The Lemon Grove Read online

  “Hush, Daddy,” a young man told him, coming over to shake hands with me.

  “Sorry, man,” he said. “Don’t mind him—he’s just old.”

  Once we drove west across Iowa and Nebraska toward the open horizon, going through a sea of pastures and fields of yellow-tasseled corn. As we crossed the Sandhills, Juanita told me about her Indian ancestors. She talked about the way white America romanticizes the Native Americans to give itself a past and how nostalgia for the past runs straight through Native American history. How even the peace and environmental movements draw spiritual guidance from Native Americans—the love of nature and the idea of living in harmony with the natural world all having their roots in Native American culture.

  Her laughter is still in my head and I can hear her telling me that they even gave America its Hollywood. “Without Indians,” she said, “there would be no Westerns. No John Wayne or Clint Eastwood.” I knew these actors from the movies that poured into Iran when I was growing up and gave my generation the idea that all of America was the Wild West.

  We stopped by a field and walked to a stream. She was talking, and for a moment my mind drifted to the dry fields of the Naranjestan. Then her touch brought me back to the green fields in front of us, a place where her ancestors in the long-gone days used to set up their villages and hunt buffalo. She squeezed my hand, her gaze fixed on the horizon—I can still see her standing there on the hill where the sky was the only border. She talked of her ancestors’ way of life, of their wars and the blood that was spilled so they could stay faithful to the land. She told me about the Ghost Dance and the massacres at Wounded Knee and how she wanted to take me to South Dakota, to the place where Big Foot fought and was killed beside a frozen stream. She described the scene as if she were witnessing it. On one side of the stream are blue-uniformed soldiers, on the other side women, children, and old people. Everyone is confused, running in different directions. The guns thunder and the frightened horses neigh, their breath steaming out into the cold air. There is Big Foot frozen in the snow, half standing, even in death looking like he is rising to fight.

  “Hey, Behruz,” I hear Kemal say. “Wake up, man. The stars are out and the moon is early tonight.”

  Then I hear Musa’s old voice. “Well, the day is gone and I’d better go to see if my herds found their way home.”

  Opening my eyes I see the flickering stars above and listen to Musa reciting a poem by Hafez as he gathers himself up to leave.

  Heaven’s fields are green and the moon’s a sickle

  it’s time to harvest not to sow

  yes the sun is high and lady luck fickle

  but life unfolds and disappointments go.

  Ten

  HE’S GONE AGAIN—he’s gone back to America again.”

  My eyes barely open, I see two people, shadowlike and close by. They move around whispering and then shuffle away.

  …I’m in a canoe in the middle of an icy lake. I’m shivering from cold. The day is gray and it is hard to know if it’s morning or afternoon. Land, trees, and fog merge in the distance. There are three men in the canoe with me. All are wearing long black coats with hoods. Their eyes glow like dim neon lights when they look in my direction. We’re searching the water. Something dangerous is around us or something bad is about to happen and we are here to prevent it. The silence is deep and there is a tension in the air as if we were surrounded by a magnetic field. We seem to be in this place to find something we can’t see, hear, or smell.

  The man who appears to be in charge takes something out of his pocket. It looks like a book with a black-leather cover. With a swing of his arm he throws the object ahead of us. It travels in the air for a short distance and then skips on the slippery surface of the ice. For a moment I see it, a dark shadow in the greenish water, sinking slowly. He points toward it, and we quickly paddle to the spot. The sound of the oars hitting the water and floating ice breaks the silence. The same man plunges his hand into the water and brings up the object. He shakes it off and holds out his arm. For the first time I see his face. There is something odd about him—he is bent over and has a tiny head with an unusually long neck that rises from the middle of his shoulder at an angle. It looks like he has a beak instead of a mouth. With the object still in his hand, he points east and then west, making a semicircle, then puts the thing back in his pocket. I understand that he has pointed out an uncrossable boundary.

  … The large room is full of people, some sitting and some lined up against the walls. No one knows what we’re waiting for and everyone seems to be confused. The heat is unbearable and we keep wiping our faces. A few men come and go, bringing files or taking them away. The place appears to be some kind of judicial office. There are shelves full of files and stacks of papers piled up against the walls. A man sitting behind a desk is facing me. Once in a while he looks up from a folder in front of him and stares at me with sharp eyes. Unlike the rest of us, who are breathing uneasily because of the heat in the room, he appears to be cold and is wearing a heavy coat. He opens a file and asks me, “Do you recognize this handwriting?”

  I do—it looks like the handwriting of a woman I know. Then he opens another file. “How about this one?” he says impatiently. I realize it is the same person’s handwriting, although looking somewhat different. I think it is either Alexandria trying to imitate Cynthia’s handwriting or Cynthia trying to imitate Alexandria’s handwriting. I know both women, but when I try to remember my relationship to them, my mind doesn’t cooperate.

  The man shouts at me over the noise in the room, “I see from your reaction that you know the handwriting.” Then he snaps the file shut.

  I can’t understand if there is a complaint against me or if it’s all a setup.

  He opens an old book, worn out by use and with smudge marks on the pages. “Look through this,” he says. “You’re free to choose the punishment you will receive.”

  I look at the first pages and then the next and the next. They are all the same, written in archaic glyphs I don’t recognize. Each line on each page is exactly the same. I start to say I don’t understand, but he looks at me in silence. For the first time I see that both sides of his head are flat and he has no ears.

  “Enough,” the man says. “It doesn’t matter. We know the punishment for your type. It is always the same—from ancient times the same.”

  … The sky and the trees in fall colors ripple on the river’s surface beneath a soft drizzle. I stop walking to look around. I must be in a foreign land, but someplace I have been before. It seems so unusually peaceful that it makes me nervous. I walk quickly into the woods. Dry leaves crumble under my feet. Soft rain falls on my head as I keep walking and searching. What I’m searching for and what direction I’m going in, I don’t seem to know. Amid the dense shadows of the forest, I see movements. A nude woman appears from behind a tree and disappears behind another. Then I see another woman and yet another. There are as many women as there are trees. They move as if they are aware of me. I follow them until through the trees I see a shimmering surface, the edge of a pond. On the far side of the water flocks of ducks are swimming. I stand still and don’t hear anything except the drip, drip of the rain all around me. I watch ducks dive under the water, one after another, bobbing… up and down, up and down.

  I watch in silence, how long I don’t know. Suddenly I am startled by a man who comes up behind me. He is wearing a bright-orange outfit, carrying a rifle.

  “What are you doing standing here?” he says. “Don’t you know you should be wearing orange in the woods?”

  There is something about him that makes me shiver. It’s not his gun or his shouting. It’s his face. His eyes are two empty holes and his smile is a smile and a frown at the same time. I take a step back and at the moment that I turn and face the pond, the ducks take flight flapping above me, and when I look at the water, the circles of ripples move toward the edge of the pond and die by my feet.

  Eleven

  I ’VE B
EEN WATCHING FOR MUSA all afternoon, hoping to see him on the road from the city. Early this morning I gave him the key to the house in Shiraz and asked him to go and find the old leather briefcase that belonged to my father. All the important family papers are in that briefcase, plus a little sum of money. I hoped the briefcase would still be there. Musa agreed to go without even asking what was in the briefcase. “I owe more than that to your family” was the only thing he said.

  He should have been back by early afternoon. From the village it’s only an hour by foot to the city road and from there another half-hour or so to Shiraz by bus or car.

  Now I’m afraid it wasn’t safe to send him. I’m not sure why I asked him or why he agreed. Just because Father did something for him or his family? Musa has brought this up a few times without revealing anything. What sort of obligation could it be that he, such a cautious man, would put himself in danger? Then I think maybe he’s late because he decided to go to the market before coming back.

  I wish Kemal would come. He hasn’t been around for a few days. He promised he would help with anything I need, but where is he now? I could have sent him to the city or had him go with Musa. I should have realized that the house could be a trap—that maybe it’s being watched, if it hasn’t been confiscated by now. But Musa is a wise man, a careful man. He would know not to go in if there were any danger.

  At noon I drew water from the well for Musa’s animals. They come back from the fields on their own. It’s their routine. Maybe they can smell the water in the well. It wasn’t easy to pull up the bucket with all of them around my legs pushing and shoving. I was afraid they would push me over the wall and down the well. As soon as I pulled the bucket up, dripping with water, they all rushed for it and I couldn’t keep them away. They thrust their heads in, tipping the bucket over before I could empty it into the small round cement trough. I pulled them by their wool and didn’t know they could be so stubborn. I tried to talk to them like Musa. “Hey, watch it,” I shouted. “Wait, you’ll get your chance.” But it was no use. I had to draw up the bucket several more times, holding it up and pouring it into the trough from above their heads. My palms are still burning from pulling the rope.

  I don’t know what time it is but soon it will be getting dark. From my place under the tree, I can barely see the village in the afternoon haze. Today there were more people than usual on the village road. I counted five groups going to the city and three coming back. Once I thought I heard a woman wailing and wondered whether they were bringing back a war casualty.

  This morning two figures came across the field and went toward the far end of the Naranjestan. I had seen them before, but usually very late in the afternoon. They seem to avoid coming to the well and farmhouse. No doubt they have seen me here. They always go into the far reaches of the Naranjestan and disappear there. Musa tells me about all sorts of people running around these days. Opium addicts, drug dealers, gun smugglers, thieves, and people who have nothing to do but wander around to pass the time. Some could be refugees from the war zones. But these two men always walk side by side, holding hands—something you see often in Iran, unlike in America. I have decided that they’re harmless.

  I’m sure that I told Musa the exact hiding place—inside the storage space under the staircase to the second floor. But under which step did I tell him? Did I tell him the tenth one? That’s where Father had made a hiding place for the briefcase. All Musa had to do was push the board, put his hand under the stair, and take the briefcase.

  Someone is coming. I can see that it is Musa from the way he walks leaning to one side. He isn’t carrying anything. I wave to him anxiously. When he gets closer, I get up and walk toward him. He looks exhausted and anxious and doesn’t look at me directly. His back seems more bent than usual. He draws water, then drinks and washes up. When we go over to the sitting deck, he takes a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lights one. He must have bought them in the city. Talk, man, what happened? I want to say, but keep quiet. He sees the impatience in my eyes. “Let me catch my breath,” he says, rubbing his nose. Then he takes off his hat and scratches his head, facing me with an excruciating look.

  “It was terrible,” he says in a dry, low voice. “Terrible. What a day. First of all, here is the key to the house. I couldn’t find the briefcase. The house was in shambles. Things were scattered all over the place. It was obvious that it had been searched. I looked where you told me, under the staircase. It was dark and hard to see. I pushed all the boards, but none of them moved. I couldn’t see inside. I thought I heard something like a door opening, then I realized it came from outside, from the yard. When I went out, I saw one of the neighbors watching from the second-floor window. An old man. When he saw me, he got his wife and they stood at the window and stared.”

  He puffs on his cigarette hurriedly, his hands shaking. I’ve never seen him so nervous.

  “What a day to go to the city,” he goes on. “It was my bad luck, I guess. In the square, the one close to your house …”

  He looks at me with his one eye, talking fast and not giving me time to speculate. “There I was in the crowd of people gathered in the square. I didn’t know why I stood there listening to people talking. Someone said they were going to punish a thief by cutting off his hand. Like the rest of them, I was waiting to see what would happen. Everyone was impatient, as if they wanted it to be finished so they could get on with what they’d been doing. One man—a boy, really—was talking about how he had seen a hand cut off. He talked as if he had done it himself. How the sweat was running down the face of the victim, who breathed hard and kept moving his fingers and touching them, not believing they would be cut off in a few minutes. How they brought the table out and put the victim’s hand on it through the leather strap … He talked wildly. I thought he just was telling a story to amuse the people around him. I just stood there in the middle of the square in the hot sun listening to—to this boy. Then I heard someone say they’re not going to cut off a thief’s hand, they’re going to hang someone.”

  He stopped for a moment. “Yes, it was a hanging day. They were going to hang two men, and I was there to see it. All sorts of people were there, even children with their parents. I’m glad I’m an old man and don’t have much time to carry such awful images with me. I don’t know what we have come to. Maybe it’s a sign of the end of the world. I heard people say that the men were being punished for having affairs with married women. I also heard that they were drug dealers. Whatever. Do they think that by hanging criminals in public in the middle of the day, crime will stop? It was like the Devil himself had tied me to the ground to see what we humans are capable of. There were two big cranes in the middle of the square. They brought the two men out of a car, their heads covered with black sacks and their hands tied behind them.”

  I’m getting angry and upset and don’t want to hear more, but the old man keeps talking. I think to myself, let him get it off his chest—it’s my fault, after all, for sending him to the city.

  “Everything happened very quickly. People became silent as soon as they saw the prisoners. The guards put the crane’s cables around the prisoners’ necks. Then I heard the crane engines roar, and suddenly these two poor men were hanging high in the air.”

  I feel my stomach turn and I get up. Musa gets up as well.

  “It was like a nightmare,” he goes on, “or like being awakened from a nightmare. I left the square quickly. My old legs dragged me away in such a hurry it surprised me.”

  Musa takes a few steps to leave. “It is not that I’m afraid of death,” he stops and says. “Not at all. But a death like that I’m afraid of. It’s the city and the people who go to watch this sort of dying that I’m afraid of. I’ve seen many deaths in my life—natural deaths, you know. Natural death in a way is bearable. It’s part of life. Life and death are inseparable twins. Natural death is peaceful. It’s like going to sleep. The eyes close softly, the Adam’s apple moves up and down a few times, and then nothing—the
person falls into a sleep that has no awakening. But unnatural death is frightening because life doesn’t want to go away and fights death with all its might. Watching that sort of death is painful.”

  He walks away a few steps and then stops. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go and find my herds. Sometimes I wish I could just live with them.”

  He hesitates for a moment and then continues. “I’m not sure, but I think I saw Ruzbeh.”

  “What? Where was this?” I ask, excitedly.

  “I don’t know if it was him. I couldn’t see very well in the dark alley that goes to the house. I saw someone hurry up the alley and turn into the street. I thought it was Ruzbeh and went after him. I thought I saw him talking to someone on a motorcycle. I can’t say it was Kemal. When the motorcycle drove away, he disappeared in the crowd. I tried to follow him. He went toward the square, but I couldn’t go there again. It was like my legs wouldn’t take me there. I went back to the house. It was dark inside, and I looked around to see if Ruzbeh had been there. I couldn’t say. Things were scattered all over the place.”

  I feel so angry at myself that I am ready to punch my fist through a wall. I know if I had gone myself, I could have followed Ruzbeh and caught up with him.

  “I’m sorry,” Musa says. “I just couldn’t find him. Maybe it was him, maybe not. I’ll go back in a few days and look again, I promise. I need to go back to the city to see someone I haven’t seen for years. I wanted to see him today, but it just didn’t work out. Now I’ve got to find my animals before they get lost in the desert or wild dogs tear them apart.”

  I watch as he walks away, his figure fading in the evening dusk. I stand there not wanting to move, not knowing how to deal with my anger and hatred, certain only that it’s going to be another long night.