Sections from a Novel: The Story of Building a Toilet in Bam
......... We all know very well that beneath the earth that is our share of the world, from north to south and east to west, seismic faults lie like ready-to-detonate mines, any one of which could go off at any moment and shake the ground. Each of us, in the course of our lives — whether long or short — if we have not ourselves been caught in one of them, has many times seen the donation collection tents in town squares and the images television has shown of ruined houses that were not particularly prosperous even before the earthquake — images so similar to those from previous earthquakes that they could be substituted for one another. Of course, recently, television has been showing more heart-rending clips with heart-rending verse. In many of these clips, a man in a long white shirt — which must be a symbol of a burial shroud — walks barefoot over dry, cracked earth in the middle of a wasteland, leaving bloody footprints on the ground. He always stares at the horizon, and sometimes a woman with large dark eyes is there too, wearing a veil and a long white garment. The musical scores of the clips are often drawn from famous symphonies. But the verses are from our own treasury. In any case, after a while of showing these clips and announcing bank account numbers for donations, everything returns to normal — until the next tremor, in the same place or thereabouts, or farther away, somewhere we all know will someday tremble, but which, in keeping with the fatalistic philosophical outlook that does not prevent us from being caught off guard and getting angry, we ignore.........
........ I don't know why I thought earthquakes had nothing to do with historical buildings and uninhabited historical areas. Nonetheless, I was riveted to the television. Sadly, as evening fell, all my wishful thinking was dashed in an instant. The news agencies suddenly showed the miniature city that had turned to dust and lamented its destruction. It was at that moment I realized many others had also wept for the miniature city the day before, just as I had. This was in fact a weeping born of a national anguish I had been badly afflicted with for some time — the anguish of 2,500 years. Earlier, perhaps, because of the spite of a certain Muawiyah who had long considered 2,500 years of history as his personal inheritance and who had bequeathed the official historical narrative accordingly, the matter had been more or less forgotten. But after Muawiyah's flight from the country, the question of whether our history was 2,500 or 1,300 years old had suddenly become a serious issue. The business of return-to-self in opposition to foreigners, unbelievers, or imperialism had also acquired a strange complexity. It was not at all clear whose "self" was meant. Meanwhile, given our turbulent history saturated with the invasions and pillaging of Arab, Mongol, Uzbek, and Ghuzz nomadic tribes, for at least fifteen hundred years we have been caught up in the question of self and other — and having absorbed all these "others," with the help of revered and distinguished mystics and sheikhs, we have managed to transcend the surfaces of selves and non-selves and venture into the depths ................
............ Everyone — from every trade and class, from every part of the country — who was able had set out to help. The roads had become congested, and the ruined city was filled with relief workers who were getting in each other's way. Marauders,
the eternal twin of catastrophe and war, had immediately gotten to work. The presence of drug warehouses in and around the town, which lay along the famous drug route as well-known as the Silk Road, compounded the situation. Horrifying news had arrived about the theft of small children and the severing of the bejeweled hands of corpses, enough to make one's skin crawl. We were all so revolted by the sacrilege against the dead that it seemed worse to us than stealing from the living. But more than all this, the arrival of relief groups from all corners of the world — and above all from the Great Satan itself — created a tremendous commotion. This was the first group from the Great Satan to be formally welcomed into a country that the Great Satan itself had dubbed an "axis of evil" — after almost three decades. Strangely, in English the words "evil" and "devil" are similar. The devil has only one more "D" than evil. This event caused the national and international excitement to rise sharply. Even a certain Mr. Hadi, who had participated only reluctantly in charitable donations, said: "What a state of affairs — the whole world has taken notice of this earthquake. Perhaps this is also a good time to raise some technical principles of urban planning."
......................... Finally, in the very midst of our hesitant standing around at the edge of the square, a bright idea came to dear Shirin's exalted mind, which drew even us into the fray: "Look, everyone is raising money to build schools and clinics... Let's organize ourselves, as an engineering firm, as a volunteer group for free design of these buildings." It was a brilliant and original idea. It was beyond criticism. Shirin herself got excited by our excitement. Strangely, even Mr. Hadi raised no objection. Winning the boss's approval, while he was still under the influence of the widespread relief activities — especially those of the New World — was no great challenge. And so, the three of us who formed the social studies group and who had the greatest talent for becoming embroiled in everything, constituted the executive group and right then and there all three of us put down whatever water we had in hand and set to work. Najme managed to get twenty-five engineers to agree to voluntary work. Then, with a joy and excitement that kept growing, I wrote a thoroughly earnest announcement about our readiness to provide free designs for NGOs and charitable associations, and sent it to all of them whose names and addresses we could find. We were sure that they too, if they had any water in hand, would put it down and immediately take steps toward fulfilling the promise we had made. Free engineering and design! What could be better? Death was the worst they could do — they'd go to Gilan then. After that, every day, after arriving at the office, I'd stuff my bag into my desk drawer and head to the company secretary to see who had gotten a move on earlier. When I saw there was no sign of any movement whatsoever, I would make her show me all the received faxes, lest they had gotten mixed in with the company's faxes.
Then Shirin would arrive — her impatience had no outward sign like mine, but I knew she was waiting. Neither of us talked about it. Lest we seem too flustered. After a week of waiting for a box full of received faxes, we gradually settled for seven or eight, then four or five, and finally for one or two — but not in the first week, not in the second, not even in the third — nothing came; not even a phone call was made to raise a question. Shirin and I were completely bewildered. We were forced to speak up. But Najme was not at all worried: "What's the fuss? Not everyone is as impatient as you. The boards of directors need to make decisions. It will take at least a month for the boards to hold a meeting and review the matter." She was certainly right. And even with a meeting it wasn't certain they would decide. Because, as far as I could tell, meetings are not quite as much for making decisions as they appear. If a decision is needed, it is often made somewhere other than the meeting room anyway.
........... Just in the final moments when, out of necessity, we were resigning ourselves to fate and it had nearly come to pass that failure to execute the project would have been our salvation, a half-finished commission arrived — on a wretched Wednesday, about a month after dispatching the announcements — and prevented it. The secretary happily informed us of the call we had been so long waiting for. It was from one of the arts associations that had heard about the availability of a plot of land in the earthquake-stricken town — land that a bereaved family had dedicated as a charitable endowment for the construction of a building for public benefit. One of that family's members, who after the disaster had been going from door to door and appealing to every group and community that might do something for his hometown, had asked us to give it some thought. Naturally we immediately snapped up this commission that was neither here nor there, suspended between heaven and earth. The caller said they wished to send a representative to come and see the land and hold talks with us, and added — mindful of the wisdom "better the first blow" — that they had their own builder in mind for constructing the building. We immediately insisted: "By God, by the Prophet, we are only doing the design for free and we have nothing to do with the actual construction." In the wake of this half-finished commission that saved us from burning out completely, we resolved to travel to the disaster-stricken city to see the land — a city that after its destruction had attained the honor of worldwide fame.
........... Later, over the course of five or six months of humanitarian activity, there was always the trial of obtaining transportation tickets — battling the Akvane Div of ticket procurement. Apparently this is a civilizational problem, because from the very beginning of creation until today, procuring tickets for travel outside the city and finding a seat in intra-city transport has been a serious problem for us — and no one quite knows why. Though in our own company we have just
an entire library full of research results on the subject. This problem is roughly like the problem of building ventilation systems. A group of experts relates this kind of problem to the unrealized ideals of the Constitutional Revolution; others believe it stems from our sense of inferiority before foreigners — which, incidentally, finds its origin in that very Constitutional Revolution. For evidence they refer to our incomparable civilizational heritage of architecture and building, and the extraordinarily efficient systems of water supply and ventilation, such as windtowers and qanats. But as far as I know, our historical forefathers — apparently after the era of pre-Islamic war chariots — never thought to build wheels, carriages, or coaches, and made do with horses, beasts of burden, and their own feet until the time when we could buy vehicles from foreigners. Besides, qanats and historical water supply systems are so similar to the construction works of ants, so natural and in harmony with the land and climate, that it is hard to count them among what we today call "technology."
.................. The voice of the driver — who was waiting for us to open a conversation but had realized we were all dozing — interrupted my aesthetic communion with nature: "What do you do?" "Engineers and specialists." "Specialists in what?" "Architecture and urban planning." "What are you going to do there?" "What do you mean?" "I mean, what are you planning to do there?" "Don't you know there's been an earthquake there and a lot of people have been killed?" "Well yes, but why are you so naïve? They deserved it, what happened to them." "You mean you don't accept that many innocent people have lost their homes and need help?" And he gave such an account of the sins of the people of the destroyed city that it was clear they had been more heinous than the crimes of the people of Lot, finally ending with the question: "You tell me — why didn't this disaster come upon us?"
.............. We entered a boulevard where the beautiful sight of the standing palm trees on both sides and the mid-boulevard flowerbeds was a consolation. The container-offices of government departments and institutions were set up in the vacant lots beside it. But just two steps farther — just two steps — after a strange square around which improvised stalls had been set up selling grilled liver, teahouses, photocopying shops, and even clothing, shoes, and butchers — we suddenly came face to face with catastrophe, with disaster, with calamity, with misery — a catastrophe more terrifying than all the images we had seen, all we had heard, or anything we had imagined. Rubble from buildings that had once been homes, schools, and offices had collapsed from both sides to the middle
of the streets. Only a narrow passage for cars remained in each street. Worn, thin Red Crescent tents had been put up along the streets and sidewalks, amid the rubble, in every spot where a palm's breadth of space had been left. People amid the rubble — which sometimes rose higher than the tents — were crawling on all fours, tossing bricks from one side to the other.
........... Beside the tents were piles of objects salvaged from the rubble: chairs and tables with broken legs, crooked and battered air coolers, wardrobes without doors or panels... and here and there small cubicles of tin or even cloth, for answering the call of nature. Women in tents beside hoses or water pipes laid across the ground, amid dust and mud, were busy washing dishes. The water flowed into gutters full of sludge and garbage. Garbage was everywhere — heaps of garbage; empty plastic water bottles, biscuit wrappers, plastic bags, tissues, orange peels, even food scraps — a shameful and strange wretchedness, a wretchedness we had not seen in the clean rubble of earthquakes in villages and small towns with no mineral water and biscuits and tissues.
.......... On the way back, the tent-dwellers along the streets — who had pitched their tents directly in front of their collapsed homes — thinking we were journalists or NGO relief workers, came out and told us their troubles. They complained about the polluted latrines and lack of bathing facilities. They showed us a row of tin toilet cubicles whose walls had inexplicably been painted. The pits were shallow and terribly malodorous. A childlike hand had written on the blue-painted wall of one of them: "Attention, esteemed Esteghlal fans." A few steps away were two shower container-units — "A gift from the German nation" — on the wall of one of which the same hand had written: "A friend's visit, though pleasant to the heart, coming to the bath brings business to a halt." The bathhouses had no water — the German nation had not known that sending a gift was not enough; they ought to have come themselves and installed them and provided water. In addition to a telephone kiosk that had been converted into a toilet — with "Private toilet" written on it in black marker — we also saw a complimentary bathhouse from the Setad-e Moein that had a trickle of water and a fire burning in a small cubicle at its far end.
....... The comparison with Japan had been a recurring story from the moment the earthquake struck, and it inflamed everyone's emotions in all media and even popular analyses. Our own television was partly to blame — it had shown footage of Japanese earthquakes measuring 8 on the Richter scale. I had seen them too. Rooms and objects visibly swayed for a long time. At the time, not because of the earthquake's intensity or its long duration, but because the earth of Japan was alive and trembling, I marveled — for everything there seems so doll-like. But that day, before the lunch and the strong tea afterward that really hit the spot had finished, Shirin once again made a brilliant proposal — a proposal that this time would require six months of backbreaking work to reveal to us that its newness and originality would get us into serious trouble: "It's clear that there's no possibility of building anything right now. Even this plot we saw today needs to be cleared of rubble first. So do the lanes around it. Otherwise getting materials there is impossible. In my view the immediate need of the people is clean bathrooms and toilets. We can start with our own money and ask any NGO willing to contribute a small amount to this." This proposal also had the same blinding dazzling effect on us as before. Besides, given the wretchedness of the toilets and bathrooms and the deep shame of what we had seen, there was no way we could leave that city with our heads held high. The only one who expressed something resembling an objection was the representative of the arts association: "Meaning you'll announce that you want to build a privy. I doubt anyone would want their name on a privy project."
............... Until the driver said we had reached the Arg, I could not make out its form. There was only a mound of earth — like the walls of a large pit left from some explosion — before us. I involuntarily cried out: "My God, is this the Arg?" The Arg was right there — and yet the Arg was no more. That welcoming, modest gate that had been all of clay, yet decorated and adorned, those magnificent walls and their turrets and merlons — were gone. Nothing remained of all that but a mound of dirt. People were standing atop the mound and looking inside the Arg. We climbed up too. The earth underfoot was soft and mingled with the bones of skeletons the earthquake had extracted from the walls. No one knew whether they were thousands of years old or the bones of the disappeared for whom no one had come to account. When we reached the top, the last flickering hope that perhaps — perhaps — something might have remained so that the Arg could be rebuilt, was extinguished. My heart suddenly collapsed. Nothing — nothing — remained. The miniature bazaar, the husseinieh and mosque, the barracks, the governor's house, the Chahar Fasl mansion... all had vanished. Dust had come upon dust. As I looked through a veil of tears at the pleasant distant mountains that stood alone beneath the glassy blue sky, I found myself saying involuntarily: "My God, how could you bear it?... What dust shall we now cast on our heads."
................... Contrary to our expectation, persuading the company's chairman to accept the new plan was not very difficult. Either the same previous reasons were at work, or the photographs we had taken of the cubicles and the latrine and bathroom pits were very moving. Of course, we could sense that they too had more or less the same view as the artist had of the subject when he had uttered the word "privy." We immediately wrote a moving appeal for donations — not that we wrote it intentionally to be moving. The account of the incident was naturally moving in itself when we wrote about the weight of the rubble beneath which bodies were still being discovered daily, and about the seasonal winds that were casting dust over the city, and about the pits people had dug in the ground for washing dishes, and about the condition of the bathhouses and latrines. At the end of the appeal we also asked all organizations that had been collecting money to help the city to allocate even a modest share to this cause. In any case, we, who like mules continued to insist on building toilets and bathrooms, were compelled to rely on the disorganized personal sentiments of individuals who had not yet decided to whom and to which group to entrust their money — and there were quite a few of them. We found them one by one in the various pulpits from which we spoke. Elderly ladies of the former gentry who still wore black tulle décolleté dresses and had their hair set with hairspray, at memorial ceremonies, donated not badly. Shirin, who was unaccustomed to elaborating on the working process and telling its story, collected good money. I think her cold and serious demeanor was better at inspiring trust than my sweet-talking and fawning was at getting results. In Najme's place, her husband stepped in and, by stirring the sensibilities of his poet and artist friends and acquaintances, was able to contribute Najme's share. He even managed, by winning the sympathy of a cultural foundation, to play a more important role. This foundation introduced two charitable diaspora groups who — unlike their domestic counterparts — greatly appreciated the idea of the bathrooms and toilets. Apparently the attention of the "impure" foreigners to meeting these unsavory basic needs had left a bad impression on them. In this manner, the funds needed to begin work were secured. The remainder we entrusted to God in the hope that He would provide along the way, God willing. In the meantime, the design work progressed well simultaneously. Of course, at the first meeting only eight of the original twenty-five volunteers showed up. But none had any objection to the project — or if they did, they didn't say so — because at the second meeting, devoted to discussing design ideas, only five came. Even so, the ideas were extraordinarily interesting and agreeable: in the ruined city where nothing remained but dust and rubble, our buildings — however small — must be beautiful and striking, to console eyes wearied by devastation. Given the strong identity of vernacular architecture, our design must draw inspiration from the values of indigenous architecture, without being a stilted imitation of traditional architecture. Since after the earthquake all urban spaces had disappeared, it would be good to provide courtyards with benches for rest and conversation — so that people who could no longer find a wall to lean against might find a little repose there. Given cultural considerations, the men's and women's sections must be completely separate. Separate courtyards would also create a private space for women. Dishwashing and laundry facilities should be built in both the men's and women's sections, because in many families the mothers had been lost and the men too had been forced to do the washing. There were also extensive discussions about earthquake-resistant structures, the necessity of lightweight construction due to people's intense fear of being under a roof, the choice of light and beautiful materials, ecological sewage systems, and countless other issues — which I gloss over, though we all thoroughly enjoyed raising them. In short, everything seemed easy and simple and achievable and beautiful as a dream. The dream of clean and beautiful bathrooms and latrines was on the verge of realization. For me personally, it was as pleasurable as when my sister and I built the miniature Albert Schweitzer hospital in a corner of our guest room.
But at the next meeting, where the five architects were supposed to bring their designs, only two were submitted. Two young volunteer nobodies who had participated in the last meeting had drawn a design which, as it turned out, was the most acceptable of all. The computer-drawn renderings of various options for various plots were truly charming. Now the seniors only needed to finalize it and draw the structural and plumbing drawings. The bad luck was that it was the eve of the Persian New Year — the eve that for us starts in early February. I don't know whether other professions suffer the same pre-holiday plight as ours, but for us the last two months are a kind of winter death. With the new year we come alive again. Of course, payment for work we've rushed to finish and delivered almost always falls to the other side of the year, but with the issuance of payment orders one can consider the work done. So these months are simultaneously a kind of fertile season too. Lambs are born in spring, because with the intervention of government project managers who don't want to send their unspent budgets back to the treasury, all the projects that the client's experts have shelved throughout the year — having sworn to treat public funds as their father's inheritance and not let every Tom, Dick, and Harry from the private sector unjustly take a share — suddenly come to life. Approval meetings are held in quick succession. They even make new contracts and, for these new contracts, in addition to advance payments, even write post-dated checks and take promissory notes in return, promising to deliver 30 percent later........
............ Now you can imagine what a burden, on top of all the other burdens, the thought of building toilets and bathrooms was — and what a torment it put us through. The trouble was that, given the nature of the project, we had to start work sooner. Gradually we were coming to understand why building a school would have been much better. In that case we would have had time until September, but now, one way or another, we had to get the drawings before year's end — because, according to the hallowed national custom, it was uncertain whether by the end of April of the following year our hands would reach anyone's help. And worse still, the material estimations had to be ready before the holidays started so we could place the order for materials — otherwise we couldn't finish the work before the hot, scorching desert summer set in. Our volunteer engineers, who had been floating in the timeless, placeless world of interminable meetings, didn't think we would actually do anything. Therefore, they had not refrained from promising to cooperate and assist — even during the New Year holidays. But apparently they had given our intelligence a bit too much credit.
............... When we got the catalogues for sanitary ware, we also discovered an important sociological point: the names were all poetic and charming: Mina, Diana, Mandana, Tara, Bita, Golsa... and these were further divided into different types with interesting combinations: Mina Gold, Mandana White, Mina White Gold, Golsa White, and best of all: Swan Faucet. I really like these names and the fact that they've given sanitary ware the names of gemstones like emerald and pearl. It could mean that we are moving away from the era of shame about the very important duties of certain body parts — the era of going secretly to the toilet, and God help us, keeping it hidden — and are finally acknowledging these organs, remembered in common parlance only for insults, with beautiful fixtures and delicate names; and this could be a very important sociological transformation. In this way, we managed to get the drawings before the holidays — and the material estimates and some prices too. Only one set of drawings remained; these were finally delivered on the last day of the year, at dusk, at a jewelry shop. I don't know why or how this handover was arranged at that shop. But the joy of finally getting them meant we didn't think at the time about the strangeness of the delivery location. I suspect now that probably the plumbing draftsman was also working at the jewelry shop. But before receiving the last set and completing the drawing marathon, to confirm the location for building the facilities we had to make one more trip to the city.
............ The prospect of asking for help from someone who had been bereaved was not particularly pleasant, but as soon as we saw him we realized that, despite the irreparable grief and pain that had settled into the depths of his eyes, he genuinely wanted to help us. Though his quiet manner and whispering voice and infinitely sorrowful eyes reminded us of the futility of all our work in a world that could be overturned in an instant.
Mr. Amiri took us to one of the responsible government offices and to meet a university-educated engineer. The responsible office was housed in a small container with four palm-sized rooms. Soldiers were trying to prevent the people who were crowding in the yard from entering. The sounds of clamoring and shouting, mixed with the dust rising from beneath the people's feet, made for a strange scene. The soldiers couldn't prevent people from entering. I don't want to absolve anyone, but some of those pressing forward were more similar to the notorious local troublemakers than to our grieving Mr. Amiri, and the soldiers' reluctance to confront them was understandable. The official liked the subject matter and the designs, but said that constructing any building in the city was currently prohibited unless the reconstruction headquarters approved it. Land would be allocated only once the revision of the master plan was finished — and he added with a sardonic smile: "Two months now, the gentlemen have been promising to give us the revised master plan. However many letters we write and pressure we apply, it's no use. For now they've promised to clarify the situation for us by the end of March." But just as we were about to commiserate with him — who clearly from his dark complexion was a local — about the government's and reconstruction headquarters' inaction, and about the fact that after two months not even ten percent of the rubble had been cleared, suddenly his guard went up and with a cold tone he defended the reconstruction headquarters and the Setad-e Moein. It turned out that as the official of one responsible government organization, he only had a problem with that one other responsible organization — not with the entire government. So, scared, we immediately returned to the main point. "We want to build these facilities in the parks. They can remain later as park facilities. You know they have to be built urgently to be useful to the people now." Fortunately, he did not withdraw his helping hand for the criticism we had made. He said: "All right, I'll write a letter to the municipality. I think they won't object to your work."
................. But our work at the municipality proceeded with a strange speed and in a completely alarming manner. Behind the desk, instead of one person, three were seated. They passed the letter and the drawings from hand to hand and gave them to people sitting on chairs around the small room — one couldn't tell whether they were staff or visitors. Later I learned how to tell staff from visitors by reading the expression of faces which, across the length and breadth of our ancient land, are uniformly appealing and beseeching like petitioners — regardless of earthquake victimhood. But that day all those who had left no empty seat in the room — staff and visitors alike — liked our colorful drawings and listened more carefully to our words. After returning to the municipality, the mayor's letter of approval — he had apparently made a brief visit to the municipality in our absence — was given to us so easily that we suspected we had been strung along. But Mr. Amiri was not surprised. He gave a somewhat convincing explanation: "Here no one pays attention to anyone. Everything is topsy-turvy — the reconstruction headquarters, the crisis headquarters, the Setad-e Moein units, the provincial governorates, the provincial representatives, our own offices, the aid groups — all quarreling with each other. But I don't think anyone will get in your way. Because there's no money or benefit in it."
............ Apparently, as easily as they had given the letter, they had rejected the request. Perhaps if we had been taken around a bit more we could have had more hope of success. In any case, even the thought of going back to that room didn't occur to us. Mr. Amiri, who seemed as upset as us, called some familiar building material suppliers in the provincial capital and told them the story. They said they could deliver some items by the seventh of Farvardin. We faxed the materials list to them from Mr. Amiri's workshop. Before returning to the capital we also had to visit the building material shops in the city to assess the available manpower who had gathered around the town squares or were sleeping on the lawns of the entrance square and some of whom claimed to have construction skills. This sad wandering through the city — with the negative answers of the sad and irritable suppliers who said there was nothing until the fifteenth of Farvardin, and the visit to Mr. Amiri's house, for which he wanted our opinion on whether it was repairable or not — ended in even greater sorrow. He, for the first time, alluded to his wife and children, who had taken shelter in his father-in-law's house, out of fear of the aftershocks, while he was away on a journey — and had perished there. On the threshold of his house, upon seeing an abandoned child's slipper next to the door, I suddenly realized how difficult the sight of the house could be, for him and even for us. We entered in silence. The house was covered in dust. The walls had deep cracks and the dusty furniture lay piled on top of one another here and there. An overturned artificial flower arrangement, an unmade bed in the sitting room, a small gas burner and a dirty teapot on it, a spoon and fork on the kitchen counter, broken tapestry frames on the floor... all spoke of his detachment from what remained.
.................... We truly started work — like good children — on the fifth of Farvardin, unmindful of spring, the shade of clouds, the riverside, and Hafez's taunt: Saki, there is the shadow of a cloud and spring and the riverside — I won't tell you what to do; you have heart, say it yourself. The first two weeks it was my turn and that of one of the two volunteer architects who, having finished the estimates, instead of going to Dubai, had taken on the responsibility of getting the work started. In the city — which had not yet properly woken from sleep — choosing workers from among the few who had come looking for work despite the holidays and the assumption that nothing would be happening until the fifteenth was very difficult. But we had no choice. So that very day, with the help of the chosen workers and some of the nearby tent-dwellers whose young men and even children had volunteered to work, we began laying out the ground with chalk. For digging the foundations, basic tools like shovels, picks, and wheelbarrows were needed, which fortunately Mr. Amiri provided right from the start. We pestered him about the materials the provincial suppliers had promised. Embarrassed, he said: "By the time you dig the foundations it will arrive. I've told them you've come. They probably didn't think you'd arrive this week." It was the same old story — applicable not only to pipe repair and construction and charitable work in disaster-stricken cities. As an experienced sociologist I have truly come to believe that one of the serious and important problems in today's social and economic interactions in our country is getting people to take our words seriously.
........................ In any case, there was no choice but to continue active engagement with the provincial capital's material suppliers. We had to convince them, by any means necessary, that we really did want to build a few toilets. We had to torment them with relentless phone calls until they decided to send the requested items as quickly as possible to be rid of us. In fact, with this trick we were able to obtain three batches of cement, iron, and bricks by the end of the week. Though we understood right then that they had apparently taken their revenge by adding a premium to our goods. Perhaps they had calculated a surcharge for the urgency of supplying materials to the disaster-stricken city. That day ended with erecting tents with the help of workers and the surrounding tent-dwellers who had acquired special skill in this — they seemed for the most part to truly be city residents, because like the people calmly and quietly waiting with papers in hand outside the municipality container, they were calm and reticent, and indeed genuinely seemed angry at the invaders who had descended on the city. One of them — a young teacher — gave some thoroughly useful suggestions: hiring a driver with a pickup truck for work, and borrowing a tent from the tent-dwellers. It turned out they — several families — had two spare tents, and he could get his father's pickup and work with us. What could be better? When we got to the storage of tents and blankets, we tried to be worthy of them. We were compelled to hire new workers in place of some who had inexplicably disappeared overnight; and as luck would have it, right at one of the squares we saw an old man and a young man with well-digging equipment who seemed sent from heaven. When we lodged them in the tent of the runaway workers, we quickly realized that heaven had nothing to do with it. Because immediately after taking out their clothes and putting on work clothes, before any action was taken, they had a thorough smoke. Their extraordinary skill at setting up the paraphernalia indicated long experience.
................ The remaining days until the end of two weeks were a hellish recurring round of rushing after sand, gravel, cement, workers, and masons. Ironworkers and welders and skilled construction laborers had their own special place. Worst of all was the well-digger. Our heaven-sent well-digger, who was supposed to move immediately from one plot to the next, fell into a well he had dug himself — on the fourth or fifth day, perhaps from intoxication — and imposed the cost of sending him to the provincial hospital on us. Nearly all the tent-dwellers around our plots, the grill-house owners and butchers and photocopying tents that were proliferating all over the city, and the NGO girls in a tent who kept visiting us, were all looking for skilled construction workers — and even finding them didn't solve our problem, because it would quickly turn out that the welder was in fact not a welder — he was mostly the introducer's cousin. But the more fundamental problem, which became clear that first week, was that the work schedule of our self-sacrificing Naser — who had ruined his holidays — was, despite his kindness and lovableness, pure fantasy. I think he had calibrated the schedule too much like the boy Sameq-e Ayyar. While we lacked the resources of Sameq-e Ayyar — like the leaf he would rub on himself and become invisible, the God-fearing elders who guided him wherever needed, the anesthetics he continuously used to knock out enemies trying to obstruct him, the invisible chains he'd put on people's hands and feet weighing so much they couldn't move, or the mirror-like walls he'd raise around them which couldn't be scaled with hook and rope... all these were ranged before us, even though all the heroic obstacles of Sameq — the wicked fairies appearing in human form who placed invisible chains on hands and feet, chains so heavy they couldn't stir, or raised mirror-like walls around them from which they couldn't climb with hook and rope — all these were before us. For this reason, by the end of the first week I concluded that we had to change tack: rather than wandering around with dear Hamid Khan in streets where every other wall bore the inscription "We shall rebuild you" or "The earthquake is God's test," chasing down people who had promised to introduce skilled workers — we should sit under the shade of the tree at our base and have in-person interviews with the contractors who had been introduced, whose number was far greater, and who were for the most part masons who had — by the grace of such well-wishers as ourselves — found the opportunity for promotion and transformation into contractors. The first person Mr. Amiri introduced was the mason of his own undamaged house — a tall, handsome man in whose eyes, like Mr. Amiri's, there was a bottomless sorrow: the sorrow of his college-student daughter who had come home for the holidays and perished. He had also lost one hand, and like Mr. Amiri and the nearby tent-dwellers was very quiet and spoke little. He listened carefully to our words, then very briefly and clearly said: "I can work on only one of these at a time." He didn't even drink the tea that Hamid Khan's wife brought for us, and left to be ready to start work the very next day. The next person arrived on a motorcycle. He was from the Azerbaijani community of the city and we didn't know who had sent him, but he introduced himself: "Right now I have five contracting jobs for the reconstruction headquarters, in these very temporary accommodation camps." "So how do you plan to attend to our work?" "Bah, those are child's play. This is what I do — I can find workers for ten workshops. I'm a Turk, I'm no ditch-digger. Do you want me to show you my contracts with the reconstruction headquarters?" Among the other people interviewed, we chose a small man from Zabul who, despite his size and the traces of occasional dips into the local drug scene on his lips and teeth — unworthy of his famous compatriot Rostam Dastan — had a powerful throat and who, with the first advance he received, bought a large number of gravestones and had his brothers' names inscribed on all of them, then arranged them all beside his tent for everyone to see how he had honored the memory of his family. The last was a lame mason who had a tent next to one of the plots, and who had immediately after the chalking-out for foundation digging, on crutches, appeared at our site and, under Naser's guidance, had set about supervising the workers in his absence. By the time Shirin and the building technician who was to replace Naser arrived, the contractors had already started work.
............... Our tale came to its end, and the old crow never got home. I believe the old crow never gets home because stories stretch too long, but our story ended on time and everyone was able to get home, because we truly, in the final month of spring, in days that burned like the height of summer with fire raining from earth and sky, finished the work and did not let our story drag on like the tale of Hossein Kord — though from the very middle of the work we had begun to sense that the work had passed beyond the literary refinement of Sameq-e Ayyar's heroism and the grandeur of Khorshid Shah's court, and was slowly becoming like the repetitive, monotonous stories of Hossein Kord-e Shabestari, where every night — after stripping bare like an Egyptian and Indian blade, from ankle boot to horseshoe nail, drowning in 124 pieces of armor — he would gird on wolf skin, buckle on a hook-shaped Uzbek shield on his waist, with a dagger hidden at his side and a sword openly bared would string bow and arrow, take up his battle-axe,
pour down the mountain like a flood, stamp both feet on the ground, leap upward like a dove, throw his twisting lasso onto the vault of the heavens, climb like a light-winged bird, and strike the mint. Obtaining materials too was possible only through resort to the stratagems of Hossein Kord when we discovered that in a city that was supposed to be rebuilt within a year, our access to precious cement in the open market had been cut off — and Shirin was compelled once again to gird her loins and stand tall as a man and once again cast her obstacle-breaking lasso over the virtual network. When the lasso's hook caught on something, it turned out we'd reached someone who the very first time had briskly and powerfully slammed our letter's face. We had arrived precisely at the cement mint. In brief, when I was finally admitted to the presence of the chief steward of the cargo, he wrote on a scrap of paper torn from a corner of a sheet, an address and a phone number and a note, and asked: "Is 2,500 tomans all right?" "No. Weren't you told 2,000?" "Look, the agents won't give it to you. They'll cheat you." "Write 2,000. Then we'll settle with them ourselves." He wrote it with displeasure, and like a flash of lightning I got myself to the address he'd given me; but finding the short, stooped old agent — who was half a hermit, or Hossein Dal Sangi — was not easy. Even with the sharpest eyesight I couldn't immediately have identified the official sales agent in the ruins where gypsum was piled in one corner and cement, brick, and stone in another. I gave the old man the letter, but realized he couldn't read it. I explained the matter. He briefly and to the point said: "No cement." "Then what you're sacking is gypsum?" "There is — but it's sold. Maybe more will come in an hour. Maybe tomorrow morning." "Well what should we do then, go back to the headquarters?" "Tomorrow morning I'll give you ten bags." "Ten? We want three hundred." "I can't give them all at once. Ten a day is good? The price will also go up." "Give thirty a day — 2,300." He was pleased that we had so easily accepted the higher price: "All right, now let's see what happens." Hossein Dal Sangi wasn't that stubborn, and in the following days, as far as he could, he'd give us a few bags of cement morning and evening. Apparently he was one of the last links in the distribution chain and was delighted by the 300 extra tomans that were reaching him.
........... But there was an obstacle and a problem that neither ayyari cunning nor enemy-binding lasso nor virtual network was able to overcome. When Shirin reported by phone — gasping with rage — I was truly falling over backwards. After the completion of the frames, to everyone's great surprise, it had turned out the roofs were sloped. She screamed: "The work of that wretched Najme couldn't have come out better than this." I knew the matter had nothing to do with Najme, who had quietly stepped aside at the outset, but I said nothing. Then she said I had to understand right away why it had happened and whether anything could be done. I had no choice but to call Naser. He very calmly said:
"When we were estimating the materials, I noticed it, but I thought you yourselves had wanted it that way for some reason." I cried: "You were in all the meetings, why didn't you say anything at the time? Didn't it seem strange?" "Yes, but I don't know why I didn't say anything. Sorry." There was absolutely no possibility of forgiveness. Now, on top of all the hard labor, we had to carry the burden of shame. Although the sloped roof didn't prevent using the toilet or bathing, after all the talk about drawing inspiration from vernacular architecture and all that love for our architectural civilizational heritage — and the sloped roof being a symbol of cultural inferiority in this rainless land with no need for roof slope — we had been badly exposed. We had become the embodiment of the proverb: "A man whose luck turns, on his wedding night his bride turns male." But stranger than the incident itself was the fact that we couldn't understand how it had happened. The only guess we could make was that the incompetence of the draftsmen's assistants and the excessive workload and the surprise of the engineers — who hadn't thought we would actually go and build those drawings — had led them to give us the computer operators' drawings without reviewing them. But the following week when I went to inspect and saw one of the buildings whose red brick walls had also risen, I realized the slope was so sharp it couldn't be taken as a rain-diverting slope in that rainless climate. In fact it had come to resemble a deliberate tipping — a kind of deconstruction that could be taken as a symbol of collapse. Even to me it seemed amusing, though from fear of Shirin I said nothing about it. Apparently God had helped at the last moment and had done something to make the draftsman's hand slip and take the slope a little steeper than the slope he always drew for all villa-type houses. With all of this, you can imagine how we trembled with fear of some unexpected mishap until the work was finished. Because it was quite possible the roofs would suddenly collapse and the ground would disappear into the sewage pits. Issues like one bathroom being short in one unit, the bathroom platforms being forgotten in another, the wrong dimensions for the doors and windows in a third... didn't even register against these potential disasters. Our young foreign architect friend, whenever such dimensional problems arose, would point out: "Oh come on, these are nothing. I've seen in big projects what happens. I worked on a building where the stairs from the first floor to the second had been forgotten in the drawings. When the construction scaffolding was removed, it turned out." "Had you noticed yourself?" He paused a little at first. He didn't grasp my meaning. Then he waved his head and hands and said: "It wasn't my job. I was only supposed to execute."
............... That day, after arriving in the city, we went to the municipality and wrote the handover minutes. This time the mayor himself was, by bad luck, right behind his desk and was compelled to accompany us for the inauguration of the toilets and bathrooms and to thank us for delivering our work on time, so selflessly. Though it was apparent he was embarrassed at inaugurating a toilet and bathroom — however informally and without outsiders' presence. Only the enthusiasm of Nader who had recently returned from Europe tempered his suffering somewhat. So we all together inspected the products of our five-month nightmare, with all their visible patches, all their inevitable roughing-over, naked under the blazing sun of the end of Khordad. The familiar residents of the tents nearby — whose rubble had still not been cleared so that they could move their tents to their own plots — came alongside us to watch. They were happy and waiting for the municipality to quickly assign a watchman and allow them to use the bathrooms. This alone should have been enough to make us happy — but it wasn't. With my eyes I searched for the man who once, when the building was taking shape, had come out of the malodorous, wretched toilet beside the plot with a ewer in hand and said angrily: "What do we want with a toilet. The government should build houses for us." The man was not there — he had surely moved his tent to the rubble-cleared land of his house.
............. I put the tattered drawings, the receipts and handwritten contracts and progress reports written in crooked handwriting on scraps and pages torn from exercise books, into a folder. Now everything seemed strange to me: 4-inch siphon, 45-degree bend with 10, 4-inch No. 4 pipe, 45-degree 3-way,
90-degree elbow, 4-inch... Toilet pan, stainless steel sink, wall-mounted mixer, galvanized sheet, glass-wool with reinforced foil backing... I could keep two handwriting masterpieces from two contractors as mementos.
In the name of God. Dear project manager, with respect, I, the undersigned, Ali Mohammadi, hereby wish to inform you regarding the cutting of the trees next to the works, and request that you instruct the project contractor to remove the trees. With thanks, Ali Mohammadi.
In the name of God. With greetings. I, the undersigned, Naser Abbaszadeh, son of Khodabakhsh, hereby request that since the work I have started is not receiving necessary materials and the workers and master craftsmen are left idle, and since cement, plate 12 in 15 door and brick and cobblestone are needed on 11/1/83, we need 100 percent supply of materials as we wish to operate two work teams. With thanks, mason Naser Abbaszadeh.