Standing in front of the gate by the stream, he could no longer bear his own weight, and his legs gave way beneath him. His back struck the wall and slowly he slid down onto both knees. He no longer felt hungry. There was a strange tension inside him. He felt as though his mother, with her large hands, was washing the turmoil in his heart.
Hail fell onto his head, onto his body, like stones, and he stared at the men of the tribe around him. Their lips were moving, but no sound came out. The hail kept falling, and it seemed to him that the house had been covered with frost for a thousand years. The cold crept from the tips of his fingers and toes into his body, reached his brain, and froze the alleys of his mind: it froze his mother’s laughter, froze the pot of lamb shorba, froze the bowl of raisins and chickpeas held aloft in the hallway.
The hail turned into rain. It poured down relentlessly, as if the sky had been pierced. Water spilled from the gutters, splattering mud across the alley and onto him. A group of tribesmen came from the yard into the hallway and went out through the two wooden doors of the gate. In the middle of the crowd, a black blanket caught his attention, and he remembered his mother saying, half-jokingly, with a smile, “You can’t find good blankets here; they’re too heavy. Buy a good double blanket from Iran.” She had laughed and added, “When you come back, I’ll dye my hands with henna till they’re bright red and go out to find you a bride. Buy blankets for yourself and your fiancée; the village winters are cold.”
And he had bought the blanket. Two of them. One for his mother, one for himself and the fiancée he did not have. And now the black-and-white floral blanket lay on a coffin carried on four small, frail shoulders. Four men whose faces he could not see. He could see no one’s face. Lips moved, and still he heard no sound.
The cold reached his last remaining brain cells. His mother froze. It seemed to him he was frozen in the ice of the South Pole, the same ice that for a thousand years had covered the house. He could not move his hands or feet; he could not feel himself. The ground beneath him was muddy, his trousers were muddy, and his shoes were soaked with dark water. And he felt none of it.
His neck turned, as if of its own accord, and he looked at the backs of the people carrying a coffin on their frail shoulders, and saw the black-and-white floral blanket, the one his mother was meant to throw over herself during the village’s cold winters. Now it was soaked through by the rain that was soaking his mother.
His eyes were fixed on the trail of footprints. The alley had emptied, and a cold wind blew from behind the men who had left, men whose memory now clung to the walls and doors of the alley. Ahmad pressed his hands against a wall, asking it for support. The wall took him under its arms and led him to the cemetery. It did not let him go. He was passed along to the graveyard, where the earth had opened its mouth and the smell of fresh soil, colder than rain, hit his face.
He stopped. It felt as if his legs no longer belonged to him. A faceless crowd stood in a circle around a pit. The black pit was ready to eat. They took the coffin from their shoulders. The same blanket, the same black-and-white flowers, now closer to the soil than ever. Slowly, they lowered the coffin and placed it on the wet earth. Two men stepped forward and held the blanket, so that no stranger’s eyes would fall upon the woman wrapped in the shroud. Two other men lifted the shrouded body and handed it to the men inside the grave, a grave half-filled with water.
They placed the body inside the hollow and stacked bricks beside it. They climbed out of the grave and threw the soil on top. The soil rose. The soil became a mound. Two large stones were placed at either end of the grave, and a strip of white cloth was laid on the stone at the head, stretched, and tied to the stone at the foot. Ahmad saw only the white. He did not understand what they were doing; he only knew that his mother was gone, his mother was inside a heap of earth, a place where winter is no different from summer, and her laughter would never freeze again.
Ahmad felt like a living corpse. Someone said, “In the name of God.” Someone said, “Amen.” The words fell like pebbles and disappeared. Ahmad heard nothing. His ears were frozen. The faceless men slowly vanished, and he was left with the mud covering his face and clothes, thinking that there was no one left to dye his hands with henna, no one left to cook for him. The village ended for him right there. He did not feel cold. He had become the cold.
And again it seemed to him that his mother had set the pot on the stove and was cooking lamb shorba for him. And again it seemed to him that his mother was washing the turmoil in his heart. He retched. He brought up the lamb shorba. He brought up the thousand-year-old ice inside him. Darkness swept over the graveyard. He could no longer look. He saw nothing. His eyes closed and dissolved into the muddy water beside the gravestone. He collapsed again. He turned into mud and became one with his mother’s grave.
