Hajer left quickly. Morad again set his head on his knees.
2
Raghiyeh had lent her crutch to Abbas. It had been fashioned out of a branch from a knotted and twisted old tree. She could now walk on her own, holding herself up with one hand against a wall. She’d cough, curse, or cry as she dragged herself across the dirt like a leech. No one disturbed her, and she was unable to be much of a bother to anyone else. She no longer cursed anyone in particular. She cursed, but her target was everyone and everything. Despite her misanthropy, she’d given her crutch to Abbas. Could he have escaped being a target of her anger? After all, as they say, misery loves company.
Abbas was able to get around with Raghiyeh’s crutch. He didn’t need a crutch to help him with a limp. No, it was simply that his legs and body didn’t have the strength to bear him, and the crutch helped him remain standing. It held his weight up, just enough that he was able to walk around the empty alleys like a strange animal. The small children were terrified of him, and as soon as they heard the sound of the crutch, they ran home, shutting the doors behind them while screaming, “Shaggy! Shaggy!”
No one called Abbas by his own name any longer. In the village, both young and old now called him by this new name, so much so that he had begun to forget his own name. The name didn’t take hold all at once; it took some time to spread. First, they called him “Shaggy-haired Abbas,” then “Shaggy Abbas,” and finally “Shaggy.” Eventually, it settled on just that one word. The word seemed enough on its own, and the name “Abbas” simply disappeared!
However, Abbas had stayed the same all along: wordless, confused, weak. It was clear that there would be no going back to his days of good health; even Abbas never thought about those days any more. It seemed as if he couldn’t even remember the days before his work as a camel herder. From the way he acted, it appeared that he saw himself as the way he had become, and he had deeply accepted this new “self” as himself. It was as if he had been born as he was, with this new name. Before he began speaking again, others couldn’t tell what he thought. When he did eventually begin to speak again, he never said anything that shed any light on his state of mind. The less compassionate used him for amusement. Abbas usually ignored these people, or just distanced himself from them. Often a Good Samaritan would come along and defend him, extricating him from the difficult situation. On these occasions, Abbas would just put his head down and walk away, tapping his crutch. He liked to go looking for gambling circles; this was the only apparent vestige of his former self. He liked spending his time in these circles, because he always had a role to play. In those games, he was treated like a lifetime member of the club, even while not participating in them, and each gambler had a specific feeling about his presence. Some thought his presence brought them good luck, while others thought he brought them bad luck.
“Don’t stand behind me, white-eyed Shaggy!”
“Come sit by me, Shaggy, my friend!”
Shaggy would be pushed from place to place, but he held on. People would kick him, but he held on. They’d sometimes take his crutch and throw it aside, and he’d crawl on his hands and feet and get it; but he held on. Snide comments, jokes, attacks, insults — he endured all these, and he held on. Whatever happened, he held on. They couldn’t do anything about it. He was there to stay.
Moslem, Hajj Salem’s son, was no less persistent. He and Abbas had become like a knife and butter. Both loved to spend time in the gambling circles. Those who didn’t like to see Abbas hanging around would try to incite Moslem against him. Eventually Moslem would leap onto Abbas and beat him. But Abbas held his ground.
“Run, Shaggy! Moslem’s coming!”
The sight of Moslem truly made the hairs on Abbas’ back stand on end. But he wouldn’t run away. Abbas had come to depend on the gambling circles as much as he needed air to breathe.
“Come here, Shaggy; these two qerans are a gift for you. Put them somewhere in your pocket for safekeeping!”
At home, no one bothered him, and he minded his own business. He had made a place for himself out by the clay oven. He was comfortable there. With some stones and dirt, he’d managed to make a refuge for himself. He filled the holes in between the stones with bits of cloth and tin and hay. He would sit at night and look at the stars and the moon, the sky. It was then that he felt most refreshed, as if he could spend a hundred years looking up above him. And before he put his head on his pillow, he would once again count the change he had collected from people in the gambling circles.
“Twenty-two qerans today. Eighteen more qerans and I’ll have twenty tomans!”
He had no friends or companions. Abrau no longer came to the house. Mergan was busy with her own work. Abbas only glimpsed her shadow from time to time. Sometimes, a bit of bread, a cup of tea would materialize by the oven; apparently these were from Mergan. Only Raghiyeh would sometimes come out and sit by the clay oven. At times, she would speak, sometimes not; sometimes she listened, sometimes not. Sometimes she’d get a qeran or two from Abbas to go and buy herself some chewing tobacco.
If given the means, someone like Raghiyeh would likely become an opium smoker. Or at least a smoker of tobacco water pipes. But Raghiyeh couldn’t afford the cost of these luxuries. Her fear of Ali Genav was such that she would never dare to try to take some of his money for these ends. Instead she’d go to Abbas and try to get enough change to buy some chewing tobacco. Two qerans worth kept her satisfied for a week. She put one pinch under her tongue and kept it there for an entire day. The lime in the tobacco had begun to irritate and injure her gums. But the tobacco was Raghiyeh’s only pleasure, as it made her a little dizzy. Before sleeping at night, she liked to also put a pinch under her tongue just as she was going to bed.
In the midst of this, Abbas was becoming a local oddity. His coming and going, his sitting and standing, his work and rest, his refuge, his den, his crutch, his hair, his torn clothes, his silence, his speech, his face, his eyes, the way he looked at things, his bones, his crooked walk — these all had come together to comprise a person with the name of Abbas, son of Soluch, now called Shaggy. Adding to this was Abbas’ bizarre appearance, which had made him a sort of legendary character; stories of him passed from person to person.
On his own, Abbas had become “other.” His separation from his mother, and his new place by the clay oven, had made his singularity even more pronounced. No one understood why Abbas had moved to this new place all of a sudden. Why did he make his home away from Mergan? Even his mother didn’t understand. The only thing that occurred to her was that Abbas had wanted to stand on his own two feet, even if helped by his crutch. He wanted his existence to have its own color, to carry its own burden. Perhaps the ordeal had left one thing of Abbas behind; himself. A “self” with whatever face it had. And perhaps Abbas was instinctively struggling to find these scraps, these scattered shards, so as to put them back together as one. In this way, he somehow had to try to understand his own life. He had to see himself alone, without relying on others, to seek his self out, to sense and feel it. To do this, he had to emerge from beneath his mother’s wings and present himself. Until he did so, his being would always be submerged, if not simply a burden. Led on like a pony, but worse, as an invalid — which he was. Even if each finger was endowed with a different kind of skill, in the eyes of others you are only seen as a transplanted branch, as something the existence of which is dependent on something else. They say, “Your mother takes care of you, your brother pays your expenses, your sister washes your clothes.” In this, they can only make mention of you in relation to someone else. And if you speak of your “self,” it’s only in vain, as in their eyes this actual “self” doesn’t really exist!