Atiq Rahimi - A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear

Her eyes, hidden by her hair, still avoid mine.

What else is she hiding?

She leaves. In the privacy of her room, she lifts the weight of my questioning gaze from her worn-out body, and sits down.

All at once, the scent of my mother evaporates from the corridor.

If I didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be here.

If I wasn’t here, Mahnaz would cry her eyes out; she would go wild with grief. Instead, she pens in her tears and her fury. Instead, she immolates her anguish in a pit at the bottom of her heart, until she’s alone again.

Just like my mother. Only once did I ever see her cry — on the day my father took another wife. My mother appealed to my uncle — her brother — who was close to my father. My uncle laughed in her face. He sided with my father. My mother sobbed and wailed. And then my grandfather gave her a little talisman, something Da Mullah Saed Mustafa had given him a long time ago. From that day on, whenever my mother felt her fury rise, she put the talisman between her teeth and bit down on it as hard as she could. Clamped down on her gag, my mother’s twisted mouth would not let out a cry. Her eyes lit up with fear, she’d make herself busy with menial tasks in the kitchen. Sometimes, she’d even rewash the dishes. After a while, she’d perform her ablutions and say a prayer of atonement.

I never understood what it was exactly that she needed to purge: anger or hate? Pride or humiliation?

My mother would say that all the water in the world had sprung from her tears.

“Have some grapes, Father!”

Yahya, bearing a bunch of grapes, has slipped in quietly; he crosses his legs and sits down next to me. I pull myself up on the cushion.

“Where’s your mother?”

“In the kitchen.”

I take a grape from the bunch and drop it into my mouth. Yahya holds the grapes up in front of me like an offering.

I wonder whether Mahnaz told her mother-in-law anything about me that could have made her angry and fear for her honor.

I stand up.

“Honor”: what an honorless word it is!

I must talk to Mahnaz. Why has she gone to so much trouble, and fought with her mother-in-law, for my sake? Why does she want to protect me, no matter what the cost?

Maybe she won’t protect me. Maybe this is all a trap. She wants something from me. But what? Am I stuck here? Why would she want to keep a strange man hidden in her house? So we can have an affair on the sly? After all, she’s certainly very intimate with her brother. She puts her breast in his mouth …

No. I can’t stay here a minute longer! I move toward the corridor. Clasping the bunch of grapes, Yahya stares at my clumsiness.

How could I think of Mahnaz like that! Why can’t I believe that a woman could rescue a strange man without any ulterior motive? Maybe rescuing me is an attempt to redress the balance since she couldn’t save her husband. Maybe by helping me, she’ll reclaim her dignity.

I sit down on the cushion again.

For the sake of Mahnaz and her secret, I’ve abandoned my mother — left her walled up alone with her fears all night long; I’ve condemned Parwaneh to stare from her window, hopelessly, for hours on end; I’ve left Farid, dejected, waiting outside my bedroom door …

I take the bunch of grapes from Yahya.

The mystery of Mahnaz is hidden in the lock of hair that she keeps having to tuck behind her ear.

I give myself up to the lifeless flowers on the cushion.

I’ve never felt this close to a woman before apart from my mother and Parwaneh. I’ve never been part of another woman’s life. No other woman has ever entered my consciousness like this. In the space of just one night, I have gone through a thousand different emotions with this woman, as though something momentous has happened between us. She has given me shelter. My life is in her hands. It is hers.

Yahya picks grapes off the bunch I hold in my hands.

“Dear Mahnaz, why do you want to help me?”

She’ll shrug her shoulders. She won’t say a word. She’ll give me a look that says, “What a stupid question! If you don’t want to be here — leave! Go on — God be with you!”

“I’m asking you because I need to know what’s going on — and I need to get to know you, too …”

“Why?”

“In your eyes, in the things you say, there’s a secret that I see in my mother’s eyes … a secret I’ve never …”

With two fingers she’ll lift the hair from the side of her face and she’ll laugh at me! She’ll smile at me and shake her head. She’ll assume I’m trying to catch her out … that it’s impossible for me to believe a woman can have integrity … that …

“Farhad, I’m so sorry to have left you on your own all this time!”

Her voice shocks me from my reverie. I try to sit up on the cushion, then I stand up, clutching the stripped bunch of grapes that I pass, stupidly, from one hand to another. I feel sure that Mahnaz has been waiting outside the door reading my mind, hearing every word of our imaginary conversation. I turn scarlet with shame.

“I’m making something to eat.”

With unsteady steps, I cross the carpet toward her. Without having a clue of what I’m about to say to her, I hear myself speak:

“My mother … Please don’t go to any more trouble … She’ll come as … soon as possible …”

“Of course, but in the meantime, let’s have something to eat.”

She stares at the naked bunch of grapes I’m holding in my hands. I move a little closer to her. My heart pounds in my chest.

“I’ve caused you so much trouble … I hope that … Yahya’s grandmother …”

A grim smile settles on her lips.

“Don’t worry about that.”

She looks away from the shriveled branch in my hands and peers down the corridor.

“As I told you last night, my husband was murdered when he was in prison …”

“Peace be with him …” I say, softly.

“And now my husband’s family wants me to marry my brother-in-law … But that’s not what I want … I keep telling them I don’t feel as though I’m really a widow. No one has seen my husband’s body … since, in prison, they bury the dead in unmarked, communal graves …”

A sudden shiver goes right through me. I don’t know whether it’s a tremor of fear, or hatred, or anger — or from thinking thoughts like these about Mahnaz. I look down, away from her face, and stare at the carpet.

“Now all of my husband’s family is going to Pakistan … But I don’t want to go …”

Mahnaz’s delicate feet blend into the black patterns on the carpet. The patterns have neither ending nor beginning. These elaborate octagonal designs are infinitely intertwined and interwoven with endless other octagons. The octagons give birth to rectangles, the rectangles give birth to tiny dots …

I snap out of staring at the carpet when I catch sight of Mahnaz’s feet moving a little to the left. The lock of hair hides the left side of her face. I look into her eyes. She is waiting for an answer to a question that I have not yet been asked.

The sudden loud hiss of the pressure cooker takes Mahnaz’s questioning gaze out of the room.

I stay behind to keep company with her unspoken words.

Why on earth did I keep my mouth shut? Why didn’t I say something helpful in response to Mahnaz’s terrible story? Maybe this was the first time she’d confided this painful secret to anyone. And all I did was stand there, red-faced and dumbstruck, staring like an idiot at the carpet!

Mahnaz didn’t just want to tell me about her suffering. Like any other woman, like my mother, she wanted someone to understand her pain. She wanted to share her distress with somebody else. The last thing she needs is another Moheb in her life — someone deaf to her cries and dead to the world!