The Blind Owl By Sadeq Hedayat (Translated by Iraj Bashiri), Chapter 9

 

Chapter 9

 

I always thought that silence is the best of things. I thought that it is better for one to, like a bittern, spread his wings on the seashore and alone, sit there.

But now I am no longer in control, because that which should not happen has come to pass.

Who knows? Perhaps right this moment, or an hour from now, a group of drunken night watchmen come to apprehend me. I have no desire whatsoever to save my own carcass. Besides, there is no room for denial. Even if I obliterate the blood stains, before they lay their hands on me, I will drink a cup of the wine in that wine flask; my own inherited wine that I have placed in the niche.

Now I want to press my entire life, as if it were a bunch of grapes in my hands and pour its essence, no, its wine, drop by drop, like water containing the holy dust of Mecca, into the dry throat of my shadow. I only want, before I go, to put on paper all the sufferings that, like consumption or leprosy, have eaten away at me in the corner of this room.

Because, in this way, I will be able to arrange and organize my thoughts better.

Do I intend to write a will?

Never. Because I do not own any property that the government could confiscate, or profess a faith that Satan could take away.

Besides, what on earth is there that could have the least value for me?

That which is usually referred to as «life» I have already lost; I intended it to be lost… and after I am gone, what the heck! I don't give a damn if anyone does or does not read my tattered notes! I am writing only because of this compulsion to write that has become a necessity for me. I need--I need more than before to relate my thoughts to my own imaginary creature, to my own shadow. This ominous shadow that is bending on the wall in front of the tallow burner and seems to be carefully reading, and swallowing whatever I write. This shadow definitely has a better sense than I. I can only hold a meaningful conversation with my shadow. He is the one who makes me talk.

Only he can know me. He certainly understands. I want to pour, drop by drop, the essence, no, the bitter wine of my life into the dry throat of my shadow and say to him, «This is my life! »

Whoever saw me yesterday, he saw a broken and ailing youth; but today, he sees a stooped old man with white hair, sore eyes and a leprous lip. I am afraid to look out of the window of my room or to look at myself in the mirror, because everywhere I see multiple reflections of myself.

But to be able to describe my life for my stooped shadow, I must narrate a story.

Oh, how many stories exist about childhood days, loves, fornication, weddings and deaths, with not a grain of truth in any of them? I have become tired of stories and fanciful phraseology. I shall try to press this cluster, but will there be the slightest bit of truth in it or not?

This I do not know. I do not know where I am and whether the patch of sky above my head, or the few spans of ground on which I sit, belongs to Nishapur,

Balkh or Benares.

 In any event, I do not trust anything.

Because I have seen so many contradictory things and have heard so many inconsistent speeches; and because the vision of my eyes--this thin yet hard substance behind which the soul abides—has rubbed itself over so many different surfaces, now I do not believe anything. I doubt the weight and the permanence of objects as well as the visible and manifest facts related to this very moment. I don't know were I to touch the stone mortar in the corner of our yard and ask it, «Are you stationary and firm? » if it responded in the affirmative, whether I should believe it or not.

Am I a distinct, singular being?

I don't know. But when I looked into the mirror just now, I did not recognize myself.

No, that «I» of previous times is dead; it has disintegrated. There exists no physical obstruction or obstacle between us, however. I should narrate my story, but I don't know where to begin.

All of life is stories and tales.

I must press the cluster of grapes and pour its essence, spoon by spoon, down the dry throat of this old shadow.

Where should it begin? Because all the thoughts in my head at this moment belong to this moment.

They do not have any hour, minute or history. For me, an incident that happened yesterday might be more ancient, or less effectual, than an event that took place a thousand years ago. Perhaps because all my relations with the world of the living have been severed, reminiscences of the past materialize before me. The past, future, hour, day, month and year are all the same to me. The different stages of childhood and old age are nothing to me but meaningless prattle.

These stages make sense to the ordinary people, to the rabble--yes, that is exactly the word I was looking for--rabble with two b's. It would be meaningful to the rabble who live in the temperate zone of life, whose lives like the seasons of the year have recognized seasons and limits.

But my life, all of it, has had one season and one state. It is as if it has passed in a cold zone and in eternal darkness. While in the center of my body, a constant flame burns and, like a candle, melts me away.

In the middle of the four walls that create my room and the wall that is built around my life and thoughts, like a candle, my life is gradually melting away.

No, I am mistaken. It is like a fresh stump of wood lying at the side of a tripod; it is scorched and charred by the fire of the other burning wood, but it has neither burnt thoroughly nor has it stayed fresh and green. Only the smoke and the fumes of the others have suffocated it.

My room, like all other rooms, is built of sun-dried and baked bricks on the ruins of thousands of ancient houses. It has a whitewashed interior with a strip of inscription. It is exactly like a grave.

The smallest details of my room, like the spider in the corner, are sufficient to occupy my thoughts for many long hours.

Because since the time that I have become bedridden, they pay much less attention to my affairs.

The horse-shoe nail that is hammered into the wall is the supporting nail of my cradle and my wife's. It might possibly have carried the weights of other children as well.

A little below this nail, a piece of the plaster has fallen off. From this exposed crevice the smell of objects and creatures that previously occupied this room can be scented to the extent that no current or breeze has been able to dispel the stink of these stagnant, lazy and dense odors: the smell of bodily sweat, the smell of past sicknesses, the smell of bad breath, foot odor, smell of bodily odor, smell of urine, the smell of rancid oil, of rotting mats and burnt omelettes, smell of fried onion, smell of boiled medical herbs, the smell of mallow and newborn's first stool, the room-smell of a boy just beyond puberty, smell of vapours that have come in from the outside, as well as the dead smell or dying smells--all which are still alive and have retained their distinctive qualities.

There are other smells, too, that, in spite of their unknown source, have left their imprint.

My room is a dark closet that is connected to the world outside --to the world of the rabble—with two windows. One of them opens onto our own courtyard, the other onto the street.

From there it connects me with the city of Rayy, the city that is known as the bride of the world" and which has thousands of streets, alleys, unpretentious houses, madrasahs and caravansaries.

The city that is considered the biggest city of the world breathes and lives behind my room.

Here, in the corner of my room, when I close my eyes, the vague and scrambled shadows of the city, that which has affected me, including its mansions, mosques and gardens, all materialize before my eyes.

These two windows connect me with the outside, with the world of the rabble; but in my room there is a mirror on the wall in which I see my own face. In my limited life, a mirror is more important than the world of the rabble, which has no relation to me.

Of all the sights of the city, there is a butcher shop in front of my window that uses two sheep a day.

Each time I look out of the window I see the butcher.

Early every morning, two black, gaunt packhorses--consumptive horses with deep dry coughs and whose skeleton-like forelegs end in hoofs as though, following some severe natural order, their forelegs had been cut off and the stumps plunged into boiling oil, and with carcasses hanging on each side, are brought to the front of the shop.

The butcher strikes his hennaed beard with his greasy hand, then, with a buyer's eye, he appraises the carcasses, chooses two of them, weighs their fat tails in his hand and takes them and hangs them on the hooks in his shop.

Breathing heavily, the packhorses get on the way.

The butcher rubs and caresses the bloodstained, slit-throated bodies whose eyes are transfixed and whose bloodstained eyelids seem to emerge from the middle of their black skulls. He then takes a bone-handled knife, carefully cuts their bodies up into pieces and sells the lean meat, with a smile, to his customers.

With what pleasure he performs all these tasks!

I am certain that he draws some kind of pleasure and intoxication, too, from this.

The burly yellow dog who has dominated our locale, and who constantly begs the butcher with submissive and innocent-looking eyes, that dog, too, knows all this.

That dog, too, knows that the butcher enjoys his profession

A little distance farther away, under an archway, there sits a strange old man who has spread a display cloth in front of him.

On his display he has placed a sickle, two horseshoes, several types of colored beads, a long-bladed knife, a mousetrap, a rusted pair of pliers, a dropper for adding water to inkpots, a gaptoothed comb, a trowel, and a glazed jar on which he has spread a dirty handkerchief. I have watched him for hours, days and months from behind the window. He always wears a dirty scarf and a cloak made in Shushtar; his collar is open and through it the white hair of his chest protrudes. With a talisman attached to his arm, and fistular eyelids afflicted by some stubborn, shameless disease that eats at them, he sits in that same position. But on

Thursdays, in spite of his yellow or missing teeth, he recites the Qur'an.

This seems to be how he makes his living, for I have never seen anyone buy anything from him.

It seems that this man's face has been a part of every nightmare I have ever had. From behind his close-cropped head around which he wraps a yellowish turban, and behind his narrow forehead, what stubborn, foolish thoughts, like weeds, have grown? There seems to be a special relationship between the old man's life and his assortment of wares.

Several times I decided to go and talk with him or to buy something from his display, but I did not dare.

My nanny told me, in his youth this man had been a potter and he has kept only this one jar for himself. Now he earns his living as a retailer.

These were my links to the outside world.

Now the world inside: the only people left for me were a nanny and a whore of a wife.

 But nanny is her nurse as well. She is the nanny of the two of us.

Because not only were my wife and I close relatives, but granny had breastfed both of us together.

As a matter of fact, her mother was my mother as well, because I have never seen my own parents.

Her mother, that tall lady with grey hair, brought me up.

It was her mother that I loved like my own mother, and it was because of this same love that I married her daughter.

I have heard several different stories about my parents.

Only one of these stories, the one that nanny told me, I imagine, must be true.

Nanny told me that my father and uncle were twins; both of them had the same face, the same physiognomy and the same disposition; even the quality of their voices had been similar, so much so that they could not easily be told apart.

In addition to this, there had existed between them an intrinsic bond and sense of mutual sympathy that if one became ill, the other became ill as well.

They were, as they say, the spitting image of one another.

Eventually, they both chose to be merchants and, at the age of twenty, they went to India. They took Rayy goods such as different types of material, shot silk, printed cloth, cotton cloth, jobbas, shawls, needles, ceramic bowls, fuller's earth, and pencase covers to India and sold them there. Apparently my father stayed in the city of Benares and sent my uncle to the other cities of India for commercial enterprises.

After some time my father falls in love with a virgin, Bugam Dasi girl, a dancer at the temple of the Linga. This girl's profession had been performance of religious ritual dances in front of the large Lingam idol, as well as taking care of the temple.

A warm-hearted girl with olive-colored skin, lemon-shaped breasts, large, slanted eyes, and narrow connected eyebrows between which she wore a red beauty-mark.

Now I can imagine in myself that Bugam Dasi, that is to say my mother, dancing with measured and harmonious movements to the tune of sitars, drums, lutes, cymbals and horns. She is wearing a gold-embroidered, colorful silk sari; her dress is open at the neck; her brocaded headband, heavy, black tresses as dark as the eternal night, knotted at the back of her head; bracelets on her ankle and wrists, a golden ring pierced into her nostril, large, black, languid and slanted eyes and brilliant teeth, dancing to a soft and monotonous melody of a setar, drum, lute, and cymbals played by naked men wearing only shalmas; a meaningful melody in which all the mystery, magic, superstitions, lusts and sufferings of the people of India are summarized and collected. Using appropriate movements and lustful gestures, holy movements, Bugam Dasi opened up like flower petals, shimmied her shoulders and arms, bent, and once again returned to normal. What effect must these movements of special import, eloquent without the use of words, have had upon my father?

In particular the acrid, pepperish smell of her sweat, mingled with the scent of champac and sandalwood oil increased the lustful intent of this scene. The scent which smells of the sap of the trees of distant lands, which revives all those suppressed, distant sensations:

The smell of a medicine chest, of Indian drugs kept in nurseries, of unidentified oils from a land full of meaning, tradition and ancient rituals--perhaps a smell like the smell of my homemade concoctions. All of these must have revived my father's latent and suppressed memories.

My father becomes so ensnared in the love of Bugam Dasi that he embraces the dancing girl's religion and joins the cult of the Linga.

But after a while, when the girl becomes pregnant, they expel her from the service of the temple. I had just been born when my uncle returns from his travel to Benares.

His taste and his sense of love apparently being the same as my father's, he too falls deeply in love with my mother and eventually seduces her—his external and intrinsic resemblance to my father facilitates his task.

When the affair is exposed, my mother threatens to abandon both, unless my father and uncle undergo the trial by a Nag-serpent; she will belong to the survivor of the trial.

According to the rules of the trial, my father and uncle were to be in a dark room, like a dungeon, with a Nag-serpent. Whoever is stung by the serpent will naturally scream; then the snake charmer will open the door of the room and save the other. Bugam Dasi will belong to him.

Before being confined to the dungeon, my father asks Bugam Dasi to perform the sacred ritual of the temple and dance one more time before him, to perform the sacred temple dance. She agrees and, in the light of the flame, dances to the tune of the snake charmer's flute. With the meaningful, harmonious and wanton movements of a Nag-serpent, she twists and turns.

Then my father and my uncle are confined in a special room with a Nag-serpent. Instead of the shriek of anguish, a moan amid a hair-raising peal of laughter, the laughter of a madman, is heard.

The laughter of a madman. They open the door, my uncle walks out of the room.

But his face is aged and anguished and his hair, from the intensity of the fear and dread, the hissing sound of the snake's coils sliding upon one another; the snake's round, evil eyes, its poisonous fangs; and its body comprising a small head and a long neck, terminating in a spoon-shaped pustule.

Aged and deranged from dread and fright, my uncle walks out of the room with his hair turned white.

According to the condition and the promise,

Bugam Dasi is given to my uncle. A frightful fact!

It is not clear whether the man who had survived the trial was my father or my uncle.

Because, as a result of this trial, he had become deranged; he had forgotten his past life completely, and did not recognize the child. For this reason they assumed that he was my uncle.

Isn't the totality of this story related to my life? Or the resonance of that hideous laughter, and the terror of this trial. Have they not impacted my life and are they not related to me?

Henceforth, I have been nothing more than a stranger and an extra mouth to feed.

At last my uncle, or father, returns with Bugam Dasi to the city of Rayy for mercantile affairs. He brings me along and entrusts me to the care his sister who is my aunt.

Nanny said that my mother, when saying goodbye, entrusted my aunt with a flask of purple wine for me, wine in which poison from the fangs of Nag, the Indian serpent, has been dissolved.

What better keepsake can a Bugam Dasi leave behind for her child than purple wine, the elixir which bestows eternal tranquillity?

Perhaps she, too, has squeezed her life like a cluster of grapes and bestowed its wine upon me--some of the same poison that killed my father,

Now I realize how valuable a gift she has given me!

Is my mother alive?

Perhaps at this very moment that I am writing, she is dancing; twisting and turning her body like a serpent in the light of a torch in the meydan of some remote Indian town; she twists and turns like a Nag-serpent and dances.

It is as if she is bitten by a Nag serpent, she is surrounded by women, children and curious naked men, while my father or uncle, white haired and stooped, sits in the corner of the meydan and watches her, recalling the dungeon, the hissing and the sound of the angry snake's body as it slides, holding its head high up; the snake's eyes

glitter, its neck assumes the shape of a hood, with a gray line resembling a pair of spectacles appear at the back of its neck.

In any event, I was a nursing child when I was put in the arms of the same nanny, and nanny, has nursed my cousin, this same whore who is now my wife as well.

And I grew up under the supervision of my aunt, the tall lady with grey hair on her temple. I grew up in this house with her daughter, this same whore.

Ever since I have known myself I have looked upon my aunt as though she were my mother, and I have loved her. I loved her so much that later on,I married her daughter, that is, my own fostersister, because she resembled her.

That is to say, I was obliged to marry her. This girl gave herself to me only once. I shall never forget that; it happened at the bedside of her dead mother.

It was quite late at night when, to pay my last respects, at a time everyone else in the house was asleep, in my pyjama, I entered the dead woman's room. I saw two camphor candles burning at her bedside.

A Qur'an was placed on her abdomen, to prevent Satan from entering her body.

When I pushed the cloth that covered her face aside, I saw my aunt with her usual dignity and attraction.

It seemed that her face had abandoned all earthly concerns; an expression that inspired reverence in me.

But, at the same time, death appeared to me to be a normal and natural event.  A sarcastic smile had dried on the corner of her lips. I wanted to kiss her hand and leave the room but, when I turned and looked, to my astonishment, I saw this same whore, who is now my wife, enter the room and opposite the dead mother, her mother, she pressed herself as hard as she could against me, pulled me to herself and kissed me passionately!

I was so ashamed of this that I wanted to sink into the floor. I didn't know what to do.

The dead body with its protruding teeth seemed to be mocking us.

It seemed to me that the dead body's quiet smile had changed.

Involuntarily, I embraced her and kissed her.

But at this moment the drapes of the adjacent room were drawn and my aunt's husband, the father of the same whore, hunched up and wearing a scarf, entered the room.

He burst into such hideous laughter that made one's hair stand on end; so that his shoulders shook violently. But he did not look at us.

Out of embarrassment, I wished I could sink into the ground. If I was able to, I would slap the dead body that was looking at us mockingly.

 What a disgrace!

Filled with fear, I ran from the adjacent room. For the sake of this same whore.

Perhaps she had arranged this affair so that I would have to marry her.

In spite of our being foster brother and sister, and in order to uphold their family reputation, I had to marry her; Because this girl was not a virgin. I was not aware of that fact.

As a matter of fact, I never could know.

Others had intimated.

On our wedding night when we were left alone, no matter how much I implored and begged her, it was useless. She did not take off her clothes.

She said, «Wrong time of the month. » She did not admit me in any way near her.

She put out the light and retired to the other end of the room and slept there.

She shook like a willow tree, as if she were thrown into a dungeon with a dragon.

No one believes this, and it is incredible; she did not allow me even to kiss her on the cheek.

The next night, like the first night, I slept on the same spot on the floor, and the following nights it was the same as the first night; I did not dare.

In short, I slept on the other side of the room for some time.

Who believes this? For two months, no, for two months and four days, I slept on the floor and did not dare approach her. She had already fixed a virginity token by sprinkling a pigeon's blood on a kerchief. I don't know.

Maybe it was the handkerchief that she had used on the night of her first lovemaking; she had kept it in order to ridicule me.

Ironically people congratulated me and exchanged winks.

Perhaps in their hearts they were saying, «Last night he must have discovered», but I pretended that I didn't know what they were talking about.

They laughed at me; they laughed at my stupidity. I had made it a condition for myself to one day write all this down.

After I discovered that she had all sorts of lovers; she did not like me perhaps because a mullah, reciting a couple of Arabic verses had placed her under my authority, or perhaps she wanted to be free! At last, one night, I decided to possess her by force.

 I carried out my decision.

But after much struggle she got up and left and I had to be satisfied with sleeping in her bed that had the warmth of her body and her scent, and by rolling in her bed. The only time that I have ever had a satisfying sleep was during that night.

 After that night she separated her room from mine.

In the evenings, when I came home, she would still be out. I didn't know whether she was in or out.

As a matter of fact, I didn't want to know.

 Because I was condemned to loneliness, condemned to death. I wanted to, by all means possible, establish contact with her lovers.

No one will believe this. When I knew that she had taken a fancy to a certain person, I would watch for him and with much humility and disgrace, cajole and flatter him, until eventually, I would make his acquaintance and bring him to her.

And what lovers: a tripe-peddler, a jurist, a liverpeddler, the chief magistrate, a judge, a trader and a philosopher that although their names and titles differed, they all were the apprentice of the man who sells boiled sheep's head.

 She preferred all these men to me. With what disgrace and servility I belittled and downgraded myself!

 No one will believe it; I was afraid that I might lose my wife. I wanted to learn manner, ethics, and charm from my wife's lovers, But I was no more than a sorry pimp mocked by fools.

As a matter of fact, how could I learn the ways of the rabble anyway?

Now I know she loved them because they were shameless, foolish, and smelly. Her love was inseparable from dirt and death.

Was I really willing to sleep with her; Was it her apparent beauty that had attracted me or was it her hatred towards me? Was it her coquettish gestures or my life-long love for her mother, or was it a combination of all these?

 No--I don't know. I know one thing, though. This woman, this whore, this witch, I don't know what poison she had poured into my soul, into my existence, that I not only wanted her, but all the atoms of my body need the atoms of her body.

They shrieked that they needed and I had a great desire to be on a lost island where there were no people. I wished that an earthquake, a storm or a tornado would strike all the rabble, who breathed outside my door and who raced around having fun, dead, so that only she and I would remain.

Even then, wouldn't she prefer any other animal, an Indian serpent, or a dragon to me? I wished we could spend one night together and die in each other's arms.

That seemed to me to be the sublime culmination of my existence and my life.

It was as though this whore enjoyed torturing me, as if the suffering that consumed me was not sufficient; at last, I became disabled, gave up all activity, and was confined to the house, like a moving corpse.

No one was privy to our mutual secret.

My aged nanny, who had become the companion of my gradual death, reproached me.

For the sake of the same whore, I used to hear all around me and behind my back, «How does this poor woman put up with this lunatic husband? ».

They were in the right, because the degree of my helplessness was incredible. I wasted away daily; when I looked at myself in the mirror my cheeks were red, the color of meat at the butcher shop.

My body was feverish and my eyes had assumed a languid and sorrowful expression. I enjoyed my newly acquired state, and in my eyes I could see the messenger of death; it was evident that I was dying.

At last they sent for the physician, the healer of the rabble, the family doctor who, in his own words, had «brought us all up. » He entered wearing a yellowish turban and a long beard.

He took pride in having administered a drug for strengthening my grandfather's virility, in pouring rocket seed and rock candy down my throat and in making my aunt take cassia extracts.

Anyhow, upon arrival, he sat at the side of my bed, took my pulse, looked at my tongue, and prescribed that I should take ass's milk and barley juice, and advised that I fumigate twice a day with mastic and arsenic.

He also left several lengthy prescriptions with the nanny, containing weird and strange extracts and oils like hyssop, oil of bay, extract of licorice, camphor, maiden's hair, chamomile oil, goose oil, linseed, fir-tree seed and other such trash. I grew worse.

Only my nanny was her nanny, too. With an old face and grey hair, she sat in the corner of the room at the side of my bed, pressed cold cloths on my forehead and brought me herbal extracts. She talked to me about the facts and events of my childhood and of the whore's as well.

For instance, she told me that my wife's habit of chewing on the nails of her left hand until they are sore goes back as far as the cradle.

Sometimes she told me stories, too.

It appeared that these stories minimized my age and made me feel like a child, because they were related to those days, when I was very small.

In the room that my wife and I slept in the same cradle. In a large double-sized cradle. I am certain that she told the same stories. Now some of the incredible episodes of these stories are more natural to me.

Because the illness created a new world in me, an unrecognizable, vague world full of images, colors and desires unimaginable to a healthy person. I felt the change of events in these stories with an indescribable anxiety and intoxication, I felt that I had become a child, And this very moment that I am writing I am participating in feelings, these feelings, all of them, belong to the present, not to the past.

Perhaps the actions, thoughts, desires and habits of the ancients bequeathed to later generations through these tales have been among the necessities of life.

For thousands of years, they have said these same things, performed these same sexual acts, and have faced these same childish predicaments.

Isn't all of life a comical story, an incredible, foolish tale?

Am I not writing my own incredible account?

Stories are but one way of escaping unfulfilled desires, desires that have not been realized.

Desires that different storytellers have imagined, each according to his own mentality and hereditary traits. I wish I could sleep as in the days when I was an innocent and ignorant child--a comfortable and tranquil sleep. [I wish] when I woke up my cheeks would be red, the color of meat at the butcher's, that my body would be hot, and that I would be coughing—horrifying, deep coughs.

Coughs that could not be traced to any known recesses of my body, like the coughs of the packhorses that brought the sheep carcasses to the butcher shop early in the morning. I recall clearly that it was completely dark; for several minutes, I was in a coma. Before going to sleep, I talked to myself.

At this moment I felt--I was sure--that I had become a child and that I was lying in a cradle. I felt that someone was at my side. For a while, everyone in the house had gone to sleep,

It was around daybreak. The sick know that at this time it seems that life transcends the limits of this world.

My heart was beating hard but I was not afraid at all; my eyes were open but because of the density of the darkness I could not see anyone.

Several minutes passed, an unpleasant thought crossed my mind. I said to myself, «Perhaps it is she! »

At this very moment I felt a cold hand touch my feverish forehead. I shuddered. Two or three times I asked myself, «Wasn't that the hand of the Angel of Death? »; and went back to sleep.

When I awoke in the morning, my nanny said: my daughter (she meant my wife, that whore) had come to my bedside, placed my head on her knee and rocked me like a child.

Perhaps a sense of maternal love had been awakened in her.  I wish I had died at that moment.

 Maybe the child she was carrying had died.

Had her child been born?  I did not know.

In this room that steadily grew narrower and darker than the inside of a tomb for me, I was constantly waiting for my wife, but she never came. Isn’t my current situation of her making?

This is not a joke. For three years, no, for two years and four months, but what are days and months? It does not make sense to me

Time loses its significance for one who lives in a grave. This room was the grave of my life and thought.

All the activities, the sounds, the pretentious life of the others, the life of the rabble who were bodily and mentally moulded alike, was strange and meaningless to me.

Since I had become bedridden, I had awakened in a strange and incredible world in which I did not have any need for the world of the rabble.

A world in which I was unto myself, a world full of mysteries, a world every nook and cranny of which I felt compelled to examine.

During the night when I wallowed at the edge of the two worlds, moments before I sank into a deep and empty sleep, I dreamed.

In the twinkling of an eye, I was living a life different from my own; I breathed in a different atmosphere, I was far away, as though I intended to escape from myself and change my destiny.

When I closed my eyes, my real world appeared to me

These imaginary pictures had a life of their own, they appeared and disappeared freely, as though my will had no influence on them.

But I cannot be too sure about that either; the scenes that materialized before me were not normal dreams, because I was not asleep yet.

In silence and with composure, I separated these pictures from each other and made comparisons between them.

It seemed to me that until this time I had not known myself, and that the world had lost its meaning and power and in its place the darkness of night ruled. Because they had not taught me to look at the night and to love the night. I am not sure whether at this time my arm was under my control; I thought if I were to leave my hand to itself, following some unknown and unidentifiable stimulus, without my influencing it in any way, it would begin to move by itself.

If I was not constantly controlling my body, and was not consciously aware of it, it was capable of doing things that I did not expect it to do.

For a long time now I had the feeling that I was undergoing a process of living degeneration.

Not only my body, but my soul, too, contradicted my heart; they were constantly in disagreement. I was constantly undergoing some sort of strange dissolution and disintegration.

Sometimes I thought of things that I myself could not believe.

At other times I experienced a feeling of pity, while, my intelligence reproached me.

Often when holding a conversation, or when attending some business, I would enter the discussion of various subjects, while my attention was elsewhere. I was engaged in thinking about myself and, in my heart, I blamed myself. I was a mass undergoing a process of degeneration and disintegration.

Apparently, I have been and shall always continue to be like this: a strange, incompatible mixture...

Something that is unbearable. I felt myself quite detached from the people whom I saw and lived with; but, at the same time, a superficial resemblance, a vague and remote, yet close, resemblance united me with them. It was these mutual necessities of life that diminished my astonishment.

The resemblance that tortured me most of all was that the rabble, too, like me, loved that whore.

They loved my wife. She, too, was more inclined towards them. I am sure that in the character of one of us there was flaw. I refer to her as the whore because no other designation suits her as accurately as this word does. I don't want to say «my wife,» because the wife-husband relationship did not exist between us; I would be deceiving myself. I have always, from the beginning of eternity, referred to her as the whore.

But this name held a special attraction.

If I married her, it was because she approached me first, That, too, was part of her cunning and duplicity. No, she did not have the slightest love for me.

As a matter of fact, how could she be in love with anyone? A sensual woman, who needed one man for lust, another for love and still another for torture. I don't think even this triad would satisfy her.

But I am sure that she had chosen me for torture. Indeed, she could not have made a better choice.

As for me, I married her because she resembled her mother, because she had a vague and distant resemblance to myself.

Now not only I loved her but the atoms of my body desired her, especially my midsection.

Because I do not wish to hide true feelings under the fanciful blanket of love, fondness, and theosophy. Because I do not like euphemism. I felt that an emanation or an aureole, like those one paints around the head of a saint, was seated in the middle of my body; and that my sickly and unpleasant aureole desired the aureole in the middle of her body and strove, with all its might, to attract it to itself.

When I felt better, I decided to leave, to go and lose myself.

Like a leprous dog that knows it must die, like birds that hide themselves away to die. I got up early in the morning, picked up the two cookies in the niche and, making sure that nobody saw me, I ran away from the house; I escaped from the affliction that had enmeshed me.

Without any predetermined destination, I passed through many streets and distraughtly walked by the rabble, who with greedy faces, were in pursuit of money and lust. I did not need to see them, because one of them was enough to represent the rest.

They were all like one mouth leading to a wad of guts, terminating in their sexual organ.

Suddenly I felt that I was more agile and lighter; my leg muscles were operating with a special momentum and rapidity that was beyond my imagination. I felt that I had been cut free from all life fetters. I raised my shoulders, this was a natural movement for me dating back to my childhood days when I did the same thing upon being freed from a task or a responsibility.

The sun was rising and burning hot. I reached some quiet and empty streets.

On my way there were some grey houses designed in strange, singular, geometric shapes: cubic, prismatic and conic houses with low, dark windows.

These windows appeared to be without any shutters, without an owner, and temporary. It was as if no living being, could possibly live in those houses.

Like a golden knife, the sun sheared the edges of the shade on the wall and took them away.

The streets, confined between old, whitewashed walls, were adding to their own length.

Everything was quiet and speechless, as though the elements of nature were obeying the sacred law of the quietude of the burning atmosphere, the law of silence

It seemed as though every place harbored some mystery so that my lungs did not dare to inhale.

 Suddenly I realized that I had left the city gate behind.

With a thousand sucking mouths, the heat of the sun was drawing sweat from my body.

Under the blazing sun, the desert bushes had assumed the color of turmeric.

From the depths of the sky, like a feverish eye, the sun bestowed its burning heat on the silent, lifeless scene.

But the soil and the plants of this area had a special aroma, an aroma so strong that upon inhaling it I was reminded of my childhood. I not only clearly recalled the activities and the words of those times, but that, for a moment, I felt that whole era within myself, as if it had happened yesterday. I felt an agreeable giddiness as though I had been reborn in a lost world. This feeling had the intoxicating quality of an ancient, sweet wine; it penetrated my veins and sinews, reaching my very existence.

In the desert, I knew all the thorns, rocks, tree trunks, and the tiny shrubs of wild thyme. I recognized the familiar scent of the vegetation. I was reminded of my own past--of my own far and distant days--but all those recollections, as if through some magic, had been distanced from me; they were living an independent life together.

While I was no more than a detached, helpless witness with the feeling that there existed a deep whirlpool between them and me. I felt that today my heart was empty and the shrubs had lost the magical fragrance that they had on those days. The distance between the cypress trees had increased and the hills were dryer. I was no longer the creature that I used to be, and if I could materialize that creature and speak to him, he would not hear me, nor would he understand my words. He had the face of an acquaintance of times gone by, but he was not mine or a part of me.

The world appeared like an empty and depressing mansion. A special agitation filled my chest as though I were compelled to investigate all the rooms in this mansion with bare feet. I passed through interconnected rooms, but at the end of each, I was confronted by that whore. One by one the doors, of their own accord, closed behind me. And only the trembling shadows of the walls with their obliterated corners, like some female and male black slaves, stood guard around me. When I reached the Suren River, a dry and barren mountain appeared in front of me.

The dry and hard figure of the mountain reminded me of my nanny. I do not know what connected the two in my mind. I passed by the side of the mountain and reached a small, pleasant spot surrounded by mountains.

The ground was covered with black lily plants, and above the mountain there was a high fort made of hefty mud bricks.

At this time I felt fatigued. I retired to the bank of the Suren River and there I sat on the sand beneath an ancient cypress tree. It was a quiet and secluded spot.

It seemed that up until now no one had visited this place.

Suddenly I noticed that a small girl emerged from behind the trees and walked in the direction of the fort.

She wore a black dress of very thin and light warp and woof, apparently of silk.

Biting the index finger of her left hand she moved freely, as if sauntering in a carefree mood.

It seemed to me that I had seen her before, and that I knew her; but because of the distance between us, and because she was directly under the intense light of the sun, I could not recognize how she suddenly disappeared. I was petrified; unable to move even slightly.

But, all of a sudden, I saw her with my own bodily eyes as she passed in front of me and disappeared.

Was she a real creature or was she a figment of my imagination? Had I seen her in a dream or in wakefulness? No matter how hard I tried to recall, it was useless. I felt a special tremor in the column of my spine and it seemed to me that, at this hour, all the shadows in the fort on the mountain had come to life and that that girl was one of the ancient citizens of the city of Rayy.

Suddenly, the scene in front of me became familiar. I recalled that as a child, on a Thirteenth day of Farvardin I had come to this same place; my mother-in-law and that whore, too, were there.

For a long time we chased each other and played behind these same cypress trees.

Later on, I don't recall exactly, a group of other children joined us. We were playing hide and seek.

At one time when I searched for this same whore, I found her by the side of the same Suren River.

She slipped and fell into the river.

She was pulled out and taken behind the cypress tree to change her clothes. I, too, followed. They held a prayer veil in front of her, but stealthily I saw her whole body from behind the tree.

She smiled as she chewed on the index finger of her left hand.

Then they clad her in a white cape and spread the black silk dress, made of very delicate warp and woof, on the ground to dry in the sun.

At last, I lay down on the fine sand at the foot of the cypress tree.

The sound of the water, like a discontinuous, unintelligible speech murmured in a dream, reached my ear.

Involuntarily, I sank my hands in the warm, damp sand; I pressed the warm and moist sand in my fist: it felt like the firm flesh of the body of a girl who was just pulled out of the water and whose clothes were changed.

I don't know how much time passed. When I stood up, I began to walk involuntarily.

Everywhere was quiet and still.

I walked without seeing my surroundings.

A force beyond my control made me go.

All my attention was concentrated on my steps, I was not walking; rather, like the girl in black, I was sliding on my feet and move on.

When I came to, I found myself in the city in front of my father-in-law's house.

I don't know why I happened to be at my fatherin-law's house. His small son, my brother-in-law, was sitting on the platform.

 He was the pitting image of his sister.

Slanting Turkmen eyes, prominent cheeks, wheat-colored complexion, a lustful nose, and a thin, strong face.

As he was sitting there, he had put the index finger of his left hand in his mouth.

Involuntarily, I approached him, took the cookies out of my pocket and gave them to him, saying, «Shajun sent these for you»--he used to call my wife Shajun instead of calling his own mother by that name.

He cast a curious glance, with his slanted

Turkmen eyes, at the cookies that he held doubtfully in his hand.

I sat on the platform, put him on my lap and hugged him tightly.

His body was warm, the calves of his legs were like those of my wife and he had the same unceremonious disposition.

His lips resembled his father's but, that which in the father evoked a sense of disgust in me was attractive and charming in the son. It seemed that his half-open lips had just finished a long, warm kiss.

I kissed him on his open lips which resembled my wife's.

His lips tasted like the end of a cucumber--bitterish and acrid. Probably that whore's lips, too, have the same taste.

At this very moment I saw his father, the stooped old man who wore a scarf, leave the house.

He went on his way without looking in my direction. He laughed convulsively, a dreadful laughter that caused one's hair to stand on end.

The intensity of the laughter made is shoulders shake.

 I was so ashamed that I wished I could sink into the ground.

It was getting near sunset.

I got up as if trying to run away from myself and, involuntarily, headed for home.

I did not see anything or anyone; it was as if I were traveling in some unknown and unidentifiable town.

I was surrounded by scattered, geometrically designed houses with only a few black, deserted windows.

It seemed that no living creature could ever inhabit those houses. But from their white wall a faint light emanated.

The strange thing, the thing that was incredible is that whenever I stood between the moon and one of these walls, I cast a very large and dense shadow, but it was a headless shadow.

My shadow did not have a head.

I had heard that those whose shadow is headless die before the year's end.

Frightened, I entered my house and took refuge in my room.

At this same time I had a bloody nose and after losing much blood, I fell unconscious on my bed.

My nanny began tending me.

Before going to bed, I looked at myself in the mirror; my face was distressed, vague and lifeless, so vague that I did not know myself.

I climbed into bed, pulled the quilt over my head, rolled over and faced the wall. Then I curled up, closed my eyes and continued my ruminations.

These delicate images which form my dark, depressing, dreadful, yet intoxicating destiny. The realm where life and death mingle and distorted images take shape, past, slain, obliterated and suppressed desires come to life again and shrieking for vengeance.

At moments like this, I was cut off from the world of matter, and was ready to be annihilated in an eternal flux. Several times I murmured to myself,

«death, death … where are you? » This calmed me down and my eyes gradually closed.

Upon closing my eyes, I found myself in the Muhammadiyeh Square. There a high gallows was set up and the odds-and-ends man who sits in front of my room had been strung up. At the foot of the gallows several drunken watchmen were drinking wine. I saw my mother-in-law, her face glowing with anger--like my wife's face when she becomes angry: now I see that her lips pale and her eyes become round—pulling at my arm and plowing among the crowd, she was trying to attract the attention of the hangman who wore a red garment. She was shouting, «String this one up, too! »

Terrified, by this nightmare, I jumped up from sleep; I was extremely feverish. My body was drenched with sweat and a consuming heat glowed on my cheeks.

To save myself from the clutches of this nightmare, I got off the bed, drank some water and sprinkled some on my face and head and returned to bed, but I could not make myself go back to sleep.

In the shadowy light of the room, I was staring at the water jar in the niche.

It seemed to me that as long as the water jar was in the niche I would not go to sleep.

I was overwhelmed by a groundless fear that the jar was going to fall down. To prevent this, I got off the bed to secure the jar but, in response to some unknown stimulus, my hand purposefully struck the jar; it fell down and broke into pieces.

At last, I pressed my eyelids together but, it struck me that my nanny was up and was looking at me. I clenched my fists under the quilt, but nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

In a coma-like state I heard a sound at the front door. Then I heard the sound of my nanny's slippers as she went out and bought bread and cheese. Then I heard the cry of a vendor from afar, shouting, «Mulberries are good for bile! »

Yes, as usual, tiresome life had started all over again.

The amount of light was increasing. When I opened my eyes, I saw a trembling reflection of sunlight thrown onto my ceiling by the water in the pool; it had entered my room through a hole in the wall.

It seemed as though my previous night's dream was so distant and so vague that I had seen it many years ago as a child.

My nanny had brought my breakfast. It was as if her face had fallen on a magic mirror. It looked elongated and thin. It had assumed an incredible and comical form, as if it was being pulled down by some weight.

Even though nanny knew that the smoke of the hooka was detrimental to my health, she smoked in my room.

 As a matter of fact, she had to smoke or she wouldn't be herself.

Nanny had spoken so much about her house, her daughter-in-law and her son to me that she had made me a partner in her own lustful pleasures.

How foolish! Sometimes, for no reason, I would think about the lives of the people at my nanny's, but for some reason everything related to the life-style and the joys of others nauseated me.

When I knew that my life has come to an end and is being extinguished tragically, what business was it of mine to direct my attention to the lives of the fools and healthy rabble who were well, who slept well, who performed the sexual act well, and who had never felt the wings of death on their face every moment.

Nanny treated me like a child; she wanted to see every part of my body while I still felt embarrassed before my wife.

Whenever I entered my room, I would cover my phlegm in the basin, comb my hair and beard, and put my nightcap straight

I did not feel shy with my nanny in any way. Why should this woman, who bore no relationship to me at all, involve herself so deeply in my life?

I recall in this same room, during the winter, they used to put up a korsi on the cistern.

My nanny and I, and the same whore used to sleep under the korsi. In the morning light, when I opened my eyes, the design on the embroidered curtain hanging in front of the doorway came to life. What a strange, terrifying curtain it was!

Depicted on it was a stooped old man resembling the Indian yogis. He wore a turban and sat underneath a cypress tree. In his hand he held an instrument which looked like a sitar. In front of him stood a beautiful young girl, like a Bugam Dasi or a dancer at the Indian temples. Her hands were in chains and it seemed that she was being forced to dance in front of the old man.

I used to think to myself that perhaps they had thrown this old man, too, into a dungeon with a Nag-serpent. That's why his figure was the shape it had and for his hair and beard to have turned white.

It was one of those gold-embroidered curtains that perhaps either my father or my uncle had sent from far-off lands.

When I concentrated excessively on this picture, I was frightened.

Half asleep, I would awaken my nanny, who with her bad breath and coarse, black hair rubbing against my face, would hug me tightly.

In the morning, when I opened my eyes, she appeared to me in exactly the same shape, except the wrinkles on her face appeared to be deeper and harder.

Often, in order to forget, to run away from myself, I would recall my childhood.

This was to help me feel the same as I did before

the sickness, to make me feel that I was healthy. I still felt that I was a child and that for my death, for my elimination, there was a second being who pitied me, who pitied this child who will die.

During frightening times in my life, whenever I saw my nanny's quiet face—pallid complexion, dull, motionless, sunken eyes, thin nostril wings and wide, bony forehead—memories of those times were revived in me.

Perhaps some mysterious rays emanating from her brought me comfort.

A fleshy mole was on her temple that was covered with hair.

I believe this is the first time I saw that mole.

Usually I did not look so closely at her face.

Although nanny had changed on the outside, her thoughts had remained unchanged.

Only she showed more enthusiasm for life and had a fear of death.

 Flies that take refuge in the room at the beginning

of the fall season.

My life, however, was changing at every day and every minute.

It seemed to me that the amount of time and activities that normal human beings accomplish in several years were speeded up a thousand times more for me.

While the pleasures for it, on the contrary, were heading for nil, perhaps less than nil.

There are those who begin to struggle with death when they are twenty years of age, while others die in a moment, a very quiet and peaceful death, like a tallow burner that having run out of fuel is extinguished.

When at noon my nanny brought me my lunch, I upset the soup bowl and shrieked; I shrieked with all my might.

 All those living in the house gathered in front of my door.

 The whore, too, came, but she did not stay.

 I looked at her belly. It was swelled up.

 No, she was still carrying the child.

They sent for the physician.

It pleased me inwardly that I had created some trouble for this foolish lot.

The physician, who wore a long beard, arrived and had me smoke opium.

Opium was indeed a wonderful drug for my suffering-ridden life!

When I smoked opium, my thoughts grew large, subtle, magical, and ready to fly away. I paid visits to a world beyond the ordinary. My thoughts and my imagination, free from the attraction and the weight of earthly things, rose toward an empyrean tranquillity and stillness. It was as though they had put me on the wings of a golden bat and roamed in a radiant, empty world unimpeded.

This experience was so profound and so delightful that it surpassed even the intoxication induced by death.

When I left the pot of fire where I was smoking opium, I walked to the window that opens onto our courtyard. My nanny was sitting in the sunlight cleaning vegetables.

I heard her say to her daughter-in-law, «We all have lost our hearts. I wish God would kill him and put him out of his misery! »

It seems that the physician had told them that my disease was incurable.

But that did not surprise me at all.

How foolish these people are! When, an hour later, she brought my herbal extracts, because of excessive weeping, her eyes were swollen and blood shot. But in front of me, she forced herself to smile.

They were play-acting for me, but they were quite clumsy at it. Did they think that I did not know about it?

Anyway, why was this woman so very fond of me?

Why did she think of herself as the companion of my sufferings?

Some time ago, she had been paid and she had thrust her bucket-like, black, wrinkled nipples into my mouth. I wished her breasts were struck by leprosy.

Now, looking at her breasts, I am nauseated even to think of having sucked the sap of her life through those breasts and that our body temperatures met and became one.

She must have rubbed her hand over all my body.

That is why now, too, she treats me with the boldness of a widow. She still regarded me as a child, because at some time in the past she had held me over the latrine.

Maybe she had used me as her lesbian partner as well, or as the adopted sister that some women choose for themselves.

She indeed «took care of me, » as she put it, with a great deal of curiosity and attention.

If my wife, that whore, attended me, I would never allow nanny to touch me, because in my estimation, my wife's dominion of thought and her sense of beauty were vaster than nanny's, or else lust had created a sense of shyness and bashfulness in me.

For this reason I felt less shy with my nanny, and only she took care of me.

Perhaps my nanny believed that fate, or her star, had arranged things in this way.

Additionally, using my sickness as an excuse, she told me all the intimate details of her family's life: their joys, their quarrels; she revealed every corner of her own simple, cunning and beggarlike soul. She told me that she was not happy with her daughter-in-law, as if that woman were a second wife, encroaching on her son's love and lust for her. She said all this in a most indescribable, vengeful tone!

 Her daughter-in-law must be beautiful!

I have seen her through the window that opens onto the yard. She had hazel-colored eyes, blond hair and a small, straight nose.

Often my nanny talked to me about the miracles of the prophets. She thought that by so doing she would console me, but I was merely envious of her low level of thinking and of her foolishness.

Sometimes she came to me to gossip. For instance, several days ago she told me that her daughter (the whore, that is), at an auspicious hour, had been sewing a resurrection garment for the child, for her own child. Then, she comforted me, as if she, too, knew.

Sometimes she goes around the neighborhood and brings me medicine, from the magician, the fortune-teller, the cupper, and the augur. She discusses my situation with them.

On the last Wednesday of the year she went eavesdropping; she returned with a bowl full of onions, rice and some rancid oil. She said that she had begged these for the sake of my health—later, stealthily, she fed all that crap to me.

Several days ago she brought me a prayer book with a span of dust on top of it.

Neither the rabbles' prayer book, nor any of their writings or thoughts was useful for me.

What use did I have for their nonsense and lies?

Wasn't I myself the result of many succeeding generations, and weren't their hereditary sufferings inherent in me?

Wasn't the past in myself?

But never has any mosque, the call to prayer, the ablutions, the noisy spitting, the bowing and prostration in front of an Almighty and absolute Creator with Whom one could converse only in Arabic had any effect upon me.

Although, before this, when I was healthy I was forced to attend the mosque several times, and make every effort to harmonize my thoughts and feelings with those of others. But my eyes stared at the glazed tiles and the intricate designs on the walls, designs that relieved me from the obligations of the mosque and transported me into a realm of delightful dreams. During prayer, I closed my eyes and held the palms of my hands before my face. In this night that I had created for myself, I uttered prayers as if they were some irresponsible words repeated in a dream. But the pronunciation of these words was not from the bottom of my heart because I preferred to speak to a friend, or an acquaintance rather than to God or to an all powerful One—Because God overwhelmed me! Inasmuch as I was lying in a warm, damp bed, none of these problems was of the slightest interest to me.

At this time, I did not wish to know whether God existed, or whether He is the embodiment of the wishes of the rulers of the earth that they had created to confirm their own divinity and to facilitate their robbing of their subjects. An imaginary picture of this world projected onto the heavens! I only wished to know whether I would make it through the night or not. I felt that, in comparison with death, how much creed, faith and belief were weak and childish, like a kind of entertainment for the healthy and fortunate. Compared with the frightful reality of death and my state of degeneration, all my education on the subjects of spiritual reward and punishment and the Resurrection Day was nothing but a tasteless, deceitful notion. The prayers they had taught me for warding off the fear of death were wholly ineffectual. No, the fear of death would not leave me alone. Those who have no experienced suffering do not understand the meaning of these words. The urge to live had been intensified so much that the smallest moment of pleasure compensated for long hours of palpitation and anguish. I realized that suffering existed, but, it lacked any import and meaning. Among the rabble I had become an unknown and unrecognizable breed, so much so that, I had forgotten that in the past, I had been a part of their world. The dreadful thing is that I did not feel either completely alive or totally dead; I was a moving body that was neither connected to the world of the living, nor benefiting from the oblivion and tranquillity of the dead.