Mahmoud Dowlatabadi - Missing Soluch

“So what do you mean?”

“Send me money! Help me with money. I’m still a living person. I breathe; I have to eat. But you see I can’t use my arms or limbs for anything. So I have to find a way to make a living. I’m thinking of opening a grocery or a flour shop. So that one day I can order a bushel of dates, four boxes of tea, and ten mans of flour, and to have had five seers of bread to eat before that. You can’t start with an empty pocket! With empty pockets you can’t even raise dirt.”

“Okay. Fine. Accepted. I promise. I’ll send you some. I’m not one to avoid working. I’ll work. And I’ll send you something when I have it. What else?”

“Nothing. Nothing, really. When you do see my father, if you really want me to think kindly of you, have him send a letter bequeathing me these four walls here. I’m not in a position to have to confront Ali Genav tomorrow if he starts demanding part of it from me. It’s clear as day to me. It’s as if I’ve read it in the palm of my hand: in a short while, Ali Genav will come around here demanding his wife’s share in this property. And if he wants it, he’ll get it! I’m just a bag of bones. How am I to stand up in front of him? He’ll come and put a line in the yard, take the house for himself, and put me in the stable! What’ll I be able to do?”

“You’re right. He’s capable of doing anything you can imagine. Fine, I’ll somehow obtain a letter for you and will send it. What else?”

“Nothing. That’s all. I do want one piece from the copper that you’ve hidden. I’m only human. I want a bowl to drink water in.”

“Fine! That large bowl that we use in the house, I’ll leave for you. What else?”

“Nothing, nothing, nothing!”

“Good! So why don’t you get up and come into the house? Why are you staying out here by the oven?”

“Don’t worry! I’ll come in; once you’re gone, I’ll move my things into the house.”

Mergan took the teacup and said, “Do you want me to pour you another one?”

“I wouldn’t mind it if there’s some left. My mouth is dry.”

By the time Mergan had gone to fetch the second cup, Abbas lost himself in a reverie. He was leaning his head against the wall and had a cigarette hanging from his lips with his eyes shut.

The dusk was so pleasant!

A voice rose from the alley: “They can go to hell! We’re going. Let them gather all the ropes in the village and weave them together to see if they can get the old mare out from the well. Ha! Do you know how deep that well is?”

“Ninety-eight lengths of a body!”

“I still remember when Abrau’s father Soluch used to say it was more than ninety-eight lengths. It’s the main well, after all! No joking!”

Molla Aman, Abrau, and Morad turned from the wall. Abbas opened his eyes to look at them. The men were speaking among themselves with excitement. Molla Aman and Morad didn’t let each other complete a sentence, and each would cut the other off by talking about what they had seen and what they had thought about it. Abrau was caught in the middle, lost for words, watching their mouths as they spoke. From the graveyard to here, he’d slowly pieced together that matters concerning the canals had descended into a quarrel. He’d seen the groups of men who had returned to Zaminej anxious and worried. He’d heard that the authorities had taken Zabihollah and the Sardar to town. But despite this, his mind wanted more new information, and this was not to be found in the banter that continued between Molla Aman and Morad.

Molla Aman took a cup of tea from his sister’s hand and gulped it down in one go, saying, “Ruined. Everything’s ruined. Fallen apart. The death of everything … My poor donkey’s dying from thirst and hunger in his stable! What a hell!”

Morad said, “I think that many of these people who were living off a goat’s sip worth of water from the canal system will now have no choice but to leave!”

Molla Aman handed back the teacup and said, “If they don’t now, they’ll have to eventually. The heaven or hell we’re left with will be on their hands!”

Abbas raised his head from his place by the oven. Abrau sat beside it and Morad went over to the water jug.

Abrau said, “You think things will be improved if they change the place of the water pump?”

Molla Aman laughed and said, “Maybe!”

Morad said, “Don’t be so naïve! Where is Mirza Hassan to come in and roll up his sleeves and try to set things right? Do you know how much it would cost to move the pump? Ha! It’s not just a waterwheel that you can pick up and set on a donkey to take it somewhere else! It’s a thousand mans of iron! Maybe more! Who has the expertise to do that? They’d want to be paid the price of their father’s blood. Not just anyone knows how to do this. You’d have to go out to Gorgon or the capitol itself and lure a couple of experts out here with a pile of bills. Do you think they weren’t paid a pretty penny to set it up in the first place? And how quickly they came out and shut it down! But what about Zabihollah!”

Molla Aman, using the same mocking tone he’d been using all day, said, “The best thing to come from this was that! I loved it!”

“The Sardar really has a way with the stick, no?”

“I doubt Zabihollah will be walking anytime soon!”

“I really doubt it.”

“They can go to hell!”

Ali Genav’s voice rose from the alley.

“Hey! Don’t you want to come and help get the camel out of the well?”

His head appeared at the edge of the wall and stayed there.

Molla Aman said, “Help for what? You think I’m eating bread for free to go and put myself to work like that? That same Karbalai Doshanbeh who’s locked himself into the pump house has taken my donkey and is starving it to death! He’s made me wretched! So I’m supposed to go and help open his son’s canal system! Whoever has land needs that water. Whoever needs that water can go and do the work. Why am I supposed to go and kill myself to pull that camel from the well? If I’m injured, who’s going to pay for my stay in the hospital?”

“What about you, Morad?”

“I’m busy. I have to go and get my things ready to leave. We’re leaving.”

“And you, Abrau? They have the ropes all ready. Everyone’s going.”

Abrau said, “I’ve done plenty for them! No more! They can go to hell!”

As Ali Genav turned away, Mergan ran out following him.

“Wait a minute. Wait. Let me come with you. After all, a body’s a body.”

Morad looked at Molla Aman. Abrau looked down at the ground.

Molla Aman said, “It’s not in her hands. She has no self-control, this woman. She’s a fool!”

In the end they failed. They failed to pull the camel from the well. They motivated themselves, used all their strength, but still they failed. All of the village’s ropes were brought to the task, and the experienced well-diggers of Dehbid went down into the well with them. They passed the rope beneath the camel’s body, wrapped it around its neck and legs, and then pulled themselves up the rope like snakes. They shook the dust from their bodies and clothes and said, “Go on! Pull!”

The rope had eight ends; the rope made of all the ropes of Zaminej village had ended up with eight ends. Ten men took a hold of each of the eight strands — eighty men’s strength all together!

“One, two, three — God’s help!”

The camel’s body rose from the mud and earth in the well.

Eighty men, together! The camel’s body began to ascend the earthen wall of the well.

“Wrap the ropes around your waist. Ha … go! It’s coming up!”

“It’s stuck! It’s stuck! Wait a minute! Hold yourselves. Plant your feet into the dirt.”