Fire in the Unnameable Country (46 page)

The guard made one final concession: there is one possibility, every second Tuesday of every third month a supervisor comes, and though he does not possess final say in the matter, he relays news of any unsolvable problems to the district director, who may push the matter up to a court order for you to leave the premises and gather your identity or else to have someone bring it here so that we may observe.

Are we finished here, Mamun interrupted then, I'm sure Salaam has other places he must

All but, I said, looking at one and then the other before retiring to the interior of the garrison. I had little faith in the turning gears of our state bureaucracy, but still one must.

In the meantime, one must grant a little attention toward the food in our home, which in times of trial had been inventive, and in the years of plenty consisted of scuttling daily self-deliveries from the Gulf of
Eden and Indian Ocean, as you know; let me extend brief description to eight curious meals as a way of suggesting their present-day mystery.

To begin, I discovered four-holed copper fasteners in my soup one day, and then an errant chicken's talon in the salad, feathers in the mutton curry, and once we had a whole dinner consisting of only capsicum candies and rum candies. On another occasion I arrived at the table to find only a single enormous egg situated at its centre, containing the steaming embryo of an unnameable bird that we carved up into small pieces and dipped into a communal bowl of raisin, fennel, and mint seasoning; the sixth notable meal was a feast of noodles as narrow as hair and which turned out to be entrails longer than human intestines; another dinner screamed on the plate; the last on the list had to be picked oozing out of an earthenware jar and was, according to Gita, from the thousand-year-earlier inhabitants of the region. Never a complainant of cuisine and the proud possessor of a cast-iron gut capable of variegated and difficult ingestion, Hedayat found himself wondering the meaning of it all, especially when one day he found himself spiralling into noisy expulsions of gas, belches if you will excuse, while knocking about against one glass partition after another and moaning in a way that sent the Yeas into ululating frenzy because they perceived it as a kind of game. They began singing the sweeping song again, what fun is sweeping time, what fun is sweeping time was the refrain, making horse-gallops with the placid glow of zombies in their eyes, while I teetered on my legs belching green gas from the deep, hissing and frothing, sticking claws into mouth in desperate attempts to invoke but nothing came out. The elevator rang in the distant reaches of the apartment, and not far away I could hear its doors opening but no one came out. They were singing and still on and on, galloping in unison while I teetered, mother father grandmother also gathered hollow pupilless and watching then as i suffered, and i saw no movement in their souls until a brute human instinct kicked Gita into
holding my neck like a nanny goat and feeding me a tablespoon of palliative broth. i numbed all over and lay on the floor as a hot spring gurgled inside me. When i awoke i realized our garrison home now not only contained glass pane separators, which prohibited free movement, but also that glass had ensconced our hearts to keep the pulse cold, and glass had sprouted walls upward and between the people who had lived here for decades in relative harmony. There were no explanations for the green belches and froth, i was provided no explanations; i ate like the others more or less, from my own plate as they ate from theirs. Yet the pains assaulted only me after every meal until i was certain the gaseous effusions were symptomatic of a deeper ailment, and i could garner no sympathy from the chess-playing guards. They disallowed me the effrontery of visiting a doctor since i would have to leave in order to, though they assured me the prison featured its own distinguished physicians, who would arrive in due course to clarify the matter, since all inmates are guaranteed quality care by the state. So i am an inmate now. Not officially, but officialdom has its many shades, the first one told me without looking up from the same fianchetto i saw him considering the last time. From then on, i decided never to eat again. Let me make clear it was neither a suicidal nor a fasting desire; instead, i made the only rational choice given the intolerable green belches and attendant ailments. i saw no reason why my body could not retain its present size and otherwise good health until the right and appetizing food came along, at which time i would make the necessary dietary changes, why not turn your attention, Hedayat, toward other facets of life in the apartment and try best to take interest in their nuances. Time passed and i grew accustomed to solitary wanderings through the repeating themes of glass and grey clouds and yellow seeds; i reasoned many ways but could never accept the daily alterations between barren moonscape and rug and home. Countless times i forgot the name of the guards, Salaam and Suleiman, mistaking one for another while
discussing my case with either because it was difficult to keep the busted demarcating cauliflower ear in order, though it didn't matter because i was more interested in their chess match, which became intriguing in many dimensions. To recall from the fianchetto, bishop took black knight, black knight eventually took white rook, there were several other meaningful exchanges until the king of spades began to advance gallantly while the jack of diamonds showed his pluck but was lured by the spellbinding manoeuvres of the queen of hearts; two American F-16s fired four missiles into a home where a flank of students were gathered to study on the night before term finals where someone was overheard joking about the lottery's colonization of every letter of the alphabet and every number of every set of numbers, and there were many scattered pieces then. One day, while following a little bird that had stayed after all the others had been scooped up into warders' pockets and shirtfolds before being locked into cages deep in the mineshaft, and was cheeping about and moving on its own course outside the boundary of the chalk outlines, i stumbled upon a pair of strange feet. And who are you, i looked up to ask their owner. Brother, surely you know me. i looked at the dark face and the rain of hair which fell nearly to the floor and realized no, i had never encountered such a person. I am your sister, we are born of the same woman and hail from the same home. She tried explicitly when my vague face then: You don't remember me, Bhaiya, No as they are Yes, she asked explicitly. i tried to recall and realized the words bore certain resemblance to shapes from the swamp of some other time but whose meaning was now obfuscated by all the changes to our home. In any case, the bird: i cupped a hand to my ear to hear its cheeping, which was now distant; i placed the same ear to the floor to hear the fall of its feet and described my pursuit, which the girl listened to while wrinkling her brow. That bird is ours, she said, there is nothing mysterious about its wanderings, it was a gift from the penitentiary for leasing our furniture to them daily. Ours: there
was another one that confounded in its plurality, and whose precise inclusive boundaries escaped me; was the bird mine also, or had i violated some licence by giving chase. Have you eaten, she asked. This question at least was straightforward enough: Not for a while, i answered; i have given up eating for now due to its hassles. From the distance there came a sound and my stomach lifted like a deep sunken anchor. My body swayed, i looked at my talons as if they were a stranger's and looked all around at the strange apartment whose floors were covered with unswept grey dust, which we were breathing, and then recall the edible yellow buttons everywhere. Then i began for all the confusion of shapes, the translucent glass squareshapes, the diaphanous darkness of the girl before me, who was all made of glass and whose spleen liver pancreas heart intestines lungbellows working pushing air were all visible and who claimed to know me. i began weeping then, i wept for every blade of grass and the animals who could not weep and for all the misers of the world whose tears had been stolen, and i was still weeping without the aid of onions or raisins or black pepper when she said, rise up, Hedayat, for it is not all misery and this misery is not the world. She pulled me up, and i realized at my full height i towered over her, which confused me because she had been a giant two seconds earlier. Come with me, she drove me expertly past one glass pane and another before stopping at an unfamiliar part of the apartment and asking if she could stand on my shoulders because it was too high. Unfortunately, i told her, i know that trick; it happened to a distant relative of mine or perhaps the story is all that remains; in any case, the imprisonment of the hunchback is not to be taken lightly, sorry but. She told me it was all right, she knew the story also though this was not the same. See up there, she pointed, and i followed the shape of a metal grating: That's the only way. i leapt up but even at my highest i couldn't and was forced to concede to her offer. i allowed this No to climb gingerly up my back and plant her soles on my shoulders; her
weight was not so heavy, and she managed without great difficulty it seemed, as with a cantankerous sound the oldmetal square grating of the ventilation shaft fell down from her hands. She kept her word and descended from my shoulders. I suppose this is goodbye. Yes, i suppose, i said, but couldn't understand why her eyes had begun to moisten, we had barely been introduced, but i too had been weeping for unknown reasons and tears can be contagious. Now how do i, Hedayat asked, but No couldn't answer because he saw a curious encrustation of salt had gathered and shut up her eyelids, and she was rubbing but still it was impossible to see or think about anything else. Someone must have hit a switch then because i felt all my hairs lift, my shoulders began to lift as someone must have increased the intensity of the sucking wind that drew me upward so quickly there was no time for goodbyes. i travelled for hours, for so long i fell asleep and lost track of time in a dimensionless nightmare, and when i awoke i was still rushing through the vents, carried by the draught as knots and twists in the metal tube opened up according to an unrevealed logic. i landed on my back in an obscure corner of the warren tunnels where it was possible to breathe out but not in; it took me perhaps a whole month to correct the frightening error in that grave cave and to relearn how to breathe. Everywhere the smell of ash and though the tunnels had never presented a culdesac in my experience i saw black terminus; there was no forward after this. For fear of being buried alive i began to dig upward and loose tufts of soil covered my shoulders. For a long time i dug until my talons bled because i could not go back the way i came. How i rejoiced at the first grains of meagre light. Once on the surface, i removed my shoes and allowed my feet to taste the sands and waters of the Gulf of Eden. i wandered for a day or part of a day and encountered no one. i sang every note i could remember and reviewed the difficult lines of songs i liked to sing, though only their melodies returned; their lyrics seemed to have blown to oblivion. To amuse myself and to pass the time i
gathered pebbles from the shallow waters and placed them into my mouth, first only one or two just to perceive the taste, but then whole mouthfuls. For hours i rolled pebbles around in my mouth and the melodies took new shape entombed in my mouth that way. They were so funny sometimes they provoked stone-scattering laughter that caused me to pluck new pebbles from the shore. At the failing light i still had not figured out where i was supposed to go and found myself in the streets, wandering through the souks from one stall to another and haggling with hawkers over items i had no intention of buying, invoking their wrath by overturning my pockets to show empty, laughing at the claws of loneliness and passing from one face to another while detecting not one flicker of recognition. i asked several people if there might be somewhere to spend the night, but revealing my impecunious state made them only laugh, and they sped me along my way. A man was sitting outside his home slurping from a bowl of froth, and he offered me part of this ambiguous meal. i told him no, though i sat with him awhile. i outstretched my talons and showed him the pebbles i had gathered that day at the shores of the Gulf of Eden, but he couldn't understand their importance, not even until after i placed them into my mouth and sang through them the sarcophagus-broken rendition of a popular tune. He looked at my face and my feathers and said either you are crazy or what is more likely is that you are dead. I suggest you hang a right, he pointed, after the end of this street. There are fewer mirrors there and you will come to a door separated from all the others by its lion's head knocker. Before i had a chance to consider, he retreated into the house and closed the door behind him. i stood up to take my first step and by the time i heard him fasten the lock i found myself in front of the door he had specified. i was led there by a deeper feeling than intuition, by a desire i didn't realize i had or which i had lost and had become unnameable, and i tell you it took no time at all to see the lion's head knocker before me. A woman answered my knocking and she was
beautiful, her hair was a raven's dress and her face was full and shone the light of noon, and she didn't wait for me to speak, embraced me deeply and said my name many times while kissing my face, I searched for you, I sent after you and they could tell me nothing about you, she kissed me until the pebbles began to leak from my fisted talons, and with each leaking pebble the curtain of amnesia lifted a little. Where. Like the devil, without an abode in which to rest the back of my head, i answered, going and coming across the earth. How do you feel, she asked me as i looked around: the ghosts were shuffling, the television was its own monotony, the rooms were filled with undead guests, the empty frame hung in its place, blood was boiling on the stove and the kitchen was adrift in its usual shipwreck, and i wanted to tell her anything but it wouldn't leave my throat. It's okay, she said, and drew out a pin. She pricked her forefinger, bade me drink, and at the first red taste of ferrous salt I could already understand better.