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.