The Drum Tower Read online

  THE DRUM TOWER

  ‘Sparse and courageous.’

  —Margaret Atwood,

  in Walrus Magazine (of The Bathhouse)

  ‘She is Iran’s Solzhenitsyn. Ms. Moshiri’s first novel, At the Wall of the Almighty, remains an unrecognized masterpiece. One might have hoped its grudgingly won reputation, and the trail of her fiction, would have led the critics to her. The Drum Tower, her latest work, may well light the way. What characters, what language. The novel just flows, evolving from something ancient and primordial into a modern transcendent voice. Honestly, if I awoke some morning to find she had won the Nobel, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’

  —Juris Jurjevics, author of Red Flags and The Trudeau Vector,

  and former publisher of Soho Press

  ‘A terrifying, brave, wise novel, The Drum Tower is about far more than the revolution in Iran. It is about a girl who is trapped in a labyrinth of family history and mythology who has the courage to find her way out. Farnoosh Moshiri celebrates a deeper revolution in prose that I would follow anywhere.’

  —Simone Zelitch, author of Louisa and Moses in Sinai

  ‘Farnoosh Moshiri’s first novel, At the Wall of the Almighty, received universal critical praise: “a stirring testament of love and courage and a condemnation of the abuses of power.”—Booklist; “remarkably intricate and fascinating … A superb debut.”—Kirkus Reviews; “Beautiful and terrifying … masterful.”’

  —Aljadid: A Review and Record of Arab Culture and Arts

  ‘Talkhoon combats not only the oppression of theocratic government but also the strictures of gender.’

  —Publishers Weekly

  ‘Moshiri’s prose is lyrical and smoothly fluid, and Talkhoon is a memorable heroine. The Drum Tower offers an intimate perspective on a major historical event, as well as finely developed characters, story, pacing, setting, and themes.

  —J.S. Stinson, ForeWord Reviews, Fall 2014

  About The Bathhouse

  ‘Written with the simple authority of an oral deposition…this is both a resolutely nonpartisan antirevolutionary brief and a gripping, harrowing story of personal courage and endurance. Models of women’s heroism don’t come any more credible than this grim book’s protagonist.’

  —Booklist

  ‘Moshiri’s impressive novel works at two levels, telling a compelling story while bearing witness to a brutal period in Iranian history.’

  —Publishers Weekly

  Iranian-born writer Farnoosh Moshiri was a published playwright, translator, and fiction writer when she fled her country in 1983 after a massive arrest of secular intel­lectuals, feminists, and political activists, most of whom were executed by the Islamic regime in 1988. Ms. Moshiri lived in refugee camps in Afghanistan and India for four years before emigrating to the United States in 1987. Her novels and collections include At the Wall of Almighty (Interlink 1999, to be reissued by Black Heron Press in 2015), The Bathhouse (Black Heron Press 2001, Beacon Press, 2002); The Crazy Dervish and the Pomegranate Tree (Black Heron Press 2004), and Against Gravity (Penguin, 2006). Among other awards and fellowships, she is the recipient of Cambor/Inprint Fellowship, two Barbara Deming Awards; two Black Heron Awards for Social Fiction, and a Valiente Award from Voices Breaking Boundaries for artists who have taken risks to speak out and act as advocates. She has taught literature, playwriting, and creative writing in Universities in Tehran, Kabul, Houston, and Syracuse. Currently she teaches creative writing at the University of Houston-Downtown.

  Books by Farnoosh Moshiri

  The Drum Tower

  Against Gravity

  The Crazy Dervish and the Pomegranate Tree

  The Bathhouse

  At the Wall of the Almighty

  THE DRUM TOWER

  Farnoosh Moshiri

  This edition published by

  Sandstone Press Ltd

  Dochcarty Road

  Dingwall

  Ross-shire

  IV15 9UG

  Scotland

  United Kingdom

  www.sandstonepress.com

  First published in the USA in 2014 by

  Black Heron Press, Mill Creek, Washington.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  © Farnoosh Moshiri 2014

  The moral right of Farnoosh Moshiri to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.

  ISBN: 978-1-910124-02-4

  ISBN e: 978-1-910124-03-1

  The Drum Tower is a work of fiction. Apart from public figures, all characters that appear in this book are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, apart from public figures, is entirely coincidental. An earlier version of The Drum Tower won a 1999 Barbara Deming Award for a writer ‘whose work speaks of peace and social justice’. A short excerpt from that version was published in the Winter/Spring 2007 issue of Gulf Coast.

  The publisher acknowledges subsidy from Creative Scotland

  towards publication of this volume.

  Cover design by Antigone Konstantinidou, London

  Ebook by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore

  To the loving memory of

  Fereydoon Moshiri

  (1926-2000)

  people’s poet of Iran.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Book I The Bird of Knowledge

  Book II Circular Flights

  Book III The Last Circle

  …………………………………..

  The battle of Good and Evil

  Which had broken out

  From the Primordial Dawn

  Is now sunk in a deep long night.

  The Good has fled to another land.

  This is its warm blood shrouding the earth

  Wherever we set foot.

  …………………………………..

  Fereydoon Moshiri

  An excerpt of “From Silence”

  translated by Ismail Salami

  Acknowledgments

  In 1999, a year before his death from a long and untimely illness and on his last reading tour in the U.S., I spoke with my uncle, Fereydoon Moshiri about my then immature plan to write a novel with the central imagery of the Simorgh, the legendary bird of the Persian mythology—the Bird of Knowledge. I remember that he was delighted and encouraged me to begin the novel. After he returned to Iran, he sent me a kind letter with useful references. He did not live longer to see the finished work, but his encouragement kept me going throughout the years of drafting the novel. This book is for him.

  My special thanks go to the writer and publisher Jerry Gold who has always supported me and to my agent Lorella Belli and Sandstone Press who made the U.K publication of this novel possible.

  I’m also thankful of my friend and colleague, Dr. Jane Creighton, who read a very early draft of this novel, years ago, and encouraged me to go on.

  And finally, for their unconditional love, I thank my husband, David, and my son, Anoosh, who are the foundations of my life.

  Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?

  Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

  Because the barbarians are coming today.

  What’s the point of senators making laws now?

  Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

  From “Waiting for the Barbarians”

  by C. P. Cavafy

  Translated from the Greek

  by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

  Book I

  The Bird of Knowledge

 
; I sense the oncoming winds through which I must survive.

  —Rilke

  The House of Drums

  When I was crazy and the winds of the world blew in my head, I lived in the basement of our old house, Drum Tower. My grandmother’s ancient parrot, Boor-boor, sat in a gilded cage behind the window, guarding my room, and Uncle Assad’s watchdog, Jangi, paced in the courtyard, panting. In those days, the chek, chek, chek of the parrot’s hard beak cracking sunflower hulls was the only sound I heard day and night, unless a stranger passed behind the tall walls or someone descended the stone steps approaching my room; then Boor-boor shouted, “Boorrrr!” to alarm my grandmother.

  From wherever she was—with her father in the depth of a dark, camphor-scented dream, or in the dim rooms of the house, roaming with her stiff legs, searching for her lost playroom—my grandmother, whose real name was Khanum-Gol, Flower Lady, but almost everyone called her Khanum-Jaan, Dear Lady, rushed to the courtyard to see who was going to my room. If the visitor was my sister Taara, she didn’t let her go—she pinched her arm, pulled her ear, or prodded her into the house. If it was our old maid, Daaye, she checked the tray to make sure the soft-hearted woman wasn’t sneaking sweets to me. “Sugar stimulates her nerves!” she said. But if Uncle Assad was heading toward my room, Khanum let him go.

  “Go Assad, go! But don’t stay too long!” she shouted after him. “Crazy enjoys the company of the crazy,” she said to herself. “Go, but don’t bother the poor thing!” she yelled.

  Walled in, isolated from the world in my subterranean confinement, guarded by a noisy parrot and a nasty dog, in those long-ago days I was “the poor thing.”

  When I heard the lek, lek, lek of Uncle Assad’s plastic slippers scraping the courtyard’s brick floor in his lame way of walking, I rushed to my closet and hid there among my smelly clothes. Uncle came in, calling me, “Talkhoon! Talkhoon! Where are you?” knowing very well where I was. Assad, who knew I wouldn’t come out of the closet, made himself comfortable in the middle of my messy room and fumbled with my things.

  In those days, the chaos in my room was the image of the chaos in my head. Clothes, socks, shoes, books, and papers, chewed-up pencils (I’d eaten them in fits of anger and anxiety), dirty plates and cups, filthy stuffed animals (presents left after each visit of my absent father), and many other strange objects for which I could not find a name or a function, were piled on and around the bed or on the old dirty desk. A thick layer of dust sat on everything and spider webs connected one old object to another. Daaye was not allowed to clean my room.

  “Let her clean her room! If you do it for her, she’ll never recover,” Grandmother warned the old woman.

  From the little hole I’d made in the closet door to breathe and watch, I saw Uncle Assad picking up my underwear, smelling it, looking around, then squeezing it into his pocket. I let him touch my stuff, steal a pair of panties, a hairpin, a broken comb, and leave me alone. Once or twice, when I wasn’t quick enough to hide in the closet, Uncle Assad walked toward me, like a zombie, and the more I stepped back, the more he moved forward, until he pressed me against the wall and rubbed his big belly against my chest. I screamed and punched him on the back. Boor-boor shouted, “Boorrr!” Jangi barked, and Khanum-Jaan rushed down, calling, “Assad! What happened?”

  “Nothing, Khanum. She’s acting up again. I’m coming.”

  This was my life in those crazy days: the mad parrot’s commotion was my peaceful time and the alarming sound of Assad’s slippers was my disturbance. If I caught a glimpse of my sister’s legs swinging out from the porch above my room while she sat memorizing a long poem for her literature class, my day was made. I gazed at her black polished shoes, white socks, and shapely calves. My heart pounded crazily, and I felt content. But when Khanum-Jaan called Taara inside, I felt lonelier than before.

  So I sat behind the narrow, dusty window, looking up at the brick floor of the courtyard where the dusk lingered before creeping into my room. In a short while, from her rooftop room, Taara’s tunes rose in the air—she played her setar way into the night. I held my breath and listened, knowing she wasn’t looking at her notes, but making her own music. In these sad, tranquil moments, the winds didn’t blow in my head but turned into a caressing breeze. Taara’s melodies and the soothing silence between them rippled in my dark head like the repeating wavelets of a calm sea.

  My room was never locked and I was free to go upstairs, but Khanum-Jaan had made sure that this would never happen. She knew that I was afraid of at least five things—first, her old parrot and her screeching cries which scratched my brain cells, announcing each coming and going; second, Jangi, Assad’s long-fanged dog who threatened me with his evil way of panting, circling around me, barking and slobbering thick saliva; third, Uncle Assad himself—his zombie walk, his rude way of breaking into my room and pushing me against the wall. If I survived the parrot, the dog, and the uncle, the ghost of Khanum-Jaan’s mother, who had been wandering around in her rusty wheelchair for half a century, scared me to death. If I could ignore the ghost and find my way upstairs to the house, my fifth fear awaited me, and that was the house itself. Yes, I was afraid of the dark, decaying Drum Tower. So there was no need for Grandmother to use locks and bolts, chains and cuffs to keep me inside; she had no doubt that the “poor girl” would stay where she belonged.

  And I stayed in my basement room most of the time. Only once a month when I knew that Uncle Assad, Daaye, and Grandmother had gone to the central bazaar for their one-day shopping trip, or once every few months when all of them were invited to a party at the aunties’ house, did I dare leave my room. On these occasions, I bribed the unfriendly watch dog with my lunch and let the parrot scream her lungs out and I left my room. First, I strolled in the garden before going upstairs to visit my grandfather.

  Ghosts don’t exist, ghosts don’t exist, I whispered to myself while walking under the weeping willows around the pool. But still I heard the squeaking noise of that old rusty wheelchair approaching me from the depth of the garden. So before I could see the dark-haired, white-gowned woman, my great grandmother Negaar on her wheels, I ran to the stone steps and climbed them up to the building.

  In front of a window that framed a blazing, birdless sky, in his threadbare green recliner, half-sitting, half-lying down, Baba-Ji was left to himself. Poor Grandfather was in a deep sleep, but I spent most of my time in his room, combing his silky hair, or stroking his old hands stiffened with dried veins. I pushed his recliner forward and adjusted the pillows under his head, just in case he’d open his eyes. I wanted him to see the street and the vendors sitting on the sidewalk selling fresh walnuts. Then I sat at the foot of his chair, asking him about the bird’s feather.

  I held my breath and listened to hear what he had to say, but there was no response. I pressed my ear to his chest and heard a vague sound, a dying drum far away in the depth of a remote place. I leafed through his old books in his tall bookshelves covering all four walls of the room, but I couldn’t find the sapphire feather of the bird.

  “Where is the feather, Baba?” I asked him, and repeated my question many times. But my grandfather’s lips were sealed.

  When Baba-Ji could still talk, when he was writing the last chapter of his book on a lap-desk with a fountain pen filled with green ink, when I still had a room next to my sister’s on this same floor—in those old days, the bird’s days, when I wasn’t treated like a bastard child, when Assad wouldn’t fumble with my things—every night Taara and I sat with Baba before bedtime and he told our fortune.

  Baba-Ji sat cross-legged on his cushion with the thick book, Classical Poems, in his hands. Slowly, he brought it close to his mouth and whispered a prayer: “O’ you holder of the secrets of the world, O’ you knower of the riddles of the wise, cast a glance upon us, show us the open horizon, pour a light on our future, we plead you—” Then he kissed the book gently, as if kissing a woman’s cheek, and blew softly onto and around it, like blowing out many candles wit
h one breath. At last, after this long introduction, he opened the book.

  All the while, Taara and I, who had to keep our eyes shut, cheated and watched Grandfather from the crack between our eyelids. We had to make a wish now. When Baba said, “Open your eyes, your fortune is ready!” we opened our eyes and sat still to hear our poems. With his deep but shaky voice, which trembled more when a phrase was beautiful, Grandfather recited the poem on the right page and that was the answer to our wish. Taara’s wish was always about Father. Was he coming soon? What would he bring for her? How long would he stay? But most of the time her poem was the story of Leili and Majnoon, the crazy lovers. Baba-Ji glanced at the page, sighed, and shook his head, “Taara, my child! You’re going to be a lovesick girl!”

  I don’t remember ever wishing for anything but the Simorgh, the Bird of Knowledge. Because I thought that the bird had hidden my mother in its scented nest and I wished to hear something about it. When Baba opened the Simorgh poem for me, and recited the epic, when he described the bird’s majestic wings and its powerful beak, I stared at the page, mesmerized, and studied those claws that were bigger than human fists. Now Baba told us how the Simorgh saved Prince Zaal, the white-haired child, who was abandoned on the mountaintop by his father, the king. When he reached the passage where the Bird of Knowledge picked up a live leopard with its powerful talons and took it to her nest to feed the white-haired child, I closed my eyes and imagined that the bird fed my mother in the same way, with the meat of wild animals, and protected her inside its fragrant nest.