Murad was standing in the middle of the crowded street.
Divesting himself of his coat, he sold it to the clothes peddler. He felt as if
a handful of false social bounds and restrictions had been lifted from his
shoulders. A peculiar feeling of freedom filled his entire being. Slightly, he
waved his hands to and fro freely, thinking that he could do without a coat. At
first, the thought of having two tomans in his pocket – the proceeds of his
sale - awakened in him an excessive desire for eating food and smoking opium
neither of which he had touched since the day before.
For want of opiate pleasure, his nerves had tautened like
wood. The joy he was seeking exceeded all other joys and desires. In his mind’s
eye, he stuck opium to his pipe and smoked it out with a single breath at the
thought of which he felt a wondrous sensation of joy come over him that
somewhat calmed his nerves. An instant afterwards, he gave a noisy yawn which
of course merged in the din of the street but which left in his nerves a
promising delight and softness. His eyes were wet with tears. Murad had nothing
to his name in life. A bag of mobile bones, an acute sense of pessimism and
some rusty knowledge which did not even avail himself made up his constitution.
In a minute a thousand different ideas went racing through his mind none of
which he put into practical shape.
This fellow was a misfit sewn into the crappy crotch of
society. Somewhere in its seams, he occupied a place like a louse and lived a
dying life. That was why he was incapable of adjusting himself to the society.
His joys, pains, and thoughts were as different as chalk and cheese from those
of others. He liked his agonies and regarded them as an inseparable part of his
existence. People, even babies were loathsome to him.
He had acclimatized himself to solitude. Even in the most
densely populated places, he felt lonely and barely at all paid attention to
people around him whosoever. He didn’t see them and didn’t want to see them. He
had built round himself an egg-like shell in which he squirmed. At times, he
was seized with fits of epilepsy. Willy nilly, he became conscious of others
every time he felt a need in himself. Soon, he laughed away his thought and
swayed his head this way and that coolly and languidly like a roused snake and
dismissed everything from his mind. To him, honor, dishonor, morality,
religion, veracity and mendacity hardly held and atom of meaning. He abided by
nothing but his desires. Even they were temporary ones. Once they were
gratified, he felt the absurdity of life even more intensely. Never did he pay
attention to his past or future sorrows. How could he now escape an encounter
with the Jew who owned a shop on the side of the street? From a distance, Murad
cast a glance upon his shop and saw him perching like an eagle on the stool in
front of the shop. In an instant, a tremor shot through his spines.
He fell reflective.
“I don’t give a fig if this goddamn Jew grabs me by the
collar in front of people and wants his money back. So far, he’s raised a
ruckus about it more than a hundred times. If I paid attention to a handful of
silly asses what would be the difference between the likes of me and the likes
of them?! They disregard me as a human being who lives amongst them, has
passions, and needs like them while they have in their store a harem of
concubines for themselves and for their cronies. I am not afraid of them
bastards.
People would collect if we fell into quarrel. Women would
think:” What a handsome young man! He is good to sleep with.” But none would
come and say that to me. I have not had a bath for months, and have no coat, no
social status, no money and no father and mother. Who would pay attention to
me?! As for men, they would think to themselves:” He is every inch a loutish
ruffian.” We would pour forth a volley of vitriolic oaths and then would
depart. At all events, I need my money. I want to live by it. Why should I lose
this damned paper if my life depends on it? I had better go, smoke my fill of
opium, drink a hearty glass of arrack, and then go to Mahin’s house to sleep
with her. Fuck the Jew! I will mix up with the crowd and buzz off! How can he
see me in this twilight with his purblind eyes? “
At this point, a young, exquisite, slender, seductive
stately woman-Murad could not even dream of caressing her gown dangling from
the rack in a laundry –strutted past him and scattered behind her a soft
morphemic scent. Instantly, one of his desires began to neigh wildly in his
bosom. He inhaled the scent as far as his lungs allowed. Hardly did he wish to
exhale it! He retained the smell in his chest so much so that he was seized
with a fit of cough. All his nerves took in her scent like morphine. She
smelled of baked opium blended with tincture. He felt as if he had dragged a
firm puff from his opium-pipe. His head grew hot and an overpowering desire
aroused in him. It was not clear from which source it sprang and what it wanted
but which was mingled with jealousy, poverty, passion, and lust. However, it
belonged to none. The hollow of her waist and the delicate broadness of her
shoulders and her statuesque buttocks were made in so masterly a way that only
a sculptor who had long suffered the agony of separation of women in a
God-forsaken place could have made such a well-proportionate statuesque woman
to his heart’s content.
The poppy flowers on her transparent tight gown seemed to
have been tattooed on her flesh. With the delicate movement of her naked
shapely feet, these flowers shook seductively and thrilled the soul. Each and
every flower swayed so lustfully that it conveyed a message, grimaced at him,
attracted him and disappointed him. The woman seemed to be naked. It was as
though the blood flowers with their opium colored petals had been tattooed on
her flesh, on her buttocks and on her waist. Murad desired to walk behind her,
inhale her morphemic scent and feast his eyes on those frowning living fleshy
flowers- flowers of soft warm living flesh!
The graceful movement of her buttocks made the flowers rise
and fall like the valve of a car-somewhere more, somewhere less but charming,
eloquent, and enthralling everywhere. Her waist produced such alluring waves
that you thought she was walking on a rope, sometimes giving a shake to her
buttocks as not to fall down. From this shake rose so elegant a grace that
sufficed to thrill your soul and make you a prisoner of life and desire. A pair
of frail shanks covered with tiny golden hairs, which resembled a field of
wheat in the afternoon sun of August, carried her slim elegant body.
Her graceful body strutted past him in a pair of buffalo
leathered shoes. Murad was intoxicated by the dazzling opiate charm of the
woman and the fact that she was inaccessible dampened his spirits. He fell
cogitative.
“A good fuck, eh? Who fucks her? Don’t know in what way I am
inferior to her fuckers. If I get my hands on the beneficent Lord, I know what
to do. I don’t seem to belong to this world.”
All his senses were riveted upon her poppy flowers as if he
had never seen them before, as if he had recognized them in a sudden. Again he
drooped in a muse. “Poppy flowers are so beautiful, so nice, so good. How
charming they have made her!”
Again a strong desire of smoking opium came over him. He had
become desire itself. He wished to fill his eternal void with the scent of the
woman and the heavy smoke of opium and the smell of the poppy flowers. For an
instant, his gaze was averted from the fleshy flowers. All at once, it seemed
to him as if the flesh of the woman crumbled in the shade of the trees and all
her fleshy flowers faded away. The shapely form changed into a ridiculous
punctured skeleton staggering away before his eyes. His stomach turned over and
a feeling of nausea laid hold of him. He was hallucinated.
Murad was still in a state of stupefaction that the Jewish
creditor caught sight of him and shouted his name several times. As soon as
Murad stopped, he sprang down from the stool. Several seconds went on but the
Jew had not yet crossed the street because he was stopped by a Chevrolet. So he
waited. His patience was up. He fidgeted nervously, waiting for the car to
pass.
Yet, his glance remained full on Murad. He did not take his
mole-like eyes off him. Murad was standing on the other side of the street,
summoning all his strength to confront the obstinate shopkeeper. The morphemic
scent, the voluptuous redness of the poppy flowers and the sexy movement of the
fleshy flowers were soon forgotten. Instead, the red two-toman bill he owed to
the Jew loomed up before his eyes. A bitter feeling of baseness seized him. To
him, all the people in the street were his foes. He pondered: “Fuck you! I won’t
give you a penny for the world. I can pay you back but I won’t. Now come and
get it if you can.”
The Chevrolet raced swiftly off. The creditor had kept on
gazing at him and triggered his eyes at him in the attitude of a skilled hunter
indicating the direction of his prey amidst a dense meadow. He thought to
himself: “You confounded Moslem! I will not allow you to escape my clutches
again. If I get my hands on you, I’ll debag you in front of people to see you
cannot gobble down Jacob’s money.”
Hardly was he in the middle of the street that a lorry
loaded with flour ran over him. Before the grisly sound of its breaks boomed
out, it had dragged his body a few meters away. His body was completely crushed
and the rest of him caught fire like wool. Overcome with solace, Murad thrust
his hands in his pockets, standing there motionless. He heaved a sigh of relief
as if unburdened. It was as if nothing had happened. Like a spider squashed
beneath the chubby feet of a camel, the creditor was crushed to death in the
street. Now his fear of crossing the street was gone.
He thought to himself: “Now the way is open. It wasn’t my
fault. I am no longer indebted to him.”
In a twinkling, a large crowd of people gathered round the
lorry like ants swarming round a big carrion. Their faces betrayed violent
traces of contortions at the sight of death. It was completely obvious that
their faces displayed no such thing in ordinary life. People had left their
houses in fear of death and solitude, taking refuge in society. Now they were
standing there, sunk into an abyss of mortal apprehension.
Murad thought to himself, “When a fowl is decapitated, and
its innards are thrown out, the other fowls fight over it until at last one of
them picks it, taking it in a corner and eats it. But the rabbles dread their
own dead bodies.”
He slowly merged into the crowd. His hands were still
resting in his pockets. During this period, the lorry had moved aside. A pool
of blood and a fractured skull whose bits still clung to the fat tires of the
lorry were scattered all over the ground. Black curdled blood spread over the
cobble-stoned street, sunk in the crevices of the stones.
A white blood smeared substance like the whites of an egg
which was amalgamated with the coagulated blood could be seen amidst a pack of
fractured bones. Murad felt like nauseating. He let out a prolonged yawn and
recalled his opium.
Gradually, he extricated himself from the crowd, making for
his solitary cellar. Fatigue enveloped him. His hands were in his pockets, his
shoulders leaning backwards and his chest up. He was whistling a vague tune as
if there were nobody but him in the street. His feet felt heavy. A sharp sense
of pain shot through his nerves. He stopped for a moment. Whistling, he turned
back. The street, the crowd and the lorry were not in sight.
He dropped his eyes and thought: “Fuck it! It’s as if
someone is pulling out my veins.”
He, then, threw out a sticky spit like the whites of an egg
on the street asphalt and pursued his train of thoughts.
“She was a dainty morsel. If only I could undress her!”
He kicked a cigarette case lying before his feet. Since it
didn’t open, he bent down, picking it up. It was empty. Distraught, he threw it
in the earthy water creeping in the gutter like a wounded snake.
“Fuck it! If I had a piece of luck in this country, my life
would not be so desperate.”
His gaze fixed on the cigarette case floating in the gutter,
he bumped into a plane tree.
“Fuck it!”
Changing his direction, he sank in the crowd. He jostled and
was jostled. He was heedless. A singular feeling of freedom pervaded every
fiber. He felt unburdened. He was alone again. People who walked past him did
not exist for him. They were for themselves and he was for himself. The sound
of the horns and the din of the people left him cool. He was alone, completely
alone. At this instant, a woman strutted past him.
Suddenly, he trembled and turned round. He beheld the same
slender graceful figure pirouetting out of a haberdasher’s shop. The same
statuesque buttocks tattooed with poppy flowers grimaced at him. She emanated
the same morphinic scent. However, this time, she gave off an acrid odor of
dung, of skull bones, of blown-out brains and of black coagulated blood.
Translated by Ali Salami