VidaKashizadeh

Shake memory shake

and let the tears come to surf-

ace

tears unshed

for what I heard and saw

when I was ten

I said

hey hey hey

hey hey

drop drop

drop drop

a monkey’s jive

Mashed Potatoe

to the left baby

to the right now

I said hey hey hey

hey hey

from London to Washington

Washington to Teheran

From London to Basra

Basra to Abadan

surf over the Mississippi river

down to New Orlean

hey hey hey

hey hey

to the left baby

to the right now

my tears are jerking

surf on them now

drop tears to the left

then to the right

shake it baby

it’s alright

two streams

of tears

for Abadan

And though

no Aladdin

is in sight

my head is splitting

shake memory shake

and split my head-

ache

one half head to the left

one half head to the right

all the rocks will roll

And how many tears must one shed

before you call her

the black boulders’ head

the answer my foe

is Bo Diddley Bo

the answer is Bo

Diddley

Bo

Ye Bo Diddley

yeah

Bo Diddley

No Bo Diddley

No

Bo Diddley

No milk today

no fish tomorrow

yes hunt them all

the fin whales of Iceland

Yes go ahead and eat them babe

you the hungry

eat them whole

now that they are

your competitors

no need for an excuse

anymore

go ahead and eat them babes

eat them whole

before you start eating each other

you cannibals

that’s your weal

and woe

It is early autumn in Abadan. It will be fall.

The sunflowers around the black boulders have grown so tall.

They are calling me to that corner further away from the house - and on the left side of the garden - which has piled-up shiny black boulders as a part of its feature, but not really matching to the rest of the garden.

I am slightly weary when approaching. I haven’t explored the boulders’ hill more than couple of times and even then only when other children were around.

I walk towards the sunflowers. They are facing the sun.

They look like the sun.

They are so tall. I am in woods with trees’ tops made of many suns.

The yellow branches of the trees are made of yellowish dry leaves.

I see the black boulders; they are shining behind the woods.

The sunflowers have touched my heart. The house is almost empty – hardly any furniture left. We will be leaving Abadan in a few days.

My father is very ill staying in Teheran. We are going to see him soon.

My best friend in school had been behaving funny in the last few days, but I’m not angry with her at all. In a way it calms me down that she acts out her anxiety. She acts it out also on my behalf - my own unclear feelings leaving the school, leaving Abadan.

At the break she avoids playing with me and locks her little finger with my little finger shaking our elbows up and down saying gha’hr gha’hr taa rooz-e ghiyaamat ( gha’hr = wrath, fury, rage/ taa – until / rooz= day/ -e = of / ghiyamat= resurrection ) a rhythmic phrase and movement that was used by school children (girls only?) when they declared withdrawal from a friend, not infrequently resulting in teasing and/or even bullying.

After the gha’hr ritual she went out and gathered other girls. They held each other tightly making a human wall walking around the building and shouting some rhymes.

I walked further away to look at Shat-al Arab behind the fence, and then walked back towards the building. The group walked in a tight row blocking my way. My friend was leading them to do it.

They were singing a rhyme. I could see that what she wanted was really to stop me from leaving the school and Abadan.

I was not angry at all.

But I was solo against –how many were there, perhaps ten? It was getting too oppressive. I asked them to let me pass. They didn’t want to.

I saw the affection in her face: sadness mixed with annoyance. She was trying to cope.

They did let go once and continued walking as a tight chain once more around the building coming towards me in order to block my way again.

It was getting too much and I was suddenly glad that it was going to be the last day in that school.

The sound of the bell came as the rescuer and gradually they had to disperse.

My friend slowed down so that her sadness became more apparent and a kind of reconciliation followed, but I don’t think we locked our index fingers for a shake in order to announce aashti (reconciliation).

Then we were talking on friendly terms again for the rest of that day. But now everything in the school seemed passé and I wanted this last day of being there to be over as soon as possible.

Even our new teacher seemed over the top saying to me and the class ‘you don’t have to ask me when you want to go to the toilet just get up and go’. One year a teacher wouldn’t let you move much at all and the next year another would make you feel small if you thought you were supposed to ask, when going out.

And I didn’t think at all that she looked like Brigitte Bardot as everyone else kept saying. She just had very long blond hair and in that colour and length the similarity started as well as ended. Her face was as round as a coin.

I have no idea of schools in Teheran. I know nothing. I will have to leave everything behind. I am not angry with anyone. I am… I am so sad.

These sunflowers are so beautiful, so beautiful.

Did my mum call me? I think she did, perhaps a few times, perhaps not at all. I walk towards the house entering through the front door.

In the past I used mainly the back door to the kitchen, but not since the house has been almost empty. It is a big house. It has two baths and very large rooms. It belongs to the Oil Company.

I enter the house and hear my mother and grandmother talking in the room located on my right. The door to the room is open.

Just before turning towards the door frame I freeze.

I am leaning on the door frame to my right but they don’t see me.

They are talking about the black boulders.

My mother is saying that this house had brought us bad luck.

She was changing my little sister’s nappy while talking to her mother (who lived with us at the time).

Now that my father had fallen ill and we were leaving the house and Abadan, the neighbours had decided to reveal to her the following:

During and after the coup when the workers were on strike, the young men from the youth club (baashgaah-e javaanaan) located on the opposite side of the road walked out protesting.

They were all gunned down by the British Army, who had made a swift entry from Basra to bring Abadan under control. They dug a hole in this garden, piled the bodies and covered them with the black boulders (were they graphite?)

My grandmother was dropping questions in between. She looked shocked and was totally absorbed in what my mum was saying looking intensely at her.

The room was big and although I was not actively hiding I was not in their vision.

My mum was saying again that now she understood why we have had so much bad luck since moving to this house.

I think there was also something about the house having been empty for some years before we moved in (Later: I remember now we knew this when the house was initially offered to my family after my little sister was born. I heard my parents mentioning it a few times with a look of wondering why, but they were so pleased with the fact that it was so spacious, that they probably decided not to make much of it. Here in the room my mother was referring to her initial puzzlement about the house having been empty for a while when talking to my grandmother).

I can’t remember which one noticed me first. By now I was standing in the middle of the door frame. I had a strange sensation in my head.

My mother said something to me, I’m not sure what. One of them got at first irritated with my presence; I believe it was my grandmother.

Their conversation was now about the process of moving. My grandmother will get the train to Teheran, and my mum, my two sisters and I will fly. Only once before I had been on an airplane and that was to Isfahan.

I walked back towards the sunflowers and the black boulders.

This time there is no hesitation though.

I walk sadly, slowly, very slowly.

The sun is further away towards the back of the boulders and all sunflowers have turned their heads towards the back too.

While gazing at the boulders for quite a while, I am now more conscious that I had mounted the pile no more than twice before.
The pile was not hard to mount at all, but I had not enjoyed it (Weren’t the edges of some of the boulders quite sharp to touch? so, it may have been hard. In fact now I remember it hurt).

I entered the sunflowers-woods and gazed intensely at the shiny boulders.

We had been in that house not that long (a year or less).

When we first moved in, my father was offered a short term extra job. It was as a coach, just before the football team of the youth club on the opposite side of the road was going to have an important match. My father was asked by their own coach to spend some extra hours with the team as well.

He took me once or twice with him to the football pitch which was not far off from the club.

I saw for the first time what a good player he had been. I had seen him dance lots of times. He did the best ghafghazi (kavkazi) dance I have ever seen live. In fact he was the only Iranian I knew of, who could dance Cossack.

But that he was so agile a football player I didn’t know. Head and feet you know. I could see the footballers looking at him with respect. I think I heard later that the team had won the games (youth clubs were for young men up to their mid twenties No one liked to see anyone under 16 there, but I saw occasionally some boys hanging around who looked younger than 16 and had to leave?).

I stayed around and looked at the boulders for a long time.

The sun was moving lower in the sky, and so were the sunflowers bowing their heads even more, in extremely slow motion.

I stood or sat close to the boulders between the sun and the sunflowers and kept a regular watch looking at the sun and then at the sunflowers to check the progress in their movements following the sun.

I had no hidden fear of the boulders now. Perhaps I was a boulder (I am a rock, I am an island).

Sadness and fear are incompatible. When one of them gets in, the other one leaves (I can’t stop crying now).

I have never spoken to anyone about this.

It just didn’t arise.

I don’t even know if my older sister ever heard about it.

We have never been back to Abadan since. And my parents never mentioned that house again. As a matter of fact I don’t think they much talked of Abadan except about some old friends and what they were up to.

I remember a few years later in Teheran my father brought the news that a friend of his who was a member of the Tudeh Party and persecuted by Savak tried to escape to Soviet Union taking all his family on a boat, assuming they will be welcome. But the Russian authorities had handed him back to the Iranian officials.

I remember this friend had 4 or 5 daughters all looking incredibly alike and like their father. One of the sisters played with my sister and another who was my age played with me. They were very serene kids, and so easy going. Only recently I heard from my sister that they eventually had immigrated to Israel (If by chance you know them please ask them to get in touch).

So yes except for a line in a poem and a hint in lyrics of a song I had never spoken of the black boulders of Abadan.

It is this blog and it is you; all of you as a collective entity.

Trust is not an issue anymore.

It is the entity of the net: it has the stars, the mountains, the wind, the storm, the consciousness, the subconscious, the caring and the careless, the brainy and the brainless.

So open your hands and see my tears dropping into the palms of your hands; look intensely at your palms and see the sea, the ocean; the creatures in them netted dying.

I cannot recall having shed tears for those buried under the boulders before.

Now that I have, I am grateful to you.

I know now why this story could not be told to a person before. It’s because it had to be revealed to a lot of people simultaneously.

This story was not my story alone. This was the story of many who could not tell it.

Bless you all.