Atiq Rahimi - A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear

“Not having the password or the Party membership card is a crime in itself.”

“Oh no! My ID card and student card!”

Without thinking, I leap up and rush to the bathroom where I hurriedly search through my trousers and shirt pockets. Nothing. Dejected and exhausted, I return to the room. The woman is sitting on the cushion as calm as ever. Frantic with worry, I stay standing by the door.

“I have to go.”

“Without your ID?”

“They’ve probably chucked my documents in the sewer; they wouldn’t have hung on to them.”

“Are you suggesting you go and look for them now? They’re patrolling the streets.”

Confused, I take a few steps back to the cushion under the window. In complete disarray, I cry out under my breath:

“Mother!”

“I’ll fetch you something to eat,” the woman says as if she hasn’t noticed a thing.

She rises to her feet. Picking up the oil-lamp, she unsettles the silence of the dark passageway.

Like the melting wax of the candle on the windowsill, I sink down onto the cushion once more.

Alone again, I’m haunted by the image of my mother’s face, her worry hidden from my brother and sister because it’s still night. They must sleep. They’ve got to go to school in the morning. My mother paces back and forth behind the door to the street, praying all the while. The courtyard is taut with her anxiety. I must go, otherwise my mother will stay up all night.

“I have to go!”

My voice rends the cavernous silence of the room. I get up. My shadow shatters all over the walls and ceiling. Yahya’s mother comes in from the corridor, carrying a tray.

“I have to go!”

“Have something to eat first.”

The woman kneels down to pour the tea. Her manner as unruffled as ever, just like her untroubled gaze, her steady speech.

“My mother won’t be able to sleep.”

“If you leave now and fall into the hands of the soldiers, your dear mother will never sleep again.”

I am at her mercy. I feel like a child. Shaking as violently as my shadow, I sit down on the floor by the tray. The woman busies herself with the tea.

“Sister, I’ve caused you more than enough trouble already. You …”

The woman drops a sugar cube into a glass of tea and hands me some bread.

“Let me assure you, it’s impossible to imagine anything worse than what I’ve been through these past few years. There’s nothing darker than total darkness.”

Her even gaze travels slowly across my trembling shadow.

“A year ago, my husband was thrown into jail. Then came the news that he’d been executed. I haven’t told Yahya. He thinks his father has gone on a journey to a faraway city called Pul-e-Charkhi …”

“Why does he call me ‘Father’? Do I look like his father?”

“No, you’re nothing like him.”

“Then why?” I want to ask. Has he forgotten what his father looks like? Aren’t there any photos of his father in the house? What was going on when he announced, triumphantly, that he’d woken me out of my dreams?

Yahya’s mother slumps back against the wall and disappears into her shadow. Her eyes track the movement of my hand. I put the bread down on the tray. Her gaze locks on the bread.

“The young man who was with you in that hole is my brother. He’s not yet eighteen. He was in prison for three weeks. I don’t know what on earth they did to him there. His mind is gone. His hair turned white overnight. Now, he never says a word. Every night he wakes up, moaning and sobbing like a newborn child …”

She falls silent, her eyes fixed on my trembling hand as it replaces the glass of tea on the tray. In my mind’s eye I see her naked breast, as innocent as my mother’s, fill with tears.

“Two times they’ve called him up to the army. They’re convinced he’s faking. Each time he’s come back more damaged than before. All I can do now is try to hide him away.”

She tucks her hair behind one ear. Silence. As though she is waiting for me to start asking all those unasked questions. But I too am silent.

Then, abruptly, she gets up, loading all my questions, my fears, and my feelings onto the tray with the bread and the tea, and she carries them off into the darkness of the corridor.

Yahya’s mother comes back to say “Sleep well,” then leaves me with my quaking shadow. I focus on the image of her fingertips gathering up her hair. Fingertips that, when I’m most afraid, seem to sweep my fear away with that lock of hair she tucks behind one ear.

What is it about this simple gesture that leaves me mesmerized and tongue-tied — and banishes all my doubts?

It moves me because, through this effortless movement, she reveals herself to me. When her face is hidden by her hair, I worry that she’s anxious. But when she lifts it back, I can see she’s not afraid.

“You should beware of two things about a woman: her hair and her tears.”

God knows why my grandfather told my father that.

He muttered prayers to himself as he fingered three of his worry beads, then continued:

“Her hair will chain you and her tears will drown you!”

Another three beads, another three prayers, and then:

“That’s why it’s imperative they cover up their hair and their faces!”

He said this on the day my father decided to take a second wife. My mother wept — and then her face once again assumed its mask of fear.

My grandmother used to say that my mother was born with a terrified face, and it was the face I was used to. Whenever someone met her for the first time, they’d assume she was scared of them.

I couldn’t understand what it was exactly that made her appear so frightened. Was it because her face looked so drawn and thin? Or because of the dark circles under her eyes? Or because her mouth turned down at the corners? If my mother ever smiled, she would smile between the two deep lines cut into her face like the brackets around a sentence; if she ever cried, she would cry between brackets. In fact she lived her whole life between brackets …

But, one day, the brackets vanished. The terrified mask dropped from her face. And then, a few months later, my father took a second wife. No one asked why, because even if someone had dared to ask, my father would never have answered.

My father had no interest whatsoever in why my mother always looked so frightened. He couldn’t have, otherwise how could he have lived alongside a woman who always looked so terrified? Truth is, my father never loved my mother at all, he just fucked her. He’d get on top of her in the dark, close his eyes … and get on with it.

But what happened the day the fear vanished from my mother’s face to make my father think about taking another wife? Probably my father needed a woman to be scared of him in order to get turned on. And the day my mother stopped being terrified of having sex, my father’s desire vanished. So he had to get himself another wife. A younger wife who’d still be scared of sex.

And maybe the day my mother lost her fear of having sex was the first time she ever enjoyed it. The first and last time.

But it wasn’t long before she put her frightened mask back on. This time not because she was scared of having sex, but because she was terrified he’d leave her.

Tonight, lonelier than ever, my brave mother has placed her frightened face behind the street door while she waits for me to come home.

Her worn-out hands, free at night to be raised to beg God’s mercy, recite the prayer for safe return.

I must go.

“Where are you going?”

The woman’s voice hits me just as I reach the far side of the terrace. I can’t look at her face. I stare pathetically at the door in front of me, and weakly offer:

“I have to go home.”