Atiq Rahimi - A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear

“Mother …”

I am nothing but a pattern in a carpet.

“Father!”

…?!

“Father!”

Everything has gone black.

I have passed out on the carpet. When I come to, Yahya is sitting down next to me.

My mother is gone. She has left with my last sight of her hidden away under her veil.

Yahya hands me a glass of water. I disentangle myself from the patterns on the carpet and answer Yahya’s kind look with a smile. In agony, I haul myself up again onto the cushion under the windowsill. I drink the water that Yahya has brought for me.

“Where’s your mother?”

“In the kitchen.”

I get up. The smell of onions leads me to the kitchen. With her back to the door, Mahnaz is busy slicing them into rings. For a moment, standing by the door, I watch her in silence. What am I doing here? Why am I shaking?

Mahnaz senses my presence. She turns toward me. With the end of her sleeve she wipes the onion-tears from her eyes, and smiles at me. This is the very first time I’ve seen her smile. She smiles to make me understand that her tears have been caused by onions, not by grief. I try to smile back. I manage a hopeless parody of a smile.

Mahnaz slides the onions into a saucepan. As always, the smell of frying onions makes me hungry. The kitchen fills with the aroma of my mother’s cooking. As always, my heart beats faster. I want to take a piece of bread and steal some of the fried onions from the pan. I want to put my hands on Mahnaz’s shoulders. I want to tuck that lock of hair behind her ear myself.

“You must be hungry.”

“The smell of frying onions always makes me hungry.”

I lean against the door. I find myself imagining I’ve lived in this house for years, that I’ve known Mahnaz for years, that Yahya has called me “Father” for years, that my mother has visited us here for years. For years I’ve wanted to go away, but I haven’t been able to. For years I’ve been asking her the same question:

“Why don’t you come away with me?”

Mahnaz stops stirring the onions. My heart thumps. She turns to smile at me. A bitter smile.

“Dear Farhad, life is not that simple!”

She turns back to the pan. The smell of frying onions makes the house seem more homely.

“If I go to Pakistan, I’ll have to marry my brother-in-law.”

I stop leaning on the door and move over to the wall.

“But where is your family?” I ask her.

She pours boiling water into the pan, and her voice comes from the middle of a cloud of steam.

“Only my brother Moheb is left with me. The rest have gone to Germany.”

She stirs the onions with a wooden spoon.

“I’ve not been in touch with them for years.”

She takes a deep breath.

“When I was born …”

She places the lid on the pan.

“… I didn’t scream, I didn’t smile, I didn’t cry …”

She takes a few chicken wings out of a bag.

“… They all thought I’d been born deaf and dumb. So when I was a little girl they arranged for me to be married to my cousin. He was deaf and dumb too. When I got older, though, it turned out that I was neither deaf nor dumb. But by then it made no difference to them …”

She washes the chicken wings under the tap.

“… My father died when I was young. I was never close to my mother. When I grew up, I had no choice but to marry my cousin. So I ran away and married Yahya’s father.”

She lifts the lid and pours some more water in the pan.

“The night when all of my family fled to Pakistan, my mother came and left Moheb behind on our doorstep.”

With my back to the wall I slide down slowly until I’m crouching on the floor. Once again, the story of Mahnaz’s life reduces me to silence. Once again, anything I could say seems completely pointless.

I forget the smell of frying onions. For some time, I stare at the black locks of her hair falling down her back.

“Is there anything I can do to help you?” I ask her without thinking.

She gives me a painful smile.

“Nothing!”

Even her throwaway “Nothing” bears the weight of a history that demands to be known.

“Why don’t we go to Iran? Your husband’s family couldn’t find you there.”

She remains silent for a moment. Tipping the chicken wings into the pan, without turning around to look at me, she says, “Farhad my dear, my husband’s family are very strange people. The type for whom blood and family honor are one and the same. Don’t get yourself mixed up with us. I’ll be fine here.”

She puts the lid back on the saucepan.

In a corner of the kitchen, my heart fills with love.

All of us sit around the tablecloth spread on the floor of Moheb’s room. All of us eat in silence. Chicken wings have taken the place of words. As if we had already said all there is to be said. No more questions to be put, no more answers to be heard. We are all waiting for the trafficker to bang on the door.

A knock. Yahya gets up and runs down the corridor, a chicken wing in his hand. The sound of his small feet echoes from the courtyard. He reaches the street door. Having answered the door, he rushes back out of breath.

“It’s a man who says he’s come to buy a carpet.”

I jump to my feet without thinking. My heart plummets. My legs go weak.

“It’s the trafficker,” I tell Mahnaz, “I can’t go with him!”

Mahnaz gets up and tucks her hair behind her ear.

“Put on your shoes,” she says in her usual even tone.

I stare deep into her eyes. But she turns her head away. I want to put my life in her hands. Mahnaz leaves the room. Moheb starts to moan. I begin to cry inside, in silence.

Mahnaz takes the trafficker to the room where I spent the night.

“Father, will you come back soon?” Yahya asks, grasping my hand, greasy with chicken.

I follow the trafficker into the room without even washing my hands. He has spread our carpet across the floor. From it rises the sound of all the guests who’ve ever walked across it. Our best carpet. Its color seems even redder than before, its “elephant-foot” patterns even bigger and blacker.

“Hey, Brother, let’s give it a go.”

Mahnaz is standing by the door. Yahya leans his little head against the green flowers patterning his mother’s skirt. My unsteady frame collapses into the middle of the carpet under Mahnaz’s inscrutable gaze. The trafficker swiftly rolls me up into the carpet saying “Ya Ali!” as he heaves us both up onto his strong, broad shoulders and takes a first step. From the sound of his feet I can work out when we leave the room and when we reach the courtyard. Where is he going? Where is he taking me? No, first I have to say goodbye to Mahnaz! The street door is opening. No!

“Mahnaz!”

My cry is smothered in the patterns of our carpet. I try to struggle free.

“Brother, be quiet! We’re outside in the street.”

“I don’t want to go! Hey, do you hear me? Mahnaz! Yahya!”

My cries are cut off by the sound of a car door opening. The trafficker brings the carpet down from his shoulders and slides it inside. He shuts the door. I want to move, I want to get free of these carpet patterns.

“Father! Father!”

Yahya’s cries chase the sounds of our guests from this carpet forever.

I have no idea anymore whether the patterns on our carpet have gotten bigger, or whether I’ve gotten smaller. I’m running along the black lines of the patterns. My father stands over me. He is big. Immense. He won’t allow my feet to slip off the black patterns onto the red background of the carpet. I’m running. I’m spinning. As if I am trapped in a labyrinth. The black patterns have neither beginning nor end. All the lines turn back on themselves. Octagons and rectangles. I am crying and running.