CONTEMPORARY AZERBAIJAN LITERATURE

2009-08-31T00:31:00.000-07:00

Over Any Obstacle: A Conversation with Afaq Masud

Alison Mandaville, MFA, PhD, Visiting Fulbright Scholar in Literature from the United States met with Afaq Masud, PhD, in her Baku office on May 20, 2008 to find out more about this prominent Azerbaijani writer’s life, work and views on literature in Azerbaijan today. Aynura Humbatova, MA, assisted in translation.

Alison: Where were you born? Can you speak a little about your family and how you got started in literature and writing?

Afaq: I was born in Baku in 1957 into a literary family. My grandfather, Ali Valiyev was a famous writer of novels and short stories. My father was a scholar of literature. During school I read, of course, different works in world literature, but during the summers, to distract from the stuffy heat and idleness, I read everything good and bad—even books above my level. At that time a series titled A Library of World Literature came out in Moscow. I read the works of the authors such as W. Faulkner, J. Cortazar, and M. Maeterlinck, who were still unknown to Azerbaijani readers. To a certain degree, I am obliged to that library for my writing identity. Now, unfortunately, I have only time to read the most prominent published works.

When I was in the fourth grade, I wrote a short fairy-tale called “Why Does the Crow Caw?” But I didn’t really start writing seriously until my second year at University. In my second year I became deeply affected by the dull daily life of a venerable poet who lived in my neighborhood. He had a life completely incompatible with his craft of poetry— his whole life seemed gray. I recall his house was full of mundane things and the reigning atmosphere of that house was a kind of dead life, like the mechanism of a clock. Hasan Ami was performing his “poetry” as a duty. Every single day he would sit at his writing-table, as if he had come to an office, and write as automatically as a machine. All this evoked in me a strange heavy feeling. This perfunctory life of his had such an impact on me that, for a long time I was not able to get rid of that sense narrowness and desperate boredom. I felt that the life he lived, that his existence was literally suffocating me!

One day, in order to save myself from that stifling feeling, I sat down and transferred the boredom that had penetrated me onto paper—and rescued myself. I wrote my first short story called “Uncle Hasan.” I realized that in this way I could get over any obstacle. So, I became a writer. As time went by, the obstacles oppressing me grew; they got older and smarter along with me and didn’t let me quit writing.

Alison: What else have you written?
Afaq: In 1979 I wrote my first novel, “The Curse.” Since then I have written eight more novels, three plays, more than fifty short stories, and many essays. Today I am editor-in-chief of a translation journal, Khazar, making world literature available in Azerbaijani. I spend a great deal of time on this. It is not an easy task to acquaint Azerbaijani readers with World literature. First of all, we suffer from financial problems. Most of the translations we have to do by ourselves, as we cannot afford to pay for the work of an outside translator. Sometimes I also translate. During the last few years, I have translated and plan to publish Sufi manuscripts with explanatory notes. Some of my own work has been translated into German and English and published in the United States [short stories “The Sparrow” and “The Dormitory”] and Austria [The Genius.] A book of mine titled Subbotniy Vecher was published in Moscow.

Alison: With all these activities, do you still have time to write?
Afaq: Since my children were born and perhaps even before that I got used to doing everything so efficiently that I always have time to write. At home I can cook and write at the same time. I can even prepare our national dish “Plov” [a dish of specially cooked rice with meat and fruit sauce which usually takes two hours to prepare] in 20 minutes. It is amazing for most people.

Alison: What can you tell us about the story, “Crash”?
Afaq: If I am not mistaken, I wrote this story in 1987. It is about a woman who imagines her husband has been killed in a car crash and reorganizes her life in a night. A crash has really happened, but it is not a road accident as the hero of the short story thinks. It is a crash between the real life and the one in her imagination, in other words it is a psychological crash.

Alison: In the four years following your publication of this story, Azerbaijan gained independence from the Soviet Union. In the 18 years since independence what has changed?
Afaq: Of course, much is changed in society. Along with political and public fields, substantial changes have also occurred in people’s outlooks. As for me, to tell the truth, I don’t feel any changes—neither within myself, nor in my life. I come from a family that was anti-soviet. My father, Masud Alioglu, was a very free person and a passionate opponent to the Soviet Union. At the time (I mean during the 1960s) when the word “Turk” was strictly prohibited, we used to listen to Turkish folk songs and read works by Ataturk. My father imitated, with his own voice, the melodies heard in the movie “Moonlight Serenade” starring American jazz musician Glen Miller. He used his mouth in such a way that it seemed as if I was listening to a real orchestra. In short, the atmosphere at our house was always free. And the creator of that atmosphere and independence in the real sense of the word was my father.

Unlike my father, who was persecuted for his free nature, I was lucky enough to have the main period of my creativity fall in the 1980’s, on the eve of great public and political changes. But I have also been subjected to different pressures and oppositions. Because of the prohibition against expressing “the inadvisable,” such topics unsuitable for a woman writer were supposed to be passed on through allusions. But I was not able to write in a different way. For instance, in the short story Crash that you have translated, the first lines of the story have disturbed many people for years. Those lines were about the thoughts that passed through the mind of the main character, a woman who had waited for her husband all night long. The woman, who is terribly jealous of her husband in his absence, imagines that it is he who is raping yowling cats out in the yard. Now, let’s be honest. Aren’t there many nasty things that pass through our minds? Why are we so afraid of these being transferred to paper? For a long time I was worn out by the astonishment of the people who were shocked by those lines. They said, “How is it possible that one can think in this way about her husband, the father of her child?” or “Is such a thing possible?” But, of course, it was only my imagination in a story of fiction, the thoughts of the protagonist. I was so strongly criticized—as if I should censor even my thoughts.

As to the changes in the society, of course, right after the independence the situation was hard. You can imagine yourself: People that were deprived of the opportunity to think and live independently suddenly began to feel themselves free. All of a sudden everything changed. There was an inexplicable chaos. It was as I wrote my short story Dormitory. In this story a family tired of close life with nosy neighbors in a dense dormitory-style apartment complex moves to the countryside only to find out that they have lost their ability to live independently.

Today I am not concerned about the socio-political problems that our country has encountered. I am sure that in the near future Azerbaijan will gain a very high level in both political and economic fields. Today I am concerned about the horrible and inevitable processes of moral degradation spreading in our society, the loss of moral values and the lowered status of serious literature. Today serious literature is the only remedy able to cure sick society. And this is a worldwide problem.

Alison: Could the same story [“Crash”] still be written now? Is it still relevant? I teach a story on a similar theme by Kate Chopin that was written more than 100 years ago, “The Story of an Hour,” about a woman who feels tremendous freedom when she hears her husband has died, and when I ask my students if it still relates to women’s lives today, they have mixed answers.
Afaq: Many things have changed after independence, but for women, there wasn’t a great change. Little changes have taken place in women’s social lives. But nothing has changed on a large scale. After independence, as I already mentioned, some things did change for the better, but the family life and the relationship between family members is spoiled. While many things in public changed for the better, after independence it changed for the worse in family life. As life gets more and more materialistic, male-female relations, as well as the relationship between spouses have also moved into that destructive stage and the national-esthetic values are lost.

By the way, most people (mainly Europeans. who I have been interviewed by on this subject more than once) consider Azerbaijan a miserable “Eastern” country, where women are oppressed. Many foreign magazines present Azerbaijani women with the image of a hard- working mother, who is sometimes selling in a market, sometimes cooking “dushbara” [meat dumplings]. More than once I have tried to explain them: In our country women are not oppressed by anyone, the rights of the women are not breached. And thus was their situation even during the Soviet times. It is our approach to women.

I am always asked about the problems of Azerbaijani women. Of course, when talking about the “Azerbaijani woman,” first of all, the social class to which she belongs should be considered. As all over the world, in Azerbaijan there are working class women—saleswomen, sweepers, laundresses and other toilers among women. Of course, their life is hard in every way. But Azerbaijani women do not consist only of those poor people. We have another unlucky army of women, who belong to the wealthy. Their lives are dedicated to the race for fashion and jewelry. But these women are also not “characteristic” for Azerbaijan. For there is yet another class of women with healthy morality in Azerbaijan, who have gained their individual independence and who are confident of their own strength and ability. But their problems are not few either. These women are deprived of the opportunity to express themselves. Living in this society, there isn’t any clear, healthy situation for intellectual women. So we have different classes of women in Azerbaijan—housewives, businesswomen, creative women, women politicians etc. Independence did not make a great difference in the lives of these women.

Alison: Are your daughters interested in being writers?
Afaq: No [smiling]--they are both lawyers. My elder daughter decided to pursue the professional career of a lawyer. But my younger daughter doesn’t know yet what direction to choose.

Alison: What is the situation for young writers in Azerbaijan today?
Afaq: The number of the talented youth is not small. But what is disappointing about them is that they are interested only in getting famous. This concern is usually felt in the low level of their texts and it reduces the value of the work. The excessive and irrelevant use of vulgar words and pornography generally draws adverse reactions from their readers.

Another problem is connected to their Soviet-like approach to literature. The aspiring young writers of today should realize that their works are not going to be published with a great number of copies; there isn’t any ideological machinery supporting it anymore. They will write only for that small number of people who are able to understand and share their feelings, for changing something about those readers, maybe rescuing somebody from a desperate situation. And, in fact, that is how the Great Literature is created.

Alison: I have one or two young women students who want to be writers here. What advice would you give them?
Afaq: (Gestures helplessly towards the ceiling.) It all depends on the Gods. The freedom inside myself, independence inside myself helped me to be a writer. I believed in myself. Here and in Europe it is difficult for a woman to realize herself. A woman has a many-sided life—at the same time she is a mother, a wife, a daughter and an office worker. There is a great distance between family life and the life of a writer. It’s like being in an airplane during turbulence—up and down and up and down—nauseating. I have lived my whole life like that—nauseous. Not every body, especially women, have the ability or occasion to live this way. But I don’t feel sick from this turbulence anymore. Now I feel it as a normal state—I have gotten used to it. Also, now I have a woman who helps me at home—cooking and cleaning. But I always find housekeeping work to do. I peel potatoes or sweep, while writing something in my mind. And I feel strangely delighted with this double life. So, In fact I don’t advise anybody (I mean girls) to be a writer. It is not a woman’s craft. I think that only the woman who just cannot live without it should become a writer. If I hadn’t been a writer, I would have been destroyed. I live inside my computer!

You know, I had a play produced for the National Theater, “Yugh,” Near Death. The play is about an old civil servant, who is on his deathbed and a woman writer who comes to his house in order to interview him, intending also to use the opportunity to write about the scene of his death. Although the woman is awarded with the most prestigious award in the world, the Nobel prize, still her passion for writing won’t let her live in peace. This woman is my prototype.

Now, nobody in our Azerbaijani literary environment had even thought about wining that prize until the play was produced. It had not occurred to them. And yet, strangely, after this, many people began to talk about it, about the possibility. And I realized that I could deeply influence society with words. It is an indication of my victory as a writer.

Works Cited:
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of An Hour.” First published as “The Story of a Dream” in Vogue. December 6, 1894.
Heyat, Farideh. Azeri Women in Transition: Women in Soviet and Post-Soviet Azerbaijan. London and New York: Routledge Courzon, 2002.
Masud, Afaq. “The Sparrows.” Tr. Shouleh Vatanabadi. World Literature Today; Summer 1996, Vol. 70 Issue 3, p505-508.
———“The Dormitory.” Tr. Aynur Hajiyeva, Ed. Betty Blair. Azerbaijan International. Spring 2004, Vol. 12 Issue 1, p76-79.

2009-08-31T00:15:00.000-07:00

The Crash
By Afaq Masud
First Published 1987, Azerbaijan
Translated by Alison Mandaville and Aynura Humbatova

The bedroom was warm and quiet. From time to time from the yard could be heard the shameless yowling of cats—every night it was as if someone was raping them. Nights like tonight, when her husband wasn’t at home, it seemed to her that it was he who was out there raping the cats.

Wearing her nightgown, she switched off the light and sat down on the bed. Then she stood again and switched on the light. She had forgotten to cream her face. Seating herself in front of the mirror, she unscrewed the lid of the jar of cream. She thought to herself about the many years she had been buying and collecting these jars of cream. Morning and evening she smeared it on her face. If you counted up and put together all that cream it would probably fill a three liter jug. She thought to herself, “See how much cream my face has drunk?!”

Reluctantly spreading the cream on her face, she massaged her forehead and under her eyes with her fingertips. With every stroke it seemed her face was becoming more and more wrinkled. She thought perhaps she wasn’t massaging correctly, or, maybe her face was wrinkling because she was becoming thin. Whatever it was, it was nauseating.

Standing up, she switched off the light. The muscles of her legs ached dully. She remembered that she hadn’t done her exercises for two days. Lying down on her bed, she began to raise and lower her legs and go through her routine. As she exercised, her body and scalp began to sweat and itch. She thought anxiously about how normal people do their exercises in the morning, then take a shower and eat breakfast and so on. But every morning she hardly had time to put on her housedress. Feeding three children, dressing them. Feeding her husband and dressing him.

Her husband was as if paralyzed. If you gave him food he ate it. If you didn’t, he starved. If you gave him a clean shirt, socks, and ironed trousers he would put them on. If you didn’t, he would walk around dirty. She was her husband’s mother. The mother of the whole house.

She felt very nauseous. Being a mother had become repulsive to her. What did she want to be now? She thought that maybe she would toss out the exercises. The hell with the diet also. Since she began dieting, her nerves were wrecked. Her body, head to foot, trembled at the smell of food. What a disaster. She was becoming fat? The hell with becoming fat. Her face was wrinkling? The hell with wrinkling. Her hair was falling out? The hell if she became bald. And then?! Who needed her appearance, for whom did she need to be attractive?

With the movement of her legs, the wood of the bed was creaking, as if small, dry sticks were being broken gently under it. She thought, “It’s always the same.” For however long she stayed awake her husband wouldn’t come, but the instant she fell asleep there would be a tap at the door. She would jump up, her heart beating, and with sleep-tousled hair go to door, look through the peephole and see her husband’s pale face, fearful with anticipation. Then he would come into the room and surreptitiously check her sleepy face out of the corner of his eye. Her countenance would depend on the contents of whatever dream she had been having when the door was knocked on. Either she would interrogate her husband or damn him to kingdom come. Or, as a poor woman of the world, she would go back to her place in their bed in silence. In any case, after all the commotion, she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Her heart would beat quickly; she would turn and toss in bed. Finally, she would sit up and just watch her husband, sleeping there with an open mouth. He would be eating in his dreams, smacking his lips until morning. Or, he would be angry with someone and grinding his teeth. It all made her bristle.

Just thinking about it, made her skin crawl. She said to herself, “How long can this continue?” How long could she live this way, skin crawling, on her last nerve? Although only 30, she had already become old—as if she was fifty.

Once, in a dream, she had seen herself getting older: Her fingernails had itched. As she scratched at them, they began to flake off into her palm. Then a tooth began to itch, and fell from its roots to lie on her two outstretched fingers. Then her ears, nose, and breasts too itched. Scratching at them, they too fell from their foundations, tumbling down her front into her arms.

Now, she began to pump her legs as if she were riding a bicycle. Peddling, she breathed in and then out. As she did so, she could feel the tautness of her stomach muscles.

She remembered her brothers looking at her thin face recently and saying to her, “Why are you in such bad shape?”

She thought, “Truly, what terrible shape I have let myself get into?!” Like an undernourished schoolgirl. As a result, her children didn’t seem to pay attention to her words anymore. Now, whatever she said, they just looked at her and laughed.

The strangest thing was that, although now she was even below her ideal weight, the desire to be thin wouldn’t leave her thoughts. She was melting herself. She wanted to disappear—or what?

On the other side of the apartment wall, from time to time could be heard the noise of footsteps—somebody going hurriedly up or down the stairs. Sometimes, somewhere in the apartment block someone coughed so strenuously as if to tear out their throat. As if they were enjoying the deep reverberations of their efforts. And every once in a while, footsteps would come up and approach her apartment door—but at that same instant, another door in the building would open and the sound of the steps would disappear. Listening to these footsteps it seemed to her, each time, that it was her husband coming up the stairs and approaching the door; that suddenly something had occurred to him so that he turned and went away again; that her husband didn’t want to return home.

It was because of the exercises, or maybe from the anxiety. But something was squeezing her heart. Standing, she opened the window wide.

Spring was coming…You could feel it from the smell of the air. In a few days the weather would be very hot. The sun would burn the eyes. The trees would blossom. The poets would become inspired and would write about smelling spring and buds and other creeping things…but nobody would really think about seeing this spring. Every year for fifty years they see a warm sun and buds—and spring is nothing else.

She believed that, generally, spring was the most aggravating of all the seasons. In this old, jaded world, there was something hypocritical about spring, year in and year out, becoming young and decorated. Fall and winter were better suited to this tired planet. For, the beginning and the end of the world was winter—cold and dead. There was far more death in this world than life.

She thought about her dead relations. Her father and mother, her grandfathers and grandmothers, aunts and uncles on her mother’s side, aunts and uncles on her father’s side…They were all dead. She was the only one still alive. For the last ten years she had lost herself in the lives of her in-laws and children, and others she had known.

The three children took after their father. They resembled him so much it was as if he himself had given birth to them. For this she wanted to die. She wanted to die also because the spring was coming. People laughed deceitfully, birds sang deceitfully, the butterflies would die after the sun set. The sun would brown the grass.

For the sake of her children, she felt ashamed about wanting death. It was a terrible thing to put them halfway through life and then leave. Why did she give birth to them?! How could she have known that the joy of being a mother both begins and ends when you first see your baby—that the joy ebbs along with the pain of labor. Later, as the children grew, why should she feel joy? For as the children grew, her troubles also grew.

She couldn’t think of any sage words about children. Certainly, she could not bring the children only half the way and then die. She had no right to do it. But then, she thought, look at the grief: she must have a right to die. But it seemed dying also had its rules, its time and commission. She considered that perhaps this was just a temporary state of affairs—she had experienced such situations often enough, God knew. She remembered the many times she had wanted to kill herself. She also remembered her toothless daughter once standing on the balcony and eating an apple—and her own desire to kill the girl by throwing her from the rail. For a long time she had thought to herself about her daughter going head over heels through the air, hitting the ground and dying.

Then the children had begun to collude with their father. The first half of every night she was waiting for her husband’s arrival, the second half, her little son would wake up, unable to fall back asleep. In the afternoons her daughter would become crazy, difficult. She thought about how she paced, tiredly, around the apartment, howling like a wolf and snapping at everyone. She remembered looking in the mirror, comparing herself to a wolf. Really, now she even looks like a wolf. Or, maybe not a wolf, but a dog. A clever and faithful dog.

She thought about how she had been in such circumstances before. She was bored of this life. Yes, she had been bored before, but then it didn’t continue long. Somedays she wanted to die but then the rest of the days she thanked God that she hadn’t died yet, that life was beautiful, was full of meanings and secrets….

In the neighboring house somebody burst out laughing. But you couldn’t tell if it was a woman or a man. Closing the window tightly, she drew the curtain and looked at the clock. It was a little before two. Lying on her bed, she began to stare at the ceiling in the dark. There were no more footsteps in the apartment block. All the doors were shut, as if all the hallways of the building were locked. If her husband came now, he could not pass through this silence.

In the quiet, the voices of objects around the house increasingly began to be to heard.

The plastic clothes covers collected in the wardrobe rustled gently. The covers were tired of staying tightly packed and were shaking loose, relaxing. The floor was creaking as if stretching itself.

When it had become very silent, a tragic air began flowing into the room from some far away place…yes, but such a different silence this time. A tragedy was occurring so that her husband couldn’t come. Probably her husband hadn’t been at his job since the early afternoon. Perhaps he had joined his all too inseparable friend, the inspector. God only knew— they are probably now sitting tête-à-tête and talking things to death. When they spoke they went on and on— “and so then and so then…” It made her sick. Her husband would say “So then …I am saying…so then I had to work at home…” As if he ever worked at home!

Several times she had chastised her husband about that. She had said to him, “Shame on you!” But what could she do? Her husband felt no shame from her words. In fact, it was the opposite. He grew fat and self-satisfied. For some reason, his legs were getting fat.

Her husband is getting into the car and starting the engine.

After dark the highways became narrow. More and more cars aimed their headlights like sharp horns at the pedestrians. The heat of the engines stupefied the drivers. Her husband, with half-closed eyes and a half-opened mouth, was steering groggily.

In the other room, her daughter was crying aloud in her dream, “You yourself are the child! The child is you!”

Often at night, her younger daughter screamed in her dreams, as if quarreling with her little brother. Afternoons, sister and brother often bickered that way. In the end, the girl was always beaten.

Every evening when she came home from work, as soon as she entered the house, the same words came from her mouth: “Have you done your homework?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Yeah.”

“Go and wash your hands and face.”

Then she and her older daughter would sit facing each other and eat supper. Her daughter’s face would remain pale for a long time, as if during the hours when she was at home somebody would frighten her, or jump out from a corner and scare her: “Boo!” God only knew, when she was at work, what happened in these big and silent rooms. What clatterings, what creakings, what whisperings would come out of the corners?!

“Aren’t you lonely until I come home?”

Her daughter was would shake her head, silently, looking at her mother’s face. “I am only lonely when I first come home from school.” But her food would nearly stick in her throat.

“But when you first come home from school, I am at still home.”

Her daughter would blush a little, “I am lonely on my way home…”

While growing up the girl had imitated her mother’s behavior—always acting like her.

Looking at her daughter, she felt everything begin again. Again the dark, airless school years, the too-short university years, getting married and so on and so on…

No, her husband couldn’t abandon all this without a word. Her heart was beating nervously, lying on her bed and thinking for such a long time. Her eyelids were painful, held open. Sleep had forsaken her.

Yes, this accident had to happen someday. That day had come and the crash had happened. Different images of her husband appeared before her eyes.

…The car rolls…her husband’s dry, blue hand can be seen from under the frame…Gradually his face collapses into the steering wheel, unrecognizable..

…The car veers off the road, and rolls down into the ravine…at the bottom of the ravine are heard the screams of her husband…

Yes, the accident had finally happened…a crash that should have happened long before. She had felt it long ago several times. Again and again in her dreams she had seen it. How long could you live this miserable, monotonous life?

Everybody has ups and downs in their lives. One loses her darling. Another dies. Another is childless and yet another has so many children that she can’t satisfy their hunger.

Yes, from this very night her own tragedy was beginning. After this night, at last, life will show her its dark side.

Standing, she looked at the clock illuminated by the streetlamp. It was past three. Approaching the window, she looked out at the deserted and black street. The endless procession of dark upright buildings lining the street on each side were as tombstones. The city appeared as two immense cemeteries tonight.

She thought that she would get up and call her husband’s relatives and tell them. But, what would she say? Should she say that he had died? But he might not be dead! No, he did die, because she now felt herself to be quite alone. She felt completely widowed.

She would get up and put herself and the house in order. Because as soon as the sky lightened, her husband would be found and brought home. Or else he would be carried to the hospital and autopsied. She would go and wait, crying at the door of the hospital, wearing dark clothes; on her head, a black scarf. At once she remembered that she had no proper black clothes to wear.

Standing, she switched on the light. She rummaged through the wardrobe shelves. She went and hauled down the heavy, anvil-like suitcases from the outdoor balcony storage area.

While taking one of these suitcases down, the open latch scraped her leg badly. Blood trickled down onto the floor. Trailing drops of blood, she went to the kitchen, and returned with a bandage. Binding the cut, she thought about how her husband was now in a similarly bloody condition. This thought gave her the creeps. Switching on the hall light, she looked at the spots of red on the floor. Fetching a wet wash cloth, she kneeled and with disgust wiped up the blood.

Opening the suitcases, she dumped everything out into the middle of the living room floor. She selected and held up the black dress that she had found. She put it on. It hung loosely from her. Just like last year, she was still swimming in it. From every side it needed to be taken in by four fingers.

She retrieved her sewing box from the kitchen. Threading a needle, she looked at the clock again. It was ten minutes past four. She would carry through until dawn lightened the sky. Turning the dress inside-out, she began to baste it, thinking about how she would arrive at the hospital, wearing her black clothes—what would she do when she saw the dead body?

Perhaps she should run crying to the corpse and throw herself upon it. Then she remembered her own mother’s behavior when her father had died. Her mother didn’t cry at all. Her mother used to say, “It is shameful for a woman to cry over her husband.”

So, crying wasn’t very important. Suddenly something shifted in her and she became emotional, recalling her engagement days.

Yes, as soon as she reached the hospital, she would cry and lean against the wall. She knew herself quite well: while crying she always had had to lean against someone or something. Why did she become so powerless? They might come and move her from the wall. Then she thought, if nobody came to take her from the wall, would she just be forgotten?

The needle pricked her finger. Her finger bled. Why was she thinking about such foolish things? She’d do better to cry about herself. One woman alone with three children…

Her husband had always come home carrying the groceries dripping with sweat, and the food was used up in just two or three days. After a few days she would have to go do the shopping herself again, carrying all the heavy bags, with swollen veins and cut palms.

Abruptly the thought came to her—for what would she need the shopping when her husband was gone? She herself kept a strict diet and the children, thank God, didn’t eat anything apart from fruit and candy.

She would never again have to prepare the bloody meat and the dusty potatoes and onions coming from the bazaar, or go through other such revolting processes. She would just buy a carton of eggs and put it into the refrigerator and that would do. She thought, “How great eggs are!” A very modern food. Everything contained neatly inside. You didn’t have to get your hands dirty and they didn’t smell bad. And they cooked in just a blink.

Her heart beat quickly from the thoughts that were coming to her now. So she wouldn’t cook the meals anymore. She would never have to fight with the meat grinder, waiting for her on one of the kitchen shelves. Until now, the meat grinder had been at the forefront of the many things shortening her life. Because she had sharpened it every day, its blade had become nearly as thin as the wing of a butterfly, and instead grinding the meat it would wind it around itself, stalling the motor and crying like a milk cow as if to say “Strip me, and start all over again.”

If she needn’t cook, then she wouldn’t have to fight with the meat grinder and with the whetstone making its repellent noises. She would never again have to use steel wool with bleeding fingers or wipe down the gas stove, mottled and spotted from cooking the meals. Her body flushed with heat as she thought about how she would escape from doing so many other things. As the many things that bothered her every morning and every evening and even in her dreams ran through her head, she became increasingly agitated, until her hands trembled and her scalp tingled.

Thinking over this freedom, so many new thoughts and even a new lifestyle came to her mind; if you put it all together, it would be a quite different life. She would look like quite a different person.

Yes, a new life was beginning.

The two side-seams were ready. Rising, she took off her nightgown, and trying on the basted dress, she stood in front of the mirror.

Without enthusiasm, she took the black dress off and put her everyday dress on. She looked at the gaping and empty suitcases and the clothes piled in heaps in the middle of the room. Here were so many years of clothes! She thought about how long she had been living—when had she worn all these clothes?

Going into another room, she switched on the light. Sitting in front of the sewing machine, she threaded the needle and sewed the basted seams of the dress.

Slowly the sky was brightening. She would begin to phone her husband’s relatives in an hour.

Combing her hair anxiously, the teeth of the comb became full. Putting one hand on her lower back, she looked again at the clothes piled in the middle of the floor.

Here and there, she noticed her husband’s old shirts and trousers among the other clothes. She should package and give all these things to the poor. Then, she thought, as her heart beat quickly, that probably she would do better to just destroy all these clothes so as not to ever have to see this reminder of past years.

There was a tap at the door. But, as if it wasn’t the door that was tapped, her own head jarred. Her heart trembling, she wondered who it could be at this time of night—but at the same moment she guessed: Who else could it be apart from her husband, so late?

So her husband had come. Her husband had finally come.

This time there was definitely a knock at the door. Then the door bell rang three times in quick succession, one bell right after the other. Evidently, her husband didn’t fear waking his children anymore.

“Bang,” she thought, “Bang…Bang, until your hand collapses. I’d like to see what you would do then.”

Now the door bell rang without stopping. The children had already been woken up. Their voices could be heard from the other room, when one of the children opened their bedroom door and looked out into the hall.

“Mama…hey mom…”

“What?”

“There’s that knock at the door…eh?”

“I hear. Go back to sleep.”

Her eyes had darkened with her jangled nerves. She thought about how while she sewed mourning clothes for herself, this blockhead, God knew, was out merrymaking.

She began to cry. She thought, “What a stupid woman I am.”

There was another firm knock at the door. Finally her nerves couldn’t bear it, and going out into the hall she switched on the light to look out through the front door peep-hole.

Her husband was staring straight back through the hole with a defensive look, as if looking right at her face.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Open the door.”

“I won’t open…”

“I told you to open the door, don’t embarrass us. People are sleeping.”

She didn’t reply.

“Open up, or else…” her threatened.

“Yes, or else what?”

“You know…”

“No, I don’t know.”

Her husband replied by banging the door so loudly that the metal of the door thundered. One of the children woke again and cried out in the other room.

She was obliged to open the door. Her husband, with a package under his arm and a disgruntled look on his face, came in and, looking at her askance, put the package down in front of the mirror. As if he expected that when she saw the thing in the package she would regret her tactless actions.

“Is this a hotel?” she asked him.

He did not reply.

“I’m talking to you.”

Her husband was opening the package, making a show with his hands: “It’s a telephone.”

“What can I do with a telephone?!”

“You talked about it the other day!”

“The other day I said a lot of things. Why didn’t you remember all of them?”

“What else did you say?”

“I said that this wasn’t a hotel. If you came late you would have to stay outside in the street.”

“Enough already, ok?”

“What’s ok?! Did you remember only the telephone? Buying a telephone is the easiest part of what I asked! The hardest part is coming and staying at home and seeing me.”

Her husband took off his shoes and put on his slippers.

“Why did you even come? Have you no other place to sleep?”

He was silent.

“This is something new. Now every time you come, you have something under your arm. What is it? Is it a bribe? Your head needs fixing.”

“My head needs fixing because of you.”

Her husband stood listening to the music in the other room for awhile. Then, going to the kitchen, he rummaged around.

She believed her husband was purposefully rummaging around with a vacant look on his face, just waiting for her to sleep so he could lie down next to her silently and avoid her piercing questions and sharp words.

She thought that her husband would even agree to sleep with a dead body, if only to avoid her chattering. Maybe he bothered to bring her a bribe every night because he felt sick of listening to her chattering. So bent his head before her as would a naughty child. It occurred to her that her husband must want her dead.

Every night her husband would return from different colorful parties to their house—a prison. Heavily climbing the stairs, maybe he would pray to God for her death. Nights, while she slept with an open mouth and envisioned her twisted dreams, God knew her husband would lean on his elbows, look at her, and listen to her breathing. Listening quietly, he would wonder when her breaths would end. Thinking about this, waiting for that moment, he would drift off to sleep.

Her husband was still in the kitchen. Now, he was drinking or washing his hands, she couldn’t tell which. Finally something—the sounds of running water could be heard. Holding her breath, she listened in the quiet. Only the voice of the water came from the bathroom.

Standing on tip-toe, she went out to the hallway and stopped at the door of the bathroom.

The door was half-open. Her husband was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, leaning on his elbows, his head in his hands. Water was cascading into the sink.

When she opened the door wide, her husband jumped up.

“Why are you sitting here?” she asked.

He said nothing.

“What are you waiting for?”

“Nothing…”

“Why don’t you come to sleep then?”

He was quiet.

“Are you feeling sick?”

“No…Why would I be feeling sick?”

“From seeing me, I think.”

“Ah, it starts again…”

“Listen…what are you playing at? If you are feeling sick, just say, I am feeling sick…What are you afraid of?”
“What am I afraid of?” he repeated, “I am not afraid of anything.”

“Then tell me.”

“What should I say?”

“Say ‘I hate you’.”

“But I don’t hate you!”

She paused, then said, “If you are afraid of leaving, we can part without the formalities. But for the love of God, don’t play with me…Tell me, and I will know what to do.”

“What do you want to do?”

“If you want to leave I will know what to do—I don’t want to stick in your throat and leave you to rot. For myself, I…” she paused.

“Yeah, what?”

She felt that she was blushing red. As she blushed, her husband’s head caught fire; he became enraged for it was as if in her blushing there was something going on that he didn’t know about.

Her husband grew more upset. Just moments ago he had been languishing, hungover, now his eyes suddenly glittered and sparked: “Yes, why don’t you finish?

She felt herself flush deeply. God knew, her face was all flushed and darkened now.

Her husband, sitting again on the edge of the bath, was looking at her. Abruptly, she pulled the door closed and bolted it, leaving him inside.

The children were looking at her with fearful eyes and pale faces from the door of their bedroom. “Mom, what is father doing in there?”

“Your father has died!”

This was her husband crying out. Echoing from the bathroom, his voice filled the house in the dark night.

After these words, each of the children began to cry bitterly.

Comforting her children and helping them back into bed, she thought, “Every spring begins like this. Damn the spring.”

2008-10-01T22:21:00.000-07:00

2008-06-17T23:35:00.000-07:00

DORMITORY

When Mastan said: "My back hurts," everybody in the building, replied: "Jan".1 When Mastan sneezed, everybody in the building said: "Be healthy!" Mastan coughed, everybody in the building brought medicine. Mastan's wife cooked a dish. Everybody in the building praised it, whether they liked it or not. Mastan's wife bought a pair of shoes. Everybody in the building said: "Mubarak"!2Mastan's child fell down in the yard, everybody in the building sighed. Such was the building where Mastan lived. It always seemed to Mastan that he was not living in a house, but in the street or in the middle of the courtyard. He was afraid to act freely at home. Whatever he wanted to say, he would think about it 30 times before saying it. It was as if Mastan's apartment had ears. If he sneezed twice, there would be a big confusion among his neighbors, and they would call him all day long to ask how he was. That's why Mastan, his wife and child always behaved very cautiously. They were talking to one another, using the polite forms of "yes," "no," 3 "Here you are," 4 and "You're welcome." 5Mastan wore a tie at home. Several times a day, he would check to see that it was straight and that he was neatly groomed. And at night when everyone in the building was sleeping, Mastan couldn't even be comfortable in bed. His wife would turn this way and that way in the bed and look at herself, checking hair in the mirror, opposite the bed. Neither of them dared to sleep without the blanket, even on the hottest summer nights. It was as if there was a big camera in Mastan's house, which was recording everything that they were saying and doing from morning until night, and it was transmitting everything directly from Mastan's apartment into the courtyard for everyone to see.Of course, it wasn't only Mastan's family. All the tenants of the building - all 150 families - felt the same way. Maybe, that was the reason why no accident had ever happened up to that time in any of those 150 apartments. The only place where Mastan could feel comfortable was in his study. Every day when he arrived at his office, he would lock the door from the inside, sit in his chair, look around and enjoy the strange loneliness of his study. His study was the only place that provided any solace for Mastan. Sometimes, he would look around his study and his heart would start to beat because he was afraid that this loneliness could disappear one day. Then he would chase away these frightening thoughts and be proud of his small refuge. He would think: "Four walls, the ceiling, the floor and me." This small room was turning into such a sweet and charming place for him that if no one would have criticized him, he would have brought his bed to his study and slept there. Mastan's apartment had three rooms. Each of those rooms was twice as spacious and full of light as his study. In addition, there was beautiful furniture, comfortable, soft couches and carpets in his apartment. In spite of all these things, he found comfort only in his small study and this situation made Mastan feel very strange.Maybe the reason was that Mastan could sit as he liked in his study. If he wanted to, he could even put his feet up on his desk. He could snap his fingers for two hours, write poems and take off his clothes. Nobody saw Mastan there. Nobody expressed any opinion about his behavior there or asked additional things. And this was worth the entire world to him.This study where Mastan was happily breathing every day was the manager's office of the dormitory of a technical school. And Mastan was the "owner" of this office; that is, he was the manager of the dormitory. He did his job very well. Sometimes, he would even write poems. At home, Mastan never dared to write a poem because, once, on a day off while he was sitting on the sofa, Mastan had drawn a picture just for fun and this caused great trouble. Two hours later, all the building had learned about it. The phone calls started. One was congratulating him, another was making fun of his new hobby, and others were asking what he had drawn.Afterwards Mastan was very careful about such things. Now whenever Mastan wanted to draw a picture or read a book, he would go to the bathroom. Even there, he couldn't sit for a long time. All the building would say to each other: "What happened to Mastan?" "Is he having a stomach ache?" "Maybe he caught cold?"Mastan had moved into this building the day he married. They had been living under the same roof for 16 years already. They had a son who was 15. But still they were treating each other very modestly just like when they got engaged. They couldn't tell each other what was really in their hearts; they even had to hide their anger inside. It wasn't a joke, they were living together with 400 people, and they couldn't say and do what was on their minds.During those 16 years, Mastan had never joked with his wife the way he wanted to. Sometimes when Mastan was in a very good mood, he wanted to jump with joy, to hit his head against the wall. Or sometimes he would shake and become green with anger, but he could never share his anger or his happiness with his wife.Their balcony was adjacent to the neighbor's and just like all the other apartments; their balconies were separated from each other only with a board that substituted for a door. Therefore, in the middle of the day or night, Mastan would see the neighbor's child across from their balcony coming to get a drink of water in the kitchen. Or see someone hanging clothes out to dry on the balcony or rinsing them in the bathroom.So, during all these 16 years, Mastan's anger and joy had accumulated like a heavy stone inside him, and the anger and fury of 16 years had accumulated like venom in his heart. That's why Mastan felt alone exactly like he had when he was young and not married. He would drink a glass of water when he got angry, and go to the bathroom and bite his finger when he got happy; after all, a grown man couldn't jump up and down like a ball in the midst of 400 people. The entire building would have shaken with laughter and, God knows, maybe, the building might have collapsed.Lately, he neither had time nor needed to talk to his wife and son about anything. His wife would share all her problems with the women in the neighborhood, learn from them what she wanted to learn and say what she wanted to say. And his son would spend time with the boys living in their building and rarely be at home.The neighbors would flow like a river with its many branches here and there across Mastan's rooms, not leaving the slightest chance for Mastan and his family to even talk or look at each other.As the years passed, Mastan got used to this world of his. Even when the lights would go out at night, Mastan would sense that everyone in the whole building was sleeping with him in his own bed. Even in his dreams, Mastan wouldn't lose his control over himself. In fact there was no difference at all between Mastan's work and home. They both seemed like a dormitory to him. The only difference between the dormitory of the technical school and this one was that the tenants of that dormitory were temporary, but these were permanent. Sometimes, especially at nights when Mastan was thinking about this, he would become horrified. He arrived at the conclusion after thinking a lot that he would have to live in this damned dormitory for the rest of his life, having a great desire for freedom and independence. When thinking like this, Mastan's hair would stand on end. The most frustrating moments were related to thinking about the end of his life for even when dying, he would be together with his neighbors. It was impossible for him to imagine that he would be allowed to lie alone in some cemetery, far from his neighbors, and that his neighbors would live quietly in their houses as if nothing happened. Mastan's building really resembled a dormitory. It just didn't have a manager. The exteriors and interiors of all the apartments were the same. Most of the furniture in the apartments was the same too; even the interior design of the apartments was alike. Why were they the same? Because 400 people were appreciating and giving their suggestions to the interior design of every apartment. All apartments had a glass buffet with expensive dishware, including, at least four or five pieces of crystal and a china tea set. Such buffets were the norm in this building. To decorate one's living room in a different way would have either been viewed as indecent or illegal. It was as though it had never occurred to anyone that maybe the room could have a different interior design; for example, even without a buffet. The strange thing was that nobody was getting tired of these buffets. It was as if they had taken the buffets over from the government just like a wall of the building. Then everybody definitely had to have a color TV. Why? Because 400 people couldn't fit into one or two apartments. And in Mastan's building, one couldn't watch color while someone watched a black-and-white TV. First of all, nobody would have wanted to watch a color TV if his neighbor was watching a black-and-white one. Everybody had to be the same. Everybody had to have the same lot of everything. Everybody had to get happy and enjoy something, get sad and cry the same amount.Mastan was feeling sick because of this fountain of mutual sensitivity - love and care. What was the reason of this kindness?! Why did they need such an illness like care?! Didn't everything have its limits?Mastan would quietly think about this only when sitting in the office of his small study. Sometimes, he would provide such answers to his own questions that he would get frustrated and nervous, pound the folders on his desk, leave his study, calm himself down by smoking a cigarette as he wandered in the semi-dark corridors of the dormitory. But it wouldn't last long and he would get afraid that the watchful "projectors" that lit up his apartment's interior would do the same with his brain, enabling the neighbors to see everything in his head as clearly as they saw everything in his house.It was as if this disease - like solicitude and kindness of Mastan's building was increasing, day by day, instead of becoming less. It seemed to Mastan that the building was trembling with kindness from the neighbors, the apartments, balconies and garages were coming closer and turning into a single large area, melting the walls between them. The kindness of the building even affected the dogs and cats as well. These street animals, which were usually chasing after each other, started licking one another all day long. And when the summer came Mastan's trouble would only become more serious, it was as though a rock as big as the building of the dormitory was falling on Mastan's head from the sky. During the summer time, the dormitory would empty out and Mastan could not find any work there so he would have to spend most of his time among his kind neighbors.After thinking a lot on one such summer day, Mastan decided to move to his sister's dacha (country house) in order to get away from this confusion for at least 10 to 15 days, to breath freely and to have a sense of peace. The dacha thing worked. All the building came to say good-bye to them. The neighbors kissed them and cried. The following day they moved to the dacha.When he entered the dacha, it seemed to Mastan that he had arrived at the most native place. What a dachasilence, spaciousness. Even the birds were singing.The moment he got inside, the first thing that Mastan did was to take off his clothes. It had been a long time since the curly black hair on Mastan's body, chest and back had seen the open air and sun. He rolled up his trousers to his knees and took off his socks. It had been a long time since Mastan's big feet - his crooked toes that sweated in his boots and socks all winter and summer long and which were covered with corns - had felt the fresh air and sun.After taking off his clothes, he flew to the garden as if he were jumping into a cold swimming pool. He started whistling freely, walking barefoot among the trees. Nobody could ask anything of him now. Nobody could ask why he was whistling and smiling like an idiot. Nobody could ask why he was walking barefoot. Nobody could give their tactless and disgusting advice. So he cheered up and started to sing."They won't let you get married to me, aman [pronounced ah-MAHN], yellow bride,Aman, yellow bride, aman, yellow bride."6Suddenly Mastan's wife saw that Mastan had climbed to the highest limb of the tree like a bird and his voice could be heard all over the place. No matter how loud she yelled, no matter how hard she shook the tree, Mastan didn't hear a thing. Mastan's eyes became glazed over from singing. They became as big as plums. Mastan's face became swollen from singing. Swollen and ruddy-colored like fresh bread. His chest expanded like a lion's.While singing, Mastan was feeling that something was slowly happening. Something was draining out of his body, his innards and marrow. Mastan was becoming relieved and comfortable as he was singing.That day Mastan sang until he lost his voice. He came down after his voice got hoarse, and he became breathless and his heart started beating faster.That very day Mastan's wife said a lot of nasty things to him. She said everything that she had wanted to say for the past 16 years that she had kept in her heart until now.And Mastan, even though he wasn't itching anywhere, confused, first started scratching his stomach and then his head. Then he rubbed his hands nervously together. It wasn't a joke. During 16 years this was the first time that Mastan was seeing his wife - her red face and bulging eyes. It was the first time in his life that Mastan realized that his wife's mouth was really big. When she was angry, her nostrils expanded like walnuts and she had the face of dragon from some horror movie.It was as if that evening Mastan saw his wife for the first time. It was as though Mastan had lived with a different person - a quiet, warm and young woman up until then. As if even her face and voice were different. The following day Mastan's son tied two cats together by their tails and rubbed their backs with something. This was the same son who was always getting top grades at school and whose photo never was omitted from the honor boards of his school for studying and good behavior.Suddenly, the screams of the cats were heard all over the dacha. A day later, his son drowned someone's hen in the pool.Mastan was really confused and lost. Every day either his wife or son was doing something crazy. Things were getting worse, day after day. His wife had turned into a witch and his son into a mad goat. They were turning everything upside down at the dacha. His wife was wearing anything she could get hold of, and she was wearing it the way she liked and walking in the streets of the village that way, disgracing him. And her clothes were so dirty. She would go for days without changing her clothes and combing her hair.Once Mastan noticed that his wife's manner of walking and posture had changed as well. Her manner of laughing was scaring Mastan for some reason now. She was stirring up the dust in the air when she walked. His son was climbing the walls. He was biting into the trees like a wolf and saying nasty things to his parents. There was not a single dog or cat left in the dacha because of him. They had all run away and hidden in some corner.Mastan had really lost himself. What was going on? Was this a dream? Why were they acting like this? Was this what they called a quiet and independent life?When his son again started to gnaw on the trees like a mad goat, Mastan got really angry and lost his temper. He was repairing the handle of the door that his wife had broken when slamming the door. And the heat was burning his back. That moment a clamor rose from the depth of the dacha, and Mastan understood what was going on. He found himself grabbing his son by the ears and lifting him up and screaming and yelling as loud as he could. He didn't realize himself what he was doing. He couldn't pull himself together or stop his hands from shaking. He was biting his son's arms, twisting his ears, pinching his cheeks and kicking him. No matter how much his wife tried, she couldn't calm Mastan down. Mastan himself tried, but couldn't calm down. He was trying to stop, to cool down, but his hands and legs were not obeying him. His son's voice was heard all over the dacha: "Daddy, I'm dying. Dad, please, don't beat me"But Mastan couldn't stop. When he got tired of beating up on his son and needed to rest his tired hands, he climbed up on his son's back. He was biting his son's ears and screaming as loud as he could until his eyes became bloodshot. His hands were pinching and twisting whatever they could get a hold of. At last, his wife called the neighbors for help: "Hey everybody, he's killing him, don't let him do that. My husband has gone crazy, please stop him!"Mastan's wife had completely lost herself. During those 16 years, her husband had never slapped their child. Now all of a sudden, she was lost because of her husband's strange behavior.Mastan was going around the garden riding on the back of his son who didn't know where to run. He was just trying to escape from his father who was screaming and yelling and making his body black and blue from pain. Now he was remembering the cats that he tied together with their tails. Mastan was confused by his own behavior. It was as if a big unreasonable, cruel monster that had got bigger, little by little, for 16 years inside him had finally awakened. It was as if Mastan had fed the monster with all his problems up to then. And the monster had become bigger and fatter, thriving on all those poisons.By the time the neighbor men came to help, Mastan's son was lying on the ground, moaning. And Mastan was out of breath, sitting on his son's back.Mastan's wife was leaning against a mulberry tree, crying. It seems she was more afraid that her husband was going crazy than for her son. That night neither Mastan, nor his wife, nor his son could manage to fall sleep until morning. His son's ears and nose had become blue and swollen. He couldn't move his arms or head because of pain. He tossed back and forth, and kept moaning until morning. Mastan's wife was also tossing from side to side. She couldn't understand how things had turned out like this. Everything had been so good. Up until then, there had never been any problems at home. Why were they having such a hard time since they had moved to the dacha? But Mastan was worse off than the others. On the one hand, he was ashamed of what he had done; on the other hand, he felt sorry for his son. He was terrified to realize that the independent life he had been wishing for up until then, and the 10 to 15 days that he had wanted to have for himself and his family had turned out to be so dangerous. How had things turned out to be so bad? Mastan thought a lot and decided that they should return home in the morning.So they did. As soon as they got home, the whole building came out to greet them. Everybody was interested in the black and blue ears of Mastan's son. They said that he had got into a fight with some kids. Then the whole building said: "Jan". Then for a whole week they kept bringing medicine, delicious dishes and fruits for his son. His son's mad goat phase passed. The kid became the well-bred, shy boy just as he had been before. He felt embarrassed and shy with everyone that he saw. His wife's face became happy again, her mouth became smaller. She started responding to him, using the polite forms of "yes" and "you're welcome."After everybody cooled down and recovered, Mastan went out to the balcony and took a deep breath. He looked out over the city. From here - from Mastan's house - the buildings looked very small.After thinking about it, Mastan arrived at the conclusion that, for sure, this is how things were supposed to be. In fact, this was better. It was as if you were standing on 50 or 100 feet, not just your own two. As if you are thinking with 100 brains, not just your own. As if you were seeing with a thousand eyes, not just with your own.It was as though Mastan saw the city for the first time, despite that he had been looking at it for a long time. All of a sudden it seemed to him that all the gray buildings in the city were big dormitories in good condition just like his own building. And in those buildings everybody was eating, getting up and going to bed at the same time.He didn't know whether he thought these things just to console himself, or whether it just occurred to him

End Notes:
1 People say, "Jan", to show that they care and are worried and concerned. "Jan" literally means "soul".
2 The word, "Mubarak" is used to congratulate someone for something new.
3 "Yes" (bali) and "No" (kheyr) are used in formal speech; "ha" and "yokh" are informal or colloquial.
4 "Here you are" (buyurun) is the polite way to request someone to do something.
5 "You're welcome" (daymaz) is the polite way to say, "Thank you."
6 "Yellow Bride" is a well-known Azerbaijani folk song.

Translated by Aynur Hajiyeva and edited by Betty Blair.

2008-06-17T23:31:00.000-07:00

The Death of the Rabbit

One of the rabbits was dying. The expression in its eyes had disappeared, its black pupils were nebulous and it was breathing heavily, its colourless mouth on the ground.
Only the ears of the other rabbit were visible from behind the bush. From quivering of its ears, one could understand that it was “grinding” something again without taking a breath, its thoughtless eyes fixed on one point.
…Stooping, he drew the feeble head of the rabbit nearer to the water bowl in case it would like to drink. Gulping the water down, the rabbit suddenly choked, lost its breath, its eyes stood still like glass buttons.
- What shall we do now?.. - Her husband turned to her with his face wizened in agony. He looked as if it was he who had killed the rabbit.
...Isa killed his cigarette butt pressing his sole hard against the soft sand with his foot.
- …A buck and doe shouldn’t be kept together. Always one is sure to die.
- Which one dies?..
- Most often a male one.
- Why a male?..
Her husband got angry at this irrelevant question of hers. As if not heard it, Old Isa put his hands into the pockets of his trousers worn out and faded in the sun, with his head on his breast he walked to the gate where he lingered for a moment:
- …Dove is safer… - he said and left.
After Isa had left, to check whether the rabbit was dead or not, her husband raised the animal’s small white pad with his two fingers and dropped it down, rose, put his hands on his hips and said in a hoarse voice:
- It will sure die…
The rabbit was still gasping for breath, its pupils were bulging and popping out of their sockets and its tiny warm body was quivering weakly.
…By the twilight the rabbit breathed its last.
Her husband dug a small pit in the farthest end of the garden and buried the rabbit there.
The whole night she dreamed about the rabbit in agony. It was bigger than the dead one and white, while agonizing suddenly he revived, rose to its hind feet, put its pads on her shoulders, opened its mouth wide and yawned showing its throat. The rabbit yawned as if it would suck her down into its big cavelike mouth like a vacuum-cleaner…
…At breakfast, the other rabbit was sitting in front of the veranda, chewing something in its small mouth; it was staring at them with a timid look as if listening to their chat.
- I wonder which of them died – the buck or doe…
Her husband screwed up his eyes and looked at the rabbit.
- Does it make any difference?
- It looks like a male.
Her husband made a face as if the sunlight dazzled him.
- What makes it look like?..
- Its whiskers…
- What do the whiskers have to do with it? As if Does don’t have whiskers.
Accurately spreading butter on a slice of bread, she said:
- What if you buy another one?!..
- Which one shall I buy?..
- Just like this.
- I say how we can guess whether it’s a doe or buck…
The breakfast was left on the table untouched. No matter how fast the husband and wife ran after the rabbit among the vines, they failed to catch the rabbit.
- It’s strange…- a little later, her husband said while turning his car with speed now left, now right in the narrow streets of Mardakan. - So strange…
- What’s strange? …
- The death of the rabbit… It is for the first time I hear that a buck and a doe shouldn’t be kept together.
Saying these things, her husband fixed his sunken eyes at the point very close.
His countenance had fairly changed since yesterday. There were dark shades under his eyes, his face had become pale.
…In the evening hardly the children got to the garden when they began to cry over the rabbit’s death. They kept pestering their father for a long time to find out the place where the rabbit had been buried. Then they went to the same place, and made a small grave from tiny stones, shingle and vine leaves.
…The supper passed in a melancholy mood. The children, with their pale faces, chilled off the meal reluctantly fumbling with their long forks in vermicelli.
While her husband was swallowing the meal unchewed quickly in big pieces, his swarthy face was becoming darker and darker, and the knot of his eyebrows turning bluish. Being very thoughtful, her husband’s eyes were fixed on something very close. As if the rabbit was dying again in front of his eyes, right under his nose.
- Didn’t I tell you that I was doubtful of those strawberries?
- Which strawberries?.. - Her husband startled.
- Those you fed the rabbits with…
- I’ve also tried some of those strawberries.
- Is your body the same as that of a rabbit?..
- Poison doesn’t bare direct relation to the body whether it is small or big.
- Yes, it does.
- No, it doesn’t! - Her husband suddenly raised his voice and banged his fist on the table and everything came clanging.
- Old Isa explained to you very clearly: a doe or a buck shouldn’t be kept together… Usually one of them dies…
- Which one dies?..
Her husband didn’t answer her and nervously pushing his plate aside stood up.
- Oh, my God! You are giving me a great deal of trouble! You wouldn’t care even if I happened to die… - he said and cursing the rabbit, went at a good pace toward the depth of the garden, disappeared in the thickness of the grove and didn’t come out of it until the late hours of the night.
…The other rabbit was watching them the whole night from behind either this or that bush and now and then shaking its pink ears.
…At midnight they were woken by her younger daughter’s noise. The child had woken up, sat up on her bed and was crying rubbing her eyes.
- What’d you want?..
The girl didn’t answer. She didn’t stop crying either.
- You want water?..
She said “no” crying and shaking her head.
- Maybe you want to pee?..
Again the girl shook her head.
- Maybe you are hot?..
- No-o-o-o…
- Why are you crying then?
For a long time, the girl shook her head to all questions crying.
Her husband, his face angry, with blank look in his eyes reddened with sleeplessness shouted nervously:
- What on earth do you want then?..
Startled, the child ceased crying and said humbly:
- I’m itching all over…
…As the next day was day-off, the weather seemed gloomy. Since the death of the rabbit, it seemed as if the greenness of the garden had faded, the leaves had shriveled and turned grey. The rabbit peeping from inside the faded grass looked as miserable as an orphan.
A heap of dirty clothes piled up in the corner of the yard within the week was waiting for her with the challenge of to be washed. The dirty clothes were so crumpled and faded that when thinking of that they had been worn a couple of days ago, one could get mad.
…Her husband, with the cigarette in his mouth, was probably digging the bed of the tree nervously at the far end of the garden. Now and then he stuck the spade into the ground as a knife and looked at the sky with his face expressing sickness and tiredness.
After a while throwing the cigarette away, he sat on the sand, his shirt around his head.
- What if you cook kufta for dinner?.. - he asked.
- Go and sit in the shadow rather than wrapping that shirt around your head.
- I like it here.
- You’ll have a sun-stroke.
As his shirt was on his head, her husband’s face wasn’t seen.
- It’s great, isn’t it?..
- What is great?..
- Everything.
The sound of Isa’s radio was heard as there was silence for a while. Mugham was on.
- There are three things in the world that I dislike… - she said. - …Heat, mugham, and kufta…
From underneath his shirt, her husband said again with his face invisible.
- Now it’s great!..
She came and sat face to face with her husband. Her husband’s face wasn’t seen from here either. That’s why, raising the edge of his shirt, she said:
- …At least, find a hedgehog…
- What do you need the hedgehog for?..
- For the rabbit not to miss.
Her husband stood up and shook his clothes.
- What else shall I find?!. Don’t you need a belly-dancer?..
She couldn’t catch her husband’s last words as she was lost in thought.
- Why do we need a belly-dancer?
- To belly-dance for the rabbit.
…Bozbash¨ was as salty as poison. Putting the spoon into his mouth, her husband smiled with difficulty for courtesy.
- Salty…
The children didn’t touch bozbash, cooked a pan of scrambled eggs splashing the oil on the floor and ceiling of the kitchen, then quarreled and turned the frying pan over.
Her husband’s voice was heard from the bedroom:
- What shall we have for supper?..
…For supper as usual, they went to the café near their summer-house in the evening.
…The sumptuous table was laid for them.
She sat face to face with her husband as usual.
- Would you have caviar?..
- No.
- What about beans?..
She shrugged her shoulders.
Her husband rushed the bean plate, which he had extended towards her, impatiently to its place among the meals closely set against each other.
The elder daughter’s hand touched the goblet full of lemonade and spilt the green lemonade which dyed the snow white table-cloth into blue.
Her husband looked at the girl so sourly that the child pursed her lips and ran out on the pretext of washing her face in order not to cry.
- Why did you look at her like that? ...But she didn’t do that on purpose…
Her husband bending his head over the dish was busy with eating the salad calmly with a hungry countenance on his face as if not hearing her.
All four of them ate silently for a while…
- Why aren’t you eating? - Holding the fork in his hand, her husband suddenly looked at her empty plate with a downcast face, narrowing his eyes and swallowing a big slice stuck to his throat.
- I’m eating.
- What are you eating?..
- Fish.
- What about fish? Don’t you feel sorry for it?..
She looked at her husband’s sunken eyes, and face which got thinner and longer within a day.
- What do you want from me?.. - She asked and felt her voice tremble.
Her husband shrugged his shoulders nervously.
- Me?! Nothing… - he said. - You do want something…But for anybody’s reproach, you’d cry mourning over the rabbit for 40 days and nights.
While her husband was talking, she felt that her tears were trickling down her chin, then her chest.
While she was crying, her husband’s brown pupils became so wide and black that it nearly covered the white of his eyes.
- Maybe you would say that you’re crying for the rabbit?.. - He asked.
She shook her head saying “no”.
- Then tell me why you are crying… What if we find a hedgehog for you not to miss any more?..
No matter how she put herself together, she couldn’t restrain herself from crying.
- Why don’t you speak? Do speak. Share your sorrow! Say you can’t live, you are bored, rotting, dying… Everything makes you sick. You can’t stand to see me, the children are in your way, they impede you…
Her husband was talking quietly and fluently as a doctor. As if he had practiced saying these words for hours.
- Just leave me alone. I have no desire to talk.
- Of course, you don’t have…So who are we to have an honour to hear your words?
- I want to sleep…
It was her younger daughter who said it and looked now at her and now at her father with sly eyes.
…Till after midnight, sitting on the veranda, she looked at the dark grove and starless sky, listened to the sound of rain. She didn’t want to sleep. The sound of the rain was so sad that it reminded her of some familiar sorrowful song. She hummed the song and felt pain in her heart. She cried placing her head on her arm. No matter how long she thought over why she was crying, she couldn’t understand it.
Her husband’s guilty voice was heard from inside.
- …Come and sleep…You’ll catch cold. It’s raining.
A little later, her husband went onto the veranda, sat next to her and put his head on her shoulder. He seemed to be sorry for her again.
- Why don’t you sleep?..
- …
- Aren’t you cold?..
- No.
- What if I make coffee and drink it together?..
- No.
- Shall I switch on the light?..
- No.
- Then what on earth do you want? - Her husband shrieked and his voice echoed.
- I want a hedgehog… - she said and turned her face to the window in order not to show off her crying.

Translated at the UNESCO Chair in Translation Studies and Intercultural Communication (Azerbaijan University of Languages) by the members of the Literary Translation Circle - Chinara Ahmadova, Fatma Babayeva, Zamire Veliyeva, Afaq Aslanova
¨ An Azerbaijani dish made of chopped meat, peas, potatoes mixed with some spices.

2008-06-17T23:27:00.000-07:00

The Sparrows

Her hands shook, or she lost her concentration. Whatever the reason, she fell down again while carrying the teacups, and the cups broke. With the cups her heart broke too. There was sweetened tea in the cups.

In the hallway her mother's angry face appeared. Her mother's face was frightening when she was angry.

Her mother entered her dream with the same frightening face. With this strange face, her mother walked over her with heavy ironlike steps . . . like a storm. With the shadow of her mother night fell and everything sank into darkness. Under the spell of her mother's rage she was left alone in the darkness. Her trembling heart turned into a small drop of water. Then her mother passed over her with her big heavy feet. She beat her and smashed her and dragged her on the floor. She tried to call for help with her weak voice. . . .

She woke up with goosebumps on her body, and while trying to clean up the broken pieces of the cup, she wondered whom she had been calling for help in her dream. Then she remembered. Her grandmother. Yes, that's it. Her mother's mother. With her heavy body, her grandmother used to try to take her from her mother's skinny hands that were shivering with nervousness. Her grandmother would hold her and press her to her heart, and she would start crying in her arms.

She missed her grandmother. She wished she could curl up in her grandmother's arms again. She thought if she could get into her grandmother's arms she would never come out. She would remain there, she would do her homework there, she would sleep and wake up there. Grandmother's arms were deep and huge like an ocean. If she had wanted, she could have even floated in that vast ocean. . . .

Her mother was still looking from the end of the hallway. It was as if the more she looked, the more her teeth pressed together, and she would make a fist, and the hair would stand up on her arms.

It looked like her mother was coming to beat her again. She was coming to pull her hair and pinch her to the bone. She thought, why didn't her mother get tired of beating her? On the contrary, the more she beat her, the stronger she became and the more relieved she seemed. It was as if her mother were getting back at someone by taking it out on her and her small, skinny body. Whom was she trying to get back at? she wondered.

Ha, she thought, cleaning up the broken pieces--maybe her mother was trying to get back at her wretched body. Why? she wondered.

At times when her mother could not beat her, she would walk around the room and curse someone. It looked like her mother wanted something badly but could not get it. What did her mother want? she wondered. As she was cleaning up the broken pieces, the sharp glass cut her hands and they started bleeding.

Her mother looked at her from a distance for a while and took a deep breath. It seemed like she did not have the desire to beat her. Maybe she was tired, or maybe the blood on her hand had calmed her mother's anger.

"Did you hurt yourself?" her mother asked with her usual dry, cold voice.

Shaking, she stood up and went to the kitchen carrying the broken pieces in her skirt. As she walked she felt the arrows of her mother's hateful words. She would always throw the same arrows at her when she was in the other room as well. Sitting in her own room, her mother would bang angrily on her black typewriter, and every bang on the keys seemed like a bullet that her mother was shooting at her.

Her mother would shoot her even in her dreams. She would ride on her black typewriter like it was a roaring tank and run over her. Pressing the keys of the typewriter, she would riddle her body full of holes like a strainer. Then she would look at her body and notice the things that had pierced it were not bullets but the painful words coming out of the typewriter. She would run to hide from her with the same words all over her body.

She went to the kitchen, carrying the broken pieces in her skirt, rubbing her knees together. There she pulled the garbage-can lid up and poured the broken pieces inside, with her ear tuned to the hallway. She got rid of pieces of glass as small as dots. She poured the pieces from her skirt into her palm.

Her mother was still in the hallway, her breath roaring with anger like a huge wave coming to pull her under.

Once she had seen her mother in a dream. It started with her mother sitting with her face toward the window and her back to her. She approached her mother on tiptoe. Her mother was silent, her hands on her knees. She was gazing off somewhere in the distance . . . then she held her mother's shoulders. As if she were empty inside and made of cardboard, her mother fell to the floor and moaned. Her mother was like her headless doll. In tears, as she tried to lift her mother, her arms came off and her head fell. With all her body shivering, she held her mother's body parts and took them to her own room, and there, with her hands shaking, she hurriedly tried to put her mother's pieces together and mend her. Her mother did not mind any of this at all. . . .

The door to her mother's room slammed. It did not take long before the angry sound of the typewriter was heard again. She took a deep breath and calmed down. She thought, what is all this her mother is writing? She had once entered her mother's room in secret and had read from the pile of her writings and had not understood a word of it. Her mother was writing something about sparrows.

She thought, maybe her mother likes sparrows. Or maybe her mother is a sparrow herself, and that's why her mother does not like her. Or maybe she doesn't like her because she is not a sparrow.

Or maybe her mother did like her. Yes, sometimes it looked like she did. This was usually when she was sick, especially when she had a high fever. It was then that her mother would not bang on the typewriter and she would not groan; she would focus her eyes on one spot and stay still, and once in a while she would touch her with her cold lips to check her fever. At those times she would not feel any warmth from her mother's lips. With the same cold lips, she would also check the heat of the iron and the wetness of the laundry. She thought maybe if she died, her mother would like her more . . . then she imagined how she would die, how she would be put into a coffin, how her mother would throw herself on the coffin and cry hard.

Her mother would throw her whole body over the coffin. Then she would feel the weight, the warmth, and the smell of her mother's body. Then sleep overcame her.

She had been imagining this a lot lately. It was nice. . . . If she was not afraid of death, and if she could be sure that she would come back to life, she would die. Yes, definitely, she would die.

She thought about this and sighed. She hugged her knees and for a long time thought about death. Death was very strange. It wasn't dark. It was cold and white as a foggy spring morning. There, what could she do in that fog with her small body? Would she be sitting or lying, or would she fly like a small sparrow? How would she go from this clear room to that foggy place? She didn't know. Would any part of her body hurt, or would she grow short of breath, or would all her body parts be cut into pieces as if processed in a meat grinder? The thought scared her.

While she was deep in her thoughts, night would fall and the room would sink into darkness. She got on her tiptoes and turned on the light.

Her mother would be crying for her. She would go mad of sorrow for her. . . . She had seen her mother crying like this when her grandmother had died. She had held on to the coffin and with a sorrowful voice had screamed, "Mother. . . ."

Then she imagined her mother's death. Her mother would be lying in the coffin with the same makeup and the same coal on her eyes and the same bored look on her face. She would sit next to the coffin and caress her mother's pale cheeks. At this point she could not control herself and her tears rolled down her cheeks.

Her mother went to the kitchen silently from the hallway. There it seemed like she was making coffee for herself. With the cup in her hand, she returned to her room and started typing again.

She thought, how strange, it looked like her mother was not alone. Being in her room for hours, or passing through the hallway pensively, standing in front of her, it always looked like her mother's mind was involved with something or someone. That's why she never felt the slow passage of time or the murdering silence of the house.

She curled up in the comer of the sofa and thought, what could be occupying her mother's mind? There was silence in the other room. She wondered, what could her mother be doing there now? She thought, maybe her mother was not doing anything at all behind that closed door. She was just sitting there, looking at the wall.

Her mother would go into her room as if she were hiding from someone. She was hiding either from her or from her father, she wasn't quite sure. But once when she was arguing with her father, she had said violently, "Let go of me. Let me die!" Then she had hidden her face in the pillow and cried.

She thought maybe her mother was right. She had gone to that other room to die. But her mother wanted to die. She was one hundred percent sure of this. Then she wondered why. Maybe the cause of her mother's gradual death was what she wrote about so madly day and night. . . .

Her father also hated these wretched writings, she was sure of this. Her father had once said this himself. In the middle of the night he had gotten up from bed, gone to her mother's room, opened the door and said, "I hate your writing." She thought this was strange since her mother was not doing anything to her father, but it looked like she was hurting him. Yes, it was strange. Then she thought, maybe her mother was also shooting her father with her typewriter from behind the door of her room.

Her father had lately been looking at her mother with such painful eyes, as if he had a toothache. Then, having no other choice, her father would contract a fever. He would lie in bed and would look at her mother and say, "Don't you feel sorry for me?" Her mother would not feel sorry for him, even when he was sick, and not even if. . . At this point she got goosebumps.

Even if her father had died, her mother would not have felt sorry for him. Once, when her father had been very angry, he had said, "If I died, I would be free," and her mother, with a cold look on her face but not raising her voice, had said, "But you are not dying." It was obvious from her mother's face what she wanted. These thoughts made her shiver. The silence was deafening.

Once when there was such a silence in her mother's room, she had gone on tiptoe and had opened the door silently and had been surprised by what she had seen. Her mother was sitting on a chair and quietly looking at herself in the mirror. Her mother looked at herself for a long time and put her head on her arms and started crying silently. Ever since that day, she kept thinking about why her mother was crying but could not find an answer.

She thought maybe her mother was crying again right now. She thought she was hearing her mother's moaning. Her heart started pounding. She got up and, on tiptoes, went to the hallway and opened the door to her mother's room slightly. Her mother was standing at the window, leaning on her arms and watching something. She noticed her presence.

"What is it?"

"Nothing. I thought you were crying."

"I am not crying," her mother responded coldly. "Enough with spying on me."

The window in front of her mother was filled with sparrows. So, her mother had been watching the sparrows all this time. . . .

She went out into the hallway and closed the door. She stood in front of the mirror and looked at herself for a long time. She looked at her eyes and her mouth. She definitely did not look like sparrows.

She thought, her mother should at least kiss her once a day. She used to kiss her when she was a baby. Maybe she had been fed up with kissing her. So be it. She had gotten fed up with kissing her. At least she could sit face to face with her and talk to her. She would only sit face to face with her mother at breakfast and talk, and their conversation would go something like this:

"Your face looks like a spoon again," her mother would say. She would smile and shrug her shoulders.

"Why aren't you eating properly?"

"I am not hungry."

"Did you get any grades yesterday?"

"I got a five in literature."

Her mother's facial expression would not change

with this response.

"Well done."

Then her mother, with the same expressionless face, her thoughts with the sparrows perhaps, would go to work. Or maybe she would go to be with the sparrows.

In the evening, her mother would be the most angry. She would first change and lie down for a while with her eyes closed. Then she would eat something hastily and go to her room and perhaps write about the sparrows again.

She thought her mother had wanted to do something for a long time. What was it that her mother had wanted to do? Maybe she had wanted to increase the number of sparrows. She then thought, what would be the use of that? She hid her head in the arm of the sofa and cried silently.

It didn't take long for her to hear the typewriter again. It looked like this time her mother was shooting at someone else. It was as if her mother would forget everything once she was behind that typewriter. Her nails would look like the tip of a sharp pen, and she herself would look like a wild animal.

Yes, that's it. She would look like a lion. Her mother would look like a lion whenever she was writing. She got up and moved closer to the window. It was getting dark. In a short while her mother would say with a cold voice, "Time to sleep," and would lie down on the sofa gazing at the ceiling for a long time, waiting for sleep to come to her.

No sooner was she overtaken by sleep than her mother would come to her. Every once in a while her mother would be kind in her dreams. She would work with a sewing machine instead of a typewriter and she would be making pink and orange dresses for her. She would then put these dresses on her and seat her on her lap and comb her hair, and her hair would fall as she combed it. Her hair would fall on her knees, on the floor, and would remain in her mother's hand . . . it was strange. As her hair fell, she would never feel any pain; on the contrary, she would feel sleepy.

The door opened with a bang. From the hallway a beam of light poured inside. It was her mother coming. She first entered with her head, then she tiptoed across the room. She came and stood above her head. Her mother stood there for a while. It looked like she wanted to check to see whether she was sleeping.

Her heart started beating fast, and she didn't dare open her eyes. After a few minutes, her mother bent over and whispered in her ear, "Are you still spying on me?" Frightened, with her eyes closed, she nodded. Then her mother held her nose and mouth with her hand so that she could not breathe and jumped up. The book slid from her knees and fell on the floor. Was she asleep?

She felt cold. She put her hands under her arms. She suddenly jumped up. Excited with the thought that had come to her, she went toward her mother's door. She opened the door and looked inside.

Her mother was writing something again. She had a kind look in her eyes. She didn't notice her coming.

She felt courageous and went in, drew closer to her mother and stood face to face with her. As soon as her mother noticed her, the kindness in her eyes disappeared.

"What is it?" she asked and put her glasses on her head, looking at her with an angry face.

"I am sick"

Her mother took a deep breath and put her cold hands on her head.

"You don't have a fever," she said, with the same angry expression.

"Maybe I should take my temperature."

"It is not necessary."

"Then maybe my fever is going to rise," she said and looked her mother in the eye. Her mother's expression did not change; instead the color of her face did.

"Then when it rises, we will do something."

She bowed her head and wanted to leave, but then she thought of something and returned.

"I feel bad . . . I am nauseous, I am cold."

"Eat a lemon and put on warm clothes." Her mother uttered these last words like a robot.

She left the room and closed the door. With her small hands, she had made a fist. She went back to her room and opened the window. Knowing there were lots of sparrows in front of the window, she tried to frighten them. They flew away. Although spring had come, it still felt cold.

For a while, in her light dress, she shivered, and as the wind was blowing through her hair, she thought of getting so sick that her fever would exceed the measurements of the thermometer. Or perhaps she could throw herself down. Then her mother would come to her, running down the steps in tears. Or maybe she would not come down at all. She would just take a look down from the window, and with bored eyes she would sigh and put on her glasses and continue writing madly. On her toes, she rose to look down. She grew dizzy, and she felt like her feet were losing contact with the floor and going down with her head. She held on to the frame and got her balance back. She closed the window, her heart pounding. She returned to the sofa and curled up.

In front of the window there were lots of sparrows eating the bread crumbs her mother would put there for them every morning. They were turning their heads from side to side, jumping over one another. It looked like they were doing the Anzali dance. Sometimes it looked as if they were peering at her through the window, laughing at her.

Every morning her mother would get up and, before doing anything else, with her sleepy face, would rush to the kitchen to get some dried bread. Then she would go from one room to the other, crumbling the bread and putting the crumbs on the windowsills. Then, with the same sleepy face, she would watch the sparrows eat the bread crumbs. The mixture of the chirping of the sparrows and the banging of the typewriter made a strange music.

With goosebumps, she got up and, like a cat stalking its prey, slowly approached the window. Quietly she opened it. The sparrows were very close. They were chirping.

All of a sudden she stretched her hand out. The sparrows turned and flew away.

Her hand was not empty. She had been successful in catching one of the sparrows. She could feeling the warm body of the sparrow in her hand, its small head was out. It was gazing at her with its small black eyes. It looked like the sparrow was laughing at her.

From her body a poison oozed out and poured into the hand holding the sparrow. Her hand started squeezing the sparrow so that its lifeless head dropped to the side.

She flipped the dead sparrow in her hand and looked at it. The sparrow still had the same smile on its face . . . that's why. She turned the sparrow's head like a key and pulled it off. She took it to the kitchen and threw it in the garbage bag. Returning to her room, she felt her knees shaking. She sat on the sofa and looked at her hands. Her hands were shaking too.

After a while her father came in. He was angry again. It looked like he was drunk. He kissed her with his hairy face and then sat in front of the television, as usual. She came and sat next to her father. She put her head on her father's shoulder. Her father's shirt felt wet.

"It is very cold in this house," her father said, and then kissed her on the head. Her father's body had a bad odor.
* * *

In the morning the typewriter was silent. The television also could not be heard. It seemed as if no one was home. She got up, put on her shoes, and went into the hallway. The door to her mother's room was open. She went in.

The room looked different. The typewriter was not there. The typewriter stand was pushed to the side, like an unnecessary piece of furniture. The mirror in which her mother used to look at herself for hours was not there either. Nothing belonging to her mother was in the room. Her mother's chair was in the middle of the room, and her father now was sitting on it. He was hiding his hairy face with his hand, smoking a cigarette. He felt her presence. She then noticed her father's bloodshot eyes.

"Where did she go?"

Her father shrugged his shoulders and looked at her with a miserable expression.

"I don't know," he said. Then father and daughter embraced and sat next to each other.

It was very quiet in front of the window. There was no sound of sparrows. She knew her mother had left them, her eyes filled with tears. Her mother had gone with the sparrows.

~~~~~~~~

By AFAG MASUD

Translated from the Azeri By Shouleh Vatanabadi