Missing Soluch (41 page)

“Don’t worry about him! I lost my camel to him, but there’s always more to have in the world, eh, Mergan?”

Abrau and Mergan stood in the door, watching this uninvited guest standing in their home. Mergan saw a black look in the Sardar’s eyes. She lowered her head in silence. The Sardar pulled a pipe from his cloak, sat on the mortar, and took out his tobacco. Seeming as if he’d just noticed Karbalai Doshanbeh, he exclaimed, “Well! Karbalai is here, too!”

Karbalai Doshanbeh had not moved from his place. He’d not move for the Sardar or for God Himself. He hadn’t even raised his head. This was not just here; that was how he was everywhere. Whether in mourning, or at a wedding, or at any gathering for any reason; it was just the millstone that he was.

The Sardar’s pipe smoke rose, and Karbalai Doshanbeh looked at him from the corner of his eyes.

“So, you say you’ve come to see how your old friend here is doing, eh?”

Karbalai Doshanbeh’s question gave light to a suspicious presumption, which did not escape the Sardar’s notice. It was the kind of suspicion that the person who says it is aware of, and the person who hears it is aware of as well. Old opponents
understand each other’s speech. This understanding between the Sardar and Karabalai Doshanbeh was not recent; they had known each other well for some thirty years. When the Sardar was young, Karbalai Doshanbeh was already a man. They would lead their camels together in caravans. Head to tail, they would comprise a single team. During their travels, they would rarely be apart. The Sardar was the front leader of the caravan and Karbalai Doshanbeh would be responsible for overseeing the entire team. But it would be wrong to think that their familiarity with each other was a kind of friendship. This was because Karbalai Doshanbeh was rarely a friend to anyone. The sense of companionship he shared with some people was simply borne out of need. These were needs that arose from having to cross a dangerous pass in the deepest winter snow, or in having to cross the desert in the summer heat. For him, companionship was simply a solution to the problem of being alone, either to face the threat of wolves in the winter or to find protection from jackals in the summer. Everyone knew this. But you can’t kill someone for being self-preserving. Goats have hair, and sheep have wool.

“Will you smoke a pipe, Karbalai?”

“Um … yes … I’ll smoke.”

The Sardar offered his pipe to Karbalai Doshanbeh.

“You’ll suck it up even if they were giving it away for free! Ha ha! You’ve been smoking pipes for a hundred years, but I’ve never once seen you take out a bag of your own tobacco from your sack.”

Karbalai Doshanbeh exhaled the smoke from the pipe and said, “A hundred years? More like a hundred and twenty years!
Just go and bring my death shroud, won’t you? Do you think you’re a spring chicken yourself? Don’t judge by your beard, just because it’s still jet-black! How old do you make yourself to be, anyway?”

“How old do you think I should be?”

“You tell me.”

“Fifty. At most, I’m fifty.”

“No. Start at twenty! You’re still innocent and haven’t seen the world, eh?”

“So you think I’m older than fifty?”

“I told you: you’re twenty!”

“If I’m older than fifty, why don’t I have a single white hair?”

“What does white or black hair have to do with anything? A goat’s hair is black! Is that an argument? White hair runs in the family.”

“So your beard went white while you were still a young man?”

“Ahmmm …”

Karbalai Doshanbeh wrapped his lips around the pipe, and the Sardar looked at Mergan with a gleeful smile.

“You don’t want to bring us a cup of tea and a date?”

Mergan was still holding the handkerchief full of dates. She didn’t know what to do with them.

“Put them somewhere by the cabinet. Just put them over there. They’re delicious dates.”

Mergan put the handkerchief by the cabinet. Then she looked at Abrau, who looked away from her. Mergan went to put the kettle on the stove.

“Hey, Abrau! Where are you, boy?”

Salar Abdullah’s voice rang in the alley. Abrau ran out. He couldn’t bear the thought of Salar Abdullah coming inside and filling the room with his huge frame as well. He met him and stood chest-to-chest with him, his back against the wall.

“Yes, Salar?”

“Run! Run and bring the ram over to the road! Mirza Hassan is coming. He’s bringing the water pump. Everyone’s gathering at the road. We need to celebrate by killing a ram! Now, go. Run!”

Mergan was standing with one foot inside and one foot outside of the house, listening to what Salar Abdullah was saying. She listened to her son’s footsteps and those of Salar Abdullah until they faded into the distance. Then she returned to the room.

“So, they’ve finally brought it!”

Karbalai Doshanbeh was speaking to himself.

Megan sat beside the stove.

The Sardar asked, “What does this new group want to do with their water pump, Karbalai?”

As always, Karbalai Doshanbeh waited a few moments before offering a few words.

“No doubt they want to draw water up from the earth! Ha ha!”

“But from dry earth?”

“What do I know?”

“But if our land had water, it wouldn’t be dry. If it had water, our canals wouldn’t be drying out every day.”

Karbalai Doshanbeh saw that the Sardar and he shared the same view in this matter.

“They say the water in the canals is so low there’s no point in re-dredging them.”

“Well, let them dredge them again, if they want!”

Karbalai Doshanbeh began to laugh silently.

“What? Dredge them? Who’ll take charge of that? You have an active imagination! This group can’t manage to drink a glass of water without someone telling them what to do. They can’t get anything done without the threat of the stick! When there used to be one or two real leaders in this village, the landowners used to collect money to have the canals dredged. Soluch himself, God rest his soul, used to make a month’s living every year from dredging them. But now that our former leaders have gone to live among strangers in town, they don’t bother with the canal waters any more. So this is now in the hands of the petty landowners. They’ve spent all their money for the land and irrigation on buying and selling. So the canals have fallen into the hands of this group of new lords! And they each think they should be in charge, since none of them trusts the others. Each of them considers the promises of the others as worthless. They each say, ‘What do I care? I only have a foot of water myself. Why don’t the others do anything about it? What’s it to me?’ The other issue is that the value of grain has fallen. That’s the most important reason, actually. They have to sell their wheat for less than three
tomans
per unit. It’s not worth it to the petty landowners to farm more than what they’ll use themselves. So now everyone who has some land and a bit of water only plants enough for his own use. During the harvest, how much pay can you set aside to hire gleaners? And those who don’t have land have to buy their wheat from the market. So, they need to get
money from somewhere. Where will the landless in Zaminej make money these days? From the small landowners? The small landowners are already in a tight spot. That’s why Zaminej is falling apart now. The young men are leaving to sell their labor elsewhere. Many may not return. That’s why the canal’s been forgotten. Everyone’s forgotten about the canal. And the canal’s like a person, or, if you like, a camel or a sheep. If you don’t care for it, if you don’t feed it, when you don’t care for it when it gets sick, it falls from its feet. It becomes ill. It gets worse day by day. Its throat tightens; that’s the water level dropping … and it will get still worse than it is now! You’ve not seen anything yet! Mirza Hassan will show up and hire a few simpletons to help dig the well for this pump. But what will be the end of all of this? I don’t see any good coming from it. And I say this while my own son is a partner in this plan!”

The Sardar asked, “So is the pump supposed to do the work of the canals, then? Will I still be able to get water for my camels, or will I eventually have to pay for it?”

“It’s all new for me, so I don’t know!”

“The pump, as you say, is owned collectively, no?”

“Yes, like the canal itself. There are two or three primary owners, and the rest have allotments allowing them to use the water for an hour or two at a time.”

“So the owner is now actually Mirza Hassan, yes?”

“Ah … that’s what they say.”

“And he’s planning to take the role of the overlord of the village, yes?”

“Probably. Most likely! But this is where he’s stuck! What lands will he be the lord of? The barren wild lands? Ha! That’s
a difficult job. His eyes are on the lands owned by my son and by my nephew Zabihollah, but he’s stuck there as well! The lands aren’t all contiguous. There are bits and pieces here and there. You want to know how much it will cost to distribute whatever water they manage to pump to these scattered bits of land? A water pump! All of the village’s money was collected by these three or four people and they’ve thrown it all at this heap of scrap metal—and let’s not forget the money they borrowed from the government! We’ll see a day when they can’t afford the pants on their legs!”

Right or wrong, Karbalai Doshanbeh was mixing his hopes for the future into his predictions, which were no doubt stained by both envy and spite. They were wishes for the failure of others. If these others were to fail miserably, then he would be able to protect his sense of superiority. There are those who establish their own standing through the misery or degradation of others. In a thousand ways they say, “Don’t move, so that I can stay ahead of you even if I’m standing still!” These kinds of people, given that they’re stuck and frozen at a specific point, can’t imagine any way ahead. Full of spite, they’re like snakes sitting on the road. And although sometimes the road may indeed end in the point that they have predicted, one cannot consider their predictions as perspicacious. What they foresee is essentially a reflection of their envy, even if it contains scraps of the truth as well. What lies in their hearts is jealousy, enhanced by the fear of losing their position.

To Karbalai Doshanbeh, it was as plain as day that his position was being eroded. He had been comfortable as long as people were in need of him. But whenever and however people found
or established a different source of hope for themselves, he sensed a tremor shaking the ground beneath him. The grounds were shifting. He’d been feeling it again recently. The government loans were putting him out of business. And he had neither the instinct nor the craft to find another use for his money. He also lacked the courage to change his ways. Earlier, his lack of spirit and his narrow mind had prevented him putting his money, which he had raised from selling his camel herd, to productive use. He hadn’t even bothered to buy a drop of water from the canal, nor a handful of land. His son, Salar Abdullah, had inherited the land and water that he owned from his mother, in addition to a half-day allotment of water from the water lords. Slowly, Karbalai Doshanbeh had become like an old viper curled on the top of an ancient jug of money. His view perceived nothing but the handful of people whose lives were somehow caught up with his, the poor souls who were compelled to go to him to borrow a bit of money, the interest of which would eventually weigh on them and bend their backs even more.

But the situation was still changing. The larger landowners had, for one reason or another, sold their lands and water and had moved to the nearby towns. Many of the landless people had also set out on roads leading to distant towns and cities, and so were now no longer in need of Karbalai Doshanbeh. All that remained were the small landowners and those who had been able to continue to provide for themselves. These were the ones who were now making an effort to take up the roles of being landlords and leaders. They wanted to stay in the village, and to move up there. They wanted to clear a new path, and head out on it. There were others who were left in the middle.
Those who, due to the low prices on the harvests, and the expense of paying for labor, had no choice but to make use of the tractor and thresher and the water pump in their fields. These people were tied to the land and had no choice but to stay. These were the people who had to struggle to make ends meet. But even they were no longer in need of Karbalai Doshanbeh’s services. They’d found a new saint to protect them. A new saint had been offered them, and they now sought their protection from it: the government. And Mirza Hassan was on the vanguard of this new idea and worked day and night for it. He ran from one governmental office to another, and from one governmental official to one or another bank. From one city to another, from one province to another. From Gonbad to Gorgon to Mashhad and back to Zaminej, across the desert. He was like a sword that cut through everything, engaging with people far and wide to get his work done.

“You remember when this newcomer Mirza Hassan used to be a sugar thief, Sardar?”

“Of course I remember!”

“Even though my own son is now his partner, I can’t tell a lie about him! No, I’m no fool! Whose rope is he using to pull water from the well?”

“So why don’t you join them? You could put all your money to some use! Why not partner with them? After all, you don’t want to take your money to the grave with you!”

“What money? Ha! Money! Are you kidding me? Do you think I have any money left?”

Mergan set the teacups on a tray and took the handkerchief of dates from beside the cabinet and brought them over.

The Sardar said, “And put a cup out for Abbas!”

Karbalai Doshanbeh sipped from his cup and sucked at the date through his useless teeth. He took out the date seed, sized it up, and said, “That’s a nice date, Sardar! Top grade! You still eat dates like this?”

“I get a batch every month. Haji Mashi sets them aside for me himself. If I didn’t have them, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with my camels! That’s why I always have a batch of the best kinds of raisins, or the best grade of currants.”

“That’s good, very good! What memories!”