There is only my breathing, the crash of khoon between my ears. I lower Kathy Nicolo to my mother’s carpet. Her hair falls away, and her face is the purple-red color of saffron, her mouth open, a furrow between her closed eyes as if she were in the midst of dreaming badly. My hands release her and I sit upon her for a moment and I am once again in my flesh. In my chest is my thrusting heart, my palms are wet against my legs, and now I wait for the sound of Esmail’s skateboard in the drive, the kick of it into his hands as he steps upon the stoop and enters his home. He has been away all the day long, on a journey he had not expected, and now I have called him home. I stay seated upon the dead woman’s chest and I wait for my son, but I hear nothing.
Nadi. Where is my Nadi?
I rise and find her upon her bed, in her darkened room. Her small face is at rest. Her forehead is free of wrinkles and I see upon the lamp table her headache medication. I sit in the chair Lester V. Burdon carried here. I remember clearly how he watched over his gendeh, how he regarded her as if she were a precious stone. And now she will be a stone shot through him, and I pray his love for her was even greater than I witnessed. In the shadowed darkness of this room, Nadi’s face has lost thirty years of living; the migraine has passed and she is in the deep sleep that comes to those relieved of their pain. It is a small face, with the soft skin of a girl. Her lips are dark, her jaw no longer set tightly with judgment, her closed eyes incapable of becoming narrow with fear and regret. Is it possible that from this rest she will rise to hear of her lost son? Is it in this small and pitiful bungalow she will know the final end of what we once were? And once again, while Bahman and my wife and children wait in the Mercedes, its trunk full of luggage for a week or weekend at the Caspian Sea, I am inside our empty home for something I had forgotten, my briefcase or perhaps a favorite pair of shoes, a last-minute call to Mehrabad, all these things that must occur before we can take our safar together, our long happy journey, these last-moment details that can be trusted only to a father and husband, my hands over Nadi’s nose and mouth and eyes, this discipline to stand firmly in the face of her struggling, her grasping and twisting and kicking. My eyes fill and she blurs beneath me but I tell to myself it is only a small suffering she must endure before she is free to join our son, before she is free to return to the flowers of Isfahan and the mosques of Qom and the fine hotels of the old Tehran, before she is free to give money to the beggars in the bazaar, before she is free to claim her destiny—my wife’s arms fall to her sides, and she is silent. I remove my hands from her face. Her brow is arched, as if she were on the moment of receiving a long-awaited answer, and her mouth now is open and I kiss her lips. Her tongue is warm. I kiss her nose and cheeks and closed eyes. Sleep, Nadereh. Rest for your safar. Rest.
The bungalow is quiet as a desert. I pass my son’s room. No breath enters me and I must discipline myself to continue moving forward, to walk into my office, remove my clothes, and slide open the door. Take down my uniform which in this country I have never worn. Pull it from its clear plastic covering from a dry-cleaning shop in Bahrain, the fabric heavier than I recalled, the smell of its cedarwood hanger. The trousers fit perfectly at my hips, and the shirt is of soft cotton but needs pressing. I stand with no mirror and tie the cravat into the full windsor knot I then always wore. Inside the jacket pocket are gold cufflinks and a tie fastener, an engraved lion of the Pahlavi dynasty. I fold my shirtsleeves back one time and secure each with a cufflink, my family name carved in each one. To Nadereh’s room I walk. I take from the bureau drawer my formal socks, black silk with small dark green diamonds sewn deep inside the leg. Nadereh lies behind me upon the bed, but it is no longer her; it is only a dress or overcoat she has forgotten to pack for our safar.
In my office I unwrap my uniform shoes, black and shiny and free of dust. I tie them securely with a double knot, then rise and slip into my jacket, each shoulder heavy with red-and-gold epaulet, my breast pocket covered with the ribbons, emblems, and badges of my service.
I secure the middle buttons and I stand at full attention, Genob Sarhang Behrani, Honorable Colonel Massoud Amir Behrani.
I pull paper from its box upon my desk, and in the kitchen I stand at the bar counter and begin to write in my mother language:
Soraya-joon,
I have done all that I could. Do not be sorry for us. Your mother and I await you upon your return. We love you more than we have loved life.
After your dear brother name your first son.
Bawbaw
An automobile passes on its way down the hill and I must hurry for I recall the lieutenant’s orders as I left for the hospital, his request for a patrol car to be sent here. For the shooting of a boy they are efficient; for the rescuing of a woman held hostage they are late.
I take the second paper and write in English that I, Colonel Massoud Amir Behrani, leave to my daughter this bungalow and all of its contents as well as my automobile and all monies remaining in our accounts. I print my full name upon the document, then sign it.
This should be sufficient, but now I am troubled by the words “all of its contents,” for I cannot leave the body of this gendeh and killer to my daughter, who I am quite certain will sell this bungalow as soon as she is able. I take up the pen and write again in Farsi at the bottom of my letter:
Soraya-joon, live here if you like, but if you sell it take no less than one hundred thousand dollars.
I place both papers upon the refrigerator door, securing them with a magnet beside the honeymoon photograph of my daughter and son-in-law. They stand in the sunlight. They appear quite happy. I kiss my finger and press it to Soraya’s heart.
I am too warm in my uniform. I feel the sweat at my forehead and neck and beneath my peerhan. There is very little time remaining. I stoop upon my mother’s carpet, position my hand beneath Kathy Nicolo’s arms, then lift and drag her into the kitchen area across the floor and outdoors onto the rear grasses. She is quite heavy, her hair loose upon my arms. I drag her through the tall hedge trees to her automobile. The air has grown cooler, but my eyes burn with sweat, and I lay her upon the earth beside the bungalow and open the rear door of her auto. There is the tired smell of cigarettes, and the seat fabric is still warm from the sun that is no longer. I look down upon her. Her mouth is open, one hand twisted beneath her. I think of Jasmeen, my dear cousin. I lift the whore and pull her onto the seat and bend her knees to shut the door and I think of what I will tell to Jasmeen, that I loved her always, that Kamfar and I wept for her. And I will embrace Pourat. I will kiss both his eyes and tell to him how I have missed him.
There is very little time. Inside the bungalow, I pull from the cabinet beneath the sink the roll of tape we used for our moving boxes. In my office I retrieve the plastic covering of my uniform. Then I enter the darkness of my wife’s room, my heart once again thrusting inside my chest. My face and neck release sweat, and my uniform is fitted too tightly at the upper back; it is all the work here I have done, it is all those days in the heat and dust and fog, a garbage soldier working with men who before would have bowed their heads if I passed by. I sit upon the bed. I pull sufficient tape free of its roll, the sound like the cracking of ice over a frozen lake, what I felt beneath my feet as a boy with my father in the north mountains. I hold with both hands the tape and lean to kiss Nadi once more. Her lips are still warm but I feel if I do not hurry she will have left me behind. I apply one end of the tape to my knee, and my fingers shake as they did when I first undressed my wife on the night of our wedding, our new home silent as it is now.
I take the plastic covering and place it over my head and face. But there is a small hole near my mouth and I must double the layer and now I see only a vague dimness as I take the tape and secure it firmly around my throat and neck. My breath draws in the plastic immediately and I expel it with my tongue. I lie down beside my Nadi. I reach for her hand but cannot at first find it and my heart leaps against my chest, then I find it, small and cool, soft with expensive creams, and I am for the moment calmed. I close my eyes and mouth and breathe deeply through the nose, but the plastic quickly fills it and I again open my mouth to complete the breath but the plastic is there as well and I force it away with my tongue, drawing in more air, all that I will need, I tell to myself, holding it in, my chest weakened by its fullness. I feel Nadi’s shoulder pressed to mine and I regret not having played music on her new player. I have a sharp desire to hear it, the poetry of Dashtestani, the ney and domback, the beckoning music of home. I release my breath, its sound a wind in my ears, the plastic slipping from my nose and mouth but then returning with the insistence of the sea, covering all the sand prints left behind, filling all the holes and channels. I attempt to force the plastic out once more, just once more, but the ocean is rising with the moon, its pressure growing in my chest, my heart and lungs beginning to burst beneath the weight of an unseen hand, my body struggling as it sinks into the bed. The plastic becomes iron against my face, and my arms float weightlessly as I attempt to pull free the tape but my fingers do not function correctly, fluttering uselessly against my throat and chin. I no longer have legs, and there is a terrible sound in my ears, the deafening pitch of low-flying F-16s, my chest beginning to fracture, my abdomen heaving, heaving—something beginning to open and release, a warmth filling me, vodka and fire, the hot wind of a desert sky, the earth falling away beneath me.