A World Behind

This is a story that goes back a while, to an earlier time in a person’s life, a time that you and I may still be experiencing. Nevertheless – and I might as well say that – I have intended to give you a bit of the great sense of nostalgia that is very likely to, sooner or later, come to us in our lives, regardless of who we are or how good we have been to people and things around us.

A World Behind

My childhood memories are no better shaped by anywhere than a mansion where I used to live with my family in Mashhad for some time. We still own that mansion, though we moved away some thirty years ago. The idea of a revisit to the house came to that part of my brain which is mysteriously controlled by my unconscious. I never asked myself why I tended to go there now, after three decades, just as I never asked myself why I never felt like doing so during this time. To me, it seems like some appalling enigma, some call from the underworld.
The mansion is in an old area of the city then called Darvazeh-e Ghoochan (The Gate of Ghoochan), now renamed Tohid St. The premises in the neighborhood have always been alike; they intertwine at every turn of the old dead-end alleys in the whole area. It is a hot summer afternoon when I find myself there again, back to rediscover the time, to give way to some unknown urge from within me.
Things seem the same, as if some spell has kept them still. The narrow path leading to the main entrance of the house is accompanied by a long narrow lawn along the wall of our house on one side and the wall of the neighboring house on the other. I can’t recall much of the neighbors, for I was still a kid when we left. The green grass is still there, and its fresh scent is first to take me back in time to the days when I roamed around playfully, ignorantly. And the crows; I notice they still live in the vicinity.
Standing straight but tired, the mansion is in mere harmony with the memories I hold. A few more steps and I am in front of the big white door, patched brown by particles of rust.
My hand is stretched, out of control, to touch the doorbell. On the spot, I remember how I waited those days for the time I was tall enough to reach the bell, how I wished to be a man.
The key turns in the latch and I find myself at a staircase that surges up. How I feared the dark staircase late at nights! Now it is light, due to the colored beams flooding in from the red and yellow and blue and green window panes on the high walls. The windows open onto the yard of the neighboring house, and they were always kept closed.
The rooms are now empty, except for some drapes, outworn, still hanging from some of the large windows. I head for my room. It is in a corner at the back of the house. I need to go past the dining room, the big living room, the TV room, my parents’ room, and my sister’s room. The polished wooden doors now look old and stained. Along the way to my room, there is an aura of nostalgia. The hall is bare and the walls are exposed. There it is. My room.
The doorknob breaks the spell cast on old memories, happy and sad, and vague. The door creaks open and I squint as rays of sunlight lying on the naked room now turn, interrupted, in anger and distrust, to see the intruder. Upon stepping in the three-by-four room, I quickly recognize the proportions of the place where I lived fully. As I turn around in the deserted room, I catch a glimpse of the ceiling in a corner where it meets the walls. Brown with moist, now.
The closet in the room always had in store a whole lot of mysteries. It was big and reached high. My mother used to hide my toys somewhere up there when I was being naughty. And I could never reach them, in my own room! I open it now and look carefully in. And I feel relieved.
The windows are still there. The curtains float with a warm breeze, but soon fall silent as the door behind me snaps shut with the currency of air. The large window opens to the garden. My next sure destination.
Stepping down the few stairs, I enter a world that I so much tended to associate with heaven itself. Three figs rising to the sky, having dropped their fruits on the cold wet ground, are parts of the tableau. From the many-hued flowers that once used to live around the trees, there is nothing left. But can’t I see them? The soil in the flowerbeds is bare and dry. Does it still bear the dead chickens I buried in it? How I wish to dig in and see!
The brick walls of the garden look heated, covered by the ivory leaves mounting them. The ground was once colored red by the pelargonium buds in vases in a row. And as I remember that, I sense an enchanting scent of the buds with another soft warm breeze.
On the far corner of the garden, there is a pathway that leads to a door. We always kept that door locked and used the main entrance. Just before the door – I reminisce – was a pile of unwanted ware, a wooden ladder, a wheel-barrow, a watering can, a rake, and other gardening tools that a young gardener who came to our house those days used to employ. That pile was like a reservoir of mysteries to me. I always felt an urge to fumble through the odds and ends and find something – I never knew what. I take a peep to find out they are all gone.
On a corner of the staircase to the yard, I sit, leaning against the bricks, staring at some blank point on the ground. A few minutes go by, and I start to feel a mixture of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. And then, I decide to leave. I seek to get back to the present life, smooth, though hard and cruel, and indifferent. I have already chosen the present.
The memories – I know – will always stay there, as well as somewhere unreachable within my own heart.
And it is so that the mansion gets smaller and smaller in the front mirror as I drive away. There is a world that I leave behind. Gradually, I choose not to see.
(Written April 27, 2008)

Empirical

There,
it was absolutely normal that
sparrows chirped.
Here,
it goes without notice that
crows sit silently.

One Everlasting Thing plus a Poem from Tagore's Gitanjali

One Everlasting Thing

I am the happiest person in the world. And that is because of you. You know this, and I know I don’t have to repeat it, but you know, too, that I need to say it over and over again; and you know that I need to tell everyone about it. I am the happiest person in the world because of you. Even before we met, I had been the happiest person in the world, because I was destined to meet you one day. Who can explain the day we met, the days that came afterward, and the days that are still to come? I can’t do that. I mean the day we met was a normal day, and we were normal people, but what was happening was extraordinary, and I couldn’t realize that. And on the day that we met, I had no idea what was about to happen at all. I had no idea how happy a person I was. I didn’t know, because I was dull. You could say that I still am. I mean I still do not know the true extent of it. Perhaps that is true. But now, I know one thing, I know that, because of you, I am the happiest person in the world. I know I am. Even now that you are gone.

I came upon this poem by Rabindranath Tagore very recently. I find it amazing, and relevant. So I put it here. I have taken it from Gitanjali, a collection of English prose translations made by Tagore himself from the original Bengali manuscript, published by UBS Publishers’ Distributors Pvt. Ltd., 2003, p. 9. The brackets are added by me.

Life of my life, I shall ever try
to keep my body pure, knowing that thy living touch
is upon all my limbs.
I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts,
knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled
the light of reason in my mind.
I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart
and keep my love in flower[s], knowing that thou hast thy seat
in the inmost shrine of my heart.
And it shall be my endeavor to reveal thee in my actions,
knowing it is thy power [that] gives me strength to act.
(Rabindranath Tagore)

So the Story Goes

The rising action
is quite a ride!
And before too long,
we’re at the climax.
but things are complicated.
So,
we fly down.
Actually,
I do.
(Her story is being … I don’t know … miraculously rewritten.)
The falling action
is fast.
The mysteries solve.
The secrets become known.
The story unravels itself.
And,
I reach The End.
A “hero”.
Wow!
(But oh! I must remember to add
that I die
somewhere just before the end.)

Like Someone I’d Never Known

One thing led to another. And I called her. I couldn’t believe that I did. But I did. The world stopped, letting me take in every single moment. When I thought of it, everything seemed inevitable, and – let me say that – this made me feel a bit relieved. I called her, after a year, and I told her that I only wanted to know how she was doing. I tried best to say that in a tone of self-control and rather distantly. She said she was doing fine, in an equally distant tone, a stranger’s tone. Then I remained silent. Perhaps, she felt pity for me. Perhaps she realized how hard things were for me. Because she grew kinder after that silence. Or I thought she did. She asked how I was doing. I hesitated, and said that nobody really cared. She hesitated, and said she only wanted to know. Only. What did I have to say? What did she have to say? Why had I called her in the first place after what she had done to me? A year after she’d married. What would she think I had called her for? A few moments passed and she said, “You don’t wanna talk?” And then the kindness went away. It vanished. Tough and distant. The stranger’s tone again. “I gotta go. But I hope things are okay with you, too.” She had uttered her last words. Too. That word was meant to convey things were okay with her. Meant to signal that the “only” reason I had to call her was now responded to. That I didn’t – or she didn’t – have more to say. She disconnected. Once again before I said anything. Just as she did a year ago. Just as then. Except for that she sounded like a real stranger this time. Like someone I’d never known.

Emotions plus Quotes from Reza Barāheni

Emotions

I can
chain my emotions
if they overflow.
If they refrain,
I’ll whip them to death.

(Hossein Jelveh
September 4, 2009)

Quotes from Reza Barāheni

From:
Barāheni, Reza. To the Butterflies. 2nd Ed. Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz Publishing Co., 2009.
Translated into English by me.

1. Taking poetry seriously means taking seriously the tools and the artifice of poetry. (p.125)

2. Saying that your theory must be the precise accounting of your poetry or, contrarily, your performance of every poem must be adapted to your theoretical data is insisting on this dogma that you have to turn everything that is performed subconsciously in poetry, like a throw from the inside to the outside, into something conscious, stripped of its throwing strength. (p. 126)

3. Every poet in our age is that “the other” who has emerged. (p.124)

Ordinary Urban People

Through the big window, I can see the town, a rather smaller city than where I come from, only as crowded. Several tall buildings rise above all others. The sky is colored dark blue, with strips of orange at the farthest end, at the horizon. The phone rings. It is mom. She wants to check if everything is OK. I tell her everything is fine. We hang up.
*
I turn around and look at the pile of books on the desk. Here, there is a pile of books almost everywhere. I remember I once read, in a commentary at the back of a book, that the writer has written about the lives of ordinary urban people who walk past us in the streets everyday, people we try not to hit when we walk past each other.
I think that, one day, I am going to read all these books.
*
My roommate comes back. He throws his book bag on his bed, at the corner of the room. My bed is at the opposite corner. He has just come. He is a freshman. I am a junior. He looks so determined, so ready to do something. His mind is always full of ideas, full of things he wants to do. So is mine. I think about the things in my mind. Many of them are things I was determined I was going to do some time in the future. Things I never did.
*
Mom calls. She says I sound kinda depressed. I think I do. But I tell her everything is fine. And that maybe I am just a bit homesick. We hang up.
*
I get up early. As days go by, I get up earlier and earlier. I get dressed and get out. During the first months, I remember, I never ventured beyond the confines of the dormitory neighborhood. Now I try more places.
I keep walking for a couple of hours. Little by little, the streets get more crowded. I look at passersby as I walk. I even stare at some of them until we finally walk past each other. Ordinary urban people. Several times, I have to draw myself out of the way so we don’t hit.
*
I look out of the window. Mom calls. I tell her everything is fine. We hang up.