“Stay here a minute.”
“Sorry to …”
Why did I say that? The woman has vanished.
I feel as feeble as the faltering candle.
Night has finished the candle. In the pitch-black room, my anxiety grows so extreme that, eventually, shaking with fear, I force myself to raise the curtain a tiny bit to see if the soldiers are down in the courtyard. But it’s dark, silent, utterly deserted. Where has the woman gone? What made the soldiers come here? Are they looking for me? But what am I supposed to have done?
I must get out of here. My mother hasn’t the faintest clue what’s happened to me. Right this very minute she’s sitting behind our front door in the hope of hearing my footsteps coming up the street. But she doesn’t hear me. Now and then she peers around the door, straining this way and that, desperate to see me emerge from the gloom. But she doesn’t see me. She wrings her hands. She recites verses from the Koran under her breath. She frowns. She bites her lip. She solemnly promises to make offerings at the Shah-Do-Shamshira Mosque if I turn up safe and sound. I must go.
I feel my way to the door. I know where my discarded shoes are from their terrible stench and, holding them in one hand, I creep on tiptoe into the corridor.
“Where are you going?”
I drop the shoes in shock. The woman is standing behind the glass door of the corridor.
“I must get out of here!”
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“Now? The street is full of soldiers!”
The woman walks past me toward a half-opened door from which pale yellow lamplight spills out into the gloom of the corridor. Before going through it, she looks back for an instant through her disheveled hair; then she speaks to me softly, in a way that suddenly makes me long to hear my mother’s voice:
“Put your shoes on.”
In the time that it takes me to put on my shoes, she goes into the room and returns with the oil-lamp in one hand. With the other, she leads the phantom I saw earlier, his arms still strangely arched from his sides. Now I can see his face. His hair and his beard are pure white. But he’s not old. He’s very young. Maybe even younger than I am.
“Come on, follow me.”
At the sound of her voice I stop staring at his prematurely whitened hair, and instead try to make out the far end of the corridor from where I can hear her skirts rustle. She opens a little door that leads to the back of the house. We climb down a narrow flight of stairs. At the bottom of the staircase she sweeps straw and earth with her bare hands from a secret trapdoor. Easing it open, she asks me to go down first.
I descend without a moment’s hesitation, without even asking myself — or her — what I’m doing.
I enter a rectangular-shaped hole, closely followed by the ghost, who squeezes in next to me. The woman closes the door above us and we hear the scratching sound of straw being scattered over our heads. Or maybe no one else hears this but me.
Who is this ghost? Her husband? Or just an unknown passerby like me, whom she has sheltered and cared for? Maybe I’ll stay here too, like him and, like his, my hair will also turn white. What can she want from us?
They’re banging on the front door. The ghost’s breath comes faster, heavier. The smell of the shit on my shoes cuts through the dank, underground aroma of the hole. The sound of jackboots echoes faintly from the courtyard. The ghost whimpers quietly to himself, very quietly. Beads of cold sweat break out on my forehead and slide down my nose, one by one. I feel liquid lap around my feet. The ghost whines more urgently. A current of warm, moist air rises from the ground, then the sharp tang of urine. The ghost has pissed himself. His moans get louder.
Quite a cocktaiclass="underline" piss and shit; soft moans and sharp breaths; pain and pitch dark.
Buried alive, here in my grave.
My grandfather used to say that, according to Da Mullah Saed Mustafa, the evil deeds of sinners and infidels turn into blind and starving wolves that come to visit them in the grave. The wolves then ravage them until the day of judgment.
Or they turn into filthy, rancid pigs that rut and torture them …
Yes, I am a sinner. And to torture me now that I’m dead, they’ve sent down an angel who is blind and deaf so he can neither respond to my cries of agony nor witness the pain etched on my face.
Where is the winding-sheet inscribed with my sins?
“Brother?”
If I ever open my eyes again — I open them — there’ll be nothing to see but the usual darkness … and here it is. Alongside the identical stink of shit and piss and sick, the changeless reek of the grave … the familiar moans of the white-haired ancient-young man … the blind ghost, the deaf ghost … and the woman who tells me, “Brother, come on, you can come out of there!”
Again I must move. But I can’t. Again the woman must sprinkle my face with water; my eyes must open; I must raise myself out of the grave of this tight box-shaped earth burrow; I must climb stairs, tread the dark and endless passage, return to the tiny room that isn’t mine, collapse onto the floor … and I must hear the woman tell me:
“Brother, the soldiers have gone …”
And then I must close my eyes, again.
I come around to the sound of pitiful whining. I open my eyes. Nothing to be seen. I put my hand on the floor: no shit, no dirt. The thick pile of a carpet. The moans are more urgent. A door shudders open; yellow light floods into the corridor; a shaft falls into this room. The light moves. Another door scrapes open and the light is gone. The plaintive cries come to a stop. A soft glow bathes the corridor.
I’m very thirsty. My throat is on fire, my head is pounding. The putrid smells of shit and piss and sick and blood and wine still cling to me. I need to drink some water. I get up. The gentle light from a half-open door leads me on, light that has abandoned this room full of pain and instead has banished night from the heart of the corridor. I reach the door. The oil-lamp rests on the threshold. At the other end of the room the mother of the child who called me “Father” is sitting on the floor. She has taken her breast out of her blouse. Her nipple is in the mouth of the white-haired ghost, who is sucking like a baby.
I close my eyes. I take a breath. I open them. No, I’m not dreaming. The ghost is sucking on the woman’s white breast. I want to move. I can’t. My feet are fixed to the floor. The ghost closes his eyes. The woman tenderly lifts his white head from her breast and rests it on a cushion.
She mustn’t see me. I have to go. But I’m transfixed. She tucks her exposed breast back inside her blouse. I’m frozen to the spot. She gets up and walks toward the door. I break out in a cold sweat. Picking up the lamp, she steps out into the corridor. The ordeal of the night sinks onto my shoulders. She stands in front of me. I am paralyzed. She says nothing.
“Where’s the bathroom?” I ask.
The woman tucks her hair behind her ear. There’s not a hint of nervousness, surprise, or shame about her. Holding the oil-lamp aloft, she leads me to a small open door, goes in to put down the lamp then comes back into the corridor.
“I’ll go and find you some clean clothes and a towel.”
The mirror scares the life out of me. In its reflection I see a ghost whose hair has not yet gone white. Is that really me?
I toss my filthy clothes, covered in blood and vomit, into a corner, take the lamp, leave the bathroom, and go back to the room.