Scooped Aubergines III

Scooped Aubergines III
As I said, the piece of land left from our garden on the other side of the new asphalt road became now no man’s land. One day, my father saw an old poor man building a little hut on it for himself and his young wife. My father saw red. His eyes always turned red whenever he took a bath and washed them with a kind of lard soap. A big cube of soap made from olive oil produced locally called Aleppo, Marseille or Castile soap. Sometimes he used the more prestigious Lux soap with the picture of a beautiful wild cat, I mean a woman, on its wrapped paper. The cube soap was as hard as stone you could easily kill people with it. One of my aunts who had a fiery temper was said to have hit her eldest son with it in anger. He was taken to hospital. No one however, wasted any words on the matter. This would have sent battalions of officers from the German Government Office of Youth Welfare to our house even if I gave my child only a little smack.

I often saw my father put some soap in his eyes or rub his whimpers with it as if to get rid of some disease. Nearly everybody had trachoma and my father used eye drops twice a day. He was not only sensitive about his health but was conscious about his diet as well. But I think his eyes were red because he was short-sighted. He refused to wear glasses, maybe because he was vain or thought glasses would ruin his eyes and increase his short-sightedness. To me, with glasses, he felt he was handicapped, not really a full human being. When you wore glasses people often belittled you and said laughing: Look he has four eyes but still can’t see well. This is what I experienced when I was doing my military service. My trainer told the others: He misses the target even though he has four eyes.

When I got my first glasses I saw my father relieved to see he was not the only one short-sighted, I saw him jump in happiness while pacing around on our living room carpet and talking to himself loudly. You could see him in his pyjamas every evening pacing the living room carpet. In summer he used to sit and walk in his white underwear as if he wanted to say: Look, my legs are white and without hair. He was very proud of his white legs. Sometimes he kept his shirt and tie on together with his pajama bottom. It relieved his psyche which was heavily burdened with complexes to see a teenager wear glasses. Going about without glasses made it difficult for him to watch TV or stay up late in the evenings. He got up with the sun and went to bed with the chickens. He also couldn’t see people s faces clearly when they passed by and greeted him, Doctors advised against wearing contact lenses due to hot and dusty climate.

My father was about to ask one of our illiterate relatives to go and push the old man with his hut down the gorge when my mother intervened the first time: If you killed the poor man his soul would haunt you all your life. Let him stay there. We wouldn’t be able to use it any way. The old man somehow heard about it and we could add a new enemy to the list.

My father was very fickle in what he believed in. One day he was a communist, the next day a nationalist. I think he didn’t believe in any of them. It all depended on how he felt towards people who belonged to those parties. His affiliation changed with his mood and people’s behavior. He held secret meetings in our house and when he was a communist he hung a big picture of the three famous heads: Marx, Lenin and Stalin who looked like holy prophets or Gods. Then he would replace it with the photo of one of the many patriots. Later he was to pay a high price for that. He was a primary school teacher and when people found out about his activities the government was informed. They transferred him to the south, to a place about 500 KM away from where we lived. I still remember the day he came home feeling miserable:They transferred only me but kept those with nepotism.

To be cotinued

Jamshid

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