Fariba Hachtroudi - The Man Who Snapped His Fingers

I find it difficult to picture this unusual, provincial young woman in the feverish atmosphere of the early days of the holy revolution. The Commander had infused people’s spirits with a mystico-political passion. The diktats of the new father of the nation were a great success. The war against the external enemy justified the internal repression. Protesters were brought to heel or eliminated. True citizens were those who were behind the Commander. It was impossible to escape from him. To ignore him. Vima was an exception. “She was special,” said the Colonel. She wasn’t interested in politics. Even less so in the war. Bombing. Hardship. Revolutionary violence. Everything that made up the everyday life of other people. It was as if nothing really affected her. Didn’t she live in the same country? When he asked her this, she invariably replied, What good does it do to keep talking about misfortune? And besides, the moment you looked above you there was no more misfortune. Another place — the sky, its vastness, its fabulous mysteries — had taken over her life. She was enchanted. The stars were closer to her than human beings were. She had been living among the stars since childhood. They conspired with her, and she wanted to unveil their secrets. The brilliant proof of the way life was perpetually evolving. Food for thought for an entire lifetime. How could she fail to escape from all the rest? To remove herself from anything superfluous, thanks to mathematical abstraction and its relative truths? The soldier was flabbergasted. Again and again I listen to the passages where he speaks for her. And eventually above the Colonel’s monotonous voice I hear Vima. I can feel her presence.

Who are you, Vima? A dreamer? I don’t think so. Or at least not in the commonly accepted meaning of the word. You have your head in the stars but your feet are on the ground. You know what you want. You are demanding. And you get what you want. Everything began with the promises of a shared desire. You made them unequivocally clear. Your suitor was handsome, you fancied him, and you told him so. There is nothing more thrilling, for a man who is hopelessly in love. But even then your mind was ahead of your feelings. The ultimate condition for marriage was for love be kept under control. Which the young man found deeply disturbing. Even today these recollections confuse your husband’s grieving memory. The Colonel falters when the time comes to speak of the most extravagant clause in your marriage contract. He says, “When Vima…” And stops. Starts again: “I don’t remember when Vima…” Coughs. Goes on in a changed voice: “Vima told me, literally: You must know that I don’t want any children until I’ve finished my studies.” You were only fifteen years old. How could a young girl, as he put it, possibly see so far ahead? You might say it was your stars. You had an acute awareness of distances measured in light-years. It reduced your suitor to silence. The Colonel admits as much, without shame. “I said nothing for a moment. But I agreed. Of course I did. I thought, foolishly, that the baccalaureate would be enough for her, the end to studies for a married woman…”

The young volunteer, with his war medals, promoted Captain, married Vima in secret, a little over a year after they first met. His family had nothing more to say in the matter, and they would never know the terms of the marriage contract which Vima had required, in due form. She obtained her baccalaureate in science, with a citation for excellence, and without affiliation to any school, thanks to the intervention of her military husband. Because there could be no mixing of the sexes, women were barred from the scientific departments at provincial universities, so she took the degree course in mathematics and physics under the supervision of former university professors who had been forced to retire. She also learned English, in the utmost secrecy. The provincial rulers frowned on those who spoke the language of the devil. Vima would rather converse with educated demons from the West than with local primates, she said. She was preparing for the future. Thinking about her higher education. She would obtain her Ph.D. abroad, or else by correspondence. She drew up a list of the best science universities in the West. With the utmost discretion. She gradually unveiled her plans. “Everything in its own time,” says the Colonel, without elaborating. The fact remains that she spoke English fluently by the time her husband, steadily rising in the ranks, was transferred to the capital. Six months later, one of the private universities opened a science department reserved for women. Vima obtained her Bachelor’s degree in less than a year. And embarked on a Master’s in physics.

Only once did the Colonel allow himself to wax lyrical. No doubt he was hoping to communicate to me, and I quote, “my dazzling Vima’s capacity for wonder, which I found truly enchanting!” He was sober once again when speaking of the end of the war. A futile, treacherous, lethal war, which left one million dead, including dozens of his friends. He was twenty-seven years old. She was twenty-three. They still had no children. Since he was keeping his promise. As the pill was not allowed, when she was ovulating he did not touch her. For fear he would not be able to control himself. He knew she would have an abortion, if ever… She had told him as much, without the slightest remorse. He kept his chin up, even when it meant putting up with his family’s insults. They said he was impotent. That she was barren. The young career officer’s sorrows and fears occasionally color his story. He was frightened. For both of them. Above all for her. People didn’t like his Vima. They said wicked things about her. Those who were close to him — by blood, in spirit — denigrated her. And felt sorry for him. The captain was well thought of in the Army and by the Commander, but he had a weak spot, and that would be his perdition, said his loyal followers, his only confidants and companions at the front. They owed him their lives. So he owed them his attention. They could see that Vima was his weakness. The Colonel’s Achilles’ heel was his wife. An Achilles’ heel who had not given him a child. A woman who hung around universities for no good reason was bound to be sick. She was suspected of every flaw. Those who were real men hated his wife and treated him with scorn. His superior officers told him, Soft guy, soft husband; soft husband, cheating wife. And all this without anyone even knowing that she didn’t pray. That she didn’t believe in all their hogwash. They would both be good for the gallows if anyone overheard the way she spoke about the Commander. Vima was beautiful. And on top of that she knew it. She was a flirt, and did not respect the modest dress code. No one ever saw her wearing the dark uniform that covered respectable women from head to foot. Officials’ wives singled her out for criticism. It was pointless to warn her of her dangerous behavior, pointless to ask her to make an effort: Vima the rebel just dug her heels in. She would listen to no one except her own conscience. That was the situation. Their nights of love effaced everything, dissolved fear and doubt. He could forget about his family, his superiors, the Commander, all the rules in force, the laws of the theological Republic. Summer was a good time for them to prolong their escapades and sleepless nights. The young soldier had certain privileges, including that of camping wherever he wanted whenever he wanted. The desert was their favorite place. All alone on earth, in the middle of nowhere, they were free to explore their romance in an otherworldly absence of constraint. It was there, with all the stars within reach, that Vima was happiest. It was there that she subjugated him beyond his senses. Her intelligence, her knowledge, her insatiable curiosity humbled him. She transformed him, from mere flesh into spirit. At this point the Colonel’s voice trembles. He so loved the constellations, the way Vima described them to him. Did he know, she asked, that the Milky Way, the expanding galaxy, contained hundreds of billions of stars? That its diameter was in the region of a hundred thousand light years? The young officer’s Eve stood naked before him, unique on earth, pointing to the canopy of heaven and shouting at the top of her lungs, This is what I worship. My God is nothing but concentrated intelligence, a supermassive black hole. The cosmos or the complexity of order born from chaos. Which surpasses us, but which is not inaccessible. Not at all. The paths to my God are not impenetrable. Science is his only Law. How do you expect me to pray to a God who is ignorant, vindictive, jealous, spiteful, bad tempered, ugly, and as stupid as they come, forged in the image of those who claim to represent him? The representatives of my God are the likes of Galileo, Omar Khayyám, Einstein. Do you understand?