Odyssey...}~}37- Spark in Darkness

In the hospital they treat Hana for lack of nutrition. Rita visits her faithfully everyday. Valery finds out about Hana's apparent intention of killing herself by starvation from Rita. She also visits her everyday. While healing slowly, Hana realizes that besides blood family, there are good people in the world that truly care for her. Many of her colleagues visit her. Baskets of flowers are brought to hospital, some of them from people who she even does not know. She assumes they are people from people from work. Her boss comes one evening and stays for a few hours.

When she is well enough after a week and half being in the hospital, she finally admits to the plan of killing herself by starvation, something the hospital staffs have already known. But her confession makes it easier for them to keep her in hospital longer, so she can see a psychiatrist. They tell her without her permission (Dr. Barbara), they can not release her. perhaps they are afraid they she will harm herself again. Hana knows that she won't. Now she has something to live for just like her mother after the death of her brother, when she gave birth to Farhad and she held him for the first time.

In her everyday session with Dr. Barbara, Hana, for the first time, opens her heart with all its suppressed emotions and feelings. She talks about her life to the good doctor. She recalls her mother's insanity after Van's murder by Savak. She tells the doctor that while no one could do anything to cure her, then it came her first grandson. She tells that her son was her mother's unfounded medicine, while the best doctors, even the fortune tellers, and some magical powers that were used in those days could not do anything for her mother, her son did.

"My mother looked at my baby when I came home from hospital and said that he is her dead son. After that she was just cured. Just like that."

Hana puts a lot of emphasis on the similarity of her case and her mother's case. She, who wanted to end her life only a couple of weeks earlier, now has so much to live for. Her entire existence and entity and her lost love of Sam are now gathered only in one thing, one reason, her grandchild. Now she finally understands her mother, who has died thirteen years ago. She says to Dr. Barbara that she wants to go to Italy before baby is born and be with Farhad and his family. The good doctor recognizes all of these; however she insists on Hana to practice the concept of the "Self Worth".

"Without self worth, without respecting yourself, and valuing your own life and well being, you can not love another human being, you can not even be a good grandmother."

Hana has studied and read many things about Self Worth, Self Respect. She agrees with the concept in her mind but not in her heart. Dr. Barbara is too smart if Hana decides to lie to her. She is determined to get better. She talks about Mario, about the relationship they have had, about how much she misses him.

"Here we go. You can start here. Don't you think you need an apology to him. He may not be available to you anymore, you understand that?! Are you ready to face that?"

Hana thinks hard and deep.

"I want to be with him and pick up from where we left; but if he is not available anymore I understand it. I am not going to go to pieces over it."

After another week in hospital and having a session with Dr. Barbara everyday, she is finally released from hospital. But the good doctor tells her that she needs to continue these sessions once a week in her office. Rita comes to hospital and kindly drives her to their home. After a few days spending at Sylvie's parents home, She can convince them to let her go home.

As color returns to her face, energy enlightens her eyes, and hope shines in her tortured body, she slowly gains some weight back, and gradually begins enjoying food again. Her performance at work becomes at its highest and the owner awards her with a big raise. She makes passionate calls to Italy every late in the evening which is their morning to hear all the news about Sylvie's well being and condition. When she hears about the baby's first kick, Hana joyously screams as though the fetus has kicked in her womb. She sees Dr. Barbara every week. She does all the things she is supposed to do except contacting Mario for apology. She is too ashamed to do that. She is just looking forward to go to Italy before the birth of the baby and be with her family.

Her poems once again become an important part of her life. As she goes deeply into her awareness so she can write them as poems, she discovers how much she misses Mario; nevertheless, she is too stubborn to listen to Dr. Barbara, or too shameful for her behavior and decides to completely forget about this one thing. The good doctor tells her that she is again hurting herself by refusing to contact Mario; but she stays adamant. Her bleeding pen only writes the things that have been the worst in her life, when soon she she will face the best . She reads one of her newly written poem over and over only to find out that she has only spoken of Mario in it:

"Since the yellowish sun rays over waves

have faded away and the billow raves,

Pain has raised me for years.

~

Then it came you, calling me to a different path.

You were a friend carried so much wrath.

And I broke my silence, we mingled.

~

The exalted night gave up magic, became short.

Our sights lost vagueness of such sort.

And sun's color was unveiled.

~

Thirsty plants were drowned in water

When my uproarious soul caught in clutter.

Thinking of years, how they have passed?!

~

When the autumn filled the world with mist,

The glimmer changed colors in strange twist.

My blood turned inward of anguish.

~

Like an old, forgotten song, I became afraid.

My body of woe carried sorrows and wondered.

And you took a glimpse into obscurities of my eyes.

~

You wanted me in the path, but the air was dark.

Every night I grieved if the day would have spark.

And when the day came to the door, I yearned the night.

~

To Be Continued

Odyssey...~{~37- Spark in Darkness

Inside Hana's apartment , where the blinds are drawn permanently, in the darkness, she like a stray dog paces the small apartment, exasperating every night. Rita, Sylvie's mom, has offered her to go to Italy with her for Sylvie's graduation only a year after they left America. She is planning to go for her graduate study. Farhad has still a long way to go, since he started much later. She thinks about their ages. She thinks about if Farhad has done what Sylvie has been doing all along, he should have graduated way before Sylvie considering, he is a year older than her. Hana meanly and stubbornly refuses Rita's offer for the joyous visit to their children just to be doleful; and just to plan her final days. She even gets angry at Farhad when he insists on her going to Italy with Rita, as though some one has violated her freedom. Her attitude these days is: "Leave me alone, all of you good people out there!" She does not return Valery's numerous calls; whence, Valery does not have any news from her to tell Mario, who calls her everyday and asks her about Hana.

Hana's life is summarized only in going to work every morning and coming home every evening. The walls of her apartment are covered with Sam's pictures from all walks of his short life, from birth to his death. As she sits mostly on the floor and looks at the photo albums, anything to remind her of past and gone, her ashtray becomes her best friend. She sees the picture of his brother, Van; and suddenly discovers something. Her brother and son were the same age when they died. They both died by the hand of someone else; Van by the hand of The Shah's Savak and Sam by the hand's of American Technology, what a bizarre phenomenon!

Her food is only cereal and even that is so little that does not even fill a bird. She intentionally wants to hurt her body by not eating. She has decided that the best way to die is not eating. It is going to be a slow and painful death but it is better than having an accident by car, since that way, she will hurt someone else, too. Slowly food becomes a pungent habit and anytime she smells the neighbor's food through the ventilation, she vomits. As she becomes weak and loses so much weight, some of her colleagues at work, who show concern about her well being and in a meeting with the owner of the company, they tell him about Hana's health and state of mind. He, who is busy making more profit for Hana's continuous and faithful effort and hard work, suddenly notices that they are right.

The next day he calls her in his office and only then he sees how frail and colorless this woman looks.

"I know what you have been through Hana, but that doesn't mean you hurt yourself by not eating!"

"How do you know I am not eating? " Hana is not afraid to show her annoyance.

"I don't have to know. I have eyes and I can see, What are you doing? Do you want to kill yourself? How old are you know? Is it forty six? Look at you in one years you have aged so much that you look like a sixty years old woman. I know that is not a politically correct thing to say, but I am saying it to make you aware of what you're doing to yourself!"

Hana controls herself of hearing the word "kill", and stubbornly looks at her boss.

"Why every time someone loses weight, people thinks she is dying?!"

"Hana, stop arguing with me. You've been my best employee and I truly care for you. Let me help you!"

Hana thinks about the words "truly care for you", and in her speaking mind says: "You truly care for profit." But to her boss, she says:

"I am fine. I don't need help."

"Oh, God, you're so stubborn. Listen, I am meeting some of my buyers tonight in a restaurant. I want you to go with me."

"You've never invited me before for such things. If this is an order and part of my job, I go with you, if not, I don't like to socialized these days."

Even though his talking to Hana makes her realize that there are still people who care; yet she does not go. She hates when friends or in this case boss interfere with her freedom and privet life.

She remembers a dream, a far past thought, when she was only a teenager, when her parents moved to the house in the dead end alley. Then she sat on the bed on her closet- like room, gazing at the red curtains hanging on the windowless wall. At that moment she saw herself just as she is now. She visioned herself in ten years, twenty years,... in the same room, living the same sort of solitary life. As the thought, then, shuddered her, it does the same now. At least on that occasion, she had a hope, a gloomy dream which echoed in her mind: "My solitary nights come to an end when a special morning comes!" She remembers that poem, a poem of hope and better future. She really expected to encounter "A Special Morning"! Now there is not any future and past is gone. Never she wakes up to a "Special Morning".

When Rita, Sylvie's mom returns from Italy, She rapturously calls Hana.

"Sylvie is four months pregnant. We're going to be grandmas!"

Hana has not been able to go to work for the last three days for her extreme weakness. People from work are really concerned for her well being, and they are planning to send someone to her home today. Her voice on the phone is barely audible.

"Are you okay? What is wrong Hana? " Rita quizzes her.

Hana has only heard the word, "Pregnant, Grandmas". As she is fading away into a dominating disease which is hunger, those words echo in her mind over and over. She finds enough strength to say one word to Rita:

"Help!"

To Be Continued

Odyssey...~~37- Spark in Darkness

*

Why every time success and superficial happiness finds a way entering one's life, a fiery outburst also strives to take away that shadowy flicker? As Hana withers in her quiet rage and depression, she generates envy to an outsider, even though she has not changed her life style at all after the favorable outcome of her book. She still lives in that one bedroom apartment she got after Farhad left her. She recalls times that she had a hard time to even buy grocery because of the heavy debt that Hamid had accumulated with his traveling and drinking and... That is not the case anymore. Those days, she yearned to have money one day, now that she is well off, the money seems to be like dirt to her. She keeps enough for herself to pay rent and bills, ad send the rest of it to Italy to her son and daughter- in- law. In fact, by doing this, Farhad and Sylvie are able to concentrate more on their school and less on working.

In the shadow of her house, The solitary Hana, who at one point was full of electrifying energy, becomes a haunting pathos and of the past. The omen of her dead son provokes the last trace of pride that is left in her heart. Throughout her life, nature has always given her a joyous comfort; nevertheless, she can not even find exultation under the blue sky or tall trees in the park across from her apartment. Besides work, the park is as far as she goes these days. She refuses the invitation of her best friend, Valery, to spend time with her, or the concern of Sylvie's family especially Rita, her mother. When she goes out into the nature, under the azure sky and blue air, her face becomes damp, and only then she realizes that the sentence of her death must be carried out soon. If she has not done that yet, is only for one reason- what will Farhad feel when he hears about his mother's death? In the exasperated silence and fearful solitude, repentance and guilt incite her conscience. The image she has always had from herself, slowly fades away into a universe of uncertainly. The color of her face is a mournful glow of fall, color of her hair is a shivering overbearance of snow, and the color of her clothes are dismal obscurity of darkness.

There is only one more thing left for her to do- she wants to die in style not in perplexity. She wants her death to be announced for natural causes not suicide. How will she do it? How can she make herself so sick that no doctor can cure her? Or maybe an accidental death is a better choice! While thinking about a plan, she prepares a will. Everything goes to her son, Farhad, and any future royalty of her book also goes to him. She decides before coming with a plan of action, to burn all her writings. Those are her soul and spirit and must go with her; But she will do that on the last minute. A wave of nostalgia fills her ashen heart, the same heart that at one point resisted the most daily trauma of life's reality. She can not help a knot forming in her throat and as her eyes fill with tears, she smells once more the aroma of a cigar of one true man she loved. The urge to be with Mario again and to be intimate with him paralyzes her to the core of her gravity as she remembers him- a man who wanted to make her his queen. Her soul brightens for a moment with the nostalgia of her lost dreams, and suddenly she feels so cold, so tired, and so far away from the best memories of her life that she even wishes for ones that she recalls as the worst. Only then, she envisions that how much she has missed the smell of her mother's cooking when every evening she came home from work or school; and how much she has missed the smell of roses in the dusk in grandpa's garden, when she stayed there on weekends and holidays as a teenager to read him Shahnameh (The book of Kings). She remembers Behroz and their Secret Society and realizes how much she misses this one true friend she ever had which was also her uncle; therefore there was no objection from her parents for her to have a male friend. She visited him every evening after school. It was mostly him that introduced him to all these wonderful literature . She thinks about how he took his life. She thinks of his daring act. "If he could do it, I can, too."

To Be Continued

Odyssey...37- Spark in Darkness

In August of 1991, Farhad and Sylvie leave America for Italy but not before getting married in a small ceremony in Sylvie's parents' restaurant. Hana, for the first time puts something beside black on for the wedding. Her Conservative outfit for her son's wedding is a blue chiffon dress, one of her own design, that she has made for the company she works. She wears no make up. Valery insists that she should dye her hair for the wedding, but she refuses. It is unbelievable that how her hair has turned gray in eight months since the death of Sam. That evening, after the wedding is over, the bride and groom, who have already given up their apartment and living temporary with Sylvie's parents, spend the night in a hotel. They are leaving for Italy In two days.

When Hana returns home from the wedding, she puts her black gown on; she remembers the gown is one of many gifts that Mario has given her when they were engaged. Now she is beginning her newest version of life, almost without anyone. She stares at her lifeless eyes, skinny cheeks, and her gray hair in the mirror. "I am old now." In the hot temperature of August, she shivers in her bed and thinks desperately about life and its meaning. "Why do people strive so much?" She remembers herself when she was working so hard to support her family after her father's death and going to school at the same time. "What for?" Now that she has lots of money, life is meaningless. All the people she cared for so much are either dead or have forgotten her. "My sisters and brother don't even write me a letter anymore!" Her Sam, part of her, her son, who was so much like her, is dead. "Oh, God, Why him, not me?" She has rejected the only man who truly loved her. "Oh, Mario, I need you!" Her life is an empty hole. She recalls that throughout her life her writing has always given her a powerful sense of motivation which has made her to go on, to endeavor, and to fight, and to prevail. "There is nothing else to fight for." Lila, her other half, she created when she was only a child, now seems a stupid and silly act. "She doesn't leave me alone." Mesa, her imaginary friend before she created Lila, is now all forgotten. "Those days were all about tall figure."

As her eyes loses the intensity to stay awake and her muscles begins to relax, suddenly she conjures up one more thing, her home land, a land that viciously threw her out and murdered her brother, Van. Notwithstanding, she feels a despondent longing for that sacred land, for that simple way of living, when everyone knew their neighbors. Here she does not even know who her neighbors are. As she intentionally refuses to sleep, as though that is a way for punishing herself, she gets up, staggering into the dark living room. Suddenly she remembers Saeid, her first love, who killed himself in a violent way for her. "Was that for me or get even with me?" She gets to the living room, puts the light on, and sits on her favorite place on the sofa, where at one night she drank and drank. She puts her ashtray on the end table, strives to write a poem, perhaps that gives her a little comfort. The last time she wrote anything was eight months ago. Her books will be out in a few weeks and it does not mean anything to her. Her poetry book is buried somewhere in closet and she has not opened it since Sam's death. Now she wants to write. What a foolish idea! But sometimes Foolish ideas are best ideas. She starts a cigarette and begins writing about if she was still a child:

"When we were children, we had big hearts!

Now that we are grown, our hearts shrivel to nothing!

What if our hearts stayed as big as when we were children!

What if we were still children, so people can read words in our eyes!

What if we didn't need speaking to talk!

What if we used our eyes for talking!

What if our hearts were painted on our faces!

But now no one can hear us if we scream!

So we must choose silence when we grow up!"

Suddenly she notices that the ash of her cigarette has fallen of her leg and not only has made a hole on her gown, it has burned her leg, too. With the back of her hand, she removes the ash and then continues writing:

"Look at this world!

When we were children, rain always poured from sky!

Now that we are grown, rain comes from our eyes!

When we were children, people noticed our rainy faces!

Now that we are grown, no one can see our sobbing!

When we were children, we were not ashamed to cry!

Now that we are grown, we cry hidden and in solitude!

When we were children, no one could break our hearts!

And if they did, it was just for a little while!

Now that we are grown, our hearts break and stay broken!

We stretched our arms wide to measure our love!

Now that we are grown, our love is little, or big, and nothing in between!

What if we still can stretch our arms wide to measure our love!

When we were children, our desires were small, our wants were little!

Now that we are grown, our smallest desires are our biggest wants!

When we were children, adults listened to our pains!

Now that we are grown, our pains our plenty, and nobody listens!

When we were children, we were children!

Now that we are grown, we are not grown, and we are not children!"

To Be Continued