Immediate Family

It is not madness. I don’t want strangers to open up my head. I don’t want anybody to see the roots of this juicy big orange. I don’t want anybody to find out how bad my head stinks. Mahiar, I smell the same smell that you talked about. The stink of a black slime comes out of my brain and my nose. I see it every night in my sleep. It oozes on my pillow, turning it black. The roots of the orange cover my face. The feeling of suffocation wakes me up.

Hello, hi! Ready? Hold on for a moment…OK, go on.

“Nothing. Are you again holding the phone while driving?”

Again playing traffic cop? I just said wait for me to put the headphone into my ears.

“Good for you! So you are becoming quite a lady. You didn’t say ready for what?”

First of all don’t get any ideas. I am fed up with paying so many fines. If this time the police catches me I have no space left on my driver license for him punch. This time he is going to punch me. Second, are you ready for my appearance?

“OK. Now that you don’t want to drive over the curb and on the sidewalk and blow your horn and weave your way through then you would not get here any time soon, although I am quite ready for you to appear.”

Well, you waited three years. Wait for another two hours.

“Two years, eight months, two weeks, um…, six hours, twenty minutes and thirty-two seconds.”

Ha, ha, ha! You know that I have no patience for counting hours and seconds, so you made it up. Are you telling me that you counted all these hours and minutes and seconds?

“Your problem is you never believed. You never wanted to believe that…”

Believe what?

I can’t hear you.

There you go again! Silent as a grave the moment that the subject comes up.

Did you say it once? Did you once talked about it? And now that…what?

“Not everything should be said. These trivialities are for the teenagers. Dear girl, didn’t you think about my age when you jumped into my life with both feet? Didn’t you tell yourself that this imbecile old man doesn’t know how to whisper sweet nothings? Didn’t you that say that his time is past and if he had fallen in love in time his brats would be brides and bridegrooms by now? Perhaps you did say these to yourself and left?”

You are bullshitting me again? Do you love to play the victim? Do you love to show your ID at all times and use your age as an excuse to play the victim?

Move you asshole! The light is green! I was not talking to you. Ha, ha, ha.

“Yes, I know. I was not stupid. I was an iceberg. You thought so, didn’t you?”

You were? You mean you no longer are?

“Well, if you still think that I am an iceberg than why are you coming back?”

Interesting that you never wanted to know why I left.

“Well, for being an iceberg of course. For…what did you say that I did not have? Aha, a passion for life.”

These two years you never called even once to ask. You always believe you have all the answers.

“Well, you did write that that I must not call or come for you. No, I really did not have the answer to why you are the way you are. Without even a goodbye, with only a piece of paper?”

Oh, since when you have started to listen to what you are told? I could not say goodbye. I could not look you in the eyes and watch you play the victim like always and then go.

“You see? Every time I talked about my feelings you said the same thing: ‘Don’t play the victim.’”

Those were not feelings. Those were playing victim. Those was begging for affection, not an expression of it.

“Phew! It is better to operate on ten cancer tumors each day so I don’t have to understand what goes on in the heads of you women.”

We women? How many women have you been with in this time?

“Good grief, Shadi…You always find a meaning in my words that does not cross my mind.”

OK, let’s forget about it. This asshole in front of me does not move.

“You never said why you left. Because I played the victim? Or because I did not have a passion for life?”

Should I?

“Say it if you want to.”

So it is not that important to you.

“Oh, my god! I never know how to talk to you.”

Talk like a human being.

“I am talking like a human being. Why do you always misinterpret my words?”

So it is me who misinterprets your words? It is always like this. You never believe that it is your own fault.

“Shadi, do you want to say it or not? I prefer that you say it now. I would love it if when you get here we stop quarreling. Like those early days that we got to know each other. Like those days that I just looked at you and you knew how much I was in love with you. I still would love to only look at you when you get here. Let’s end our quarreling right here and now on the phone.”

Only look at me when I get there? No kisses, no hugs?.

“Would I dare to immediately jump to take you in my arms and kiss you the moment that you get here? I am sure you would say I want you only for my bed. Wouldn’t you?”

What has it got to do with the bed? They are right when they say you men have your hearts in your pants. I meant expressing your feelings.

“How rude you have become! Of course you have been ruder before. What does it mean ‘your hearts are in your pants?’”

You mean “your hearts are in your pants?” It means it lies in your Excellency’s shorts.

“With whom you have been associating all this time? You were never so rude.”

Ok, stop being silly, you paragon of civility and courtesy. In the time that I spent with you I forgot even the simplest curse words that I knew. It was embarrassing that when I went back to normal life I could not curse like a normal person. The best I could do was “you ass” and “you idiot.” You asked a question. Don’t you want the answer?

“Yes, I do want the answer. Curse me if you want. Say whatever you want but tell me with no frills: What happened?”

I got bored. That simple!

“Bored with me?”

With you, with the patients who every day lined up in front of your clinic with bouquets of flowers in their hands. With your night vigils next to the bed of this guy and that guy. With what you said. With what you said always at the wrong time. Remember that night when we were having dinner? You said that there was a cancerous tumor that smelled rotten. When you opened up the head it smelled so bad that the only female nurse in the surgery fainted and the technician threw up…Remember that? I was having dinner. The piece of red meat in my mouth turned into stone. I felt dizzy…I never touched red meat again. I have not had red meat for the past four years or so.

“Well, I…I don’t know. I saw those scenes from close-up but I went on eating red meat. The smells remained in my head but after that surgery I washed my hands and had my lunch.”

That is it. Something was eating me from inside, something that said how could I sleep next to a man who could pick up an electric drill, crack open some unfortunate guy’s head and push his hand into his brain up to the elbow in cold blood and with indifference? So carefree and so cool that you would imagine he is breaking stones for the love of it. How can he live with all that blood, stink, cancer and filth? How can he eat? How can he sleep?

“Live? Sleep? How come after so many years you never learned that I never lived?”

But I wanted to live. Didn’t I have the right to?

“Yes, you did. From the beginning I fell in love with your crazy ways, in love with all that life inside you. So much agitation and excitement! No one could take those away from you.”

Umm…

“Now has anything changed that you are coming back? Has this zombie changed that you are coming back, the same zombie who cracks heads in cold blood and joyfully, pushes his hand into the people’s heads, brings out filth and doesn’t care a bit?”

Then you don’t want me back? It is not too late.

“There you go again? Don’t you want us to talk like friends for once? Straight and without evasion?

Yes, I do.

“So talk!”

I am coming back because my brain stinks, too. The same stink that you talked about. I don’t want an stranger to crack open my head. I don’t want him to go back at night and tell his lover that he opened up the head of a woman and it smelled like slime; that it reeked. When people look at my paintings I don’t want them to think of the stink and the slime that you were talking about. Do you get it?

“Talk sense so I can understand what is going on. Why are you talking nonsense?”

Mahiar, Dr. Zandi told me the same pea-sized lump — the same lump which brought me to your clinic, the same pea that got us together — is now the size of an orange, one of those juicy and large oranges.

“But that lump had gone away. My God!...Hurry up and let me see you…Do you have your pictures? Did you have a test? Why didn’t this motherfucker Zandi didn’t tell me about it?...”

Why did you lose your nerves? Don’t panic. I am coming. I was thinking that in the unwritten laws of you doctors it says that you cannot operate on your immediate family. There is nothing about old lovers, is there?

“It was you who did not want to be my immediate family. I could not understand what you were talking about. You said that you did not believing in marriage. You said that a relationship forged on paper is not worth more than the paper it is written on, that…I never figured out your philosophy, my girl.”

But you didn’t answer. Is there such an unwritten law?

“That unwritten law says that if you hold somebody as dear as life then the blade slips through your hand, your sight goes dark and your hands tremble. Do you understand what I am saying? If the hands of a surgeon trembles it means death. When somebody is as dear to you as life itself then you cannot make decisions, you cannot operate fast, you cannot be decisive.”

But I don’t want anybody else to open up my head except you.

“Are you going crazy again?”

It is not madness. I don’t want strangers to open up my head. I don’t want anybody to see the roots of this juicy big orange. I don’t want anybody to find out how bad my head stinks. Mahiar, I smell the same smell that you talked about. The stink of a black slime comes out of my brain and my nose. I see it every night in my sleep. It oozes on my pillow, turning it black. The roots of the orange cover my face. The feeling of suffocation wakes me up.

“You must rest. We must decide fast. Perhaps an emergency surgery. That same asshole Zand is the best one.”

It is you or no one else.

“I cannot. I cannot cut your body with my blade. I cannot. My hands would shake. My hands are shaking now.”

You still love me as much as life itself?

“God, how stupid can you be. You are so stupid that you did not understand that if it was not because of you I wouldn’t have aged ten years in these two and a half years. When you went away my life went away, too. Everything left me. My home went dark. It has remained dark ever since.”

Mahiar, do you think I’ll live?

“God willing, everything…Oh, I forgot you don’t believe in something called god.”

Mahiar, I am beginning to doubt.

“You always doubted god.”

I starting to doubt his non-existence. How shall I put it? Now I don’t want him not to exist. I want him to exist. I am terrified if he does not exist. I am terrified if you do not exist. I am terrified, Mahiar. Terrified that god does not exist and that you do not exist. Does god exist?

“I say he does.”

How did you find out?

“When the science of medicine told me that this patient was going to die in 40 days but he did not. I went in the operating room in despair. I had given up on the patient but…I don’t know. Maybe there is no god. Maybe you were right. Maybe…I really don’t know.”

“I want god to exist. I want both you and him to exist.

“I exist. I am here. Come fast so we can decide what to do.

I’ll be there but as you said let’s just look at each other. Let’s not talk. Let’s not talk about anything. No, let’s talk but only about good things, like those early days. Let today go. If the god that you say exists then there would be a tomorrow.

“Ok, whatever you say. Come on, girl. My heart is exploding.”

I am at the door. Come and open it.

“But you had the key.”

I’ve lost my key, Mahiar.