the Killing of an Arab a Novel --Six Chapters-First Draft-Hooshang Danesh

8/9/2019 the Killing of an Arab a Novel --Six Chapters-First Draft-Hooshang Danesh

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The Killing of an ArabNovel

Hooshang Danesh



Copyrights 2010 by HooshangDanesh

All rights reserved. No part of this bookmay be reproduced or transmitted in anyform or by any means, electronic, ormechanical, including photocopying,recording, or by any information storageand retrieval system, without permissionin writing from the copyright owner. Thisis a work of fiction, any resemblance to

actual people is coincidental.

First Edition



Chapter One: Contact

We are video-chatting, my friend and I. He is

married and lives in Amsterdam. He is not

Dutch, but we’re both rootless, and restless--

doctors, we can go anywhere.

He is amazed by the on-line availability of

medical texts in States. He is picking my brains,

like he’s suddenly been dropped into a virtualtoy-store, and there’s no way out of there.

“What else you got?”

“Nothing, that would interest you!”

“Just tell me what you got, will you?”

“Look: I have Atlas of Endometriosis, 3rd

Edition!”

-1-



“Send the file, I’ll take it.”

“You’ll take it? You are a Psychiatrist for Gods

sake!”

“I’m married though, you never know!”

“Send her to a gynecologist, are you mad ?”

“Look , I like to collect text-books, they are free,aren’t they?”

“They’ll sit on your hard disk forever!”

“Let me worry about that.”

“Ok, its sent.”

He looks exasperated, sitting in front of the

webcam. His hair standing upright on his head,

been slept on . It’s a Sunday, he looks disheveled.

I can hear his kids in the background.

“You should see the way you look--like a

frenzied mad dog!”

“Just because I like to keep up with

information?”

He just likes to hoard things. A genuine pack-

rat.

“What else you got?”

He is relentless. Its getting comical.

“This one couldn’t possibly interest you at all-so

don’t bother me about it.”

“Let me be the judge of that-you act like you

own these files.”

I should let him have it, its like a Greek tragedy.

-2-



Back in med-school, he’d started collecting

antiques. He would, in the middle of term drive

to some far-out county for the thin promise of

finding a 19th-century table lamp.“You want to know what its called?”

“Go-ahead, try to humiliate me!” Chuckles. He

is incensed, I can hear it in his tone.

“Its: Oxford dictionary of clinical dentistry, 430

pages.”

I can’t stop laughing now, its hilarious.

“I’ll take it.”

He can’t back down. His forehead is stuck in the

shadows of the camera, pale and immobile. I

can’t make-out his face anymore. He is

dissolving in the shadows, unrecognizable,

“Coming right up!”

“I like to be able to talk sensibly with my

dentist!” He offers as an explanation.

He wants to rationalize things: but hoarding is

absurd..

“ The whole planet is afflicted with what you

got.” I want to say, but I don’t. Instead I say:

“It took you too long to come up with that

explanation, it

-3-



doesn’t count--remember: your mothers house?”

Once he took me home to meet his mother, the

house stank of cats, and defeated carpeting.

Card-board boxes of all sizes, were piled from

floor to the ceiling, and there was this thin

narrow passage, right in through them, you hadto tip-toe your way through, or fall flat on your

ass. And where there were no boxes, there were

piles of yellowing old news papers, some of them

dating back to 60’s. He’d looked curiously at me

and asked:

“It looks pretty bad, ha?” Like he wasn’t quite

sure.

And I’d mumbled: “Yes.” Not sure, what’s

expected of me, and also in a shock.

“I’ve seen worse!” He’d said flatly, dismissingly,

but with a tinge of anger.

And we’d left it at that.

Few years later, he casually told me his uncle

and wife were being evicted from their Long

Beach home by the department of Health

services.

“But why?”

“A neighbor reported them-they had collected so

-4-



much junk, all the windows were shut up, there

was no light coming in through the house, and

the house stank the neighborhood.”

“How could they live like that, I mean what do

they do for a living, how do they support

themselves?”“They both work for the post office.”

Pause.

“They’ve been working for the post office for

twenty-five years!”

“Oh.”

I am not sure what--but something is thinly

logical about that explanation. I mean: post

office, order, sorting things out, and its

malignancy: never letting go of anything.

The picture from Amsterdam breaks. He moves

out of its field chasing one of his kids out of the

room. He apparently closes the door to his study.

Because they’re just faint obscure noises now ,

like they were thrown down a well.

“How is life there?”

“We like it here, there’s so much going on, and

then there’s a peacefulness here too, living isn’t

-5-



So diluted. I don’t think we could live in States

anymore, we would probably need a house three

times this.”

“Remember my uncle and his wife?”

“The pack-rats?”“Yeah.”

“I think I finally know why?”

“Why?”

“ It’s all the Wal-marts, and the Chinese.”

“No, its deeper than that.” I think,

but let it go.

The door to his study must have been opened,

tiny voices rise like birds in thorn-they want

attention-and I see two of them behind him, on

the ground directionless, running in small rapid

circles. Like toys on fresh battery.

“You better go.”

He is reluctant.

“ Ring again, if you have something for me.”

It occurs to me that he uses hoarding to make

contact, human contact.

I want to say: ‘object relations’ have become

torn apart, like stars, planets nudged out of

motion.

-6-



But I must dash-off. I’m chasing objects as well.

Life is a lot busier here in Los Angeles.

We both wave goodbye, and just as I’m about tocut the video off, I have another video-chat

invitation.

I don’t recognize the signature. Its vague. But

my memory is inefficient these days. There is

just so much I can store in my cells: so to cache

anything new, something else must always be

reduced in significance-I’m not sure what I can

afford to condense anymore. Everything seems

vital.

I type:

“Hi, do we know each other?”

“Yes.” Response is in English.

“Where?”

Pause.

She is typing a response.

“Nous avons recontre de la conference!”

I have to think. Translate. Conference?

Qu’est conference?”

She is typing.

“Medicins san frontiers-a Paris.”

-7-



Doctors without borders.

“Oh, oui.”

I connect the video, and there she is: Samar Ben

Mahmoud..

Just as pretty as when we met in Paris. Onlyolder, something vague building around her

eyes--no hijab (head cover), smiling wide with

that familiar innocence, same pearly white teeth,

and cracks in her eyes like pools of light. Back

in Paris she’d stood out like something wild and

uncommon. With a full-length black skirt that

didn’t quite match anything else she wore, or

match Paris for that matter. And her briefcase,

like something unexpected, thrown in the mix,

and she’d looked worn by its weight--and its

unfamiliar language of close-fisted masculinity. I

remember I noticed her feet first. She was

wearing a strappy open-toed pair. I was struck

by how pretty, and milky they were. And then

the hands she stretched out to meet mine, soft,

long, exquisite. Why was she there?

“What are you here for.” She must know some

English. Everyone pretends to, a bit.

“Etes-vous un medicin?

“No.”

She isn’t a doctor. Doctors don’t carry

briefcases.

“Je suis un avocet.”“Qu’est-ce avocet?” No English at all? I

-8-



probably look disappointed.

“Lawyer, lawyer, d’anglais.” She repeats in a

happy tone, like she’s just discovered it in a

giddy corner of her brain. She has very bright

expressive eyes. I want to tell her she looks like

Juliette Binoche-but I’ve forgotten what she

looks like-its just a beautiful name. And only anexcuse for a complement.

We exchange eye contact again. Her eyes are

dipped in jars of honey.

“Je travaille sur l'obtention de l'eau à des

villages différents en Afrique.”

“votre français n'est pas bonne?”

“aucun.”

“votre niveau d'anglais?”

Pause.

“Ecote?”

“Pavillon de la Finlande est proche

Voulez-vous y aller à pied?”

I want to take her away. To a tourist spot next

door. She stands out here, conspicuously

splintered. The Finnish woods might have her

scents. Scents of roots and foliage with nests.

We walk to the pavilion de Finland, its almost

next door-it’s a modern piece. I am exhausted

with French architecture. They all have the

-9-



same autocracy, everything repeats itself like a

knock-knock joke. She walks along me. She has

a funny child-like walk. She swings to the left

and right, it reminds me of a windshield wiper.

And she smiles uncontrollably.

She is either playful naturally, or my curiosity

has made her coquettish. I seem to stare afterher, with fondness, and with a look like I’m

making an arrangement of her in mind. “

Like I plan to put her in a vase.

We have a great deal of fun that day, she likes to

try French pastries and chocolate. And likes to

beg me to share some with her. There is

something matronly, willowy about that. But I

have strict rule against sugars and cholesterol.

She doesn’t mind showing she disapproves of my

rules.

We come to have these forays into Paris every

day, for the next seven days of conference. We

are attracted to each others’ company. Nothing

around us exists directly during these dates, but

-10-



as extensions of some vague filament of

happiness. When I finally have her alone in myhotel room, in a clear day you can see across

miles of rooftops. She refuses to make love.

Though she is very aroused. She trembles at

every touch. Her face reposes with discovered

new feelings ? I can’t tell. She says she is a

virgin!

“I have to be married first.” She says coyly,

reserved, while panting with sexual excitement.“Or my father will kill me.” There is a look of

terror in her eyes. Is it real? I take heed though.

Had I not taken notice of this expression, we

might have gone all the way-but the severity of

that thought! She is a Muslim. She would have

been killed? In retrospect, I think the thought

must have both excited and trapped me there

and then in a way I am yet, unable to explain.

We exchanged e-mails next day. It was the last

day of conference, and it seemed the

appropriate, modern thing to do. Though

I couldn’t have imagined the thought of wanting

to murder her someday then, as now.

-11-



She said she lives in Tamanrasset. A town on the

borders of Sahara-- 2000 kilometers south of

Algiers.

“You should come, and talk to my father.”

Her English had improved a lot in seven days.

I think she meant I should marry her-that is if I

want: her love (or does she mean sex?)

I meant to tell her we don’t do things that way.That there are many factors in love.

That things aren’t quite as common or concrete

as the father -approval -racket. But all the while

thinking: does her ways turn

“father”-“abstinence”, -- “marriage” into

complicated mysterious, and pleasure-finding

things ? I Know her temperature was higher

pitched than most girls I’d met. Perhaps “hijab”

was invented by women after all? I know women

who would pay dearly to have their libido

pitched this heavenly sharp.

And now, after two months, here she is on

skype. Without a “hijab”-her hair is dyed a

brownish color. Its short and looks attractive

around the symmetry of her face. She is wearing

a summer dress, something with straps over her

shoulders and her breasts are large winged

objects inside. I know how they feel. How they

can tremble like sea in desert, I know the rotund

shape of her nipples. Something had to be chased

out of my brain to preserve the memory of their

geometry.-12-



“What?”

“Do you like my dress?” She repeats it as though

I can be hard of hearing.

She stands in front of camera now., showing off

the dress.Its what happy careless women would wear if

they were strolling down a beach somewhere. Its

ornamented with tiny flowers. Its stylish. She

has good taste.

I say its pretty. I mean it.

She says: “I have good taste.”

I say approvingly like a husband: “I know

azizam.”

Azizam is an affectionate Persian term, it means

honey, dear. Its like habibi in their language.

Is the dress a glimpse of what she is like inside?

Carelessness of summer-unguarded, indifferent.

There and then I begin to think of her as a wife.

There is something very unexpected, and calm

about her.

I see her fit anywhere in the world. Our world.

I feel happy, privileged by her existence?

“You look great.”

“Thank you honey. I like that word ‘honey.”

It occurs to me that words of affection like:

azizam or honey must have certain sounds, andlyricism in them. Binding. Movements away

-13-



from the remote- into smoother hoards of life.

It feel as though with “honey” her pretty dress

will come off her body the way it never did in

Paris. Though I was allowed to touch, and tease

her- I’ve never seen her naked.

But here, 10,000 miles or more away--She looks

ready to throw them down like feathers in the

wind. Is it the rebelliousness of internet?

Or is this the reunion of a river that began in

Paris? Or million years ago?

I don’t know quite want to say:

“ Can I see your breasts?” I’m sure I can’t say

that. Even distance doesn’t reduce how unusual

that sounds to me. I know I’d really have to want

her first.

And I know I’ll be saying it for her sake. To me

seeing them from here is like conducting a

mantle of music far away in an attic. Their scents

are out of reach, their shifting weight. The

orchestra would be missing major footsteps. But

she must know I desire them. That I am

speechless. I’d felt them-- made them sway, and

felt their nipples harden in between my fingers,

like frozen things.

-14-



But that “terror” in her eyes: ”My father will

kill me.” I want to ask: “is it easier here. Is a

simple webcam enough to shake away the

foundation of family/religion? Has this religionexisted for the cold indefinite solitude of

appearances only?

I notice her room. Its small. The webcam is

slanted to her right to show her thinly profile.

Behind her is a dresser, painted white like the

rest of the room, it absorbs light in goblets and

drops them around her in fits of grey. She wears

a headphone with a microphone, she whispers

carefully, everyone in the house must be sleep.

She lives with her parents of course. And the

door to her room is closed. And her clothes are

piled orderly and neat on the dresser.

I know I don’t wish to see her naked. Touching

her in Paris had almost meant love, this here

could drive me into insanity. (And it does.)

I say I’ll see her again tomorrow?

She nods her head.

She blows kisses, as we sign off.

-15-



A taste remains just under my skin. Something

subterranean, something from some other world.

Later on I dream of her breasts stirred. Of their

terrifying wind.

In the morning, I try to forget her, it feels like

being infected by the pure essence of objects. Iknow I want her scattered warmth. But I know

seeing them without touch is a soliloquy,

touching them without love is object-less, empty.

It will be like the thick fruit that breaks and

falls. And no one’s to pick it.

But I’d underestimated her. Underestimated

myself. And underestimated the threat of being

submerged in the sterile sorrow of aloneness.

Objectless.

-16-



Chapter Two: The Eyes Have it.-17-



She calls back the next day. Its almost midnightthere in Tamanrasset. And it’s the beginning of

evening here in Los Angeles. The day will settle

in dark mountain hollows soon. We will almost

share the night together.

I hear the rapid Spanish dialect of the neighbors

in my headphone. The world is hushed on her

side of the world-except the occasional barking

of a lonely dog , and the sounds of roosters, orare they chickens? No one would know around

here.

I like to ask her personal things like does she

have a boyfriend. And why a pretty woman like

her is yet unmarried. In fact I do ask that.

“Comment etes-vous pas marie?”

She looks shocked by the question. They are

unused to directness, or is it reality?

“Vous n’etes pas marie ni.”

She means I am not married either.

I want to say: but I’m not an Algerian Muslim

woman aged thirty. But its all too obvious.

“Il ya quelqu’un?”

“Speak English please.”

“did you have someone?”

“Yes, but he married a girl with money. I loved

him.”

And just as she says this, tears come out of her

eyes. She is quick to dry them by a lonely finger.

Its so solitary, I think.

-18-



I want to be empathic.

“I am sorry, who was he?”

“No, it’s the past-why go to the past, why?”

I like to say: but its you who is crying about it!

But then I’m neither a woman, nor a romantic.

“There are gender and cultural issues here.”

I murmur mutant to myself.

She wants to change the subject again:

“How about you, you aren’t married yet, why?

You haven’t found anyone?”

She asks almost accusingly.

“I don’t have anyone?”

I think sadly to myself: But I want to say we

have something called: fuckbuddies. People who

like each other, go for casual sex. But I know this

fuckbuddy thing is neither in the zeitgeist nor in

the collective consciousness. And never been

practiced by me. I’ve just heard of it. It can’t

really talk about something I’ve only heard of!

“You look beautiful tonight.”

I want to say you look like a silent territory-like

your Sahara-like pure water has slept in you.

-19-



But I can neither translate it, nor her English

can pick it up. We have to fall on something

terrestrial, something not words but with their

potency and tenderness.

And I think this is where her pale, pale skin

comes in, like a trick of waving silt by a magician

and doves will fly out.

“It’s inevitable that her clothes will come off. “

I think.

If we sit her and there, night after night for

weeks, in wrathful peace, nothing would stir us

as much as her pale flesh seen. Nothing in her

world can forbid it yet, religion always play

catch up to the majesty of thirst.

“We should sit in our own blue bonfires, and

watch the passing of blood over our extended

wings.”

I want to express. Should I tell her I’m a poet

too?

A clear wind from near my Pacific ocean to her

silent, solitary Sahara, How quickly my mind has

turned on itself. I’m changing my thoughts,

inhibitions, restraints.

-20-



The thing really needs my perusal, her daring,

and the rightness of our reflection.

“Its all there.” I think.

So I begin to softly seduce, the most willing

object. Her readiness is in every dress she puts

on for the next few days. The florid flows of tiny

colors in the distance. They all want to bedropped in her 30-year-old hands and slap the

moon in the face. I would have said.

In how she texts: “I am going to take a shower,

and be with you in ten minutes.” In the way she

turns the camera to show the whiteness of her

bare legs. The slope of her eyebrows in the view.

The silent agreement of the universe.

. One night I ask :

“Aren’t you sleepy?”

“No.”

“You sure!”

“Yes, I’m sure, I want to talk to you more,

everyone in the house is sleep?”

“Are they?”

“The door to your room closed?”

“Yes, see.”

She walks to the single door and turns the lock

clock-wise.

“See?”

We are co-conspirators now..

-21-



.“Can I see more of you-I think we’re ready.”“No, we can’t-we have to be married first.”

She repeats it like a mantra.

“But how can we know if we can be married?”

“I don’t understand?”

“Tomorrow night?”

“May be!”“But you have felt me in Paris-you know me

already!”

“But we are 10000 miles or more away- we

almost have to become closer or die apart?”

“Die?”

“Alright I’m exaggerating a bit but only the

spirit can move this distance alone, and only the

spirit makes the call!”

I seem more vague to myself.

“Yes, I know.”

“Tomorrow night.”

“What do you want to see?”

“Everything at once, “

“I think we’re just desiring to be close.” I say

convinced.

“We have talked so much—and we will run out

-22-



of words someday, and then what?”.”

“I want to fall into some dream of silence, and

take root.”

I want to say, but can’t, even if she knows

English well? Though it isn’t vague to meanymore.

She is silent. I know she repeats the words to

herself for understanding. But listens more to

the music, so it reaches her. She moves the

microphone closer to her mouth.

I think her hands are so pretty.

“Yes?”

Pause.

“And yours, your skin?”

“In the rigthtness of your reflection.”

The poet in me.

pause

“Are you falling in love with me?”

“I think I’m falling into all possible, that’s

something.”

I repeat, hoping she catches their scents.

-23-



“Your voice is so nice.”

Pause.

“Votre voix.”

“I understand.” I say, and see the swaying

towers, like spiders, they will turn the moon into

a star.

Then her bare skin begins to cover the camera,

the whole of the solitude.

They look like roots of water.

Everything remains still, and persists at another

limit.

Her breasts look the way they’d felt. But its like

they are covered by more mystery, and made

even more voluptuous.. She rubs her nipples

round and round, like I’d done. Her fingers are

slimmer than mine. And for a time, she looks

absorbed in some memory.

“It can’t be mine?.”

I think a voice might have been brave enough to

say that in my head.

And she sways under my skin this way, a

subterranean river. And its not like I get goose-

bumps, erection, or rapid heart beat. Whatever

this is, its more stealth. It’s as much a mystery

-24-



to me, as movement, stillness, or the geometry of

things are. But I think and dream of nothing

else but her for hours after we sign off, until she

connects on again. And we barely talk except:

I ask her to marry me.

She agrees.

-25-



Chapter Three: The Shape of

my Heart.

Moments after we wave goodnight, and only an

hour after our engagement is set final. I go

looking through drawers , and old boxes, for my

grandmother’s diamond ring. I know I’ve always

had it. Always assure of its existence, though notlooking for it at all. Its always sat there,

somewhere, like a rare unguarded treasure. Oh,

not because of its price, its only a half-carat

diamond ring, princess cut, on aged white gold..

Its an antique . She’d said before she passed

away:

“You only give this to a woman you are going to

marry.”-26-



Like she’d suspected I might be careless with its

allegiance, and then looked at me as though, the

thought of my marriage had suddenlyinvigorated her. It must have meant continuity,

endlessness to her. She must have known that it

exists, then and there.

I often wonder if she was the one who poisoned

me with these thin innocent thoughts of love,

marriage?

Never mind that now.

She’d died two days later in sleep at the oldpeople’s home in north of Tehran.

Not really a nursing home. She’d never been ill.

But where she’d been surrounded by people her

own few generations. Women and men she

talked to often. People who had lived lives

similar to hers. Old doctors, college professors,

inventors, nurses.

I know their society had been rich and

confirming. Their own generations must have

thought of erecting these places themselves.

Orderly, clean, spacious rooms with views of

Persian gardens, rituals: tea every hour, word

puzzles, and talk of poetry and of classics.

-27-



I’d been there many times. She’d liked to show

me off. I liked to do the same. She looked healthy

vibrant, and sometimes energetic as a little girl.

No one had ever seemed depressed, or ill there.

Just aging well, and social in the Persian way:

like everyday is Nourooz (new yesr): presents,

eloquence, the perfect symmetry of things, like in

Persian rugs, like the universe somehow makessense and geometry is its testament.

And their earned luxuries: their satellite dishes

like little deflated things arranged conspicuously

asymmetric on balconies. (they weren’t allowed

by the illegal government who frightened, would

naturally jump at the sounds of birds chirping.)

The Voice of America in one room, BBC in the

other. They trusted the state run TV and radio,

even less than the young people did.

Silent agreement over the outside distant world

of rape and mayhem. Silent prayers for the

extinction of “akhunds” as they called the clerics

(the enemy).. And always poetry at the

beginning, and in the end. Like destiny is like

geometry too, and somehow it must always

repeat and rhyme in one form or shape. Only

then they weaved and sang like young boys and

girls the truth about the world, and everyone

trembled then before this swirling mystery.

-28-



And the saddest thing for me then as now: the

remembrance of things past. That inevitable

sense of nostalgia.

The nostalgia had always wanted me to run out,elsewhere, elsewhere. But one by one they had

picked up this revulsion in me, they seemed to

have the keenest senses, and left the nostalgia out

of our conversations. Like it was an uneven

number in the grace of our meetings.

But where did I pick up these thoughts of love

and murder?

It couldn’t have been the religion in them. None

was a devout Muslim . They may all have been

born into it, but with all the hardships of present

Iran. These people were sick of this new-old-

religion-racket.

My grandfather, God bless his soul, had upon

moving into the big city, ages ago, been

persuaded by a friend into Bahaism, a

-29-



perfect peaceful naïve branch off Islam, I don’t

know much more about them. But their

ritualistic “meetings” and “socializations” been

too autocratic and ceremonial to be

comprehensible to me as young boy. I was

reading Crime and Punishment then, and was

content with that sort of meaning. Everyone else

seemed to take things too seriously, or do I meansuperficially”? My dear grandfather, after

taking me to a Bahai meeting (which had lasted

a ghastly 3 hours) looked me in the eyes, and

there and then abandoned thoughts of

converting me, I think in my 14 –year- old eyes ,

he must have clearly seen the nature’s beast in

me. He must have seen that no amount of talk

about “love and peace” could drive the beast

out.

And with the same rebelliousness, I assume, my

grandmother had defected from Bahaism after

his death. No, she’d remained respectful to him,

all through his “love and peace” phase of life, she

must have been a beautiful pretender. But

shortly after his death, she went to India and

became a devotee of a 70-year-old Indian guru

named startlingly: Sri Sri Baba. And she

remained a devoted follower, until hoards of

grown young

-30-



men, his eminences’ former followers, came out

of closets in numbers and accused him of having

had raped them in their childhood. Their stories

entirely believable. She left this guru feeling

indignant and confused.

And she never mentioned this period of her lifeto anyone. And if I were slightly playful, joking

about this pedophile. She would stare at me

hurt,, with her round black eyes, pleading me

silently to stop. And I would.

-

But for different reasons, everyone in the

fashionable old people’s home was a silent

objector to the religion scam. Though none ever

really warned me about the deception, the

conceit, or I wouldn’t have become the perfect

murderer I slowly am.

-31-





this surprise business. It occurs to me that the

“surprise” notion may be an entirely alien thingto her. That nothing suddenly thrust upon you

can be that welcome in her world. And that

perhaps somewhere inside her she is expecting

bad news?

“No, I assure you, you’ll really like this!”

I feel I have to really convince her with this.

“Ok, what is it?”

She clasps her hands in that childish way shehas. It reminds me of her walk, the playfulness;

she’s taking her time to mature.

“It’s a ring, an engagement ring, for you!”

“You have it already?”

“Yes its right here, look!”

I take it out of its velvet bed. It sparkles with

blueness. Like I’ve lit a lantern in the room. She

stares at it, asks me to hold it close to the

camera. She is awake, restful, measuring things.

“For me?”

“Who else , why, we are engaged now.”

“But you said you can’t come to Tamanrasset for

another 2 months?”

“I know I’ll mail it to you.”

“How? They’ll steal it!”

“No, I know a courier service, they’ll deliver it to

your door.”

“Make sure I have to sign for it.”

-33-



she says with legal authority.

“Ok.”

“Its beautiful. How did you get it?”

“It’s a long story.”

Perhaps I don’t want to remember my

Grandmother at this point.

Perhaps she ought to have warned me with not

just her eyes,. But words, even tears, aboutrecklessness, treachery, love.

And perhaps she ought not have left me with a

jewel to plan a future, but a strapping dagger,

something ominous and intimidating.

Samira is over the moon that night. Every few

moments she asks me to put the ring right back

in front of the camera and turn it like its on fire,

and the ring’s reflection looks condensed, in her

attentiveness, like it’s become the union of nights

elements, and you feel as though an assumption

is posted behind every object in the universe, and

this ones’ clearly sustained by a minor star.

And her clothes don’t just come off her body

that night, they vanish like a spell and everything

becomes a curve that circles us into the closest

distance. And I, an intelligent being myself,

survive a night of worship?

-34-



She doesn’t ask me to make any promises, she

doesn’t even ask whether or not I will post the

ring later or sooner. By the dawn there in

Tamanrasset, she falls into sleep. With the lights

and the camera left on. Her legs far apart, like

she’d been interrupted in the middle of a dance.

I jump into bed myself, assured that love or a

religion has taken over me entirely. And I dream

of a great forest surrounding us. Of objects

incomprehensibly inseparable and lost. And of

their union, and collective echo, somewhere,

where I’m not allowed.

As soon as I wake up, I instantly recall past

conversations at the old people’s home in

Tehran. Someone or other had on more

occasions tried to explain the “foreign” religion

of Islam. They liked to do that. To blame it all on

Arabs. The history apparently went something

like this: Arabs spiritual impulses before

Muhammad were entirely absent or lukewarm.

That they worshipped idols, their objects of

devotion had to be seen by eye, and touched by

hands or it couldn’t exist at all!!

“They couldn’t imagine God , can you believe

that?”

-35-



“Well what does that mean?”

“It means they can’t abstract at all—eventually

they’ll need 72 virgins just to understand the

abstraction of heaven? Why don’t you read

some?”

I read.

The different nomads had different idols, Andthey performed ceremonies in “nude” around

these idols. A famous object was known as Al-

Lat, she was a cubic rock!!

“But the current object of worship in Mecca is a

huge cubic rock!”

“Old Muhammad, may he rest in peace, really

tried.”

She (Al-Lat) was venerated by Qurayshies.

“Muhammad changed a great of that, I tell you

son, but that a meteor hitting the desert

venerated as a “larger” holy object?

The old folks raised their eyebrows in a tight

circle of empathy! As in:

“The mysteries you don’t know boy!”

“Do you know as we speak the Islamic republic

not too far from these walls is arresting women

for not dressing constrictively enough. I mean

they want the scarf tight enough to literally

strangulate us?”

-36-



“And all the time, while they worship anothercubic rock-a she phallus.”

That was the voice of my own grandmother.

“What does have to do with the price of rice?”

“My grandson is not an idiot, he just pretends to

be.”

“Look, old Muhammad had his hands full. I

mean some nomadic Arabs worshipped stones

made in the shape of phallus, and do you know

the most frequent appeal to their object-gods?”

“What?”

“Guess.”

“I can’t.”

“Their most frequent appeal to stone idols was

to settle the legitimacy of their children.”

“You mean they slept with one another a lot?”

“Call it what you like, but it sure sounds like

they fucked each other’s wife or concubines and

frequently.”

“Frequently?”

“They come home, after a long trip, and the wife

or whatever is pregnant, they would go to the

stone god temple, and draw arrows.”

-37-



At the time I had pointed out that if they

performed their ceremonies in nude, around

object gods, and children’s legitimacy were

frequently questioned, then Freud, would call

“Hijab”: Reaction-Formation: constructing the

opposite of their reality. I had exclaimed this

with great enthusiasm. But the old folks cared

less for Freud than for Islam or Arabs.

I read on.

In: Kitab al-Asnam (the book of idols)

everything the old Persians murmured is

supported: the old Arabs worshiped objects

created, rather than the creator. They clearly

had problems with abstraction.

This by sidelines reminded me of my friend’s

exile to Amsterdam and his family of pack-rats,

his mom’s house, the postal workers being

evicted for hoarding objects etc.

“Arabs called these object-worship temples:

Ka’bah. And they circumbutated the Ka’bah in

a state of nudity?

“You must tell them.”

“Tell who?”

-38-



“Whoever you run into.”

“The current Arabs still worship a stone in a

temple called Ka’bah, and the act of worship

consists of circumbulating the stone-- not nude-

mind you, but in white uniforms.”

“Who would I tell these to?”

“To those who worship objects, that they might

have to become Muslims, and this is what one

Islamic empire looks like.”

The most quiet of them says:

“Imagine ten more, and you see the problem?”

“No, I don’t.”

Their olive-colored voices whine down in my

head.

I don’t praise their halting history lessons. Their

love of what might be made clear. Or the fears of

what awaits their grandchildren on the Tehran

streets. But above all I sing a common thought

that joins us in the dark.

And of murder and love, always in the air.

-39-



Chapter Five: 72 Virgins in

Heaven, 1 on Earth.

I had to call my mother and tell her the good

news. She and my sister have been waiting for

the day I announce my engagement and wedding

plans. My sister is unable to have children.

I have come to be their sole common thought of

fertility. Through me they hope to leave the

frantic rain of their veins, and naked forms.

I suspect they daydream of caressing these

offspring, of admonishing them with their clear

gestures. A naked boy will be taught to curl his

fingers into a fist (like me), the girl will measure

solitude with silence.

-40-



After my grandmothers death, they’ve both

moved to India, They’ve bought apartments inBangalore, fancy little places with air-

conditioners, silk Indian rugs, and old family

pictures framed luxuriously, like restless

longings. The have cell-phones, and broadband,

and no morality police like Tehran. And

everyday is some God’s birthday in India, and

this abundance of Gods, I assume they feel, can

not pierce your flesh and thoughts like one Godin Tehran can. I clearly approve of India, but

refuse to visit them. One anchored God, this is

the way I want it. Breath of flesh and matter

exactly joined, for the love of one “entire”-- that

doesn’t even know your name.

“Hello!”

“Its me.”

Its my mother who always picks up the phone.

My sister is afraid of phones just as I am. I’m

happy phones are dying out. The boomers thing.

“How is it going?”

I ask in my American colloquialism.

“Great, we just came back from a women’s

meeting. We want to collect enough money for a

new orphanage, in a village near Bangalore.”

“People keep reproducing, ha?”

Pause.

She doesn’t quite know how to answer me.

She believes as Hindus do that we are on

different planes of consciousness. She sufferssilently for my lack of altitude.

-41-



“Hey mom, I have a new joke for you.”

“Ok.”

“An Iranian, An Indian and an Arab were

shipwrecked and were holding on to a piece of

wood for their lives, in the middle of an ocean?

I rest for timing, as jokes go this one is a bit

complicated,.

“Ok?”

She is enthusiastic.

“A shark swims by and eats the Arab and the

Iranian. Right?”

“The Indian holds one hand up to the sky, and

thanks God for having saved him from the

shark. The shark turns around right then, and

says: “Hey I ate one of you last year, and my ass

still burns.”

Mother is laughing and for some old, odd reason,

always wants to explain my own jokes to me.

“You see its because Indian food is real hot and

spicy. “ Ha ha ha. She laughs with renewed

energy. It reminds her of Iran where everyone is

cracking jokes all the time, Persian mockery of

all that’s officious, mean:

-42-



and all in the name of “this-too-will pass” of

Hafez and Rumi, In the parlor of: “dust-in-the-

wind.” Where the soul filters concreteness from

the essence of most joyful- is

“I have news for you.”

I almost never start a conversation like that. She

is already alarmed.

“I am officially engaged to an Algerian lawyer,

she is beautiful.”

“ What’s her name?”

“Samar, short for Samira, its quite a pretty

name.”

Silence.

“You sure you aren’t hurrying things, how long

you have known her, any pictures?”

“Yeah, I’ll send it right away. Check your e-

mails.”

Silence.

You’d think the pursuit of continuity, genetic,

etc. would speak, sparkle, but it’s the perennial

fear of changes? Or: Love-objects have become

unfathomable to her. My father passed on six

years ago, she does “meditate” few hours a day.

When in Tehran, she’d walk out of her

“meditation” hours, wet with tears, and claim to

have reached ecstasy over and over. Entirely

believable to her. But not to me.-43-



The knot never seemed broken. At the river’s

bend, she’d continue with same chains. And the

presence of ecstasy/God in just a few hours of the

day, made her God look truant. They were

thoughtful fits of solitude, solitude with attitude.

Style. But why her God was only present in herown architecture of absence?

She never explained I never asked. I was content

her God was flagless. Her God didn’t rest by

tables waiting impatiently to razor necks. I loved

her for this generosity, and was patient with her.

“How long you have known each other?”

“A few months? Its like time has been split in

two--time in her absence, and time in her

presence. Mom I think time has a lot of unknown

features.”

“You talk to her like this too?”

“Not really, she is all the way in Tamanrasset,

somewhere in the south of Algeria.”

“All the way out there?”

“Funny her mother said the same thing: “all the

way in America.”

-44-



“What’s with you mothers and distance? Is it the

length we have to travel the womb?”

“Her parents know you talk like this?”

“They only speak Arabic, she said her father

understands French.”

“Well good, you haven’t been to Algeria, have

you?”

“No, how can I, I’m booked for 3 months solid,

we talk and see each other on Skype every day.”

“I see!”

She sounds puzzled. She needs help.

“Let me get your sister.”

“Oh, no.”- I think, that’s always a threat. My

sister is older than I, round and grayish-a

changeless bully. And its like her mind has

boroughs, and one can devour priests, one can

devour neighbors, but they all can devour poets.

She cuffs the phone. I know they are discussing

something frantically. The bully picks up the

phone after a minute or two.

“We got your fiancé’s picture, is this her in a

“hijab” ?” She sounds threatening.

-45-



She doesn’t wait for an answer. Talking to her is

like holding a sword against a dragon. There is

fire and there is smoke, and you can wave your

sword aimlessly, uselessly.

But like the dragon in “Shrek” you hope she’ll

fall in love with the donkey.

“After all the crap we’ve been through with

Islam, you want to marry a woman in ‘hijab’ ? I

mean that’s so two-faced.”

I don’t know what to say. Her vocabulary hasn’t

grown since she was eight.

“Look here, Samar, my beloved, lives in Algeria,

its like living in Iran, except Iran is quite a bit

worse, but when taking pictures, they have to

wear hijab. In Los Angeles, she won’t be wearing

a hijab, do you mind?”

I secretly wish for the donkey to appear now.

The dragon will whisk (the donkey) away, in

rapture, finally captive to love, discipline, even

good vocabulary.

I want to whistle a tune while her boroughs are

working up cynicism, mixed with rejection.

But everything is a bit absent in her. The

murmurings of crystal, wood, bird, man

-46-



“This isn’t another one of your madness things,

is it? Remember in 2004 you fell in love with that

Hollywood actress. I don’t remember her name.

But you sent her flowers, even wrote scripts for

her. And where did you end up?”

She damn sure knows where I ended up. In a

private mental institution, for only two weeksthough, just the place for a tune-up.

“Look here, we’re in love, and getting married.”

Waving the sword in the air.

“How old is she?”

She is thirty, a very attractive thirty-and she is a

virgin.”

“She is what?” She really hasn’t heard me.

“She is virgin, never been touched, etc..etc..”

“You must be joking me, a thirty-year-old

virgin. How do you know she is a virgin?”

“She told me if she is touched by anyone before

marriage, her father would kill her. It’s the

Islamic law there!”

I say with abstinence, conviction.

-47-



“You’ve gone bunkers.”

Bunkers is one of her favorite words, she has

other favorite words I don’t understand. Like

“shagging” -“chakra” or “prissy”—for a time

she had everyone calling her: “padma.” “The

foot of mother” in Hindu. “What?” I was neverbold enough to ask why. We didn’t grow up

together, she was such a bully, and a precocious

little girl, she had to be shipped out of Islamic

Iran to a boarding school in England, where the

nuns collectively pronounced her unsalvageable,

“irredeemable”, or something like it, as it turns

out, nuns too, have their own vocabulary.

Of course, they couldn’t have been more “right”

the big pretty bully went on to college, studied

arts, and is a self-made millionaire.

Ask me why? And I tell you God has a soft spot

for bullies. They fasten themselves to his sad

beauty, and avoid innocence altogether.

So I assumed she can’t understand the beauty of

virginity, having left hers perhaps, behind the

mossy walls of some old English building.

-48-



See, on the roads of becoming a murderer, I

become the magician of creating mysteries of

reason and intellect. As I go along, almost every

rose’s visible beauty can be turned upside down.

As a favorite football coach of mine used to say:

“ Any team can win on any Sunday.” And so I

believe, same with reason.

My mother gets back on the phone. She

understand my petition better. And she wants

grandchildren.

“So, when are you going to Algeria?”

“In three months. We haven’t talked about the

details yet.”

“Tell her, I have a lot of family jewels for her.

They are all meant to be given to your bride.”

She wants to bribe her already! She means

‘affection’ though. Very Expensive these days..

Pause.

She is searching in her memories. But it always

takes but a few seconds: the woman is sharp.

“Tell her when I was in College, we were taught

about the life of a great brave Algerian woman.

She fought against the French.”

-49-



“Her name is on the tip of my tongue.”

“Mother, do you think it’s the right time to

mention their history of colonialism.”

I am somewhat ashamed of having suggested

that. Because later on, as you’ll see I take every

chance to mention and humiliate my object of

love.

“Alright, you are right, better not to mention it,

they are sensitive about that. But what language

do you guys use to speak, you don’t know

Arabic, she can’t know Farsi?”

“We equally butcher English and French,

though her English is improving a lot faster than

my French.”

I liked to boast of her mental acuities back then.

“She is like a sharp little butterfly, she jumps

from French to English, back to French and I’m

learning Arabic, though to be honest with you

mom, I will murder a woman who makes love to

me in that language, its so ..well..unromantic..so

I plan to teach her a lot of sexy-dirty words in

Farsi, do you mind?”-50-



“Ha ha ha..this is a little more than I need to

know.”

“I know but it will amuse you all day, sex is like

a tiny infinite burn. Every footstep will throb.”

“I have to go, your sister is calling me, she’s met

a Tibetan holy man, he’s teaching her about thepower of crystals.”

“She is surrounded by monks-someone must

always lick the wounds of millionaires.”

“Stop it, you two didn’t grow up together, you

never really liked her.”

“No, I can’t say: I did.”

“All wounds can heal, remember!”

“You think miracles can happen mom!”

“ Miracles happened to you!!”

“No they didn’t. I am a tornado through the

south, slanting through the back mire, I like to

spit on the broken boats, and drive them into

shoulders mom.”

I could have said that then, but didn’t know it

yet.

-51



Chapter Six: She Drives Me

Crazy

After talking to the folks I sit through an all-

engaging silence. The sister’s anger, the mothers’

shy approval, And I think I hear my father, the

dead are more powerful, and his sad handsome

face is here. He always jumped, jumped rather

than wait. He’d jump for the brutal pleasures of

everyday. He was like a boy with his own bear.

He once asked me to go for a ride with him, andtook me to the nastiest streets of Tehran, streets

I’d never seen. In the poorest neighborhood. And

parked the car, walked to an old cinema which

showed three Chinese Karate films for the price

of one. He bought two thickets, we found two

seats in pitch darkness, in the middle of some

dreary thing. The theatre was packed with men

only. They talked throughout the cheapest actionflicks, and broke

-52-



and chewed sesame seeds and spat the tiny

shelves at anyone seating below them. I

remember sinking into the wooden seat, thinking

this odd odor, these cold men, this existing is themost horrid experience I’ve ever had. And why

is he doing this to me ? After a few hours he got

up and we left in the middle of the third

incomprehensible thing. Once outside and in the

car, he calmly said: “I just want you to know

how the others live.”

I didn’t speak to him for two weeks, until anger

receded in the distance.

“Once I had a father who was a giant.”

“This for the crocodiles who lie in ambush.

Because I want to break the chalice in the middle

of worship. And those who sleep in the street

corners will say: once he had a father who was a

giant.”

I wait all day aimless until its 11:00 PM in

Tamanrasset. I know she’ll be tired from her 12

hours day, and that she is saving for me the most

special part of herself. I feel gratified. I almost

want a tiny madness to come in for sure, in thisgreat gathering of “us”, her and I.



-53-Something should howl, pushing through our

throats. Tearing out roots, shaping new sounds.

She is late, and I complain to the computer, I

know its slowly acquiring, mirroring creature

forms, its future arrives in its now like a

projection. It will be soulful someday, it says:

“rest assured.” I know I want it that way.

When she clicks I click right back. She appears

briefly: “I’ve been learning new English foryou.”

“What?”

“Things to amuse you.”

“What?”

“I don’t know how to say it, but I’ll write it for

you.”

“Ok.”

“I go to take shower, then you can see my

poussy, I want you to think you can fuck my

poussy.”

And she clicks off. The picture’s gone. I have the

sentence in front of my, she must have looked up

the words, and hurried through with excitement

of their meanings, forgetting the spellings.

And isn’t this a strange place for a dance.

Oh, savage shameless Algeria.

-54-



I type:

“Les femmes Algériennes Je t'aime.”

“Algerian women I love you.” So, it’d be the first

thing she sees, when she gets back. and wait

and tremble like a man out of its shell. Like a

man with blue teeth, a grin born of a head, eyeswith thousand ears.

“How long does a shower take?”

Oh, mine are 10 minutes each.

I want to hear the tiny sounds of water, where in

her body resist. The pink sponge, the green soap.

“How did it go?”

“Like this.”

And the towel is on he floor.

“Really, like that?”

“Yes.”

“How will it happen.”

“Its like an itch, here, it never sleeps.”

“Now whip him, whip him.”

“Here it is where my finger is, here, whip him.”

“Your pussy, you shaved.”-55-



“If you just look at it, it feels so good when I

know you stare.”

“Do you like me?’

“Yes and you?’

“Yes, yes.”

“Let me see, I have to see.”

“Its so hard,

Then I dream of being on a roof’s edge.

With the fears erased.

“One more blow.”

“I want to see that nothing is left.”

Out on the sky no one sleeps.

Her deep blinding forms crackle the matter. And

out of the corners of night a leak.

A long enduring moment of tenderness, and

pure relations escape. In both of us,

simultaneous.

And I become addicted to her, and she’s

addicted to me. And it will come to matter.

Continued







Documents

the Killing of an Arab a Novel --Six Chapters-First Draft-Hooshang Danesh