The publication of Memar 127 coincides with the sixth anniversary of Soheila Beski's passing. May her memory be honored. Mrs. Beski was a hardworking, punctual person who despised the expression "better late than never." During the years she managed Memar magazine and the Memar Award, she wrote hundreds of stories, some of which have been published. These cultural and literary activities did not prevent her from coming to the aid of her fellow countrymen whenever disaster struck our land. During the 2003 Bam earthquake, she organized a group of architects and coordinated the construction of a set of sanitary facilities in Bam — an urgent need of the earthquake survivors — and, as was her custom, completed the project "on time."
Months later, in a conversation unrelated to Bam, she suddenly said, "The Bam affair broke something inside me." Over the years, through her activities in various fields, she had become familiar with incompetent administrators and the prevailing spirit of dishonesty and plunder. Yet she had apparently hoped that in this national catastrophe, she would witness some mercy shown to Bam and its inhabitants. Alas, it seems that was not the case. Her short novel In the Tale of Building a Toilet in Bam is a report on "the Bam affair." The book is written as satire, and like all genuine satire, it expresses a grief that has taken this form to become bearable. The book's opening note follows:
Bam, 2003. Standing, fifth from right: Soheila Beski
We have the nature of love, hidden yet manifest / In the city of love we are hidden, in love's alley we are known — Rumi
Our tale begins with the occurrence of a calamity in a very, very ancient city — a city several thousand years old in a distant land, as if at the edge of the world, enclosed by an endless desert and legendary multicolored mountains: a thousand purples, a thousand browns, a thousand yellows — sometimes like the crumbling walls of ancient fortresses, sometimes like mythological creatures turned to stone. Under a high turquoise sky as clear as blue eyes, hidden among gardens and thousand-year-old trees reaching toward the heavens, appearing as if by magic in the heart of the desert. Beside the city, on a bare, treeless plateau, a miniature city of mud and clay several thousand years old, like the hem of the sky, had drawn itself upward — so magnificent and splendid that it was unbelievable for a city built of earth.
And the great calamity descended upon all of this at dawn on a Friday, in the final moments of a black, cold desert winter night that was about to fade before a day stealthily approaching from the shadows of darkness — precisely at that hour when the sleep of the slumbering grows deep and sweet, and stirring for the obligatory morning prayers becomes most difficult. When the true dawn broke above the thousand-year-old trees that still stood calm and steadfast, the city was no more. Everything on the ground had turned to dust at the foot of the sturdy trees, and it could have remained there — like the buried ancient cities — had it been another age. "The world's suffering and torment, though long it may be / With bad and good, will doubtless come to an end / We spend our journey on what is passing / Until the journey that does not pass arrives."