TWO
She must have been no more than eight years old when her father told her about his urge to end his life when he was eighteen. He was serving at the military then. Since he had a driving license, his main brigade commonly tasked him with driving trucks that moved food and equipment between different camps through the Alborz mountain range in the North of Iran. He was on one such transportation mission that day, driving a Dodge M37 on a road that spiraled downward toward the other side of the mountains. He suddenly felt the need to shut his eyes close. He then took his hands off the wheel and let the truck barrel down the hairpin turn. He wasn’t sure for how many seconds or minutes he kept dissociating from the truck that was racing down the steep angled hills. It felt so peaceful and free, he would remind her young daughter who was staring at him with her two big brown buttons for eyes. How was it that he was still alive then, she wondered? It was a miracle that he didn’t die that day, father would add. He would retell the story many more times, always ending it with the miracle of God. That’s how he encountered His Existence. Later, he would tell her that he found his spiritual community that saved him from himself, the community in which she was born and grew up. He owed all his life to the community and to Him. What an unsatisfactory explanation, the daughter began to think as she got older, larger, taller, and as father became lesser in her eyes. More than twenty years later, the daughter began to feel the urge to let go of the wheel, when biking downwards in a green and peaceful city on the northern hemisphere, three continents away from him.
A dead human body releases thirty different chemical compounds. Odors and fluids permeate the flesh, as if life that leaves the body. They say at the moment of death, the human body becomes twenty one grams lighter. The movement of life turns into respiratory droplets and aerosols, as the body slows down. A rank pungent sweet smell. When I first entered the old house, I did not realize that it was you whom I was breathing in. Your odor, your body, your fleeting life.
I first assumed the smell was coming from the broken pipe in the kitchen. The pipe that had dragged me to your house after many years. Trying out faucets of the washroom, I figured the water supply of the house was cut off. Probably until we fixed the pipe it would stay that way. I checked all three stories for the source of the stench that weighed so heavy in the air. There was a thick layer of dust everywhere, just like mother had described over the phone. Despite the offensive stink, the garbage bin in the kitchen was empty. The fridge was clear, spotless. On the white racks, there was not so much as a leftover sauce, or a jar of pickles. Although the still image of you, not breathing, has haunted me for years, for as long as I remember, I never would have thought of associating that strong smell with your body. When mother called complaining about how even ten years after your divorce, she still had to look after you and your property, I didn’t make much of the broken pipes, or your absence. I thought you were gone visiting a friend in the North, or whatever it is that you were doing these days. I can’t recall when exactly we lost touch.
Aside from the story of your drive for death, my first encounter with it was with mother’s mother. Do you remember how feeble she had become? Under a heavy capsule of oxygen taller than me, that was stalled next to her bed, every night she asked God to end her suffering. She kept talking to otherworldly saints, asking them to take her life. Her supplication always ended with her daughter’s aggressive scolding. She was not allowed to give up on life, because so many other lives were dependent on her, emotionally rather than financially. Eventually, it was her old musician friend who played the song of death for her. He was here in this very living room, for his regular visits. As per usual he had brought his clarinet with him. They knew each other from back in the day, when he was a part of a band that played in a dingy small cabaret close to her house, that was rarely frequented by local residents. She was an upper middle class wife of a man-whore. Her husband, my grandfather, left her alone at home every night, venturing Tehran’s entertainment district, chasing after expatriate women who came from Russia or the UK to work in Iran as nurses, teachers, and benefactors. In order to calm her nerves, she began to frequent the only cabaret in her mostly residential neighborhood, where he, a twenty year old young chap, played the most melancholic pop songs of the time. In the sad green lights of the shabby cabaret, she let herself drown in the sound of clarinet. Decades later, her daughters and grandchildren fell for the same irresistible melody.
After lunch as we all sat around grandmother’s bed that we had put in the living room, her musician friend took out the clarinet from the black box. And the magic took over the house. Or perhaps it was the heaviness of the food that was sinking in our bellies. I still don’t know. We all fell into a leisurely afternoon nap. Once we woke up, he had stopped playing and she, breathing. I could see her body turning blue. The stream of death took over, beginning from her foot and crawling up to her core, her neck, and finally her face. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I remained still, in the corner of the room, my eyes locked on her body, as everyone in the room began to move toward the bed. More than feeling a sense of loss, I remember mother’s struggle to remain practical. From calling elder members of the family to informing them, to finding a physician who would come home to treat my aunt who kept fainting, my mother took care of it all. You didn’t approve of her occasional tears. Perhaps this is why I am having a hard time crying now that I look at your still body. Lying on your back, eyes closed, on your bed. Your odor is from hell but your face has a heavenly smile on. I hope you didn’t suffer dad. I hope you got your wish.
