Only Sound Remains - book excerpt

Working in the studio broadened my social life. I was invited to parties that weren’t like any social gathering I’d seen before, which I only attended to be near Forugh. Most people at those parties were either liberals or leftist artists and thinkers and I felt uncomfortable being surrounded by people with whom I had no connection either intellectually or politically. 

More-over, I found all the drinking and revealing dresses offensive to my beliefs. I usually kept a glass of water with ice in my hand. That stopped people from offering me drinks and spared me from explaining that I didn’t drink alcohol, and risking judgmental looks or sarcastic comments. 

It was at a party, an engagement perhaps, when I met Ibrahim’s family for the first time. Fakhri (his wife), Lili (his daughter), and Kaveh (his son). The party was held in one of those houses with a big garden at the north of Tehran, all demolished now and turned into high-rise buildings. 

It had a large and high-ceiling iwan with six tall columns that centred the entrance. A white balustrade bordered the iwan, except for the middle where two sets of staircases like two sides of a trapezoid, led from the iwan to the yard. The façade was coloured in white with four vertical windows, wooden-framed and arched at the top, located at two sides of a wooden door.

Forugh arrived later than I expected. People had been talking about her and Ibrahim for a while now and perhaps she didn’t feel comfortable being around his family. I saw her enter the yard from my table near a round hoz, with a small fountain in the middle. She stopped at Ibrahim’s table and had a brief exchange with him and Fakhri (who responded to her gracefully), walked upstairs, passed past two tables of fruits and pastry on the iwan, and entered the house. 

Through the open door I saw Lili, who was around twenty, leave the living room (where people were dancing to 6/8 beats) the moment Forugh stepped in, and join her parents at their table in the rear. 

I ambled around the garden with Siroos, a camera assistant from the studio, and smoked a cigarette. He’d watched Psycho recently and couldn’t stop talking about the famous shower scene, the music, the jump cuts, the camera moving towards the plughole only to exit the eye. “It’s such a strange feeling when you watch a movie and, before it even ends, you already know that you’re watching a classic, something that will go on living long after you’re gone.” He killed his cigarette and smashed it under his shoe.

When I returned to my table, a drunk man with a loose tie and a sweat-stained shirt joined me to catch his breath. “Why are you sitting alone, young man? Go inside and dance!” We chatted for a while. “Have some fun, life is too short.” He rose to his feet. “It was as if yesterday, when I had my first kiss in the basement of this house.” He winked at me. 

Forugh, a glass of red wine in her hand, exited the house with Kaveh, a teenager at the time, on her side. They stood together next to an apple tree shaded white and pink with its blossoms. I could tell from their gestures and cheerful faces that they were having a friendly conversation. Soon after two men joined Forugh and Kaveh. In a minute, the amiable conversation gave place to an intense argument. I left my table to listen.

“I’ve seen your house,” said the older man to Forugh, “you live in a place like that and still call us bourgeois?” 

“Being bourgeois isn’t about what you have or don’t have, it’s about how you behave and think and…” 

The younger man interrupted her by reaching for the label on her new coat, pulling it off and placing it in her palm, saying sarcastically, “Here you go! I removed your bourgeois label! Now you belong to the proletariat.” 

Forugh, tipsy from alcohol, walked briskly towards the house crying aloud, “Can you believe these idiots? They say they’ve removed my bourgeois label!” waving the label in her hand. The younger man looked at Kaveh and said, “It must be difficult to be around her, to make small talk and pretend nothing’s the matter.” 

Everyone around them fell silent. 

“I don’t have to do anything. I am talking to her because I want to,” Kaveh said, and walked off. 

Almost four decades later – after Kaveh had become a prominent journalist and photographer – I read about his death by landmine near Kifri in Iraq, just a few hours after he’d said to his colleague, “When I’m in situations like these, I feel I am me.” It made me think that they must’ve felt comfortable in each other’s presence because Forugh was a restless artist and Kaveh was on his way to becoming one. 

I walked towards the young man – who was still talking about the bourgeois and the proletarian in an assertive tone – turned my head to the left and, pretending not to see him, bumped into him and sent his scarlet drink all over his white shirt. 

“What the hell!” 

“I’m sorry,” I said, as insincerely as I could and walked away. 

I could see Forugh through the glass window, standing in a corner of the living room with a group of people, chatting and laughing. I poured my water in the hoz, glanced at her one last time, and left. 

Excerpt taken from chapter six pp 74-76. 

Only Sound Remains – the poem which inspired the title of the book 

By Forugh Farrokhzad (1934-1967). Translation by Dr Hossein Asgari, from his book of the same title. 

Why should I stop, why? 

The birds have gone in search of the blue direction the horizon is vertical, the horizon is vertical and movement: fountain-like…

And day is a vastness which doesn’t fit into the limited imagination of newspaper worms.

Why should I stop?

The path passes through the capillaries of life

The cultivating environment of the womb of the moon will kill the corrupt cells and in the chemical atmosphere after sunrise it is only sound, sound that will be absorbed by the particles of time.

Why should I stop?...

The unmanly one, has hidden his lack of manliness in darkness, and the cockroach … ah when the cockroach talks

Why should I stop?

Collaboration of lead letters is in vain,

Collaboration of lead letters will not save the lowly thought…

I’m a descendant of the trees breathing the stale air depresses me a bird which had died advised me to commit flight to memory

The ultimate object of all forces is to be united, to be united with the origin of the bright sun, and to be poured into the light’s intelligence.

It’s natural that windmills rot.

Why should I stop?

I hold the unripe bunches of wheat under my breasts And breastfeed them…