Mahmoud Dowlatabadi - Missing Soluch

Mergan turned around and said, “There was some bread left in the bread basket!”

“Well I ate it.”

“You ate it? All of it? What about your brother and sister? Are they supposed to eat each other?”

Abbas bellowed, “How much was there anyway? Not even enough to feed a baby goat!”

Mergan replied, “So what do you want me to do? Turn myself into bread? There’s none left! Can’t you see?”

“Well, go borrow some from the neighbors. Go get some from Ali Genav. Can’t you walk?”

Mergan’s lips and eyelids began shaking from rage. She came closer, controlled the anger in her voice, and spoke directly at Abbas. “I can walk. But I can’t beg. Do you hear me?”

She began to walk away. Abbas shouted after her, “So I’ll sell my corkwood myself. I’ll take it to the market and sell it!”

Mergan, as she left, shouted, “Wake up your brother, Abrau. Take him with you. Drag him out from under his blanket!”

Abbas shouted after his mother, “I won’t give a single penny of what I get from selling the wood to anyone else. I’ll buy bread and eat it all myself!”

Mergan didn’t listen to him. She stood straight in the wind and made her way toward the outskirts of Zaminej.

No one had left their homes yet. Only Hajj Salem and Moslem were out and about. The two were leaning against a wall and were waiting for the sunshine to emerge. Moslem had his hands between his legs, and every now and then would raise and lower one or the other of his large bare feet. He was muttering to himself, “Ah … ah … the sun’s late! The sun’s late … It’s not coming out! Not coming. Ah? Papa? Isn’t the sun coming out?”

Hajj Salem replied, “Take it easy, you. Don’t blaspheme! God will be angry. Take it easy!”

Mergan walked past the father and his disheveled son and set out on the road. Outside Zaminej, the path that crossed the foothills of Boluk met with another road and extended to the city. Mergan walked away from the village. The sun was lost in the dry and lifeless cloud cover, clouds that could offer no hope to any villager. The only use of these clouds was to cover the sun. Their quality was only the intensity they gave to the cold, the edge they lent to the wind, making everything around feel forlorn. Beneath the clouds’ cold belly, the sand hills and salty wasteland were laid out; the surface of the land was seemingly sealed by a layer of ice. The face of the land was frozen into a scowl, as if an enemy of everyone. A grim-faced father, a dead child. Why could it not be reborn, remade? Why not a cloudburst, at least!

The road was scratched into the body of the wasteland, set in place like a shed snakeskin in the dry cold. The expanse was empty; all that remained from last year’s bushes were solitary tumbleweeds. Little clusters here and there that served to illustrate the wind’s blowing. Wind and wasteland, wasteland and wind. The road, wind, and wasteland. Loneliness and despair. Mergan’s bare feet and toes were lamenting the cold. Something more profound than pain coursed through her feet.

Mergan reached the edge of the salt river. The river flowed in seven streams, and each stream flowed softly and quietly like an ancient serpent. The water was low, almost nonexistent. The surface of the water was covered by ice. The ice was so thick, one could stand on it without breaking it. But to what end? On the other side of the river, there was nothing moving to distract her from her thoughts of Soluch. Nothing and nothing more. As if the land were evacuated of life. Nothing grazed, or even slithered. So where could Soluch have gone? And where was Mergan to go? Why had she come here? Why? What for? And even if she did see Soluch …

See him? See him! There he was. He was coming! Was it Soluch? He had appeared out of the ruins of the old mill and was coming! He had wrapped his cloak around himself and he was coming! It was him! Was it him? Or a dream? No! It was daytime. Clear as day. It was him. A small man’s frame, with a satchel.

She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. No! It was him. The sunken eyes, the drawn face, his heavy brow, his locked lips. The darkness of his face, and his threadbare cap. He’d come! He was coming closer. His bare feet bore his cloak-wrapped body closer and closer. He came softly. Like a shadow. His eyes were fixed on the dry ground before his feet as he came closer. He reached Mergan. Quietly. Wordlessly. As if she were not standing there, as if Mergan were not right there in front of him, as if she were no one to him. Nothing and more nothing. A shadow! He passed by Mergan’s dry eyes and walked toward the river. He rolled up his trousers. Silently and without a word, in the same manner as he had come. The shadow placed one foot on the ice. He walked lightly. As if he were floating. He moved, not step by step, but as if floating. The slow-moving shadow grew more distant. His cloak was blowing in the wind. He was growing distant, moving farther and farther away. Across the river, across the ice. A bed of ice now separated Mergan and Soluch, just a bed of ice. If only he would turn his head and look … but no. A shadow has no head. It kept going. A weary flight, made in the shortest distance. The last flicker of the floating shadow played upon the ground. It was far away. Far. Farther. Lightly, shapelessly, and without a form. Farther. A small shadow. A dot. It was about to disappear. It was gone. A wisp. Nothing.

Wasteland and wind. Wind and wasteland. Thoughts. Thoughts and the river.

Was it him?

Mergan opened her lips. She began to feel that the dryness of her eye sockets was giving way to moisture. Perhaps from the cold wind. What should she do? Should she stay? Should she wait? Go? Stay now and come back later? Let her eyes go and stay herself? Close her eyes? Yes, that would be better. Move her arms and shoulders? To shake off the layer of ice that had covered her? Yes. The cold. The cold moved her. She shook. She felt she’d just had a nightmare. A nightmare that had left her shocked rather than terrified. As if life had hesitated for a moment inside her. Sight, all that remained was her sight. Shock. Is it really possible to see all this with these two simple eyes? Is it? Now she had seen that Soluch had gone, just as the water beneath the layer of ice flows. The water flows and is gone.

I saw him. I saw Soluch leaving .

Mergan shook herself. Her body was wrapped in a lining of cold. She had to leave. She had to go. But not to look for Soluch. She turned her back to Soluch and faced Zaminej. She headed back, speeding the pace of her steps. You can’t acknowledge the cold. If you stay still too long, it will attack you. So, you can’t stay still. You have to move; it’s all that can protect you. In the outer fields, the cold is a ruthless adversary.

Tears filled Mergan’s eyes. She preferred to think they were from the cold. She didn’t want to admit to herself that she was crying. She didn’t have the heart. What’s crying anyway? Her eyes had been dry for years. And now … now she had no patience for it. She didn’t have the patience for it. What point was there crying?

Let him go. He can go to hell. Has no other woman ever been struck by misfortune? As if no other man ever just up and left. No … No point in crying. To each his own. Let each make his home wherever he beds. He can go to hell!

Mergan appeared to believe what she was saying. But this sentiment was not the flame that was burning in her heart. That was a flame not easily extinguished. Mergan didn’t want to allow the flame to escape out from her eyes, her throat, her hands, or her mouth. She wouldn’t allow it. So the flame flickered inside her, burning. It stung and consumed her. Fire poured within her. A silent clamor. A rough farmer was ploughing her heart with his ploughshare. To the very roots! The roots that had grown deep these many years were being ploughed and upturned from their ancient place in her heart. Being and nothingness were upended, turned upside down. Her heart was no longer that small, quiet bird, that tame and obedient sparrow. The wings of the bird had been torn out. Naked and featherless. The hawks, yes, the hawks had set out to flight. And where were the vultures? Mergan felt the cold sharp blade of the plow cut into her guts, as if the sedimentary skin of the soil was scraped off. What was being unearthed in this long-forgotten land opened her eyes: Mergan was in love with her man! She sensed this clearly now. She loved Soluch! She remembered the love she had for him. A forgotten love. She began to realize how much she had forgotten her love for him. Her love was for a man whose absence from her side, even if he were to sleep alone out by the clay oven for a thousand nights, was unthinkable for Mergan.