Read Online Missing Soluch by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi - Free Book Online

slid to one side on top of him. The pressure in his intestines was not quelled. It kept throbbing. Wind blew within his empty intestines. He had no strength left in him to move. But the pressure inside compelled him to do something. The notion occurred to him to rid himself of the bundle of wood, so he grasped the knot on his chest and with a motion opened it. The bundle loosened and fell to one side. Abrau became lighter. More vomit. Not just bile, this time also some blood. He quickly lifted a finger to hisear. No, the blood on his ear was caked dry. He didn’t want to believe that he had brought up blood. Drenched in sweat, he crawled on all fours into the house and dragged himself to the foot of the stove. The extinguished stove.
    In no time, a cold—the cold that he had, in his feverish state, forgotten—took hold of him, shaking him like an electric shock. Every part of his body shook. No one was there. No one was home: “Is there anybody here? Anybody?” His broken voice echoed back at him. He had to get up. He rose. With one hand on the wall, he stood, still shaking. Like a willow sapling in the wind. As if an earthquake was shaking him. His knees, shoulders, and waist all shook. It took a great effort to hold himself up against the wall. The house was dark, or … were his eyes going dark? He looked at the door. The night had filled the doorway. No, the house itself was dark. Nonetheless, he had to do something. The blankets were in a far corner. Staggering and groping, he made his way to them and, trembling, lifted one blanket over him. No, one wasn’t enough. Another. And one more. All of them, every blanket. But the sound of his chattering teeth continued. His teeth made the sound of hard candy shaking inside a tin. Something even he didn’t understand compelled him to let out a wail. A cry. Something to open the way for the pain. To open the narrow passage that any person in pain must keep open. Otherwise, if the pain cannot escape, it explodes. A cry, a drawn-out cry. As it ploughs through the heart. A cry that sounds as if it’s one hundred years of age, drawn from the veins and arteries, from the marrow of the bone. No, it is the veins and arteries, the marrow itself, that has transformed itself into this sound, this call, now pouring up through the throat. It is life itself. Life, pouring over thetongue, getting caught within the chattering teeth, seeking a way to ask for help, to seek succor.
    “Oh … mother …”
    These words, now being lost within the chattering teeth of this son, of Abrau, must be the first words a human ever uttered as a result of pain.
    Abbas arrived. Bread in hand, a morsel in his mouth. As he chewed, his eyes were stretched open more than even usual for him. He took the empty bundle from his shoulder and tossed it to one corner. With the loud voice of a man bringing home bread, he shouted, “Isn’t anyone home in this ruin?”
    Only Abrau’s trembling body shook the darkness of the room.
    “Why didn’t you light the goddamned lamp?!”
    Abrau couldn’t respond. Words lost their form beneath his teeth. Abbas grasped the wick of the lamp and a weak light broke the blackness of the room. Abbas still had the bread in his hand. He turned around and his eyes fell on his brother’s broken face that was visible wrapped among the blankets, and his sickly and fear-stricken eyes that were darting to and fro. Whatever blankets there were in the house were piled upon him, and with his small face and frightened eyes he looked like a vulnerable animal. Abbas, not thinking of what he was seeing, walked over to Abrau and, with a tone not bereft of violence, said, “So what’s happened? Why’d you go and dig yourself a grave like that?”
    Abrau didn’t respond. He couldn’t. He didn’t try, either. Abbas wasn’t blind; he could figure it out. He came closer and asked, “Why are your lips bloody? Did Salar get his hands on you again?”
    Abrau trembled and his teeth