The Shipwrecked Read Online Free Page A

so that they could go from one side to another. She was frightened. She searched for her grandmother’s voice. The voice was old and far away; the dead only stay in their place on Friday nights. On other nights, they are in the sea. And then a voice nearby, closer and more familiar, her mother’s voice consoling her so that she would not be afraid of anything. “There is still a long time left before the island empties, empties of residents. It is then that the dead will return to their homes and lives and settle down here. . .”
    Why should she be afraid? It must be Monday, and they were in the depths of the green waters, chatting andconfiding in each other. No one could hear them above the water, whatever they said, whatever they wrote, but Monday . . . Monday of what year was it? She stared into the darkness and listened. It sounded as if someone was struggling to climb up to the window. She looked. A pair of hands, thin and long and wrinkled from having been underwater for years, and then she saw Mr. Golestani who pulled himself up to his neck into the window frame.
    â€œYou’re still thinking about the cellar?”
    Disappointed, she looked at him and realized that Mr. Golestani had again come to say, “You are here, deep in the green waters, like the rest of us . . . you have been here for a long time, you must accept it.”
    MONIRU RAVANIPOUR is one of the most prominent writers of postrevolutionary Iran. She is the author of several distinguished novels, including Heart of Steel , Gypsy by Fire , and The Drowned . Her collections of short stories, Kanizu and Satan’s Stone , were translated and published in the United States. A former Brown University fellow at the International Writers Project, Ravanipour now lives in Las Vegas and is affiliated with the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada.

The Maid
    Goli Taraghi
    WHEN THE REVOLUTIONS CAME , those who worked for us simply got up and left, even Hassan Agha, the cook, who had been with us some forty odd years, and his wife, Zahra Khanum, who always swore we were the apple of her eye, and Morteza the Gardener, who at each prayer heartily blessed Father and everyone in the family—and even Nanny Karaji, who had grown old in our household and was an integral part of it.
    With the departure of the old cook, a part of our family history was wiped out—all those memories that involved him: Friday family luncheons, New Year’s charity dinners, the pleasing mix of aromas wafting from jars of tomato paste and preserves and condiments in the upstairs pantry, the soothing jangle of dishes and pots and pans, the magical taste of home-cooked meals, and the seemingly unassailable security of the kitchen. With him and Nanny Karaji leaving us, the Shah skipping the country, the uncles hastily migrating to far-off corners of the world, a neighbor’s house being confiscated, and ShamsolmukKhanum being accidentally “martyred,” a door was being closed forever on our past. It was the end of an era and the beginning of something new, something ambiguous, vague, unfamiliar. The logic of daily events escaped us, and history, like the onslaught of a foreign horde, swept away old customs and pillaged what was left with an assortment of unmatched pieces that did not fall into any recognizable patterns.
    Hassan Agha disappeared suddenly and surreptitiously—no goodbyes, no reasons or excuses for leaving. We thought he had been taken ill or—God forbid—had died in one of the clashes of the revolution. We could not imagine that he had left of his own volition until his sons turned up as local revolutionary-committee 1 henchmen and began sending threatening messages. Zahra Khanum, too shy and diffident for a face-to-face encounter, sent an emissary to let us know of the complaint she was filing against us with the authorities.
    We could hardly believe any of this. We should talk to Hassan Agha, we decided.