Atiq Rahimi - A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear

I go back to my cushion under the window. Reaching one hand behind the colossus of candle wax, I open the curtains to let more light fall onto the carpet. Below me, the courtyard, alive with anxiety, awaits my mother’s arrival.

I collapse with exhaustion onto the flower-patterned cushion.

In the clear light of day, the black lines on the carpet seem blacker than ever, and its deep red background glows with the quintessence of red. Suddenly I realize that these carpets are woven from hatred and anger. Black against red! As though the carpet weavers twisted the red weft of their anger with the black warp of their hatred … Women carpet weavers … children …

I’m sick to death of carpets!

I turn away from the black dots inside the rectangles of the carpet and lean back against the cushion’s flowers.

Up on the ceiling, a spider has spun its web around the lampshade.

I lower my face into her hands. Her hands are frozen. They tremble. But they hold me so tenderly!

My mother. She got here an hour ago. In disguise, well concealed — underneath the local laundrywoman’s veil. She couldn’t risk anyone spotting how scared she was coming here.

At first even I didn’t recognize her. There was a knock on the door. From behind the curtain I could see it was a heavily veiled woman. With her was an old porter with a large carpet balanced on one shoulder. They entered the room with Mahnaz. The porter deposited the carpet in the corner and went out. Then Mahnaz left too, closing the door behind her. My mother took off her veil and examined her battered son with exhausted eyes, her troubled face lit up with a beautiful smile. But not a word escaped her lips, shut tight as always between those two tense brackets. And me, I shook. I shook deep down inside. I trembled in her arms. I could not speak. We stand together in silence. My head in her hands. I can hear her breath laboring in her chest. I can’t open my eyes. I imagine she has loosened her blouse to take her worn-out breast and place it between my dry lips.

Her hand, shaking with anxiety, hovers over the gash on my temple.

“At three this afternoon, a trafficker is coming here to take you to Pakistan wrapped up in this carpet …”

That’s all she says. I lift my head from her hands.

“Mother, but …”

“But what?”

Looking directly into her terrified eyes, I find that all that I wanted to say is reduced to a single word:

“Nothing.”

She hands me an envelope. Inside is my father’s address, together with a little money.

“Mother, where should I go?”

“Where else can you go?”

I put my father’s unbearable pride back in the envelope.

“But what about you? And Parwaneh? What about Farid?”

She looks away, taking my hand in hers. She clears her throat. Trying not to cry.

“Things will get better soon.”

I press her hand to get her to look at me. But she won’t. She stares down at the carpet. Perhaps, for the very first time, my mother grasps the hatred and anger that has gone into weaving this carpet.

“Mother, let’s both go!”

A bitter laugh shakes her tiny frame. Her eyes repeat her father’s words:

“Faith is better than a roof!”

The door opens. It’s Mahnaz.

“I’ve brought you some tea.”

She puts the tray down next to my mother and pours out two cups of tea. The brackets round my mother’s mouth relax, allowing a smile.

“I can’t thank you enough for your kindness … I’m so sorry we’ve caused you such trouble …”

Mahnaz hands my mother a cup of tea.

“Here, please have some tea. These days it’s important we all take care of each other.”

She stands up and leaves the room.

My mother stops staring at the door through which Mahnaz has just walked and turns to look straight into my eyes.

“What a kind woman! After you’ve left, I’ll give her a present.”

She soaks a sugar cube in her tea.

“Where is her husband?”

“He was executed.”

My mother takes the sugar cube out of her tea and drops it onto the saucer. It melts as quickly as her heart. Her horrified gaze travels out of the room to the corridor, where it alights on my battered shoes.

“May God be with him!”

She mutters something under her breath. Her trembling hands bring the sugarless tea to her anxious lips. She downs it in one gulp. As if she wants to wash the shame from her throat with hot tea. If she were at home, she’d get up and leave the room, she’d hold her hands under the cold tap, then she’d rewash the washed dishes, or rescrub Parwaneh’s immaculate school veil …

Yahya peeps his head around the door to stare at me and my mother.

“Yahya, come in.”

At the sound of my voice, the child steps into the room. But at the sound of his mother, he quickly goes back to Moheb’s room.

“She has a child?”

“Yes.”

My mother’s troubled eyes, looking more lost than ever before, scan the empty corridor anxiously. I dare not tell her that Yahya calls me “Father.”

“Mother, how did you find the trafficker?”

“Your uncle found him,” she says, her gaze still lost in the corridor.

“How much money does he want?”

“His payment is that carpet. We don’t have the money, so it’s the only thing I could think of.”

“Mother …”

She puts the cup back on the tray, drained of tea, filled with sadness.

The way she looks at me makes me lose track of what I want to say. She lifts her sky-blue skirt from the flower-patterned cushion, and stands up.

“I have to go. The laundry-woman is waiting for her veil.”

“No, Mother, I can’t go without you.”

“You must go. I’ll bring Parwaneh and Farid with me once I sell the house.”

I can hear the doubt in her voice.

She takes up the veil from a corner of the room.

“I’ve forgotten how to put it on!”

She laughs a small, bitter laugh. A laugh that makes me shiver. She adjusts the veil over her hair. The brackets around her mouth shake.

“Mother, I’m coming with you.”

She covers her face, as though she hasn’t heard what I said.

“Mother, I can’t just leave without seeing Farid and Parwaneh …”

She brings her grief-stricken hands out from under her veil and presses them against my heart. My voice fails. My eyes fill with tears. I put my face in her hands. My mother’s broken voice emerges from behind the folds of her veil:

“May God watch over you …”

Why does she move away? Isn’t she going to kiss me goodbye? I need to look into her eyes again, I need to see the brackets that muffle her cries. I stumble toward her. I reach out to touch the veil that is covering her eyes but I cannot feel the exhausted face it hides. The veil is wet. My mother is crying. Crying without a sound. She is crying between those two brackets. She is crying under her veil. My mother is rinsing the laundry-woman’s veil with her tears.

She takes another step away. Her whole body is shaking under her veil. She moves into the corridor. She searches for her shoes. I stand there, lost, like a button dropped on the black and red patterns of the carpet. Yahya and Mahnaz come out of Moheb’s room. My legs won’t move. Without a look, without a smile, my mother says to Mahnaz, “God be with you … May God reward …”

Her words are swallowed by her veil. My feet have been sewn to the carpet by the threads of hatred and anger that were woven together by all those nameless women and children. My mother is gone.

My feet are sewn to the carpet.

My heart breaks at the sound of the door to the terrace closing behind her.

“Mother …”

My voice breaks.

The carpet is sewn to my feet.