Dominique
By
Shahram Sheydayi
Translated Exclusively for Gallery Mamak
by
Mamak Nourbakhsh
You touch once and you don’t dare touch again.
‘Visiting hours are over.’
You touch her hands once, and only once, and then you have to close your eyes; this you actually do.
‘Outside, please, lady.’
You know you mustn’t look at her eyes, again something you don’t do: you don’t look.
The woman doesn’t leave. You know her and you know that she is crying. You don’t look at her but you know, you see. She doesn’t leave; two people are forced to hold her and pull her toward the door.
The woman has left and the guards have too.
Your feet and the legs of the chair are stuck to the ground otherwise you’d have been able to move. You’ve been sitting there for several years; right there.
You have looked from this side of the glass at her hands and you have wanted to touch, only once; and that only in your dreams…
‘All mariners are trash thinkers. All those who’ve sent anything to the sky are trash thinkers.’
‘Shut up!’
‘All those who sign any kind of petition are trash thinkers.’
‘I told you to shut up!’
‘All those who laugh and sing out loud, dance, read, go to the park, to the beach, to the museum, to exhibitions, to airports, watch TV, drive trucks, sit at desks, go to the shoe store, to the basement, to the ground floor, to the upper floors, in the airport, in the bus, in the metro, walk-- all of them…’
‘Shut up! I’m telling you, shut up! If you don’t, I’ll call for the guard.’
‘All those who are guards, officers, the soldiers who march, all the generals, the guards!’
___________________________________________________________________________
Number 5276 to another number, ‘poor sucker, each time his wife visits him he loses it.’
The guard takes Dominique outside. The mixed up number has got everyone thinking that he prefers to be called Dominique. He has asked all the other numbers to recognize Dominique and to call him by that name. He’s even written this name out on his shirt and his PJs. He’s also told everyone that Dominique ‘once had a rooster’.
They take Dominique to solitary. He has to stay there for three days.
He’s been sitting quietly on his bed for a few hours now. He lies down.
He wants it to rain outside.
It rains outside and he feels a pleasant rainy breeze.
‘Dominique! It’s raining outside!’
‘Now I enter the Tajrish Bazaar to do some shopping. No, I take a good look at the color of the vegetables, fruit and dates. Then I remind myself of the path I have to take to go back home. I say, I get in the cab. No, no, I hate taxi drivers. I’m still in the Tajrish Bazaar. Persimmons! I want to eat some persimmons—how many kilos?’
‘Two please. Half a kilo of parsley.’
‘We don’t sell in half kilos, sir.’
‘Dominique! Don’t say anything, you’ll just start a fight. It’s not important. The guy just doesn’t want to sell by half kilos, that’s all. Dominique, let go of the guy’s collar! He doesn’t want to sell!’
He’s now gotten up and is sitting on the bed. He’s pushing people away with his arms: ‘leave me alone, leave me alone! I’m not doing anything to anybody.’
The guard looks in through the peep hole. Upset, he shakes his head and lights a cigarette.
‘Dominique! ‘
Dominique turns his head toward the peephole. The guard passes the cigarette inside.
He gets up and takes it.
‘Where were you, Dominique?’
‘Tajrish Bazaar.’
‘Well, would you like to say something?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Why not?’
‘I got into a fight.’
‘I could see that. You wanted half a kilo of parsley and the guy wouldn’t give it to you. Give it up, Dominique. There are all kinds of people around.’
‘That’s not the problem.’
He hangs his head down.
‘That’s not it at all.’
He doesn’t talk.
He holds his head in his hands.
‘It’s just that I can’t describe it to myself any more. I just go a little ways and then I get into a fight. Can you understand that?’
Twenty minutes later the guard has left and there is no guard in the hallway.
Dominique has gone to the Tajrish Bazaar again. He’s taken hold of the walnut seller who has been sitting cutting up his walnuts by the scruff and he has lifted him off the ground. He’s shouting, ‘Dominique, tell me your real name!’
I have made a Dominique and the problem has become serious for me now. Actually it did rain that night. I opened the window and looked at the wall in front of me. I stayed there till the morning and I didn’t even know that it was possible to stay there all night.
I only thought of Dominique, only of him.
Several days have passed and yet Dominique’s presence is bothering me. This has never happened to me in any of my stories before.
There is a Dominique. There is a Dominique somewhere. I don’t know if it’s night or day for him right now. I don’t even know what time it is for him. I don’t know why his wife has been coming to visit him for two years or why he only looks at her hands. It’s been two whole years. They haven’t even spoken to each other in that time. This bothers me. There’s a guard who after all he’s seen and heard of Dominique still falls apart.
Dominique became so serious and real for me that I couldn’t take it.
I made a Dominique and I didn’t know, I really didn’t know, what to do with him.