...that came to a play and left without any trace."
Ariana was not sure if the the phone call of the night before was the right thing she had done. She felt so detached from hope, and felt so miserable that began regretting to had made that call. Heartache crowded her mind. "Why isn't she here?" She kept asking herself. " After all these years, now she is so late! I guess my dad was right that she doesn't care for anything but her poetry."
She finally raised her head, where it was between her legs, looked sadly at Roya and said:
"She won't come. She is so phony! my dad is right! how I hurt my mom and dad for this!"
"Come on Ariana! I was also listening last night to your conversation with her. She fainted when she found out it was you on the phone... Don't be like your dad."
"Yes, she fainted; but maybe later she decided if she had lived without me for nineteen tears, she can do it for the rest of her life! But, look, it is two hours has passed from the time she was supposed to be here...I am sure my father is right; she chose her poetry, or as she says in her interviews "my art", over me!"
Roya tried to comfort her friend with her soothing voice, while lighted two cigarettes at the same time and gave one to Ariana:
"You know what is going on in the streets. May be she is stuck somewhere! maybe..."
Ariana had thought about it herself; yet it was hard for her to swallow her mother being late after nineteen years. Her friend found an excuse and left the room momentarily. She went downstairs to call Neda's home. Kasra answered the phone.
"You don't know me! I'm a friend of Ariana..."
Before she was able to continue, Kasra cut her off:
"I wanted to call myself, but she had not left your telephone number for me. She left home four hours ago. You mean to tell me she is not there yet!?"
Roya, all shaken, sighed: "Not yet!"
Kasra ran to the alley and then to the streets. He saw people, he saw the revolutionaries, he saw the crowded streets, He smelled the odor that Neda had smelled. He saw the tanks, trucks, the weapons. He saw the burning, the destruction; the setting fire the cars, trash, tires, even buildings. He saw bloody people, some with superficial wounds, some much deeper; He saw the trace of Neda. "No car can drive in this!" He told himself.
Suddenly he noticed Neda, blue Fiat in a very narrow street. He ran. He touched the hood of the car. It was cold. It was obvious that she had parked the car there a long time ago. He noticed the damages done to both sides of the car. Some one had punctured all four tires and then slashed them. "Why, why the destruction? " He began running again into the main street, right into the middle of the crowd, stepping on people, not noticing all the women with their babies in their arms and toddlers hands in their hands, pulling them, pushing others. They all wanted a piece of this pie! The same man with Uzi, who had talked to Neda said something to him; he did not hear. The crowd was thickening as he tried to find a way to go ahead. The other side walk that a few hours ago was Neda's hope to reach since it had had less crowd in it, now was filled with people. There was no place to go, nothing to do. The odor, the smell, the heat of the bodies, the children, who were left behind and crying! he saw a few of them bloody on the ground being smashed under the feet of this wild bunch. No one cared to pick them up. No one cared to look for their parents. He saw dead people! So much blood, so much odor, so many machines, so many weapons, so many men wearing military fatigues. It appeared that somebody with a hand microphone was speaking only a little ahead. It seemed all the action was there, a speech, a lecture about how bad the Shah was and how this backward religion was going to come and rescue people from evil and sin ;and give them money, food, and work, to make women cover their hair, to have men wear beard; and all these people, that had lost their mind, specially women with their children, were trying to reach where the man at the top of a big military car was talking with his hand microphone. So Kasra decided to aim at where everyone was going, to where the action was; where the bearded man was talking.
☏
Roya returned to her room. Ariana was still sitting on the floor in the same position she had left her. The spirit of mother and daughter haunted Roya with a sudden flashes of the picture of Revolution; and a lonely journey of a mother to see her daughter amongst them. She began to cry. Ariana raised her head and looked at her friend. Her eyes were brimming with tears.
"She left home four hours ago!" Roya said factually.
"So you went to call!?"
"Yes, I did not want to tell you. I don't want you to blame her now that you'd found her. How do you know the story your mom and dad told you is true? How do you know that your real mom was not searching for you? We don't know what they did. Her name is not even in your birth certificate. If they were able to do all these illegal things, we don't know what else they have done. I've always had my suspicion. You don't look like them or act like them. Just don't doubt her until your hear her side. There is something so wrong with all of this!"
To Be Continued
No comments:
Post a Comment