A journey in the evening | Fawzia Sultanbagi | Story
Writer: Fawzia Sultanbagi
Translator: Shayan Sofisultani
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The last time I was on a train, it was a cool summer evening. Before that, the fortune-teller had told me, “Never travel during the evening!”.
I laughed and said, “If only I have the chance to travel, it doesn’t matter even if it’s after midnight, I don’t care!”.
I remember on that evening I felt so lonely, that wherever I went and whatever I laid my eyes on I felt like crying. It was as if this was my last journey, my last visit. I stood repeatedly in front of the gate and walked back up all those stairs to go back in and then come back out again, as if I had forgotten something, wishing someone would have accompanied me to see me off, and thrown some water on the floor after me.
There were times when these alleys were extremely noisy, with children screaming, greengrocers selling fruit, and women laughing, but now nothing could be heard except for coughing behind the walls.
I was waiting for a taxi on the street near our house. It was silent here too, as only a few grocery stores were open.
From time to time, taxis would drive past me, some empty and some with passengers, until finally a taxi stopped. I sat in the back and said, “take me to the train station please”. He furrowed his brows and complained in a low voice, “with this plague, I have to go to the end of the world!”.
Under my mask, my breath was stuck and I was even afraid to cough incase he would throw me out onto the road.
At the station, I boarded carriage number 7, and sat in my designated seat, with mask, gloves and a book that I always carry with me everywhere. It’s my habit whether I’m in a car, on a train or on a plane, that I daydream or read a book, but on this day I was so bored that I didn’t want to think about anything, and I even regretted reading the books I had read today to fill my time. I wanted to lay back and take a nap, but the movement and mumbling of the old couple next to me wouldn’t allow me to sleep.
They were very restless and unable to stay calm. The woman was crying and begging, and from time to time the man would mumble something into her ear and she would seem to boil like water.
I’m not someone who likes to gossip or poke my nose in where it doesn’t belong, but I wanted to know what the cause ofthis couple’s pain was.
As I inched myself closer to them, the woman looked at me as if she was in need of someone to pour her heart out to and said,”Lady, tell me please! Do you think someone who is innocent would be sentenced to death?” I said, “I don’t know”. She started again, ”Do you think an 18-year-old child would be sentenced to death?” I repeated, ”I don’t know”.
This time she asked with a sarcastic tone, ”Have you been to university? What did you study?”
I said, ”Yes, I studied law”.
With a broken heart, she dropped her hands down and gazed at the floor.
It seemed that her son had been coming home from school and had been arrested because of the rally in the December of the previous year. He and tens of others like him were taken, and no one knew of their whereabouts. After more than one and a half years, the parents had been told to go and see them for the last time, and if God is merciful they might receive the body back.
I regretted my answer. I wished I had said no! I wished I had said that nowhere in the world would 18-year-old children be sentenced to death! I wished that, even if it was a lie, it might have made her feel better.
My mind returned to the book in my hand. I was playing with the pages, but I wasn’t in the mood to read it. I wanted to skip the remaining pages and get to the end fast.
At the end, the city is in quarantine, and he is laying down on the couch in a position so that his phone wouldn’t move. With his left hand picking his nose, his fingers have the smell of cigarettes. He inhales the scent, filling his lungs with an unknown cigarette.
He can’t differentiate between the smells and types of cigarettes,because he never smokes and if smoke comes near him it makes him start coughing right away.
He had once seen a picture where a guy was holding his phone and a red packet of cigarettes with the brand name ‘Winstone’ written on it, while smiling at the camera. He often thought about buying only one Winston cigarette to try it, just so he knows what it tastes like, but he was scared – scared that he might get addicted to them, scared that his lungs might stop functioning well and that he would cough nonstop, scared that he might cough so much that his lungs tear and wither away and he would no longer be able to breathe her smokey breath.
“Why are you coughing? Did you get a cold? Stop smoking! You can’t even breathe anymore! I say… I hope it’s not this damned plague they say has taken over the world.”
She couldn’t bring herself to say their neighbours had all caught the plague and were in quarantine.
She didn’t talk about the day before yesterday when two of her colleagues died in hospital because of this virus. She couldn’t bring herself to say that they were buried without a proper ceremony or anything.
Can you hear me? I said I wanted to tell you something. I’m confessing a grand sin. These days everyone talks about the end of days, about the world getting destroyed, about a grand sin taking over the world. They say the people are paying for that sin.
She couldn’t bring herself to say, “Unfortunately, you shouldn’t close my eyes here and say Honey don’t open them until I tell you to!!”
One, two, three…
Starting the count from one to ten.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen… until twenty.
Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three… until thirty.
A voice vibrated in her ear, “waaaraa”
She opened her eyes.
Hello, can you hear me? I wanted to tell you that I’m that sin, the me whose heart is where the smoke of your cigarette is! This late at night where even stars don’t shine.
Hello, can you hear me?
She couldn’t bring herself to say, I wish for the last time you would take off my clothes and fill me with love.
The book was as heavy as a mountain in my hands, my breath was heavy, making me dizzy, the words were wearing masks in front of my eyes, coughing and dancing around the gallows, the gallows also wore a mask and the corpse of a child was hanging there.
I took the mask off my face. Except for coughing, nothing else was coming out.
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