al-majus

Salty Eye, Sweet Play. Written in Four Vignettes, No. 4.

“You always get to be D’Artagnan!” cried Morteza.

“Well, I am the oldest,” said Mehdi.

“No, you’re not.  Niku’s the oldest.”

“Niku’s a girl!  A girl can’t be one of the three musketeers!”

“D’Artagnan isn’t one of the three musketeers, Mehdi,” said Niku coolly, leaning on a tree.  “They just hang out.”

“Well, either way.  A girl can’t be a musketeer.”

“Is that so?  Well, I suppose I won’t tell you about the grenades I found then.  Come on, Mostafa.”  She grabbed the toddler’s hand and walked back into the house.

“Grenades?” said Mehdi to himself.

“Grenades?” yelled Morteza, running after his sister.

Mehdi grabbed his tree branch and began tracing lines into the dirt.  He wasn’t even sure what a grenade was, but it sounded great.  Now he had lost his chance.  Niku was back in the house, and when Niku was back in the house, it was almost guaranteed that his mother would find some sort of a chore that would keep her busy for the rest of the afternoon.

“Mehdi!  Mehdi, come here!”  Morteza both screamed and whispered from the garden steps, pawing the air with his hand.

Mehdi dropped his sprouting musket and ran behind his brother into the kitchen.  Huddled around the faucet, Niku and Mostafa stood silently with their hands on their thighs.

“Now, listen carefully,” commanded Niku, once the other two had settled themselves into similar positions.  “Your mother isn’t feeling well today and the old woman is here taking care of her, so we have to do this quietly.”  The old woman was actually the children’s maternal grandmother.  About half the size of most human beings, with eyes that bulged out of her chador like light bulbs, Khanum Kuchik didn’t quite inspire the same love from the children that Khanum Bozorg once had.

“If either one of them catches us, you can be sure it’ll be our heads,” warned Niku, swiping her finger across her neck.

The boys nodded. 

After checking both the corridor and the garden steps, Niku ran over to an old pot in the corner, where she had stashed the grenades the day before.  She came back with eleven of them crumpled in one hand.

“Whoa!” grinned Morteza.

“What – what are those?” gasped Mehdi.

Niku held up one of the latex treasures she had found in her father’s drawer the previous morning.  She had been helping her Aunt Mehri, who was on one of her tidying crazes again lately, clean out his wardrobe, when she came across a packet of the long-forgotten contraceptive explosives.

After carefully filling all eleven condoms with water, each child grabbed three, with the exception of Mostafa, who was only given two, and ran off to the pomegranate orchard, where the battle of the grenades would soon commence.

Eager as always, Morteza dropped his first bomb before they even reached the battlefield.  The next two blows were Mehdi’s.  One, aimed at Niku, hit a tree; the other landed smack-dab on Morteza’s behind.  Realizing he had only one grenade left, Mehdi ambushed Mostafa and snatched one of his slightly flaccid grenades away, sending the toddler off howling to his sister. 

The battle was temporarily suspended, until Niku picked up her little brother and helped him toss two of her own grenades. One skimmed Mehdi’s arm, the other ruptured on his face like a sac of amniotic fluid.  As for Morteza, he missed both his final shots and thus ended up joining forces with Mehdi and a traitorous Mostafa in trying to assail Niku.  The alliance quickly dissolved, however, once the two older brothers began arguing, and in the end Mehdi used both his bombs on Morteza instead.  Mostafa, meanwhile, ran off screaming and laughing in hysterics and eventually dropped his last one into some brushes.  This left Niku the undisputed victor, with the final blow resting in her hands.

“Sons of dogs! What are you doing with those?” squealed Khanum Kuchik, picking up a popped, wet condom by its knot.  Her eyes landed on Niku, who was cradling the last full grenade in her chest.  “Niku, you afreet!  This is your doing!”  She snatched the grenade away from her and sent it flying towards a tree.  The branches shook about violently, as the remains of the condom slid down several of the leaves and landed on top of a pomegranate bud.

“If this were any other day you’d all get a beating,” said Khanum Kuchik, raising her hand up like a paddle.  “But God knows, I don’t have the head for it right now.”  She gathered her chador and looked earnestly at the soggy musketeers before her.   “Children, something terrible has happened.  The doctor is here, and well, to tell you the truth – your mother has miscarried her child.  She’s okay though, don’t worry about your mother; she’s all right.  But the baby – well, I’m sorry to say, the baby is dead.”  She shook her head.  “Shame too, a beautiful baby boy.”

The children stood in silence, waiting for their grandmother to continue.

Khanum Kuchik dabbed her tears and stiffened her tiny body.  “Anyway, your mother wants to see you, and wants you all to come and say goodbye to your brother.  Now, come along.”  

Niku and the boys followed their grandmother to Mehri’s room, where the patient was listening unenthusiastically to the Moftakhar family doctor.  Her lips were pale and parched, and the rings under her eyes darker than usual.  She was sipping on a glass of water with several iron keys shimmering at the bottom.  When she noticed her children and niece, she smiled sadly.

“Children,” she sighed in her most gentle voice, then taking note of their wet clothes, “What the hell happened to you?”

“Don’t worry about that now, Mehr Afaq,” said Khanum Kuchik.  “They were just playing.  Drink first, then talk.  You’ve lost a lot of blood and need to replenish your iron.”  She stood silently with her hand stretched out for Mehri’s glass, as Mehri gulped the last of the key-water and winced, then took the glass from her and turned towards the children.  “All right children, go kiss your mother,” she said.

The musketeers stepped forward one by one to bestow their kisses unto their queen.

When they were finally through, Khanum Kuchik shooed them swiftly away.  “Come here and let your mother rest,” she said.  “I want you to see your baby brother.”  Her face was full of morbid delight as she led them to the bloody bucket in the corner, where Mehri’s miscarried son was curled up, cosy as a snail.

“Aw!” cried the children.

“Aw, what’s his name?” asked Niku.

“I don’t know,” said Khanum Kuchik.  “Mehr Afaq, what’s his name?”

Mehri shrugged her shoulders at her mother.

“It’s…Mahmud,” improvised Khanum Kuchik.

“Aw!” cried the children again in unison.  “Mahmud!  Mahmud is dead!”

Morteza giggled, pointing at the foetus’ penis.  “Look at his dudul.”  

The others joined him, giggling softly, except for Mostafa who added his signature high-pitched shriek.

“Like a little grain of rice,” they laughed.

Khanum Kuchik bit her lip.  “Sss!  Be quiet, you devils.”

The children fell silent.

“He would have made a fine musketeer, though,” said Mehdi, making a serious face.

“A fine D’Artagnan,” offered Niku.

“A fine D’Artagnan,” they all agreed.

written by Alaleh Mohajerani

an earlier version of this text was first published by Cardiff University in 2008

collage citations: tree ; brooch ; musketeer hat ; moon ; stars