Zendegi

Her face was purple and swollen, barely recognisable; he gazed at it long enough to be sure that it was her, but he felt no urge to touch her, to speak to her, to hold her. This body was a kind of grisly portrait of the woman, captured at the scene of the crash; it proved that she’d been there as surely as a photograph, but that was all.

In the ward, a doctor came to see him. He’d had an operation to stem internal bleeding, and it appeared to have been successful, but rather than officially discharging him they were making special provisions for him to attend the funeral. ‘You need to bury your wife, Mr Seymour, then come back to us after two days.’

Omar came to pick him up. In the silent drive to his house, Martin struggled to prepare his words.

Javeed was waiting just inside the door. He flung his arms around Martin’s leg and pressed his face against his trousers.

Martin lowered himself gingerly to the floor and embraced his son. He held him for a few seconds, then forced himself to let go; if he clung on too long he knew he would not be able to hide the fact that he was the one seeking comfort.

They were alone; Omar had gone on into the house, giving them privacy. ‘Where were you?’ Javeed demanded.

‘I was in the hospital,’ Martin said. ‘I got hurt, in the car.’

‘But where did Mama go?’

‘Mama was in the car with me.’

‘Is she in the hospital?’

Martin didn’t answer that. ‘You know, sometimes if you get hurt, it can be like you’ve gone to sleep.’

Javeed nodded. ‘Total Knockout.’

‘That’s what happened to me. The truck hit the car, it was like a big punch. I was knocked out for a day.’

Javeed said nothing; in his games, no one was ever out cold for more than thirty seconds. ‘Mama got knocked out too,’ Martin persisted. ‘But she didn’t wake up.’

He took Javeed’s hand. Javeed stared down at the floor and tugged on Martin’s arm, swinging it back and forth, testing something rather than trying to break free.

‘Farshid said Mama went to Paradise.’

Martin hadn’t been prepared for this, but he could hardly blame Farshid. Javeed treated him like a sibling, with no adult mystique, no power to bluff and delay. Javeed would have known that he knew something, and would have worn him down until he disclosed it.

Martin said, ‘No, Mama went to sleep and she didn’t wake up. She got knocked out, too hard to wake up.’

‘Did you try to wake her?’

‘The doctors all tried. But she couldn’t do it.’

‘If she went somewhere,’ Javeed reasoned, ‘she would have told me first.’

‘Yeah, of course. She’d never just go away.’ Martin put a hand on Javeed’s cheek and raised his face so they were looking directly at each other.

‘But-’ Javeed hesitated.

‘What?’

‘Is Mama dead?’

Martin said, ‘Yes.’

Javeed’s eyes narrowed. ‘She’ll never get better?’

‘No. She was hurt too much.’

‘But-’ Javeed’s struggle persisted a moment longer, then he gave up trying to untangle the impossible knot. He sagged to the floor and started wailing, ‘I want Mama!’

Martin bent over and cradled him in his arms. ‘I know,’ he whispered. ‘I do too.’

Omar helped organise the burial. Martin was still barely functioning, and the only other funeral he’d arranged had been his mother’s, almost twenty years before, in a country where he’d understood the culture inside out.

In her will, Mahnoosh had mentioned Khavaran Cemetery, where religious minorities and apostates were interred. Omar suggested that a proper Muslim burial might yet be attainable, to spare her family some distress, but a few hours later he’d changed his mind. ‘I spoke to her father,’ he told Martin. ‘They won’t come, wherever it is.’

Martin suspected that Mahnoosh would have shrugged this off, entirely unsurprised, but he still felt his fists tightening with anger. ‘What did he say to you?’

Omar shook his head. ‘Forget about it.’

The funeral took place the next morning. Javeed had been clinging to him ever since he’d returned from the hospital, and Martin had been dreading even this brief separation. ‘I’m going to go and get some friends of Mama to come here to say good-bye to her,’ he explained. ‘I’ll be a couple of hours. Is that okay?’

‘Okay,’ Javeed agreed.

There were less than a dozen people at the cemetery. Martin had emailed Behrouz in Damascus, but his flight would not arrive until the afternoon. Along with Omar’s family there were some old friends of Mahnoosh’s, Farah and Yalda, their ex-husbands, and two relatives Martin had never met before, a mother and daughter that Omar had managed to track down.

When the gravediggers had lowered the coffin into the ground, Omar stood with upturned palms and recited a prayer in Arabic. Mahnoosh would have rolled her eyes – and whispered to Martin that for all of Omar’s sweet hopes, the mullahs had consigned her soul irrevocably to hell – but she wouldn’t have silenced him.