes staring blindly behind sunglass shades – army issue; while above them and below them the tombstones continued to bud out of the soil, each in rank and file surrounding their great general, their great leader, their great father – now too, dead.
In those days after she had left me for not good enough, I began to hear the wind speak through the leaves of summer nights, and the stars form themselves in constellations that came to exist only in my mind. The grasses whistled as I passed by, and the more I walked and searched for what would never be in my hands again, the more the trees drooped and the greater the sadness was that hung over the eaves of the towns I visited.
I no longer welcomed the company of my friends and my friends no longer cared for my company. I relished that I no longer belonged. The home that had been promised to us, even though in a slum, was sold as not good enough; and all my possessions that I had kept for the day where they could become the foundations and stones necessary for that grand palace became only a vision and were sold off as not worthy of being held by me or anyone. Most of the items I cared for the most, I just threw away, though. I sought to free my mind from the torture of what I had permitted to be done; yet, my mind refused to leave where it had fixed itself to be. As lovers tied in myth, my mind was tied in the reality of her presence, now gone. Wisps of willows in the British Council. Waters sploshing against the dampers in the central pool. The shouts of children in the school yard. My parents’ gossip over the lunch and dinner table. Waking up in the back seat to see the sun rise as we drove across the asphalt toward dirt roads and winding mountain passes.
And then, I don’t know how it happened, the Kings, they died. It may have been the day I took our last Persian carpets and sold them. The Isphahan and the Tabriz, the Shiraz and the Mashad. There were about 14 of them. One, so big that you could line the entire tent wall with it, surrounding your bride and her family with the security of the tent’s shade but providing them with the breezes that slipped over the floor, cooled then by the lambs’ wool woven into warp and weft. I stuffed those carpets into the back of my 1976 Volvo wagon, and drove them down to a miser carpet dealer somewhere downtown. On the tape deck I listened to President Carter’s speeches about Habitat for Humanity and Social Justice and I remembered his smile from the cover of Mad Magazine.
When I arrived at the carpet dealer he smiled and said, “I’ll give you $100 for each carpet and a bonus for being so generous.” He sat down in his chair and he listened to me rant and rave about how my parents were all crazy and the revolution shouldn’t have happened; and how these carpets were like jewels that deserved to be seen by people rather than rotting in the cellars of memories now lost. He smiled sharply again and promised that the carpets would be well cared for and drew a corporate checkbook out of a drawer to his right. He wrote out a check in the amount of two thousand bucks and handed it to me.
I took that money and I cashed it at a check cashing place in town. 6% service fee and an ID. Luckily, I still had an ID. For the last time in my life I signed my name on the back and there, on that day, I threw out the last vestiges of royalty and I packed my bag and walked out of the woods. Figuratively, that is, of course. I still did go to the woods. Even though I was far away, I could sit among the trees on the edge of the river and watch the King Heron dive for food while in the distance the oil refineries reflected ancient ruins in amber yellow and shivering white.
The trees. The trees rustled together to form cathedrals and temples, shrines to inner peace and spirituality. To certainty that man’s destiny lies not in material things but in connection to God, to spiritual beings, ghosts and goblins. Now and then I would see a rabbit run for shelter, and in the evenings the birds would gather and enshrine their day in plays on chatter. And in the mornings, after the sun had burned the fogs away and left the sky in a cold gray, every now and then I would see an owl swoop down to its hole just under me on the cliff above the water’s edge.
It was a quiet place where I had placed my despair. In the rustle of the rushes I could hear the water pushing past reeds in the rivulets built by Valerian’s soldiers all to water the fields of a still proud empire. Out in the distance, I heard the cars begin to move, carrying people to town. But here there were no dust clouds announcing their arrival from the other side of the mountain pass. Here the cars were clean, washed by the latest modification in car washes, the dust having slid off the most novel inventions in wax.
While I could remember how it was and how it had been, I also knew that it would never be again. I had not been good enough, and now I had sold the last of what had been more than good enough. I no longer had a carpet or a Qilim to sit on and I no longer had a blanket to my name. Finally I was free of her grip and I was able to walk out with a hope and a prayer that there could be something different for me out there. What, I did not know. It no longer mattered. I had no plans. I had placed my faith not in palaces nor in dreams; but in something I had not yet found, something greater than Man.
