Aunt Mastoora
By: Behzad Ghaderi
translated by: Kurdistan Hajebi
He told me:” let’s visit Aunt Mastoora . I wasn’t familiar with her, told that:” she isn’t too old, about 60 years old, but she looks more than 90″ I imagined her. A Kurdish woman who is 60 but seems as 90 means that she has experienced Anfal directly, at the time of chemical attack she was walking through streets of Halabja and hung person’s paddling in Tehran has been recorded in her mind, however, maybe she has not dreamed them yet, it is just my imagination, it is like a runaway horse .I told:” why shall we visit her?”
-Aunt Mastoora is among those persons who I love to visit, she has good things to say.
-I didn’t know you like listening to fables and legends!
– She doesn’t tell neither fable nor legends, but she retell history.
-I didn’t know you like history as well.
– She learned me to like it.
– She isn’t old enough, what does she have to tell?
– Let’s go there, then you know it, my describing is not useful.
He always wanted to surprise me. He never told me about Aunt Mastoora. He didn’t use to exaggerate. My sense of curiosity was made me crazy again. what does such studious find in this old women that he loves to visit her? How does she look alike the old woman in “Dostoevski”‘s novel that ” Raskolnikov” hit her by an axe!
why he is stepping with me like “Raskolnikov” and streets and Russian dead’s houses are like then?
We knocked the door. An eight-year-old boy opened it, the boy looked at him and told Aunt Mastoora is in her room lonely. we went to the yard. A big yard and a small room that his steps took us toward it. The child ran to the house across the room.
We went inside the room, it was 2×3 meter room, she was leaning there, she didn’t aware of our greeting. he told me:” she is asleep, wait till she wakes up, look how does she asleep in this dark room! I wander what is she dreaming! they told sleep of evening is deep. I am sure she has slept tight and doesn’t hear us. A dream far away of tomorrow and deads of right now! A dream that doesn’t know what pomegranate is and the espoused her; a husband who doesn’t know what clove is and is bestsellers. A dream that is dumb and digressed.
I told to went away and not to wake her up. He told:” no, look at her, her sleeping is special too. She even has opened her hug and expecting in sleeping. A expected hug for boys who are not born of “orgasm” . I don’t want to leave her, I’m like her, tired, more tired than her, more tired than an old woman who I’m more tired than an old woman who hasn’t been able to walk for years, an old woman who all mountains has dead on her back, with a happy heart and a fisted hand and a dictator scarf. Look at her, she is waiting, waiting for death, she is always hearing sound of death, a death that can’t stop blood stream in her vessels.
I went through his words. was a guest in a room where the old woman was sleeping there, a tired room. She closed her eyes but I could imagine her looking, a sad and tired looking, slept and dried up on the far corner of the room, I could see her dreams, the dream of girls and boys’ dancing with a red mesh ( grooms wear mesh), sound of drum and a mule that leaves its footprint on snow… I told:” let’s come back, this imaginations are too difficult for me.” he told: “no, let’s come closer.”
I looked close at her, as if I haven’t seen an old women yet! she was unique! she was sleeping on her left side with a beadroll in her left hand, her mouth was open. we sat near her. He told:” look at her, I know who Aunt Mastoora is? she is and old woman full of shaggy , hunters, and singer old women and men.
full of ogre, superstition, charm, knots of braces. confused of smell of dung and dirty body. full of pain and unfinished sex. Aunt Mastoora is a withered woman, her cockles could reach the ground; her dreams fell into corridors filled with walking of beadrolls which were like lash. Azrael is looking for her. Aunt Mastoora is a withered woman, I know she loves the sound of beadrolls in hand of her sons.
we made noise but she didn’t wake up. Her dreams were deeper than you thought. He told: “Look at the wrinkles and how they are stacked on top of each other, in each of them a story and a novel has been buried.” I told him to narrate one of them, he looked at me and his face got pale such as “Raskolnikov”!
He told:” it was war time. Aunt Mastoora was living in the villages, A pretty seventeen-year-old girl. She always waited for and said: if they don’t come this evening, they will come tomorrow certainly.” She was waiting for Peshmargas. Abdulla was Peshmarga too. but… but “Rostam” didn’t get off his back. Mastoora loved to be Peshmarga because Abdulla was Peshmarga, and Rostam was a stray quisling and loved Mastoora and Every day invaded the village with a large number of soldiers and quisling, but then they hid in fear of the Peshmargas every evening. Abdulla didn’t take Mastoora with himself, just told her to bake bread for them. she suffered on furnace in fear of Rostam. she got tired and told Abdulla that she don’t bake bread anymore, she wants to take gun and be Peshmarga like them. Abdulla told her to kill Rostam then go there. he gave her a mine and waited for her in the garden. Rostam came on this day, then Mastoora hid the mine under Rostam’s car and ran away. she and Abdulla were climbing the mountain while the mine burst. Rostam died immidiatly and a few soldiers cut their hands and legs… it has a long story. Abdulla got martyr very soon, Mastoora came back but she had to marry another quisling.”
I interrupted him and told him to go, her sleep is more deeper than she wakes up soon. we went out. we were in the alley. I told when visit her again? he was about answering that the boy ran to us and told: “sir, sir…aunt ..aunt” we came back quickly, we could hear the women, men and children’s crying:” hey my hardworking mom…” I was perplexed.
