Sumera

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Persian

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A photographer once said: If your pictures are not good enough, you're not close enough.

We get off the car when we arrive at a desert in Karaj called Haft-joob. A lorry passes us by and we cough as it speeds past in a cloud of dust. We laugh as we cough and our laughter swells until it suddenly drops on our head. Ahmad is standing on the sand dune. When the dune subsides, he sees us from a long distance, waves his hand and runs towards us. As he gets closer, he moves his hand up as if he’s holding a ball. Nima says: ‘I don’t have a pump. I’ll bring you one in the evening, ok?’ Ahmad doesn’t know what ‘evening’ means in Urdu. He looks at him in bewilderment and gives him a faint smile. 

We have reached the pit where the tents are. Pit, is another name for the place where Ahmad and tens of other families live. Inside the pit the cold biting wind blows just as above; it penetrates into us and makes us shiver. Ahmad takes out a T-shirt and wears it on his shirt. He turns back, looks at us and smiles. Two men, each holding a doublet of a pair of shoes, are standing in front of and looking at each other in the hope that the other lets go of his doublet. The woman who’s standing beside me speaks Persian almost correctly. She holds my hand and whispers in my ear: ‘bring us pills.’ She shapes a circle around her belly and continues: ‘so that we can’t have kids.’ Her name is Manijeh. She says: ‘I’m from Karachi. When the flood came, I lost everything. Here is better, you are here, Iranians are very nice.’ Her clothes are colourful. She laughs heartily and says: ‘I warmed some water and washed myself.’ Then she suddenly says: ‘My two daughters are mute. Come and see them.’ I ask her where they are. She says: ‘Here, behind the tents.’ She pulls my hand and asks me to go with her. Everyone is busy doing something; Maryam is taking glucose test, Nima is talking to men and Bahar and I follow Manijeh to her tent. 

Behind the tent, two little kids are lying prostrate on clods of earth. I bend down and sit beside them. Manijeh shakes her head in regret and repeats: ‘They are mute.’ I’ve almost become nervous. Never has this word been my favourite. I say: ‘They are so small. Are they just mute or they’re deaf-mute?’ She says: ‘They’re not small but stunted. This one is four years old and the other three.’ Neither of them has socks on. The 3-year-old one can’t stand; she looks like an eight-month-old child. Manijeh points to her 4-year-old daughter and says: ‘Both suffer from extremely soft bones. Their neck bone is so soft they keep their head straight with difficulty.’ I look at the younger girl and I see a hole on her leg. I ask: ‘What is this?’

Suddenly the 3-year-old kid stares into my eyes. Her eyes are so full of fear and black that I can’t believe she is really 3 years old. I can’t believe the heaviness of this little child’s gaze. Manijeh says: ‘A few nights ago, a…a… (she says something in Urdu that I can’t think of its equivalent) came into the tent and took her between its jaws and pulled her out.’ She points to a place with her finger and continues: ‘it pulled her out on the floor until there.’ I ask: ‘what was it?’ She puts her hands behind her head as if they’re ears, then she takes a crawling pose. I ask her if it was a wolf. She shakes her head and says: ‘No.’ Nima has arrived, he hears the story and asks: ‘fox?’ Manijeh repeats slowly: ‘fox!’ She is hesitant. She thinks if what she wants to explain is a fox or another animal. She tries once again and says the animal’s name in Urdu. We all shake our head, we don’t know.

Before leaving, Manijeh says: ‘Her name is Sumera.’ She means the girl’s name; Sumera.

Maybe it’s better not to go behind the tents, easier I mean to go on with your life and keep the routine. Maybe it’s better always to stay in front of the tent; there is always something to do in front of the tent too. But what about the temptation to fly with wings of wax? Oh! The temptation to reach out to what’s behind the quotidian life, the temptation to get close…

After Nowruz, all the Pakistani tents in Haft-joob were pulled down. All of the people were sent back to Pakistan on bus or minibus. All of them went away, Ahmad, Manijeh and Sumera; but the gaze of the little girl behind the tent stayed there in the pit forever.

Their stories and the stories of Others

Persian
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Sometimes I get frustrated being sceptical about all the stories; but this is a truth. Those who survived just by secrecy and mistrust are for sure good storytellers. These people don't tell stories to impress us or to arouse our pity. These stories are told cuz they're a means of liberation, sometimes maybe the only lifeline. If little Setareh's mum doesn't tell the story of her drug addict husband, she may not walk comfortably in streets and live in her neighbourhood. The story of a drug addict husband can save her from perverted eyes, from harassment and from a dozens of other dangers. And maybe we never know if these stories are true or imaginary. Even if they are imaginary, as long as the teller and the listener believe them or are convinced of their existence, the stories are true.

If Maryam says that the two young men, accompanying her, are her brother and uncle, that someone stole their travel bag on the way, that they don't have any document, this is a true story; because Maryam believes it and if I believe it too, it becomes a truth. Because I am the only woman with whom she is in touch, Maryam asks me for money to buy sanitary pad; then she tells me she bought painkiller with the rest of the money. But what if later I realize she uses methadone? It's here that the line delineating the truth is lost. 

There are still other ‘what if’ questions. What if Maryam told her story till the end? What if others didn't suspect the truth of her story? What if Maryam didn't feel ill in the immigrant camp?
 

But sometimes the undefined truth will reveal itself to us, whether or not we believe it. Maybe it's because of this, that we cannot always believe our own stories. Someone might even question believing our story; and maybe it's then that the story changes. It is then that Maryam's story becomes the story of a drug addict girl who came from Iran to Afghanistan with two young men. We can't even know if Maryam is Afghan or not! We can't even know if she had a bag at first place to be stolen. We can't know what her relationship is to the two men accompanying her. We can’t even know if she has any identification card with her or any money for that matter. 

And so Maryam's story is only a bunch of unanswered questions. The complexity and bitterness of her story, forces Maryam to leave the camp. In truth, she is asked to leave because she believes in her story but others don't.

It is not possible to have the same understanding of two different stories or to have two standpoints to a common story. Others, who don't believe in Maryam's story, give credence to their own story: Maryam is lying. With clichéd and predefined reasons, the number of those who don't believe in Maryam's story, grows, but in my opinion, her story will not be believed because Maryam is a lonely woman; because she belongs to a class of society who has always been exploited, because this class has never spoken out and is easily condemnable; because Maryam is an immigrant and has never had any rights; she has always been downtrodden but has never ceased to believe in her own stories. 

Apart from all the predefined and clichéd convictions, how can we say that we don't believe in Maryam's story?