ISSUE 1
December 2000


MILKWOOD REVIEW






OTHER WORK: "A Window Into the Past"

THE POET'S VISIT, cont. Click to hear in real audio


The dining room table was set, with plates and glasses upside down so they would not catch the dirt from the street.
Mahmood Ardavani put down his glass and got up as Mina and Simin entered. He was friendly and at ease and looked very much like his photographs. He wore casual clothes-- a blue and white shirt and denim pants. Mina's father made the introductions.
Mina and Simin were silent. The things Mina had prepared to say, such as, "I've always admired your work," or "I'm pleased to be in the presence of such a great writer," escaped her. She glanced toward the window at the dentist who had his office above the bank across the street. The dentist was bending over, working on a man's teeth.
"I'm so happy to meet you, after I've read so much of your work," she said finally to Ardavani.
"Thank you. I'm very flattered," Ardavani said, raising his hand to shake hers.
Then he turned to Simin and shook hand with her. Simin blushed deeply. Mina noticed they held each others' hands for a moment before letting go. He stared into Simin's eyes for a long time, his gaze as penetrating as in his photographs. Mina felt a tremor inside of herself and a transformation just being in his presence; the air around her had a new intensity.
"You two are classmates?" he asked.
"Yes. I've always admired your work," Simin said.
"I am so pleased to know that lovely girls like you are my readers."
Simin raised the book he was holding and said, "I brought this for you to autograph."
He smiled and nodded his head. Then suddenly, as if he had awakened from a dream, he took his eyes off her and turned to Mina.
"I see you have a copy of the same book. Shall I autograph both of them?" Mina nodded.
He took the books and, sitting down with them, thought for a moment. "I'll improvise a poem for each of you."
"Oh, wonderful," Mina said, the words just flowing out of her.
He began to write something in one book and then the other. Then he gave the books back to them. "Do me a favor. Don't read them now. Save them for later."
Simin and Mina nodded.
"Sit down. Tell me, what other things do you read?"
The two girls sank onto the silk-covered loveseat.
"We read Hafiz and Saadi for school," Simin said. "And Mina and I read almost everything printed in the Teheran Monthly and Setareh."
"Very good. What are you two girls going to do when you graduate from high school?"
"I don't know," Simin said.
"I don't know either," Mina remarked.
"I hope to send my daughter to the university," Mina's father said.
Mina wanted to bring up the idea of being sent abroad but Ardavani's presence was inhibiting. Anyway, it did not seem to matter that much at the moment.
They talked for a few more minutes and then Mina's father said,
"Mr. Ardavani and I have a lot of business that we want to discuss." He looked at the set table. "In fact I'm sorry to say he won't be able to eat with us here tonight. We'll have to meet someone else, a mutual friend."
Mina and then Simin got up and stood staring at Ardavani.
He smiled at them. "I'm happy to have had the pleasure of meeting you."
"I'm too," Mina said.
"So am I," Simin said.
They turned around and left. Mina's father was laughing at something that Ardavani was saying in low tones.
They began to run toward Mina's room as they reached the veranda. As soon as they got into the room, they opened the books.
For Mina he had written: "One morning I woke and realized I was in love with a dark-eyed, dark-haired girl with a mole on her upper lip. Now every time I see a girl looking like that I recall that faraway love and fall in love again."
For Simin he had written: "Your ethereal beauty will always remain food for the imagination of the poet."
"He liked you better than me," Simin said.
"Yours sounds better to me, more grand."
Simin shook her head. "It's so impersonal."
"He kept his eyes on you almost the whole time."
Simin shrugged.
They hardly spoke about their impressions of him. In a few moments Simin left. Mina did not sleep well that night. She tossed and turned and got out of the bed a few times and looked outside. The night air was crisp and the sky crowded with innumerable stars. She could see that the room where Ardavani slept was lighted and she wondered if he was reading or had fallen asleep with the light on. She wished she could tiptoe over to his room and sit by his bedside and talk.
The next morning she would have to get up early and leave for school, probably before he got up.
As soon as she returned to bed she felt anxious and was restless again. It wasn't just the meeting with Ardavani that had shaken her. It was Simin's manner too. She had seemed so humorless as they compared the poems.
At school Simin seemed cool and distant. All day she kept to herself. At recess Mina saw her sitting alone on the veranda,staring into space. She went over and tried to talk to her but Simin barely looked at her. Her eyes seemed to be focused on a landscape that Mina no longer shared. After classes Mina looked for Simin but she had left without waiting for her as she often did. Mina walked home despondent.
Two months later, on a holiday Mina went to a picnic in a park outside of the city.
The park was crowded with many families, their children swinging on ropes they had tied to trees or jumping over rivulets of water. Women were cooking on portable stoves or fires they had built with sticks. Mina walked away from her family to a quieter section, and she was startled to see Simin standing by a little stream with a fishing pole in her hand. She had rarely been alone with Simin since Ardavani's visit. Simin had persisted in keeping to herself, more or less ignoring her. It was near dusk and the air had a reddish tinge. Simin's face looked flushed and grave. She wore the dress they had made for Mahmood Ardavani's visit. Mina walked over very quietly, and standing behind her, whispered,
"Simin."
Simin turned around and looked at her dreamily for an instant. "Oh, you!" She grabbed Mina's hand instinctively and then let go.
"I'm so glad to find you here. I've been bored all day," Mina said.
"Where's your family?"
"Over there."
"Mine are on that side. That's why we didn't run into each other before." Simin raised the rod, lifting the hook from the water, and abandoned it on the ground.
"I have to sit down. I'm tired."
She sat on the grassy bank of the stream and Mina sat next to her. Mosquitoes buzzed in the trees that stood sparsely around them. The air had a slightly rotting smell.
"Tell me, why have you been avoiding me?" Mina asked after a few moments of silence.
"Oh, no reason."
"Please tell me."
Simin, holding her head so that all Mina could see was her profile, said, "You must know. It was what happened that day with Ardavani, what he wrote for you coming spontaneously from him. I envied you so much for it. I just had to avoid you until the feelings passed." Her voice sounded hollow and faraway. Mina felt a chill listening to that voice which was almost unrecognizable.
"Oh, that's so silly," she managed to say.
"When we were in the room with him, I wished so much for you to be out of the room-- you and your father, I wanted so badly to be alone with Ardavani," Simin went on.
Mina recalled that she had similar thoughts when she stood in the room and felt ignored by Ardavani. But the thoughts had quickly vanished, like sparks. She lowered her head so that Simin could not see the tears that had come into her eyes.
"All that is past now," she said after a moment. She was hopeful for an instant, but the next moment she could see that the gap that had begun to open between them was only deepening. The confession had made it worse instead of better. A grayness, denser than ever before, enveloped her.

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