Children’s shouts ring out again on the rubble. The noise floods into the courtyard, and the house.
She falls silent. Listens to the children, who are playing the same game:
“Hadji mor’alé?”
“Balé?”
“Who wants the foot? Who wants the head?”
“I want the foot.”
They run off into the street again.
She takes up her story. “Why was I talking about your father?” Rubs her head against the wall, seeming to think, to scour her memory… “Yes, that’s right, I was talking about the two of us, our marriage, my loneliness… Three years of waiting, and then you come home. I remember it like it was yesterday. The day you came back, the day I saw you for the first time…” A sarcastic laugh bursts from her chest. “You were just like you are now, not a word, not a glance…” Her eyes come to rest on the photo of the man. “You sat down next to me. As if we already knew each other… as if you were seeing me after just a brief absence or I were some tawdry reward for your triumph! I was looking at you, but you were staring into thin air. I still don’t know if it was modesty or pride. It doesn’t matter. But I saw you, I watched you, I kept glancing at you, observing you. Noticing the slightest movement of your body, the slightest expression in your face…” Her right hand plays with the man’s filthy hair. “And you seemed so arrogant, so absent; you just weren’t there. That saying is so true: One should never rely on a man who has known the pleasure of weapons!” She laughs again, but gently this time. “Weapons become everything to you men… You must know that story about the military camp where an officer tries to demonstrate the value of a gun to the new recruits. He asks a young soldier, Benam, Do you know what you have on your shoulder? Benam replies, Yes, sir, it’s my gun! The officer yells back, No, you moron! It’s your mother, your sister, your honor! Then he moves on to the next soldier and asks him the same question. The soldier responds, Yes, sir! It’s Benam’s mother, and sister, and honor!” She is still laughing. “That story is so true. You men! As soon as you have guns, you forget your women.” She sinks back into silence, still stroking the man’s hair. Tenderly. For a long time.
Then she continues, her voice sad. “When I got engaged, I knew nothing of men. Nothing of married life. I knew only my parents. And what an example! All my dad cared about was his quails, his fighting quails! I often saw him kissing those quails, but never my mother, nor us, his children. There were seven of us. Seven girls starved of affection.” She stares at the frozen flight of the migrating birds on the curtains. Sees her father: “He always used to sit cross-legged. He would be wearing his tunic, holding the quail in his left hand and stroking it at just the level of his thing, with its little feet poking through his hand; with the other hand, he would caress its neck in the most obscene way. For hours and hours on end! Even when he had visitors he didn’t stop performing his gassaw, as he called it. It was a kind of prayer for him. He was so proud of his quails. Once, when it was bitterly, freezing cold, I even saw him tucking one of the quails under his trousers, into his kheshtak. I was little. For a long time after that I thought that men had quails between their legs! Thinking about it used to make me laugh. Imagine my disappointment when I saw your balls for the first time.” A smile interrupts her and she closes her eyes. Her left hand strays into her own loosened hair, caressing the roots. “I hated his quails.” She opens her eyes. Her sad gaze loses itself once more in the hole-studded sky of the curtains. “Every Friday, he used to take them to the fight in the Qaf gardens. He would place bets. Sometimes he won, sometimes he lost. When he lost he would get upset, and nasty. He would come home in a rage and find any pretext to beat us… and also my mother.” She stops herself. The pain stops her. A pain that spreads to the tips of her fingers and digs them more deeply into the roots of her black hair. She forces herself to carry on. “He must have won a lot of money in one of those fights… but then he put everything he had into buying a hugely expensive quail. He spent weeks and weeks getting it ready for a very important fight. And…” She laughs, a bitter laugh that contains both sarcasm and despair, and continues. “As fate would have it, he lost. He had no money left to honor his bet, so he gave my sister instead. At twelve years old, my sister was sent to live with a man of forty!” Her nails leave the roots of her hair, and move down her forehead to finger the scar at the edge of her left eye. “At the time, I was only ten… no…” She thinks about it. “Yes, ten years old. I was scared. Scared that I too would become the stakes of a bet. So, do you know what I did with the quail?” She pauses a moment. It is unclear whether this is to make her story more exciting, or because she is afraid to reveal the next part. Eventually, she continues. “One day… it was a Friday, while he was at the mosque for prayers before going to the Qaf gardens, I got the bird out of its cage, and set it free just as a stray cat-a ginger and white tabby-was keeping watch on the wall.” She takes a deep breath. “And the cat caught it. He took it into a corner to eat it in peace. I followed. I stood there watching. I have never forgotten that moment. I even wished the cat ‘bon appétit.’ I was happy, thrilled to watch that cat eat the quail. A moment of pure delight. But very soon, I started to feel jealous. I wanted to be the cat, this cat savoring my father’s quail. I was jealous, and sad. The cat knew nothing of the quail’s worth. It couldn’t share my joy, my triumph. ‘What a waste!’ I thought to myself, and suddenly rushed over to grab what was left of the bird. The cat scratched my face and scurried off with the quail. I felt so frustrated and desperate that I started licking the floor like a fly, licking up those few drops of blood from my father’s quail that had dripped onto the floor.” Her lips grimace. As if still tasting the warm wetness of the blood. “When my father came home and found the cage empty, he went mad. Out of his mind. He was screaming. He beat up my mother, my sisters, and me, because we hadn’t kept watch over his quail. His bloody quail! While he was beating me, I shouted that it was good riddance, because that bloody quail had sent my sister away! My father under stood immediately. He shut me in the cellar. It was dark. I had to spend two days in there. He left a cat with me-another stray who must have been roaming around-and told me gleefully that if the animal got hungry it would eat me. But luckily, our house was full of rats. So the cat became my friend.” She stops, shakes off her memories of the cellar, and comes back to the room, and her man. Unsettled, she gazes at him a while, and suddenly moves away from the wall. “But… but why am I telling him all this?” she murmurs. Overcome by her memories, she stands up heavily. “I never wanted anyone to know that. Never! Not even my sisters!” She leaves the room, upset. Her fears echo down the passage. “He’s driving me mad. Sapping my strength. Forcing me to speak. To confess my sins, my mistakes. He’s listening to me. Hearing me. I’m sure of it. He wants to get to me… to destroy me!”