Zendegi

Martin had no eulogy prepared; everything had happened too quickly. ‘Mahnoosh noor-e-ruzhayam bud,’ he began. Mahnoosh was the light of my days. It was the truth – and he knew this was the way he was expected to express it – but even as he spoke he recoiled from the idea that he owed the people around him a single word on the subject. To speak about these things with anyone but her was not an affirmation of his love, it was a kind of debasement.

Surely he owed her more than silence, though? Whatever belonged to the two of them alone, he could still recount her virtues in the company of friends. ‘I never knew anyone so fearless,’ he said. ‘So honest, so kind.’ He stared into the grave, unable to continue; he felt as if someone were holding a gun to his head, forcing him to recite these flaccid incantations even though he knew they were just driving her away from him. Yalda stepped in, praising Mahnoosh’s generosity and sense of humour.

Back at Omar’s house there was a photograph of Mahnoosh propped up on a table, surrounded by flowers; it had been taken not long after Javeed was born – after six years of IVF – and Martin could see both the defiant light of triumph in her eyes, and a sense of humility and tenderness. It was a beautiful picture, but he wished he’d thought to dig up one of the dishevelled twenty-year-old Goth to put beside it.

Rana and her mother-in-law, Nahid, had been cooking since dawn. Martin was enthroned on a couch in the living room, with Javeed beside him. The guests ate, talked among themselves, and came to him to offer their condolences. Martin was growing dazed and weary, and the effort needed to maintain even a minimal level of sociability made his head ache. Part of him longed to curl up on a bed in his own silent house with Javeed in his arms and let the blackness engulf them. But he didn’t trust himself to fall that far and then emerge into the light again. At least all the irritating rituals and false notes served a purpose: like a concussion victim being slapped and prodded, he knew he should be grateful for anything that kept him from drifting away.

When Behrouz arrived, Martin was finally jolted out of his stupor; he hadn’t seen his friend face-to-face for three years, and he couldn’t just exchange a few desultory words with him then let his eyes glaze over.

Behrouz embraced him. ‘I’m so sorry, Martin.’ He bent down to kiss Javeed, who flinched away. ‘You don’t remember me?’

Javeed shook his head.

‘I had some adventures with your father when we were young. Once we saw a dragon fall from the sky; it almost landed right on top of us.’

Javeed buried his face against Martin’s side.

‘How’s work?’ Martin asked. Behrouz was now a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, which these days seemed to mean as much video journalism as prose.

‘Not bad.’ Behrouz smiled slightly. ‘Business people might be the last paying market left for real news. If they’re convinced that they’re getting fearlessly objective information, they’ll keep shelling out for it – while everyone else gives up caring and buries their head inside their favourite consensual reality.’

Martin laughed softly, self-conscious but grateful for a few words of real conversation, a lifeline out of the pit. ‘You’re not a fan of News Five Point Oh, then?’

‘Don’t get me started. HigherTribe is worse, but they’re all pathological. What isn’t filtered and spun is just invented out of whole cloth.’

‘Yeah.’ The replacement of journalism by rumour aggregators and group-think salons was a serious matter, but Martin’s enthusiasm for talking shop was already beginning to falter. ‘How’s Shadi?’

‘She’s in Canada; she’s doing a Ph.D.’

‘Jesus. Everyone’s kids got old so fast.’

Behrouz smiled down at Javeed. ‘We had a head start on you. But you’ve still got the best part to look forward to.’

Martin struggled to keep his composure. Mahnoosh should have seen Javeed growing into adulthood, studying, flourishing, making his own life. He didn’t know where to direct his anger at the injustice of it. He’d heard people muttering about a court case; the truck driver was in hospital but was expected to be discharged soon. The man probably deserved to be imprisoned, but Martin wanted nothing to do with the process.

‘How long are you staying?’ he asked Behrouz.

‘I have to fly out again tonight. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’ Martin suddenly recalled that he’d be in hospital anyway; he was in no position to play host. He shook Behrouz’s hand. ‘I’m glad you came.’

Roused from his paralysis, Martin moved among the guests; Javeed clung to him, saying little. Mahnoosh’s second cousin, Nasim, and her mother, Saba, had been at the cemetery, but Martin had barely registered their presence there. Saba, he now discovered, was a retired economist; Nasim a computer scientist.

‘I’m afraid we never managed to get in contact with Mahnoosh after we came back from the US,’ Saba lamented. ‘She was a teenager when we left Iran. But we had as much friction with the family as she did.’