4 Story of

Shahram Sheydayi

Translated by Mamak Nurbakhsh

A Breath in Our Dizziness

I reach out to take hold of the wings of one of the airplanes. He just barks for the heck of it. I put the rock in the middle of the road and take off to hide down the street. The first car that comes along brakes, swerves, pulls back and changes its course. The second car has obviously seen the rock from a distance and has enough time to swerve away. I head over to it and pick it up. It’s a big rock and heavy. When I get to the sidewalk I put it down where I first found it. I look around for a bigger one, pick it up and place it a bit further away from the first rock. Then I fetch another one. Now there’s three of them and no need for me to hide. I simply walk away.
I stick a word into the middle of the poem. Useless. I drag the dog in and stick it in the middle of a poem. It barks.
Just for the heck of if. It barks even at its own owner. I threaten it to make it stop. It barks.
It’s so sure it has to bark. I take my hand off the paper, it barks.
I put my hand back onto the paper. It barks.
That’s all it has to do. That’s why they’ve put it there. Prisoners in stripped uniforms: it barks.
The phone rings. I don’t answer it: it barks.
Torn train tickets: it barks.
I don’t get to my appointment to pick up the parcel: it barks.
Dictionaries: Larousse, Robert, Random House, Oxford Heritage: it barks.
Collins: it barks.
They’re pulling the table upstairs around zhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… it barks.
Wolves surround it: it barks.
Pigeons, turtledoves surround it: it barks.
Keys turning in locks: it barks.
Mosquitoes that don’t let you sleep till long past midnight: it barks.
You had to sell your bike: it barks.
It didn’t use to be like this in the olden days… respect for elders… it barks.
Silence: it barks.
Talk: it barks.
The horn of a huge truck: it barks.
The daunting mustache and build of the driver: it barks.
A play, a movie: it barks.
Shredded potatoes: it barks.
The guy confessing to the priest in the movie: it barks.
American or European: it barks.
Yellow or white or black: it barks.
The hoisting of flags: it barks.
The lowering of flags: it barks.
You’ve gotta take one of those rocks off the road: it barks.
We’re talking of the environment, fish, flamingoes… it barks.
It was raining by the time I got to their house: it barks.
Are you barking?!! It barks.
I fell down; I was so scared he’d attack me: it barks
Did it start barking as soon as you started writing? It barks.
Who’s to speak to whom? It barks.
Who’s to answer whom? It barks.
She swore at him, slammed the door and left: it barks.
What did they say? It barks
You have to have an abortion and get a divorce otherwise that mother fucker will never divorce you once you’ve had the baby: it barks.
That’s the stunt he’s pulling: it barks.
He kept talking and I couldn’t figure out which one of us he was talking about: I, who’d just been freed, or Enrico, who’d been born in Nicaragua: it barks.
I even removed another one of the rocks: it barks.
Don’t stand here, they’ll recognize you: it barks.
It’s best when you’re in moving: it barks.
How about dinner? It barks.
First was it Abel who … Cain or was it Cain who … Abel? With a stick or a shovel? It barks.
You’re putting in too much salt; add some water: it barks.
He’s not from hereabouts. Nope, even I couldn’t recognize him: it barks.
Go get the other rock: it barks.
It’s a diesel. It works with gasoline: it barks.
Pay close attention! The tips of the fences around this embassy are of a masculine build. No one can climb over these walls: it barks.
How about if I shoot just once and do their loudspeaker in? It barks.
Fellow countrymen!! It barks.
He poured ether onto the napkin and shoved it over his nose. Then he threw a plastic bag over his head: it barks.
Done? It barks.

That’s how I did away with the dog. ■

( Refugees will be Deported, p.7 )

Dominique

You touch once and you don’t dare touch again.
‘Visiting hours are over.’
You touch her hands once, and only once, and then you have to close your eyes; this you actually do.
‘Outside, please, lady.’
You know you mustn’t look at her eyes, again something you don’t do: you don’t look.
The woman doesn’t leave. You know her and you know that she is crying. You don’t look at her but you know, you see. She doesn’t leave; two people are forced to hold her and pull her toward the door.
The woman has left and the guards have too.
Your feet and the legs of the chair are stuck to the ground otherwise you’d have been able to move. You’ve been sitting there for several years; right there.
You have looked from this side of the glass at her hands and you have wanted to touch, only once; and that only in your dreams…
‘All mariners are trash thinkers. All those who’ve sent anything to the sky are trash thinkers.’
‘Shut up!’
‘All those who sign any kind of petition are trash thinkers.’
‘I told you to shut up!’
‘All those who laugh and sing out loud, dance, read, go to the park, to the beach, to the museum, to exhibitions, to airports, watch TV, drive trucks, sit at desks, go to the shoe store, to the basement, to the ground floor, to the upper floors, in the airport, in the bus, in the metro, walk-- all of them…’
‘Shut up! I’m telling you, shut up! If you don’t, I’ll call for the guard.’
‘All those who are guards, officers, the soldiers who march, all the generals, the guards!’
___________________________________________________________________________
Number 5276 to another number, ‘poor sucker, each time his wife visits him he loses it.’
The guard takes Dominique outside. The mixed up number has got everyone thinking that he prefers to be called Dominique. He has asked all the other numbers to recognize Dominique and to call him by that name. He’s even written this name out on his shirt and his PJs. He’s also told everyone that Dominique ‘once had a rooster’.
They take Dominique to solitary. He has to stay there for three days.
He’s been sitting quietly on his bed for a few hours now. He lies down.
He wants it to rain outside.
It rains outside and he feels a pleasant rainy breeze.
‘Dominique! It’s raining outside!’
‘Now I enter the Tajrish Bazaar to do some shopping. No, I take a good look at the color of the vegetables, fruit and dates. Then I remind myself of the path I have to take to go back home. I say, I get in the cab. No, no, I hate taxi drivers. I’m still in the Tajrish Bazaar. Persimmons! I want to eat some persimmons—how many kilos?’
‘Two please. Half a kilo of parsley.’
‘We don’t sell in half kilos, sir.’
‘Dominique! Don’t say anything, you’ll just start a fight. It’s not important. The guy just doesn’t want to sell by half kilos, that’s all. Dominique, let go of the guy’s collar! He doesn’t want to sell!’
He’s now gotten up and is sitting on the bed. He’s pushing people away with his arms: ‘leave me alone, leave me alone! I’m not doing anything to anybody.’
The guard looks in through the peep hole. Upset, he shakes his head and lights a cigarette.
‘Dominique! ‘
Dominique turns his head toward the peephole. The guard passes the cigarette inside.
He gets up and takes it.
‘Where were you, Dominique?’
‘Tajrish Bazaar.’
‘Well, would you like to say something?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Why not?’
‘I got into a fight.’
‘I could see that. You wanted half a kilo of parsley and the guy wouldn’t give it to you. Give it up, Dominique. There are all kinds of people around.’
‘That’s not the problem.’
He hangs his head down.
‘That’s not it at all.’
He doesn’t talk.
He holds his head in his hands.
‘It’s just that I can’t describe it to myself any more. I just go a little ways and then I get into a fight. Can you understand that?’
Twenty minutes later the guard has left and there is no guard in the hallway.
Dominique has gone to the Tajrish Bazaar again. He’s taken hold of the walnut seller who has been sitting cutting up his walnuts by the scruff and he has lifted him off the ground. He’s shouting, ‘Dominique, tell me your real name!’
I have made a Dominique and the problem has become serious for me now. Actually it did rain that night. I opened the window and looked at the wall in front of me. I stayed there till the morning and I didn’t even know that it was possible to stay there all night.
I only thought of Dominique, only of him.
Several days have passed and yet Dominique’s presence is bothering me. This has never happened to me in any of my stories before.
There is a Dominique. There is a Dominique somewhere. I don’t know if it’s night or day for him right now. I don’t even know what time it is for him. I don’t know why his wife has been coming to visit him for two years or why he only looks at her hands. It’s been two whole years. They haven’t even spoken to each other in that time. This bothers me. There’s a guard who after all he’s seen and heard of Dominique still falls apart.
Dominique became so serious and real for me that I couldn’t take it.
I made a Dominique and I didn’t know, I really didn’t know, what to do with him. ■

( Refugees will be Deported, p.27 )

Pliers

The man who was watering his gardenSir, as a regular reader I’d like to have a forced interview with you. Should you accept you’ll have enough to put together a short story tonight.
I accept.
First question: all formalities set aside, in an interview which was incidentally carried out by myself but which never got printed you once told me, or yourself, that you hated.
That’s right, I do.
That’s right but you didn’t say what it was that you hated.
Go on. I’ll eventually figure out what it is you’re after.
Yes, in that interview you said that since you don’t write of a tree or a valley as it really exists so your tree or your valley is actually giving the finger to the real tree or valley and that that’s what sets them straight. You believe, and now I’m quoting, that your trees and valleys are your way of slighting them. My question is whether you’ve first accepted the tree and the valley as it truly is and then gone on to slight it. See, I’m having problems here. Can you explain this to me? My entire life is mocking me as I pass through it. This is true of both our pasts and you’re clinging on to a tree and a valley! What’s more, you don’t even stop there, you go on to give it an erotic meaning too. You don’t answer my questions the way you used to. Let’s go back to the previous interview. You’ve already stated that what we are doing isn’t called living. The very things like breathing, walking and the like. You’ve stressed that it’s called ‘running away’. Does this mean that to you ‘escape’ and ‘life’ are one?
Well, these are things I’ve said but I haven’t emphasized cause had I done that I wouldn’t have been able to escape. That’s right.
Excuse me, two teas, please.
In your stories we come across cranes and large tractors. One of your novels is even called Large Scissors and your latest work is called Pliers. I don’t plan to talk of objects or of objectification but I do feel that by turning to these objects you have started to mock and poke fun at mechanization. This mockery is but a moving adamant derision.
Elisa enters carrying a tray with tea.
Hello, hello! This is Elisa my wife.
Pleased to meet you, pleased to meet you!
Elisa has translated your works into French.
Yes, of course, I’d heard your name and I’m very pleased to meet you.
Good thing Elisa entered when she did. See, we were in Jakarta once when she saw a pigeon and suddenly got all wired up. She fished your work Pliers out of her handbag and fumbled through it as she shouted. I tried to figure out what was wrong but she just kept saying she’d found it and that the Pliers were this very bird.
Elisa, could you please tell the story yourself? That’s right, Jakarta, the bird, the pliers.
Later I realized they’re all one. I’ve reread the end of the story several times. Which part? Precisely from the place where the female bird is cut off from its flock, the migrating flock. She’s left behind and she comes to rest unsettled in your balcony, right next to the pliers you’ve forgotten to put away. Every day when you wake up in the morning and open the window you see the bird next to the pliers. She’s sitting there rubbing her beak against them and spreading her wings on the ground like a bird that is about to die. She acts stricken. When she calms down somewhat she starts to speak with her beak glued to the pliers. She tells you the pliers are her husband, her dead husband who has been killed in one of the wars.
You open the windows every day and when you see those two you say to yourself that you’re stuck.
Those very words are the keys you’re giving your readers but unfortunately that key doesn’t fit any lock. You’ve given your readers a key that they can always carry with them but one which opens no door. I don’t know why you do this. My wife tells me that when she asked you to give her a copy of Pliers to be introduced in a publication, you put your hand in your pocket and pulled out a set of real pliers instead. It looks like you weren’t feeling well enough to joke.
My husband said you used to suffer when you gave him the Pliers. Your hand, actually both your hands, would tremble. We still have Pliers. If you’d care to turn around you’ll see it on the bookcase next to the books. It’s stuck among the others.
Don’t let the tea get cold.

On page 47 of Large Scissors… Let me say that from the very first page you were busy climbing stairs whose destination we never figured out. On this page the reader suddenly realizes that from page one there’s been a little boy following you but it’s not till this page that you turn around and look behind you. You see the boy but neither one of you talks to the other. You stop being the narrator. The little boy begins to speak from this page and it looks like he goes over those very 47 pages. The boy descends the stairs on this page and at the end of the story the reader realizes that from that very moment you are the one who starts following the boy. The only difference is that you never, I mean the boy never turns around to look at you.
You don’t tell us anything about the boy. It’s strange. For close to 50 pages the boy talks but we don’t understand a word of what he’s talking about. Maybe the only thing that can be understood about him is that whenever he returns from school he looks into the stores, the mechanic’s shop. He’s suffering from something and there’s even a point at which he talks of the book. He says, ‘whenever they tighten a screw with a screwdriver or a bolt with a wrench I feel like they’re squeezing my heart. ‘
In fact the closing of anything hurts him. Throughout your stories we see various mechanical tools shutting like prisons: mobile prisons, prisoners who feel their imprisonment which might be why the boy has been following you for 47 pages. He sees you as the one capable of opening these prisons. Then when you begin to follow him through the rest of the 47 pages he feels secure.
At one point in the book he writes on the wall, ‘the title to the book bothers me, change it.’
But in fact we’re reading a book called Large Scissors, the very name that upsets the boy, the one you don’t change.
What I’m trying to say is that you are purposely, either purposely or you’re sick, aggravating the situation.
Elisa, please!
No, let him go on I’m really enjoying this. He might well be one of my best readers. He’s allowed to say whatever he likes. Please go on.
I’ll make an example from Pliers. When that bird is suffering and when she sees the pliers as her murdered husband the situation is gruesome enough but you don’t stop there. You magnify the situation and you take no pity on her. One day on the beach you find a white oval stone which you bring back, secretly place under her and actually drive her mad. As a reader I could see that the bird was deluded but there was still a chance that she might come out of it and not go mad, but you actually help her to complete her madness.
We all know how heavy Bach’s music is, when intensified it brings pain and its monotony drives one crazy. Well, as a person I accept to listen to Bach but I decide on the extent and the mood I’m in when I listen to it. But you put the tape recorder on the balcony and you rewind the tape so that the bird is stuck with it all day long.
You are in fact a criminal.
Elisa, darling, you’re driving yourself mad. You’re being highly emotional and taking a psychoanalytical approach to the work.
The humor in your work creates problems… after these stories, after your humor, one reaches peaks of nervous convulsion. In other words, your humor stems from a sick mind.
Elisa!
I beg you…
It’s like being struck by lightning. The only difference is that one doesn’t know it. One bursts out laughing at the time but then gradually, after maybe years, it turns black.
I hope you don’t misunderstand. In fact, whenever one of Elisa’s students asks her to introduce a good book she introduces one of your works.
Yes, I truly like your stories otherwise I wouldn’t translate them. In a sense I might actually be in love with them.

He grimaces at his wife and she suddenly screams out: ‘You’re a criminal. You’re a war criminal.’ ■

( Refugees will be Deported, p.81 )

What a shovel could have done

The sparkle of a flashIt all started one night when I suddenly woke up and realized that I was feeling really well. I felt so good that I was shaking hands with everyone. I have no idea where all those imaginary people whom I was shaking hands with had come from. Then gradually I realized that this was my job: I was to shake hands with people even if it were to take fifty years.
I had to let my dad know.
Your son!!
Get up!
Your son has to shake hands with people!
Get up!
How can you sleep like that when your son, yes, your son…
I felt that one day these words, these very words that I was writing, would be the end of me. But what good did this feeling do me then ? This issue of shaking hands had become so serious that for an instant I imagined I had given this story to be typed; then I’d taken it and handed it to the editor. After reading it he had wanted it to be printed in this very issue. I’m thanking him and gripping his hand. But I take back my story saying that I’d not come to get it printed: I’d only come to shake hands.
It’s strange. It’s even strange for me why this issue is getting so big all of a sudden (please don’t open a personal file). When I see my PJs I realize that things are changing. “PJs”. That’s what I want to call my collection of poems. I shouldn’t drag this one out either cause then this might turn out to be serious too. It’s not impossible. Someone has to turn this into a PHD dissertation and put some fifteen to twenty years into it and do some critical research. (You’ve got to be joking, that way he’ll never get his PHD). Even more ridiculous though would be if some European president were to take off his pants during some dynamic speech, even take off his PJs in his excitement. He could hold them up to the cameras and repeat: ‘This! This! This is what has brought mankind advancement.’
Why shouldn’t the front pages of all the papers be filled with pictures of PJs?
I remember back in high school (told you he’d start up on his personal file) I didn’t get a good grade in my history class. I was real upset for a couple of days. Finally I realized why: that’s right! I hadn’t been wearing my PJs that day. Just like I’d guessed: my PJs had reacted and taken their revenge.
Grandfather died four days ago and we covered him with dirt.
I keep on looking at his picture. Then, when I’m not looking at him anymore, I don’t know why but I get the feeling that he’s looking at me. I have to say in the eighty four years of his life he had forgotten to say something but now that he’s dead he’s come back so that he can screw us up with that look in his eyes. The look is there in those pictures of his that are all over the house and in his obituary. Suddenly he’s remembered that there’s something he didn’t say in his eighty plus years of life. Then with those strange eyes of his he insists on saying it!!
But what is it? ‘What is it you want to say, Grand dad?’
It was the issue of the shovel that made me try to figure out if I really loved him or not. I never came to a conclusion. Then I told myself that I didn’t know if I loved him or not.
The issue of the shovel:
When we put grandfather in the grave we covered him with dirt. We didn’t do this with our feet and hands , we did it with that very instrument that is so familiar to everyone. That’s right! We did it with a shovel.
I don’t know if he’s cursing me now or not cause I was one of those who used that damned instrument someone had placed in my hands to…
In all honesty, Grandfather, I too covered you with dust!
From that moment this damned instrument, this cursed tool, has been coming to me in my dreams and wakefulness like it had come to life. It would find the best part of my sleep and then invade it. It would be right where I’d laid my pillow, my blanket, the place where I liked to rest and read or to listen to music when I’d come back home. Then it would surface right in the middle of the blanket leaning against the wall.
Another time: we were at my uncle’s house and some visitors had come from the provinces. They each came in, there were quite a lot of them, greeted us, and expressed their condolences to either my uncle or to my father. Then right after the last person had entered, I don’t know if it really was the last one or not, but there was a sound at the door. I opened the door and the shovel entered. I know that no one could see it except for myself. They set the table and I saw the shovel lying right in the middle of it. It would be on one of the couches. By the fireplace. The real meaning of the presence of the shovel, or better to say the translation of the situation it took over, is precisely this: ‘Yes, I’m a shovel, I am a shovel, the shovel is me, I myself am a shovel.’
When I look at the root of the behavior of this shovel I grasp the meaning. After the Inculcation Ceremony1(Grandfather, for your sake if for no other reason I had to ask someone and find the meaning of the word. More negligence!), when they lay a corpse in the grave those around the grave, particularly relatives, pick up the shovel to throw in dirt. Each person is allowed to throw in a few shovel-fulls. Once he is done the shovel is ‘thrown to the ground’. Then someone else has to pick it up while the others secretly look on. As you can see I’ve put ‘thrown to the ground’ in quotations.
Now it’s clear to you too why the shovel reacted, was unable to accept the situation and why it kept on showing itself to me. Eventually the shovel would have had to do this sometime otherwise the real dialectic would have been left incomplete. Now the shovel is at peace and it’s taught me (with all the hatred I have developed for it) that yes, I too loved grandfather. ■

( Refugees will be Deported, p.95 )