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We sat in two rows facing each other in a black van. We were twelve men, six on each side. The bearded guard covered our eyes with large scarves. Like a magician he pulled a scarf out of his pocket, wrapped it around someone’s eyes, tied it tight at the back, pulled the next one out and then the next. I was the last person, the twelfth one. The guard, who was already tired of this tedious job, covered my eyes carelessly. I could see everything; the scarf was slipping down on my nose.
There was no window in the back, but I could see the driver’s window; he had rolled it down. It was September and the breeze was fragrant. Damascus Roses bloom in this month, I thought. Around this time of the year schools open. I remembered how I always walked to school early in the morning and felt the same fragrant breeze on my face. Even then I was conscious of the Damascus Roses.
I was happy that my blindfold was loose and I could see everything.
The van bumped up and down. It was a country road, no asphalt. I saw the olive trees passing by. It was not dawn yet. Everything was gray, not quite dark and not quite bright.
Some of us were dozing off. Tilted heads wobbled on thin necks. One of us hummed a forbidden song, a love song about a revolutionary who asks his lover to kiss him good-bye, because he is going to be executed:
"Kiss me, Kiss me for the last time ... May God protect you! ... I’m going to my fate ..."
We couldn’t talk; I’m sure we would have, if there had been a wall between the guards and us, but there wasn’t. We couldn’t look at each other either and talk with our eyes; our eyes were covered. Mine was not; my scarf was loose and now on my nose.
It’s not that we had no idea where they were taking us. If we could talk, we would share our guesses. The strong possibility was: transferring us to a different prison, the one which was outside the city, the worst, the one with modern torture equipment. The second possibility was: taking us somewhere for work, to build a new prison, maybe. The third was: to take us somewhere in the desert, hand us machine guns and force us to fire at the other political prisoners—those who were sentenced to death.
I was sure that the others were considering the same scenarios behind their black blindfolds or in the dark abyss of their dreams. There was no other possibility. Why would they drag us out of our cell before dawn, cover our eyes and take us to who knew where? None of us had been tried yet; all of us were in a temporary situation—the stage after the tortures and before the trial. My intestines, which were bleeding as the result of a certain method of anal torture, had only recently begun to heal. They couldn’t possibly execute us; that was out of the question.
The olive trees were passing. When I was little, every summer we went to this resort area by the sea. My father had an old VW Bug. My sister and I sat in the little hollow space under the rear window. We sat face-to-the window and watched the road. All the way I looked at the olive trees passing at sides of the road. They were white, light green, gray, green-gray and white again, strange colors for trees. My father hummed the old forbidden song all through the way: "Kiss me, kiss me, for the last time ... May God protect you! I’m going to my fate...." My mother peeled off the tender skin of a slim, green cucumber, cut it vertically into four long pieces, poured salt on them and gave each of us a piece to eat. She peeled off another cucumber and then another, till our little car smelled fresh with the grassy scent of young, tender cucumbers. Sometimes my father had a bad headache and Mother laid the cool, green skins of cucumber on his forehead. He looked like an Indian chief in the western movies and we laughed at him. Cucumber skins absorb the pain, my mother believed. When Father felt better, he hummed his old love song which he remembered from when he was a rebel.
I loved the part where he raised his voice dramatically, became sentimental, and told his lover that he was lost in the middle of an unknown sea:
"In the midst of the storm, I’m wandering with the boatmen.... We have sacrificed our lives, that’s why we can’t keep our promises...."
The van bumped up and down. The sky was still dark; dawn was not to come. One of us was snoring and that made me remember my dream. Last night I dreamed the strangest dream of all my past three years in prison. I dreamed about this woman that I knew once, one of our friends, the woman whose whereabouts I do not know and probably I’ll never know. She was my friend’s wife. She fell in love with someone else and they got divorced. But the lover left her after a few months. She was lonely and was living in a dark apartment facing a wall. When she looked at her window, there was this wall, right in front of her; a bricklayer was busy working on it all the time, twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, laying bricks on top of bricks. The wall grew taller and taller everyday. It got to a level where she couldn’t see the sky anymore.
After the lover left, I used to go and visit her. She was quiet most of the time, depressed maybe, because of what had happened to her, and the wall. I did all the talking. I wanted to keep her current. Those were the crucial days: a revolution, a war and several coups and assassinations, one after another. I considered it my revolutionary duty to visit her and not let her become politically passive. Was I attracted to her? In a strange way, not quite sexual—maybe. She was a mystery to me, completely closed, living in a world unknown and inaccessible. I wanted to open her up, unfold her, but I didn’t know how. I became so easily obsessed with my own verbal ability that instead of making her talk I did all the talking myself. I began the conversation, then talked so much that my own words drowned me in a whirlpool of never-ending monologue. Most of the time I found myself spinning in this whirlpool, talking forever, while she just sat there motionless, listening to me, not even blinking. This passivity encouraged me even more and I plunged deeper into myself, believing that I was impressing her by my eloquence.
Night after night I visited her and talked. I didn’t learn anything about her. She remained closed up in her many folds to the end. One evening I stayed late. I finished talking about politics and started a new subject: men and women. Then I led the subject to sex and gradually to more private matters. I even asked her some personal questions like whether she’d ever had good sex with her husband or the man she loved, which she didn’t answer. Then I talked about my own sexual life, my ex-wife, our unhappy marriage, and so on. At two o’clock in the morning I asked her if she wanted to sleep with me. She said no. I insisted; she seemed quite detached and cold, absent in a way. But, for some reason (maybe extreme depression) she was completely passive. She could have asked me to leave, which I’d have done immediately, but she didn’t. So I kept insisting.
By three in the morning she was extremely tired. I’ll never forget her eyes. They were red, like someone who has cried for hours. She sat on her bed, leaning back against the wall, at times even dozing off. I talked constantly, but she was withdrawn, going somewhere far away from me. In the short intervals when I stopped talking, we heard the bricklayer, laying bricks on top of bricks. He used his trowel to spread the mortar, flatten it and lay another brick. It was dark. We couldn’t see the wall, but we could feel it.
At four, I persuaded her to sleep with me. She was exhausted. I had exhausted her. She gave up resisting only because she was tired and wanted to get rid of me and get some sleep. She said, "Ok." No, she put it this way; she said, "You can have me, come; then go and leave me alone."
I don’t know what had gotten into me that night. I wasn’t in love with her. I didn’t want sex either. I just wanted to break the ice, go inside her, unfold her, understand her, maybe. I made love to her; no, not that. Whatever it was, it was unpleasant. She was frozen under me, mummified. The moment I entered her, I froze too. When I buttoned up my pants, I felt awkward, ugly. The last thing she told me before I left, the last thing she told me ever, was, "Turn the lights out!"
It was dawn when I left her apartment. The wall was so tall I couldn’t see the top. The bricklayer was up there in the sky. Walking in the gray alley, I pictured her lying in bed, the palm of her right hand under her cheek, facing the wall, witnessing how it was growing tall, blocking the bright morning sun, reflecting only a dim grayish light.
I saw her later, several times, in the meetings and mass demonstrations. She acted like nothing had ever happened between us. She never came close to me, but didn’t hide herself either. I was there, one among many, a friend, not a close one though; an acquaintance to whom you never talk, but you may work with or share ideas. Several times I was going to tell her that I needed to talk to her, but I never did. What did I want to tell her? Did I want to apologize? Did I want to make sure that I hadn’t hurt her feelings? Or maybe I just wanted to ask one question: "What happened to that wall? Is he still laying the bricks?"
But I never talked to her again, and it happened that the bearded guards attacked all of our organizations and houses. Most of us got arrested, some escaped from the country, and a few committed suicide.
I don’t know her whereabouts. Did she get arrested or managed to escape? She couldn’t possibly have stayed in that apartment; although the wall was tall, the guards could still find her.
So last night I dreamed this strange dream. There we were, both of us, standing in front of her window, looking at the wall. The bricklayer was up there laying the bricks.
I said, "I’ve come here to —."
She said, "Sh ... sh ... don’t talk, just listen."
I listened. It was the sound of the bricklayer’s trowel, flattening the mortar and then dumping a brick on the mud. It was a constant, monotonous sound.
I said, "How tall is it going to get?"
She said, "Who knows?"
I said, "How do you feel now?"
She said, "Calm, I’m calm."
Now the bricklayer fell down. It took him quite a while to get to the ground. His scalp opened wide like a ripe, red watermelon and his brain smoothly slipped out. I screamed, clawed my face and cried; I yelled and howled like a baby. Like an orphan, like somebody lost, I shed tears. It was as though I had no hope in this world whatsoever. She looked at me, calm; she didn’t even blink. Now she kept looking at the wall again. I thought to myself, She has never forgiven me. She will never forgive me and can never be kind to me. At that moment in my dream the only thing which could save me from that intolerable misery, that feeling of total ruin, was her tender affection. But she didn’t give it to me. I stood there crying like a baby and she, a woman, a potential mother, watched the wall as though nothing had happened.
When I woke up, two bearded guards were standing at the iron gate of the cell. The small eye-window on the ceiling was black. The night was still deep. The guards told us to leave our things in the cell and get out. It was a long way to dawn when we got in the van.
The olive trees were white, light green, gray, green-gray and white, tender twigs bending with the gentle breeze. One of us snored. I knew who he was. He was always sleeping. In the past three years he had gradually reached a stage where nothing was important to him anymore. Transferring to a worse jail? So be it. Building a prison with our own hands? So be it. Being executed? So be it. He was not himself anymore. Long ago in the torture chambers, when they took his soul out of him, they took all the pain out at the same time. He no longer felt the pain, so they stopped bothering him. Now, not knowing where we were going and not caring either, in the dark vacuum of his meaningless dreams he was snoring.
The van bumped up and down. Now I could see the desert; it was the end of the road; the van stopped. So this is the case, I thought, we are going to kill our own friends. My heart climbed my throat and reached my mouth. Am I able to do this? How? How can I fire at my own comrades? At anyone? Friend or no friend? Am I able to fire at all? What about the others? Can they do this? What if we resist? They will kill us on the spot. Who cares, huh? Do the authorities care? The bearded guards can tell them that we rioted and they had to kill us. Meanwhile the guards came into the van and removed our eye-bands. We looked around, at the desert, at each other. One of us suddenly shouted,
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(illustration by Victor Velez)
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"Comrades, they are going to execute us! "
A guard hit him on the mouth with the back of his hand. His big gold ring with the picture of the Great Leader carved on it tore our friend’s lips; blood gushed out. Then they pushed us out of the van. The same friend with his mouth full of blood shouted again,
"They are going to kill us before our trial, comrades! This is against the law!"
This is impossible, I thought—out of the question. I looked around; there was no other van, no other prisoners, no one but us, the guards, and the endless desert all around, bluish-gray, breathing silently in the last minutes of the night.
They prodded and hit us with the butts of their machine guns. Where are they taking us? I thought. What’s the difference? Why don’t they kill us right here? Then I felt my knees buckling under me and I almost collapsed. I’d never have collapsed if I hadn’t seen the wall. There it was, in the middle of the desert, the tall brick wall, reaching the sky. It wasn’t just a wall, any wall, it was the wall of my nightmares, the wall behind the woman’s window, the wall that the bricklayer was building, the wall that he fell off, the wall that made me cry in the last dream of my life.
They dragged us to the wall and made us stand there facing it; they stepped back. We stood face to the wall, our noses almost touching it. I smelled the fresh mortar and heard the monotonous sound of the trowel smoothing the mud. The sound came from the very top of the wall, from the sky, saying something like, swoosh ... swoosh ... swoosh.... It was as if we stood there forever.
I felt the fragrant breeze of September. I heard my father humming, "In the midst of the storm ... wandering with the boatmen..." I saw the green-gray leaves of the olive trees waving with the breeze. I felt the cool soothing touch of the cucumber skins on my forehead. I touched the tall, dark, shadowy body of the woman I hurt, the only woman I ever hurt in my life. Then I heard the clicks. One of us whispered, "O God, have mercy on us!" Someone else muttered, "Mother!" The comrade with the bloody mouth shouted, "Long live the Revolution!" And they fired.
We sat in two rows again, on the way back, six men on each side. They covered our eyes with the same black scarves. I was the first one. The bearded guard tied the scarf so tight that it hurt my head. I couldn’t see anything. It was complete blackness. But I knew that some of us had fainted at the wall and been dragged into the van. A couple of us were wet with pee and vomit. Nobody hummed anymore. Nobody dozed off—even the friend who slept all the time. I couldn’t see the olive trees; I didn’t want to see them even if I could; I didn’t want to see anything. The only thing I wanted was the cell; I wanted to go back to the cell and stay there forever. I thought, It’s good that we are going back to our cell. I felt a warmth and security I hadn’t felt for years. I thought, after a while we will recover from this false execution and I’ll ask my friends if they also noticed the wall in the desert, if the wall was really there.
The van bumped up and down, taking us to our cell. I heard the sun slowly coming out from behind the remote edge of the desert, lighting the world. I felt its fragrant honey taste in my mouth, the taste of life. But I could not see the dawn; the black scarf separated me from the sun.
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--Farnoosh Moshiri is the author of two novels:
At the Wall of the Almighty and The Bathhouse
Beacon Press, 2001). This story is used with
permission form her recent collection of short
stories The Crazy Dervish and the
Pomegranate Tree and other stories
(Black Heron Press, 2004).
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