Blackberries

Image courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Collections

Everything is in shambles. I try to fit the rusty old key into the lock, and it sticks when I turn it. I worry the door won’t open. The key slips from my sweaty, shaking hand. Chips of brown paint and dusty strings of spiderweb cling to my blouse. A cold wave of panic sweeps over me, down my arms and up my throat and across my face. In spite of all this, I realize that if by chance I’m unable to unlock the door, I’ll simply drive back home and nothing will have happened. My panic subsides. I draw in a deep breath, dry my hands on my trousers, and brush the paint and spiderwebs from my sleeves. I calmly turn the key and watch the door open.

The scent of my grandparents hits me: lavender, pine, and nettles. Their summerhouse, damp, cool, and dark, is like an abandoned museum. I manage to pry open one of the crooked wooden window shutters despite its rusty hinges, and shafts of light lance the room. Thousands and thousands of dust motes awakened by my entrance dance in the air. Now to find the switch box and the water valve.

“How are you going to manage?” I can hear Gorazd say, with his eyebrow cocked. “You know you can’t,” he would add, or my father would. “You’re such a klutz,” Gorazd would say, as always. “I’d better come along,” my father would say. “You’ll never be able to do this on your own.”

A cold wave sweeps over me again. I can picture my grandmother when she came here alone, or alone with me, because I don’t really count. I can see her big behind sticking out from under the sink and then her ruddy, pleased face when she turns the tap and watches the water run, as if it were a miracle.

I kneel under the sink and gingerly place a clammy hand on the valve, but for the life of me I can’t remember which way to turn it. I close my eyes and picture a hand turning a faucet, then tentatively turn my own to the right and feel the valve give. I rise to my feet and twist the tap, watching it tremble and splutter before gushing out its first jet of water in three years. I sigh with relief as the water flows down the drain, but now I have to find the switch box. I can see my grandmother go to the cupboard by the window and grab a wooden rolling pin, then hobble toward the entrance. I do the same and see the switch box high above the door. Snap-snap-snap. I can feel each switch give as I push the end of the rolling pin against them. My hands are still sweaty as I flick on the living room light: it works. I flick on all the light switches: everything is working; nothing is amiss. But it can’t be, I say to myself. Nothing is ever right. That’s just how it looks.

I pull the sheets off the couches. The dance of the dust motes in the light becomes even livelier as I plop myself down, wondering what I should do next. Everything needs cleaning, and I should go up into the attic to make sure there isn’t something dead up there. I should get rid of all these spiderwebs. I should replace the sheets with the ones I brought from home. God knows, the clothes in the closets must be rotting with mold.

“It’s an absolute mess there.” My mother’s voice flows through me. “It’s unfit to live in,” she says, reluctantly handing me the key to the house. My father is supposed to give it to me, but he’s angry I’m going. He and Mila are reading a picture book in the backyard, his way of showing me that he’s a better parent than I am.

“Everything is falling apart,” my mother adds, even though the key is in my hand. They are well aware that I always change my mind, and that whenever I do make a decision, I am left with painful doubts. And if they don’t like my choice, they make it hurt even more.

I remain silent as a first line of defense, something I’ve been doing ever since I was a little girl.

“You know what your father thinks,” she says. “On top of everything else, there isn’t anyone up there. You’ll be all alone in the mountains. You’ll freeze to death. What will you eat?”

“I’m thirty-three, and I’m a mother,” I remind her. Though I look frail and insecure, whenever I say I’m a mother, people take me more seriously.

My mother sighs. It’s summer, and they’re hoping they can have Mila longer. They want this because they think, among other things, that I’m not a good mother, considering all that’s happened to me.

“As you wish,” she says, while actually meaning the opposite.

“I’m off now,” I say, putting my arms around her. “I don’t want Mila to see me leaving.”

“I worry about you, sweetheart,” my mother says in a weepy voice, as if I were going off to war and not to a summerhouse in the mountains.

“Come on, Mom. I’m just going there to relax — to clear my head.”

“I know, honey. But why can’t you just stay here with us? It’ll be so much better for you. I’ll do all the cooking. And it’s clean here. No one has been up there in years. How in the world are you going to manage?” she asks with a troubled stare. “I feel so sorry for you.” I can feel her getting on my nerves.

“Okay, I’m off,” I say.

“You’re not saying goodbye to Dad?”

“He’s with Mila. Let them be.”

“As you wish,” she says.

I’m barely out the door when I call my friend Ilina. I often wonder how she puts up with me. She knows I rarely call unless I’m feeling insecure about something and want reassurance. Ilina is in a meeting. “I can’t talk right now!” she says in a loud whisper. “You should just go and call me when you get there!” Even this helps a bit. I repeat Ilina’s advice, which always starts, just like my parents, with “You should”: “You should go there on your own.” “You should be alone.” “You should learn to cope with what’s happened.” “You shouldn’t be afraid.” You should, you shouldn’t, you should, you shouldn’t.

I should learn to manage things and not be afraid, I say to myself. Okay, I’m managing. I egg myself on: the water and electricity are working; the windows and shutters are open; the sheets are off the furniture. But my bags are still in the hallway. And I don’t move. I only stare out at the fir trees slowly swaying left and right, like hands playing a waltz on a piano.

I turn my gaze to the framed photo next to the broken-down TV from the ’80s. The photo shows us seated for dinner in the yard outside. The table is a cornucopia of my grandmother’s specialties. My grandfather sits at the head of the table. He is grinning, and his gold incisor glitters in the sunlight. My grandmother stands beside him, proud, a smile on her face, looking grand in her apron. Her hands are resting on her hips, pleased at the thought of feeding the family. My mother has allowed my father to put his arm around her stooped shoulders. In his other hand is a tall, sweating glass of beer. My mother looks like she’s missing her left arm. A fork dangles from her right hand. She’s looking not at the camera but somewhere to the side. My brother is already absorbed in the food on his plate. He seems oblivious that we’re taking a family photo. I’m at the far end of the table. I look as if I’m trying to hide behind my brother, though I’m actually sitting in front of him. The sun in my eyes makes me look worried. My mouth is slightly open. I look frail and thin, as conspicuous as a half-starved street urchin. The fact is, every time I see that photo, I feel a wave of pity for myself.

Since long before Mila was born, I’ve often felt a kind of paralysis, a desire for everything to miraculously pass so that I can finally have a wish and desire of my own. I know I need to make myself do something, but I can’t imagine what. It’s all I can do not to call Ilina, so I repeat what she said: “You should go for a walk. Long walks are good for the mind. It’ll clear your head; it’ll be good for your body. You shouldn’t lock yourself up like this. You should be out in nature more.” You should, you shouldn’t, you should, you shouldn’t.

It’s that hour of the evening when the elderly step out for a stroll. I will watch them totter down the lanes and alleys, leaning on canes they have carved themselves. The children will have been out playing all day long. They’ll be scampering around the old men and women, hiding behind bushes or disappearing in the woods, their cries ringing out, now close, now far.

I step out onto the path in front of the house, peering up and down, but I don’t see a soul. None of the neighboring houses show the least sign of life. All their shutters are closed tight, their facades crumbling, their yards overgrown with weeds. Sani’s house is among the most derelict. The garden beds are a riot of ferns, goldenrods, and wild roses that litter the yard with petals. Tufts of weeds jut from cracks in the walls. Here and there a tiny fir tree has sprung from the earth, and in a corner grows a lush maple sapling. The backyard of the house leads into the forest. Along a steep trail, through tunnels of rustling beech trees, Sani would lead me to a clearing where blackberries grew rampant.

Sani had a younger sister, Andrijana, who was always clinging to us. Before going off to pick blackberries, Sani would chase her sister off, telling her she was too little to be tagging along, whereupon Andrijana would cry, and I would feel all grown up.

Sani always took the lead. She was fearless, fast, and nimble. Both of us were scrawny little things, but while I looked frail, Sani seemed strong and supple as a hazel switch. She moved through the trees like something feral, while I lagged behind, afraid of slipping on the patches of moss. She would leap over anything that came in her way, and if she happened to fall, she would spring up at once, as though she felt no pain. And she would plunge into the blackberry bushes just so. The first time I followed her, I did the same, for it seemed painless. The thorns drew blood, and I began to cry. I wanted to leave, but I didn’t know the way home and was afraid of wandering through the forest alone. As I stood there whimpering, Sani picked mouthfuls of the jet-black fruit, indifferent to the thorns scratching her skin. She finally turned for home, her lips and teeth purpled, her arms bleeding. I trailed behind her, still whimpering, though it wasn’t the thorns that hurt as much as the feeling that I wasn’t there.

The next time we scrambled up the forest trail, I told Sani what my folks had been saying about her family. I wanted to be the first to tell her, feeling this would add to my importance.

“Sani,” I said, “your parents are getting a divorce.” I didn’t even know what that meant.

She didn’t say a thing. She just pressed on into the woods.

“Your dad caught your mom in bed with someone else,” I said, though I didn’t know what that meant either.

“Fine,” she said.

We didn’t utter a word until we got to the blackberries. She plunged into the bushes again. “Want some?” she asked.

“I’m not really hungry,” I lied, pretending I was interested in a cluster of mushrooms whose caps I’d knocked over.

“They’re really good. You gotta come and try some,” she said several times, her mouth blackening. “Mmm,” she moaned, closing her eyes.

I went over and reached for a nearby blackberry and scratched my hand. This time I didn’t cry out, though I became afraid when the thorn wouldn’t give, pulling on my skin as if wanting to take it off. I placed the blackberry on my tongue and bit it. The sweetness hit the back of my ears and glided down my throat, and as it did, my whole body went sweet.

“I don’t know,” I said. “They’re not that great,” I lied, seeing how the other blackberries were deep among the thorns.

“As you wish,” Sani said.

Turning back, Sani said she wanted to go home and clean herself up. Her forearms were bloody with scratches. Her shirt was torn in several places, her lips and teeth dyed dark blue, her tongue black. There was a scratch under her left eye. We headed straight to the bathroom, and she began washing her arms. Whirls of pink water disappeared down the sink. Then her father, Chichko Krsto, barged into the bathroom. It was too small for the three of us. I leaned back toward the tub.

“Picking blackberries again, you little rat?” I’d never heard someone say that to anyone before. I tried to make myself smaller.

“Yes!” she snapped back defiantly.

Chichko Krsto slapped her hard across the face. She had to grab the sink to avoid falling.

“You little shit!” he snarled. “Look what you’ve done to yourself! Why don’t you ever listen? So, was it worth it?”

“Yes!” she shot back. “They’re delicious,” she added and stared him down. He slapped her again, and I fell back into the tub. Which is when Sani’s mother burst in. “What have you done to them!” she screamed, pushing him away and scrambling to help me up out of the tub. “Are you okay, honey? Are you hurt anywhere?” I nodded, trying my best not to cry. “You better go now, honey. Go home now,” Sani’s mother said, edging me toward the front door.

When I got home, I told my parents what had happened.

“Those people are batshit crazy,” my father grumbled.

“Insane,” my mother agreed. “Those poor girls,” she added.

“What do you expect?” my father said under his breath. “A nut and a nympho.”

The things grown-ups say in front of their kids, I think as I follow the old tire tracks оn the dirt path. Before Chichko Krsto hit Sani in the bathroom, he would come over and rail that he was going to kick Diana out. That he’d caught her fucking half the men she worked with. That he should’ve known she was into fucking. That he’d been so fucked over. “She’s a nympho, she’s sick in the head,” he’d bark, emphasizing the word sick. When Chichko Krsto used the word fuck too often, my parents would send me up to my room. But even from there I could hear every word.

The day after Sani got slapped, my grandmother hush-hushed me into the kitchen. “Come here, I have something for you,” she whispered. She showed me a plastic container brimming with blackberries that filled my eyes. “Open wide,” she said and placed a berry on my tongue. I closed my eyes. Nothing. Then a touch of sweet turned sour. I swallowed, but my body felt no sweetness. “Aren’t they good?” she asked. “Yes,” I lied. She beamed with pleasure, continuing to feed me with her glossy, wrinkled hands. I obediently opened my mouth each time. “Aren’t they tasty?” she would say each time she fed me one. “Very,” I lied again, knowing she’d bought them just for me.

Before bed, I asked my brother what a nympho was. He laughed at my not knowing. “A nympho is a whore. A woman who really likes to fuck.”

I can’t remember when Sani left, but after that summer, she never came back. For years I thought I was responsible for her not returning, and for her getting slapped, since I was the one who had told her about her parents getting a divorce. Later I heard from our neighbor Lenka, to whom Chichko Krsto had also raved about Tetka Diana being a nympho, that her parents actually did get a divorce. “A divorced man is a failure,” I overheard my father saying to my mother, “a man who’s failed at life.” “Those poor girls,” my mother kept repeating. “I’ve never met a girl as intelligent as Sani,” she often said. At times she would even call her hyperintelligent. And each time she did, I felt like rolling into a little ball. Which is why, years later, over dinner one night, I told them that Sani had become a travel writer, a lesbian, and an S&M enthusiast. “Well, with parents like hers, how could she have turned out all right?” my mother concluded. “She’s married to an older woman,” I added. “What the hell?” my father muttered.

What I didn’t tell my parents was that Oxford University Press had published two of Sani’s books, one a political travelogue on her adventures in Papua, the other an account of the S&M subculture in New York, which she had researched while working as a domme. I scoured the web for negative reviews and comments, but I couldn’t find a one. But I did find that she’d gotten both a Guggenheim Fellowship and American citizenship. I also found out that her wife was a renowned lesbian poet. They lived in Manhattan, and on a Texas ranch, and on the road.

I follow Sani on all the social media. At least once a month, I browse through her Instagram pictures, her Facebook posts, her political comments, and the countless updates of her glamorous life on Twitter. But of all the things that pain me, the pictures hurt most. In every one, Sani is clearly enjoying herself. And, oh yes, her name isn’t Sani any longer. It’s Alex, Alex Marr — from Markovska. Alex, then, is enjoying herself in all the photographs, in which she’s invariably half dressed. One side of her body is covered with tattoos of cacti and other thorny things. The other is the color of creamy sand. The down on her light brown arms is golden. Her teeth gleam in all the pictures — a double row of perfect tiles. Her hazel eyes match her complexion. I find a crumb of comfort in the fact that she’s not all that pretty, her nose a little flat, her cheeks rather chubby for someone as lean and supple as she is. Her beautiful body is always being touched by someone, passionately touched, with taut fingers sweetly sinking into her smooth skin. She is touched on her hips, her waist, her inner thighs, and the thorns adorning her strong body.

I, too, have photographs in which I am being touched. No one knows about them except Gorazd, but I’m afraid that one day Mila will see them, and that’ll be the end of me. They were made seven years ago, exactly nine months before Mila was born. I’m naked in all of them: pale white, with skin that has always been hidden behind clothing. I’m spongy, like “old mozzarella,” as Gorazd used to say, as if it were an endearment. In the first series he made, the morning-after pill is in the palm of my hand. “Look sassy,” he ordered. This was supposed to be another one of his “art projects,” all of which were utter failures. He called it “Documenting the Death of the Idea of Оur Child.” He also thought of calling it “How I Killed Us.” In the second series of photos he took that day, he made me stick my tongue out, with the pill ladled on the tip. Gorazd ordered me to stand with my legs spread, seductively tilting my hips forward. In the photos, my breasts hang like pears, my nipples so light that they’re barely visible. In the third series, Gorazd told me to sit on the bed. He put the camera on auto, kneeled down on the mattress, and towered over me. He made me open my mouth with the pill still on the tip and spat on it, then commanded me to swallow. He yanked my hair, pulling my head back. With his other hand he squeezed my right breast and pinched the nipple. Breathing heavily, he tilted his head as if to kiss me and then stuck his tongue out. He then forced his hand between my thighs. This is how it always was. At first I would feel a fire there and a sweetness beneath my tongue, behind my ears. The feeling that I was burning, but I never burned up. He grabbed my head again and shoved his penis in my mouth. The camera clicked on for twenty minutes or so, which was the time it usually took him to come. First soft, then hard, soft, then hard again, he bucked relentlessly. I never saw the photographs, but I must have looked an awful mess. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t let me. I could barely breathe. He slapped my hands away, grabbed me by the hair, and stuck his penis in my mouth again. He bucked and panted like a horse being broken while his sweat rained down on me, mingled with my tears, snot, and spittle. It was all I could do not to gag. But when he thrust it deep down my throat, gripping my head with both hands, vomit spewed out my nose and the sides of my mouth. Only then did he let me go. I scurried to the window and threw up again. He laughed all the while, which was better than him getting angry. He told me to come back and wipe myself clean with the sheet. Then he ordered me to lie down and open my mouth. He kneeled over me again and jerked on his penis until he ejaculated in my mouth and told me to swallow it.

I had vomited up the morning-after pill. It crossed my mind even then that this might have happened, but I didn’t have the strength to reenact the “Death of the Idea of Our Child,” because I knew he wanted to get me pregnant. He came inside me intentionally, knowing he shouldn’t have, knowing I didn’t want it. He knew I was applying for a graduate scholarship in the UK. Knew that I might have become something.

I finally come to the forest spring where Sani and I used to fetch water. Sani drank directly from the stream. I was afraid of the water touching my face. This is where my grandparents would collect water for cooking and cleaning. The water was never as cold coming from a plastic jug as it was flowing in the stream. It didn’t taste as good either. Sani would take off her shoes and dunk her feet in. “It’s so cold!” I’d cry out. “It’s cold at first, but then it gets good,” Sani would say. “This water is always flowing. You can put your feet in and still drink it.”

I take off my shoes and dip my feet. I shudder from the cold at first but then feel warm all over.

Alex Marr — I often google the name. I get thousands of results. I then type in mine, Ivana Petrova. There are many Ivana Petrovas. One is a female weightlifter. A journalist or two. There’s Ivana Petrova the lawyer, and a cosmetician who goes by that name too, and yet another who trades women’s wigs. I am none of those Ivanas. I am not on the internet. I am nothing. Maybe I could have been something. Maybe. If I had gotten another pill and taken it. If I had left.

I’m beginning to grow cold again, so I lift my feet out of the stream. I haven’t called Mila. I haven’t called my parents to tell them I’ve arrived, that I’ve “managed.” The very thought of calling them gives me the feeling of having a hair ball in my windpipe. All I want to do is lie down on the moss beside the water and stay there.

I find my way out of the woods and make my way home. Though the sun is sinking below the horizon, I haven’t seen a single person, much less a child, but then two elderly women appear on the path before me. They are dressed like the old ladies of my childhood: long, knitted, sleeveless brown sweaters; tubular skirts; dark knee-length stockings; and leather sandals. One of them has her hands clasped behind her back. The other woman — older, smaller — leans upon a cane in her right hand while bracing her left upon her hip. They are silent as I approach.

“Good evening,” I say.

“Good evening,” they reply, and stop. The older one squints at me. She seems familiar.

“How are you?” I ask, not knowing what else to say.

“We’re fine, managing somehow,” the older one says. “And you — which house are you staying in?”

“That one there,” I say, pointing with my chin.

“Aren’t you Andon’s granddaughter?” she asks. “You don’t remember me?”

Over the years, I’ve learned to stop feeling guilty for not remembering the grown-ups of my childhood. But I do remember this woman. We used to play with two of her grandchildren who were just a bit older than Sani and me.

“Tetka Rada?”

“Yes, yes.” She nods with a contented smile. “It’s been ages since I’ve seen you here!”

“Ah,” exclaims the other woman, “Andon and Gorica’s granddaughter! We would come for coffee.”

“Gorica made such delicious pies,” Tetka Rada says.

“Oh, and the sweets she baked,” the other woman adds.

“Those were the days. And now you see us all grown old and ready to leave the world,” Tetka Rada says. Her blue irises sparkle between her wrinkled, nearly lashless eyelids.

“Andon and Gorica left us a long time ago, may God rest their souls,” says the other, crossing herself.

“The future is yours, child. It is now your turn,” Tetka Rada says, straightening herself.

“But look, look around, there’s no one here,” the other woman says. “No one comes anymore. And everything is falling apart. It’s just the two of us old biddies and a few other women who wander through the neighborhood like ghosts.”

“The times have changed,” I say, beginning to sound like them.

“There are no children anymore,” the other lady says, sighing. “We’re going to die out.”

“What are your folks up to?” Tetka Rada asks.

“They’re fine; they’ve just retired.”

“And your brother?”

“He’s in Germany.”

“He’s managed, then,” the other lady says. “It’s better there now than here,” she adds. “So, are you married? Do you have children?” she asks as they glance toward my ringless finger.

“I have a seven-year-old daughter.”

“So why don’t you bring her along? There’s another child further down the road. They could play together, get fresh air.”

“The place used to be full of children…” Tetka Rada says, looking around disappointedly. “You used to run around, making a racket, causing all kinds of trouble. You’d sneak into the house to steal chocolates.”

“I stole your chocolates?” I say, feeling offended.

“Oh yes,” Tetka Rada says with utter certainty. I can see she has no intention of offending me but is just poking fun. “You always figured out where I hid them, and ta-da! You’d slip right in and steal a handful. You’d even steal for your friends. You little fox!”

Her companion laughs.

“Well, I’d better be getting along,” I say. “I’ve got work to do.”

“How long are you staying?” Tetka Rada asks.

“I don’t really know,” I reply. And I really don’t.

“We hope you stay for a while,” the other woman says.

“Yes, stay,” Tetka Rada says, chiming in. “And do come by for coffee.”

I leave with the contented thought that I had once stolen chocolates, though I find it difficult to believe. First of all, I don’t like chocolate. And second, I’ve never stolen a thing in my life. Third, I think I would have remembered something like that — or someone else would have. As I open the gate into my overgrown garden, I realize with great disappointment that maybe it was another girl who stole her chocolates.

Soon the sun will set behind the mountains. I take out one of the folding chairs Andon and Gorica used to relax in while they drank glasses of wine and watched the colors change and disappear with the sun. They’d listen to the sounds of the forest — the chirping of birds and crickets, the rustling of unseen creatures in the foliage, of frogs and hedgehogs in the grass, of the imagined movement of foxes and bears. I find an old wine bottle in the cupboard above the sink. I take one of my grandmother’s ancient, chipped glasses and pour myself a drink, then sink back into the chair as the sun colors me orange. I know I’ll have to call my parents soon and talk to Mila before she goes to bed. I take out my phone and lay it on the low concrete wall beside me. Even now, I can hear the conversation in my head.

“Hey there, how are you guys doing?” I will ask, as if casually.

“We’re fine,” my father will reply. He won’t say, “How is it up there?” Because that would be his way of begrudging my decision.

“How’s Mila?” I will ask. “How’s she doing?”

“Mila? Amazing! What do you expect when she’s here with us?! Pssssss.” He will let out a disparaging whiz from between his teeth, as if to say, “Well, of course. She forgot about you ten minutes after you walked out the door.” I do my best, since I’m the only parent she has left, but she is already forgetting about me now and will no doubt forget all about me in the future.

Being forgotten happens to me all the time. Even Gorazd has forgotten me, for the most part. He hasn’t forgotten about those photographs or, rather, about me in those photographs, photos he would bring up every time I asked him for the child support he never paid. Now he lives with some Gordana. I don’t know her. I only feel a malicious pleasure that I’m not the only one who makes mistakes. He never calls Mila. It’s as if she doesn’t exist. If she asks about him, I tell her that her father is a busy man, always traveling.

I once heard her talking to the neighbors’ daughter, who’s a bit older than Mila.

“You got a dad?” the little girl asked.

“I do,” Mila replied.

“So, where is he?”

“He’s traveling,” Mila said. “He’s a sailor.”

“Which sea?”

“The Atlantic Sea,” my daughter answered.

I wanted to call my parents and ask if they’d ever talked about seas and oceans with Mila, but I knew I’d have to explain why I was asking. I don’t need to add to the guilt I feel whenever I see that she is as scrawny as I used to be — her limbs as frail as а dragonfly’s wings, her eyes slanted and heavy lidded like Gorazd’s. And wearing that look of his that meant reproach and contempt, though I’m not sure yet what it means in Mila.

My phone is still on the concrete banister beside me next to the wine glass. I hear women’s voices — a clatter of cries and chiming laughter. I rise unsteadily to my feet and see that there is a group of women in Sani’s yard. One of them is thrashing the rampant weeds and ferns with a stick, attempting to clear a path. Three other women stand under the balcony, helping Sani climb up. She eases her way over the rail and rattles the shutters to the entryway. “It’s no good. I can’t get in!” Sani cries. The woman fencing with the ferns looks up. “No way, huh?” she asks in English. Sani shakes her head. The women help her climb back down, and they leave together through the newly beaten path. “Watch out for nettles!” one of the women warns. “Too late,” another replies. They straddle the fence and disappear somewhere down the road. I’m still half out of my chair, wondering if I should go after them. While I’m thinking, I hear the babble of women’s voices, and now I see them all standing at my gate. They’re waving. “Hey! Hello!” they call. I wave back, gesturing for them to come in, because my legs are shaking.

As they climb down the stairs leading to the balcony, I rise to my feet, straightening my skirt. I become aware of my greasy hair, my hairy legs. I’m so stunned at their sudden appearance that I blurt out a loud hello. I try to keep my eyes off Sani. The first woman to step onto the balcony is older than the rest.

“Hello,” she says. “Ivana, is that you?” And I recognize Tetka Dijana, Sani’s mother. “Yes, it’s me. Dijana?” She nods. Sani reaches out her hand.

“How are you?” she asks, but I can tell by the look in her eyes that she doesn’t remember who I am. She looks at me the way celebrities do, or people who have been around the world, or teachers who no longer remember their students: an empty, albeit polite stare.

“Hey, Sani, haven’t seen you in ages.” The words tumble out of my mouth.

“Yes, yes,” she replies, still making an effort to place me.

“Here’s Andrijana — you remember her?” Tetka Dijana says, pointing at Sani’s younger sister. I shake hands with a fairylike creature who has long blond hair and a porcelain complexion.

“Wow, Andrijana, I haven’t seen you since you were a little girl,” I blurt stupidly, realizing that Sani was a little girl when I last saw her too.

“And these are our friends from America,” Sani says, then introduces me to the woman who was battling the weeds in the yard, a silver-haired woman in a lumberjack shirt, faded gray jeans, and square sunglasses with metal rims. She stands aside, examining the green buds of a hazelnut tree.

“This is Lenna. Lenna, say hi to Ivana,” Sani says in English. “Hi, Ivana,” says Lenna with a crooked smile. Lenna must be the poet, Sani’s wife. Sani knows my name, I say to myself. Or else she just heard it from her mother.

“And this is Ashley,” Sani says, pointing toward a dark, sinewy, tattooed young woman in a sleeveless white shirt and blue jeans. Ashley extends her hand.

“Sani and Andrijana are visiting, so we’re traveling around a little,” Tetka Diana tells me.

“Is that so?” I say, pretending I don’t know that Sani lives in the States. “Do you live overseas?”

“I live in America; Andrijana lives in France.”

“My brother lives in Germany,” I add, just to say something. The rest of the women smile politely.

“Are your parents well? Oh, I heard your grandmother passed away,” Tetka Dijana says.

“They’re fine,” I reply. “They’re in Skopje. Yes, my grandmother left us a few years ago.”

“Have you seen Krsto?” Sani asks, pointing with her chin toward their house.

“No, but I haven’t been up here for quite some time either.”

“It looks run-down, like he hasn’t been coming around. We tried to get inside. No way,” Sani says.

“You and Sani were such great friends when you were little! You played together all the time,” Tetka Dijana says.

“Yes,” Sani says, as if beginning to recall. “We had great times together. So what brings you up here now?”

“Not much. Just came to unwind.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Attagirl,” she says, as if I have done something extraordinary. “There’s no one around, and it gets kind of eerie at night. But it sure is beautiful up here. Just smell this air. And look at that view.” She turns her head toward the sun as her skin glows golden. Her tawny irises soak up the rays, which illuminate her slinky body through her white linen dress.

“Hey, what’s this?“ Lenna calls out from behind the hazel tree. Ashley joins her, and Andrijana and Dijana follow.

“Remember how we used to go pick blackberries?” I ask Sani, now that we are nearly alone. “Or, rather, you’d pick them, not me.”

“Blackberries?” Sani asks, looking blankly at me. “Oh, right! There were blackberries around here!” Clearly she didn’t remember a thing.

“Come on, I thought she’d actually seen something interesting,” I can hear Andrijana saying from behind the hazel tree. “They’re just a bunch of mushrooms. Hey, Sani, what kind of mushrooms are these?” She throws one at Sani, and it flops at my feet.

“I have no idea.”

“They’re just mushrooms,” someone says in English.

“Are they magic?” Lenna asks, pretending she’s going to put one in her mouth. The others giggle. Again their chime of laughter.

“I remember you and me going down to the forest stream,” Sani says. “So I wanted to take them there, but the path from my house is overgrown. How do we get there? I can’t remember anything. I have the memory of a goldfish.” She laughs.

“Just go down the stairs and take a left on the path.” I look at her tattoos as I speak. All those thorns, all those plants tattooed on her skin, are from some desert overseas. Not a thorn from the forest here.

“Great,” Sani says. “I guess we better get going, dip our feet in the water, and take off. It’s getting dark.” She turns toward the others. “Hey, let’s go,” she says in English. “The sun’s going down.”

“Oh, but I’ve been such a bad host, not offering you something,” I say, trying to keep them from going, though I’m not sure how. “Not that I have anything to offer you, except to share this bottle of wine.”

“We want to leave before nightfall. We left the car down by the main road. But hey, yeah, let’s have a sip,” Sani says, picking up the bottle of wine. “Vino, anyone?”

“Vinooouuu,” Ashley says, eagerly approaching.

“Wait, let me get some glasses,” I say.

“Forget that,” Tetka Dijana says. “Let’s drink straight from the bottle.”

“You go first,” Sani says, handing me the bottle.

“Nazdravje,” I say, smiling. “Nazdravje!” they all cheer, Ashley and Lenna too. I take a couple of swigs and pass the bottle to Sani. We’re all laughing.

“Let’s see if someone spills any wine on themselves,” Andrijana says, since we’re all wiping our lips. We do several rounds, and Tetka Dijana gets the last drop.

“Well, cheers to you, girl!” she says, giving me a firm embrace and then planting a loud smacking kiss on my cheek.

“I’m so glad we saw each other,” I say, hugging everyone in turn.

“It’s so nice to have met you,” Ashley says. Lenna holds my head between her hands and kisses my nose and forehead. Sani is the last to say goodbye.

“You have no idea how happy I am to see you,” she says, embracing my waist with one arm, my shoulders with the other. I give her a strong, clumsy hug back. She’s like a warm, smooth stone.

“Me too. And to think I just got here,” I say. “It’s all like a dream.”

“Well, this place is a dream,” she says, her hand lingering in mine as she walks away.

“Goodbye, honey!” Tetka Dijana calls out.

“Goodbye, Ivana!” Lenna calls, taking a mushroom from a pocket and throwing it in the air. Ashley blows me a kiss; Andrijana waves both hands. I wave back, blow kisses, my laughter ringing in the air.

They vanish among the trees. The air and sky grow cold, but I feel warm. I sit and watch the houses and the trees change their complexions as the colors dim and the shadows thicken. A fleck of light flashes down below on the road. And another. And still more. Fireflies fill the little path to my yard. Then I hear the echo of the women’s laughter and the flurry of their footsteps. They run among the fireflies, waving as they pass. I wave back, calling goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

The Invisible War

Illustration by Anne Le Guern

برای نسخه ی فارسی مقاله به این لینک مراجعه کنید

An icy wind slaps my face as I step onto Rahahan (Railway) Square, one of Tehran’s busiest transit hubs. I walk by a grass field next to a rectangular pool; the train station, a wide marble building with lengthwise windows like multiple eyes, stares at me from the other end. As a child during another war — between 1980 and 1988, between Iran and Iraq — my family’s journey home, after summertime visits to relatives in Tehran, began from this place; I’d carry our bag of chicken slaw sandwiches as we ran to catch the train back to our hometown in southern Iran, where battle raged at the border. Today I pass a young trash picker, maybe thirteen, pulling himself out of a garbage bin. A mother is squatting with a child in her lap, her face covered by her navy scarf and her hand held up for alms.

It is January of 2021, and Iran’s third COVID-19 wave has just plateaued. For months now, I’ve been trying to write a story about what it has been like for a country to experience US sanctions and a pandemic at the same time. There has been an invisible war on my country throughout my lifetime. And then there came a disease. Even as we fought live during a pandemic, we were already ravaged by an unseen conflict. Two chaoses merged.

Today, I am looking for people who were first in the line of fire. I’ve come to the train station to meet Ms. Alizadeh*, a forty-four-year-old technician at the neonatal intensive care unit of a nearby hospital.

We see each other and say hello behind our masks. She has milky-white skin and eyes the shape of eucalyptus leaves, oval and elongated. She wears a green flower-print scarf pinned at the chin under her black chador. I’ve met her at the hospital before and know she moved to Tehran a decade ago, from a village five hours away.

When her only child was two years old, her husband was diagnosed with a chronic illness that left him unable to work, and Alizadeh became her family’s sole breadwinner. “On some days, I had nothing to feed us but dry bread and water,” she remembers. Alizadeh had to quickly devise a plan out of hunger. She looked for work at the hospital, starting out on the cleaning staff. It was immense physical labor, but it also meant that Alizadeh could afford to feed the three of them. “My money then had barkat (blessings); I could stretch it to pay for our needs,” she says.

This is no longer the case. Less than a year after the US government restored sanctions against Iran, in 2018, food prices soared. Alizadeh had to cut down beef consumption to a single kilogram a month. She chopped it into pieces the size of peas, which she put into stews. Alizadeh ate the broth and gave the meat to her husband and child, who “needed the nutrients,” she says.

They were experiencing what the economic analyst Yar Batmanghelij calls “the weaponization of inflation” — an inflation forced upon people in countries under economic blockades. Sanctions have been suffocating Iran’s sources of revenue, devaluing our currency and strangulating our economy. The most immediate impact on the street is soaring prices.

Around the same time, Alizadeh started feeling “immense joint and muscle pain, as if my body was hollow and I would collapse to the ground.” Walking and even breathing became difficult. After multiple doctors and rounds of testing, she ended up in an oncologist’s office. He told her that she had cancer. The chemotherapy normally recommended was now off limits. It was made in the European Union, and because of American sanctions, official imports had stopped altogether, and therefore, insurance companies had stopped covering it. Sanctions on Iran are extraterritorial — they prohibit non-American businesses from trading with Iran — and Alizadeh’s prescription was now a black-market commodity; one dose would cost years of her salary. For weeks she assumed she would die of her illness without a chance at chemo. But Iranian pharmaceutical companies routinely develop domestic alternatives to foreign drugs. The doctor found her a substitute that was covered by insurance. She was relieved — so much more briefly than she expected.

And then, March of 2020. A twenty-nine-year-old nurse at the hospital where she worked died of a mysterious new illness. Alizadeh wanted to flee; she knew that catching it might leave her child an orphan, and her exposure was excessive: a two-hour commute on crowded subways and buses to then work in a hospital that could only provide surgical masks and latex gloves in limited numbers to employees. Her job could lead to her death, but without a job, she and her child would surely die anyway.

And so she continued to teach mothers how to breastfeed, even as they waited for their PCR tests. She had to iron the masks and reuse them. She visited the hospital lab multiple times a day, walking past patients waiting for their COVID test results.

I ask how she has kept herself together. She says she has been driven by a conviction: “God would allow me to care for my child.”

Alizadeh’s shift is beginning soon, so we start walking to the hospital. We pass women, men, and children asking for money or food. She stops to give money to a woman whose children are selling sheets of poetry. Despite her meager earnings, she makes donations to charity every week, recording them in her monthly budget notebook. “I remember when there were hardly any beggars in this neighborhood,” she says. “That’s why I give. There is such a narrow space between being able to live on the pride of one’s own work and being left to the streets.” She speaks with icy eyes and tight lips.

At the hospital entrance, she invites me inside for tea — a warm, fragrant cardamom tea with poolaki, a very thin, coin-like piece of candy infused with saffron and dried lime. In a white marble hall, we sit at a table next to four other nurses who are discussing a mother with opium addiction. We women — the nurses, Ms. Alizadeh, and I — sit facing the babies in incubators — a new generation born to this war.

All the women in this room have lived two wars now. The Iran-Iraq War of 1980–1988 was the backdrop of our childhood. The second war, which is perhaps more accurately a continuation of the last one, has no name. I call it a US-led war on Iran. To show it to you, I need to go back to before I was born — to 1979, the year a revolutionary movement overthrew Iran’s last monarch.

The king’s country was a friendly US client state where American military officers enjoyed diplomatic immunity, Henry Kissinger smoked hookah as a belly dancer frolicked around him, and the blond, blue-eyed model Lauren Hutton strutted on the ancient stone columns of Persepolis for Vogue. Then, in 1979, Iran was reborn — into a nation indignant about its place as the playground of empire. Iran’s revolutionary movement toppled the king and, when the US government gave him refuge on US soil, took Americans in Tehran hostage.

On the cover of Time, Iran’s leader was caricatured as a devilish cleric with red, sinister eyes. The Joker was chosen to represent Iran at the United Nations in an issue of the comic book Batman. Iran’s uprising would quickly solidify her into an evil nemesis. Sanctions — global economic blockades — became the primary American weapon against us.

Manu Karuka calls sanctions “imperialist siege warfare.” This economic war is waged on weaker countries by the world’s most powerful financial and military powers. The sanctioning economy is up to four hundred times larger than that of the target, argue Davis and Engerman. Sanctions appear to have no consequence for the imposing side yet devastate the livelihood of nations on which they are inflicted. Nicholas Mulder writes that sanctions “put a country on the road to social collapse.” In postrevolutionary Iran, this descendant of the medieval siege has been refined on the bodies of Iranians.

Ms. Alizadeh fought for her life throughout the Trump years, when Iran’s financial strangulation was led by the most unhinged American administration to date. Just as Trump reneged on the nuclear agreement that had given Iran some sanctions relief, he restored past sanctions and added new ones, vowing to bring “Iran’s oil to zero.” Oil exports are Iran’s main source of revenue; they dove from two million barrels per day in 2016 to two hundred thousand in 2019. In his memoir, Trump’s second secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, brags that “from 2017 to 2020, Iran’s GDP sank from $445 billion to $192 billion.” Iran’s working-class people, like Alizadeh, are always first to feel the blow of each sanctions regime: recession, inflation, and shortages, and all at once.

The US president reinforced the blockade with tweets of carnage and threats of military force. Sanctions and psychological warfare are intricately interlinked. The siege amplifies its immensity with threats of military force, which can materialize into total war. A day after ordering the assassination of Iran’s top general, Trump tweeted: “Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.”

We had experienced this under previous American presidents, including Barack Obama. He, too, put “all options,” including military onslaught, on the table. Four years into his presidency, in 2012, Obama tweeted his vice president’s boastful words about their administration’s sanctions: “These are the most crippling sanctions in the history of sanctions. Period.” Richard Nephew, Obama’s principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy, described sanctions as “pain” deployed on the “tendons, ligaments, and joints” of the “Iranian body economic.”

On the bodies of the sick, like my father, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2013, Obama and Nephew’s war was felt with minute precision. His chemotherapy was dispensed under strict protocols at a central public drugstore. My mother, brother, or I spent hours in line for each prescription; we met people from across Iran waiting for a plethora of drugs. If my father’s chemotherapy regimen turned out to be unavailable, we chased alternatives or treatment plan changes, rushing in loops from doctor to drugstore and back. We spent full days on the phone and at the insurance office trying to sort out our co-pay because of price increases. The hospital faced a nursing shortage, as well as wear and tear across the building, so my brother washed our father in the nephrology ward’s one working bathroom.

My father died of cancer while his country was under an economic blockade. The impact of sanctions would only be exacerbated in the years after, by the compounding sanctions regime and by COVID. Economist Djavad Salehi Isfahani writes that the pandemic “caught Iran at its weakest economic state since the end of the war with Iraq three decades ago.” He directly attributes the economic weakness the sanctions created with thousands more COVID deaths than would have happened were Iran not under sanctions.

Fatemeh Mohammadi-Nasrabadi, a scholar at the National Nutrition and Food Technology Research Institute, brings it back to the body. “Sanctions are making Iranians sicker,” she tells me, “by inducing malnourishment and limiting access to medical care. The pandemic has made it worse. Yet there is no system” — in Iran or anywhere else — “for tracking and tracing sanctions’ casualties.”

And so it is left to Iranians like Mohammadi-Nasrabadi to piece the picture together. One in three Iranians was living below the poverty line in 2019, a year after the US sanctions were reinstated, according to a report by the newspaper Donya-e-Eqtesad (World of Economics); the report attributes this to the high rate of inflation. Researchers Jalal Hejazi and Sara Emamgholipour found that food insecurity increased dramatically between 2017 and 2019 in urban and rural areas — a result, they conclude, of the economic vulnerability the sanctions caused. Since 2019, meat and fruit consumption have nearly halved; chickpeas, historically a staple food of the Iranian peasant, jumped in price by 112 percent in 2021 alone.

Iran’s health-care workers are key witnesses to the compounding impacts of hunger, medical shortages, and COVID. I had been following their tribulations in the hospital since 2018, when the sanctions sparked a new pharmaceutical crisis. Relatives and friends were suddenly calling contacts at drugstores to find medicine. Tweets pleading for help finding pharmaceuticals were retweeted hundreds of times. By 2021, the pharmaceutical crisis had become a care crisis — one that swallowed patients and care workers alike.

Dr. Foroughi is a doctor of internal medicine. As soon as the first suspected COVID-19 cases were announced, he volunteered to be on a team of frontline workers in the COVID ward. Dr. Foroughi’s wife is immunocompromised. They have two children, who were four and six when the pandemic began. To protect them against COVID, he lived at the hospital.

We speak in 2021. I ask him if, in those early days, he was afraid of dying and leaving his family. He says that both he and his wife were unafraid; that he couldn’t have made this decision without her support; that they both felt a patriotic call. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give meaning to one’s life by standing on the front line for our homeland,” he says, comparing himself to the volunteers in the Iran-Iraq War. But this time he saw his country up against enemies that were “hidden” — both the virus and the global pressure piling up on Iran before COVID, which he had seen greatly jeopardize the health-care system.

“We were used to pharmaceutical shortages, but after Trump it was a whole new level of scarcity,” he explains. And not only of medicine, he stresses. The hospital itself — its brick, mortar, and equipment — was in “slow demolition.” A malfunctioning CT scanner or MRI machine might take months to repair, delaying testing and treatment. But for him, material scarcity was not as devastating as the deterioration of the life of Iran’s health-care force. This, he tells me, is how sanctions “hollow out” a health-care system: “How can you expect a nurse or technician who shows up to work hungry to do their job?”

Sara Karimi*, the head nurse of an intensive care unit, has been a witness to the unraveling of Iran’s health-care force. I am visiting her for a second time at her home in March of 2021. She sits on the kitchen floor cross-legged, in a tank top and flowery maxi skirt, picking out stems of herbs. She’s making lamb curry with herbed pilaf for her colleagues. Washing blood and goo from glossy pink pieces of lamb shank, she points to the bag it came in, which includes some chicken and shrimp. “One and a half million tomans [$50] for this,” she says. “My monthly salary is eight million,” which was worth about $300 at the time. Her father, a developer, is able to supplement her income; and yet. Her alert black eyes flash kindness and anger at once.

Karimi has been working for twelve years. When she started, her colleagues were middle-class people, she says, with “decent” material well-being. It was in more recent years, “even before the pandemic,” she tells me, that things began to change. When I ask her to explain what they’ve experienced on the job, she mentions shortages — not only of medicine but of IV fluid and heparin locks, of hospital equipment that breaks down, of salaries that arrive late.

Karimi says that “in the last few years” her colleagues have been taking home hospital meals, provided to them on shifts for free, because of tightening food budgets. They moved farther south or west of Tehran, the only places where they could afford rent, and commuted three to four hours a day. She reiterates what I have heard from other nurses; she has seen her colleagues “get poorer and poorer.” When she recounts the timeline, it follows the one described by Alizadeh: the worst began in 2018.

The same socioeconomic descent was taking place in the lives of teachers, park janitors, and taxi drivers. But hospital workers then faced more extreme exposure to COVID. “We watched people die in scores in front of our eyes,” Karimi says. She lost her brother as well as several close colleagues.

Now, she says, nurses are “fleeing” — immigrating. COVID has made them highly sought after by the Global North and Persian Gulf countries. She mentions a nurse practitioner who works at three hospitals to make ends meet and has burned out under pressure. “It’s gotten to a point where he doesn’t give a damn about who lives and who dies; the dead become just a number.” She says this while describing how meticulously nurses must watch out for every patient in the ICU. “Exhaustion leads to despair and lethargy,” she says. “To get as many people as you can to survive on each shift, you have to fight it.”

Karimi blames both COVID and the ruling class for the difficulties nurses face. “We are being swindled by an oppressive sheriff,” she says. She is speaking of fasad, the corruption of the ruling elite she calls the sheriff, and she points to doctors’ special-interest lobbies, the growing black market for pharmaceuticals, and the jet-setting lifestyle of children of Iranian officials on Instagram.

I wonder if Karimi thinks sanctions impact her work in any way. She tells me that she thinks of the word sanctions as a false flag. “It is a word they use to cover their incompetence.”

In Persian we refer to sanctions by the Arabic word tahrim (to make haram, or forbidden). The economic weekly Tejarat-e-Farda reports that tahrim strengthens the informal economy and increases economic corruption. Bryan Early and Dursun Peksen argue that sanctions contribute to the proliferation of the shadow economy, and Jill Jermano writes that they lead to “endemic state corruption.” When transparency must be eschewed for survival, more of the economy moves underground. Illicit financial activity thrives in the dark. It keeps the economy from total collapse, but it functions as both a lifeline and a sinkhole.

We notice it at both the local level, among those we know, and among the political elite. Coupled with other factors, like inflation and scarcity, once-robust institutions — hospitals, for instance — crumble while the source causing the instability remains contested.

Once, as a country, we knew what to call the force from which we were trying to protect ourselves, when our bodies pressed tightly together in refuge from air raids. This time around, we have no unity in calling out the weapon targeting us. There is a thread of over four hundred comments on Persian-language Twitter about whether medicine shortages are due to tahrim. I met others in the health-care force who, like Sara Karimi, denied that sanctions have anything to do with scarcity. They believe it is not tahrim but “internal corruption” that has led us to where we are today.

Ehsan Mostafavi, an epidemiologist at the Pasteur Institute of Tehran, says some Iranians believe in this internal corruption as the source of all of Iran’s problems because of a “fiction” that humanitarian goods, presumably including medicine, aren’t sanctioned. Those who impose sanctions on Iran, he argues, intentionally diminish the human cost.

The mechanism by which sanctions extract that from the bodies of Iranians remains invisible to most of us, but not to Mostafavi, who learned how the system works in 2020, when he was, he says, “directly involved” in Iran’s attempt to buy flu vaccines. “Banks holding our reserves aren’t willing to release our money,” he says. And if they did, to whom? “Banks won’t take Iran’s money, and pharmaceutical companies aren’t willing to work with us or even answer our emails.” As he speaks, he rotates his index finger in a circle to indicate a loop that can’t be broken. The very purpose of a sanctions regime is to create a pariah state out of a country so that no entity – bank, business or company – is willing to trade with it. This is how, he explains, medicine becomes increasingly scarce and the black market proliferates.

Sanctions rhetoric is by no means consistent about the human suffering that sanctions cause. Even as US presidents intensify the war against us, they declare devotion to the people of Iran. “We continue to stand with the people of Iran in your quest for freedom, prosperity, honest and effective government,” George W. Bush said while decimating our prospect of attaining any of those things. Sanctions aim to hit a space where the enemy-state is weakened but the people of the nation remain unscathed. No such space exists. Sanctions destroy nation-states by simultaneously weakening institutions and inflicting harm on civilians.

There are moments when US officials readily admit that civilians are directly targeted by sanctions. Pompeo has said that he hopes US policy toward Iran will lead Iranians to regime change. “Regime change” must be decoded to mean that Iran’s internal chaos will lead to societal collapse. In sanctions rhetoric, “civil war” is cleaned up as “a people’s uprising.” Nephew, who analyzed how sanctions might best strain our tendons, ligaments, and joints, writes that the US government analyzes national data from Iran to find how “civil unrest or, at a minimum, civil discontent” can be provoked. Elsewhere he notes that he and other sanctions officials instigated inflation and currency crises to “drive up the pressure on the Iranian government from internal sources” and to “pry apart the regime and the population.” The “internal sources” and the “population” to which he refers are Iranians.

The ethics scholar Joy Gordon, who has studied the ramifications of sanctions on both Iran and Iraq, calls sanctions an invisible war — hidden with language that is intentionally “innocuous and vague.” What is hidden is harder to name. The sanctions regime presents itself as less destructive to civilian populations than military onslaught. It is enforced by an economic power that, like its military counterpart, no one will want to enrage. The world obeys and looks away from the human toll.

Even the operatives are unseen. Juan Zarate, former deputy security advisor under George W. Bush, brags that this war is perpetuated by officers of the Treasury, “bureaucratic insurgents — guerrillas in gray suits.” It is a conflict waged by economic policy advisors who intricately know how the global financial system works, and how to cut off a country’s lifelines. Sanctions are backed by the aura of America’s army but are instigated by noncombatants who co-opt the language of economics and law to invoke legitimacy and neutrality. By blurring the lines between wartime and peacetime policy, they can destroy an “enemy” on autopilot, at little cost to their constituents.

But is Iran taking note of the immensity of the weapon that targets it or doing enough to respond? I go to Hanieh Sajjadi, a professor of health policy at the University of Tehran, with that question in March of 2021. Sajjadi is one of few academics focused on sanctions and the health of Iranians. She sits upright in a navy monto and a black cowl. I can make out, above her mask, her ink-black unibrow and thick eyelashes. She speaks like a lecturer trying to convey the urgency of a matter, her voice rising to a pitch every so often. She believes time is running out. In 2019, Sajjadi and her coauthors wrote in the medical journal Lancet that six million Iranians went without necessary medical treatment because of sanctions.

Sanctions don’t just continue over four decades, Sajjadi tells me; they compound. Iran’s postrevolutionary health-care system to Sajjadi is a case in point. Once resoundingly successful at improving public health, Iran today faces rising maternal mortality rates in its poorest provinces, an upshoot in the spread of noncommunicable diseases, and an increasing lack of access to medical care and critical medicine. Inflation inadvertently means less access to public health.

“Is Iran doing enough to resist sanctions?” I ask her again.

When citizens are attacked with military hardware, she says, they rally in solidarity. But sanctions do not provoke the same survival response because the sources remain firmly concealed. They are camouflaged by time and by “absurdist language which claims concern for human life,” says Sajjadi. “Like termites beneath the structure of a house no one can see, they silently and purposefully eat away at the wholeness of a society.”

For years, she says, “that we were untouched by sanctions was a strategy of fighting this war.” During the first two decades of the Revolution, access to public goods — health care, education, electricity, and clean water — improved while Iran was under sanctions. “There was a sense that the blockade could always be overcome,” she says. The sanctions regime intensified, but Iran’s leadership did not take the change seriously. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president from 2005 to 2013, called sanctions “worthless shreds of paper.” Sajjadi calls this “time lost.”

In 2013, Hassan Rouhani, once Iran’s lead negotiator with the West, launched a presidential campaign and won resoundingly on a platform to remove sanctions and the threat of war against Iran. His top diplomat, foreign minister Javad Zarif, negotiated the so-called Iran nuclear deal with the US, the UK, Germany, France, China, and Russia. Iran agreed to limits on its nuclear enrichment program — justification used by the American and European powers to expand their blockade — in exchange for sanctions relief.

Zarif called sanctions not shreds of paper but “economic terrorism.” He gave that tool of war a name and enlisted public health officials and academics to document the ways in which sanctions had hurt the health of Iranians. Sajjadi thinks that Zarif’s diplomatic overture was a major breakthrough in not only minimizing sanctions’ harm but also getting Iranians to pay more attention to their destructive impact. But it wouldn’t be enough.

Iran did not receive the full relief promised to it, and Trump reneged on the deal and reimposed Obama’s sanctions. Then he piled them on. The current American administration calls Trump’s withdrawal “a catastrophic mistake” — while continuing its exact policies. No matter the state of the nuclear deal, the US obsession with Iran as a prime enemy upon which it can easily inflict pain has not ceased.

Today, Iran’s political leadership may be more eager to engage with the West to ease sanctions, but it also has more knowledge about the impossibility of “full sanctions removal,” a claim that Rouhani once made after the deal was signed. Every cog in the sanctions machine — the designation of Iran’s banks and financial institutions, our ability to conduct international transactions and trade, our reserves in various countries, our oil and commodity exports — is gridlocked individually. Sanctions were intentionally designed as a labyrinth too complex to escape.

Sajjadi says a generation of sanctions have already damaged the unborn. Mass suffering — collective punishment — is the essence of every sanctions regime, to an uncertain but certainly deadly end. Iranians will live increasingly more difficult lives as their internal discord grows. Intermittently, threats of military force will build on our sense of annihilation. Our fate will be determined by the counternarrative that we devise — the war story that we tell ourselves. We must respond effectively to a conflict that manifests among us as growing corruption and instability while resisting societal breakdown. “We need to see the war and those it is most hurting,” Sajjadi says. “A war that has left intergenerational repercussions requires intergenerational sacrifice.”

No matter the outcome of talks between Iran and the West, postrevolutionary Iran is now a categorized victim of siege warfare. The “Iran model” is today used by American academics and policymakers as a mock-up summarizing sanctions methodology and its impacts. For this footnote in journal articles and on Twitter, Iranians have paid with their lives.

The writer and editor Kurosh Aliyani believes that Iran can’t push back against this war through diplomacy alone. In this “unrestricted war,” as he calls it, sanctions are just one facet; others are covert ops, efforts at destabilization, a constant threat of war, and the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and military commanders. “We need a new language and new metaphors to begin talking about a new kind of warfare — an invisible war,” Aliyani, trained as a linguist, tells me as we sit in an outdoor café in downtown Tehran. Through his snow-gray beard, Aliyani speaks with a monotonous calm but narrows his eyes behind his glasses to express urgency or outrage.

Aliyani says that this war is invisible because those on whom it inflicts pain are unseen — an erasure that works in levels. On the world stage, Iranians are deemed dispensable. A US Secretary of State once said that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children under sanctions were “worth it” — a remark that says all that’s needed about the ways American foreign policy justifies the suffering it inflicts on civilians.

The erasure also operates within. Iran is fighting a battle in which mass suffering is inflicted upon the Iranian people. But the disappointment of those with the privilege to despair — “those with the voice,” as Aliyani calls them — has taken center stage. People who complain about the price of lamb chops, private school, or European vacations. To contrast, he recalls his recent hospitalization, during which he overheard an ill nurse talk about being unable to afford her medication. “While I was admitted, nurses received a bonus, and she was ecstatic” — Aliyani pauses — “that she could pay for medicine. That was her life’s issue. But who’s talking about her?”

Iran today feels like an angrier, more fractured place than the one I was born into. The political establishment appears more incompetent; street violence and poverty have reached the highest levels I’ve ever seen. Nurses, teachers, and the retired sporadically protest late or low pay. There is widespread despair.

If our solidarity has waned, if we can’t see our greatest wounds, I ask Aliyani, doesn’t that signify a deterioration in our morale, without which defeat is certain?

In response he recites a line from a poem: “Siyah lashkar nayayad bekar, yeki mardeh jangi beh az sad hezar” (One good warrior is better than a thousand extras). We have survived thus far; Iran is wounded, but it exists. He refers to wartime commanders who rose among our massive volunteer forces during the Iran-Iraq War and who have been etched into the Iranian imagination as martyred saints. And he concludes with another question: “Do you think Iranians can no longer rise to the occasion?”

In On War, Carl von Clausewitz writes that the ultimate aim of an opponent is to make “one incapable of further resistance.” Defeat is a time and place where resistance to war ceases to exist. I remember the many times when people I spoke to for this story — scientists, doctors, nurses — compared themselves to the heroes of the Iran-Iraq War. They spoke of their willingness to risk their well-being for the collective, which they defined as the people of their vatan, their homeland. We can hope to overcome war when we are still willing to subject our bodies to hardship or even death. So long as Iranians are willing to save Iran, Iran can hope to be saved.

Narjes Khanalizadeh’s village in northern Iran is tucked away under a mushroom of citrus trees near the Caspian Sea. The first time I visit, I see her face on a large poster at the beginning of the road before I find the name of the village. I get out of the car and walk a lush, narrow path, asking directions as I go. The air smells of burned wood and peeled oranges. “Head straight and find the mosque,” an old man on a bicycle tells me. I pass by wooden homes with pyramidal hip roofs covered in dried rice stems. Cusped like a bird’s nest between the mosque and a few houses is a patch of land. There I find the graveyard orchard, and Narjes.

Narjes, who was a nurse, is now known as one of Iran’s first Martyrs to Defend the Path of Health — health-care workers who died fighting COVID-19. Narjes died during a pandemic that killed health-care workers worldwide, but the term martyr invokes heroes of the Iran-Iraq War. She has been placed on the continuum of the first war.

Her mother, Assieh, visits Narjes’s grave every day before sunset to wash the stone, water the flowers, and say a prayer. That’s where she agrees to meet with me. “Narjes lost her sense of smell weeks before her death,” Assieh says. Then came frequent headaches, loss of appetite, and fatigue. “But corona wasn’t yet fully known here, ” she says. Narjes continued going to work, even staying at the hospital when it was snowed in. “She could have taken time off; I’ll never know why she didn’t. In her last weeks, she was driven by an urgency to give care,” says Assieh, wiping tears from her cheeks.

On February 20, 2020, Narjes collapsed in the hospital with a high fever. She died on February 25 at the age of twenty-five. Within a day, photos of her went viral on social media, many of them shared by Assieh. Narjes, with soft brown eyes and pink lips, is seen in the green prairies of her hometown or in a hospital uniform. Her long, wavy locks cascade from beneath her head covering.

Through Iran’s first COVID-19 cases were confirmed a month before, it was Narjes’s death that announced the outbreak of COVID and its threat to health-care workers in Iran. Narjes’s lifeless body was the first to be tested for the virus in her home province, Gilan, and was buried under strict protocols. “It’s all a blur,” Assieh says. “I just remember my father in a hazmat suit digging her grave.” By that time, Assieh herself had COVID and went into isolation for twenty days.

On one visit, Assieh takes me to the graves located inside a closed gate right behind where Narjes is buried. They belong to the ten martyrs of the village — war volunteers and those on military duty, young men who died in battle during the Iran-Iraq War. Four of them are Assieh’s cousins, second cousins, or neighbors. Some of the graves are empty because the bodies never came home. “I never imagined that my daughter would come to lie here as the queen of Iran’s martyrs,” Assieh says, telling me that they all “sacrificed their lives for Iran in wartime.”

On each of my subsequent visits to the village, Narjes’s grave burgeons with new details — one time a curved metal shade, the next a glass gravestone cover, and then green silk ties and military-style identification tags etched with prayers. It has become a pilgrimage site where Iran-Iraq War veterans and groups of health-care workers come to pay their respects. I imagine, in some future time, a tomb erected here.

Iran has survived thus far not only because of the willingness of Iranians to protect her, but also because of a culture that immortalizes them. Every time I get back to Tehran, the Iran-Iraq War veteran who introduced me to Assieh says, “Ziyarat ghabool” (May your pilgrimage be accepted by God). The grave of a martyr is sacred space to be passed on to later generations. In war, death is not an ending but a possibility for our future selves.

*These names are pseudonyms.

The Final Landscape

Image by Ram Pangeni from Pixabay

Under a month-long lockdown in Kashmir, the streets are deserted, the stone-throwing protesters are locked away in their homes, and winter is settling on the valley. In a dialogue with himself, an aging artist creates the illusion of company while he pontificates over the utility of his art in a place of perpetual war. The dialogue deepens as the artist’s mind digresses between legends and newspaper headlines, pondering the creative ways the people of Kashmir carve out freedom in the interstices of spaces that imprison them.

Originally published by Mountain Ink, the story explores the resistant possibility of art, imagines a moment of isolation, and subverts it in its execution.

— Raaza Jamshed for Guernica Global Spotlights

 

He was losing count of the days now. It was a month-old lockdown and the September sun had just begun to smile readily at the mountain peaks.

“What day is it today?” wishing to be ignored, he almost murmured.

It was Tuesday, September 2 in that year of warlike situation.

“Word has it that the taskmasters desire people to lose count of the days and sooner the better, for it would be less embarrassing to justify this forgetfulness.”

“No, no! For Heaven’s sake, no, don’t call that forgetfulness.”

“What else if not forgetfulness? I am already losing count of the days.”

“So what?”

“Fatigue has already entered my spine. My vision is becoming blurred. I am getting sick.”

There was nothing to act on. Sunlight already appeared growing weaker and the chill in the mornings and evenings had made humans return back into their skin, to remember that it was time for a change of the season. Yes, the summer sun has shifted its glance. There were no more vertical sun rays gazing at the deserted streets. This year stones were missing from the streets.

“Are the stones cleared away from the streets?”

“Wherefrom? The streets that wind along the lake and disappear in the forest?”

“I don’t care where. You know what matters are the missing stones or more likely preemptive disappearance.”

“Indeed, what must matter is the absence of the stones.”

“Absence and disappearance are two distinct states, aren’t those? Artista, you are a free man who doesn’t have to risk anything for the arrival of his expectations. You, I know, are waiting for the leaves on some trees to fall and to turn crimson on many others. You do not have to pretend to be self-unconscious to the fatigue so you could feel the numbness of silence of whatever surrounds you. You are waiting for the stones to hurl into the air so you can clench the textures within your color palate. You rather wait for the sun to change its direction and that explains to me your indifference to the night sky to reveal the secrets of peace unto you. You count the hues that are embedded in the seasons to give directions to your thoughts and capture the moments of sadness.”

“I do not wait for the crimson to smear the streets for the emancipation though you understand me as a free person. I am no more a believer in dreams and I know that someday I shall leave forever to dream my great dream. Waiting for the great dream to come true or as you like to understand it, the arrival of my expectations, I am tied to that moment in time that shall comfort me from my bondage.”

There once lived a woman amidst erudite pandits who refused to die. In her youth, when she would rest down to eat after completing the daily chores nothing would take her by surprise then. She had realized that her wait to take the infinite inside was not far. She sang about the darkness that surrounded her only in the wilderness. She defined the void. She bore no children and marked in her verses the certainty to meet the infinite and pass on in peace from here unto there. Every night she washed the stone hidden underneath the crust of rice served in the bowl for dinner. She left behind the stone for the young.

Hond maaran kina kath
Lalli nalwut tsali na zanh

(Whether they killed a big sheep or a lamb it was all the same Lalla had always got a stone to eat).

“Bring me those diamonds bedecked in the sky. Rise to the sky and snatch not one but all those tiny stars in an entire vault that shield your land from anonymity.”

“I do not wish to wither away in void nor lose my way across the vast deserts. Journeys across would become not just difficult but impossible without those dimly-lit stars in the sky. Aren’t all landscapes grief-stricken? What would become of the landscapes if the horizons as well were measured and guarded?”

“You sound utterly eccentric to disregard the light of the day that guards us all. There is nothing to help you but to do away with this ridiculousness.”

“Death catches those young by the tail of the daylight. There is nothing solemn to bring oneself in loving the light. I have nothing left but my small indifference to offer. At least there is nothing doubtful about this smallness like many of those impressionist strokes, at chance, that create an illusion of ecstasy. I struggle to handle the landscape without striving for the exotica. Landscapes without humans cannot become a site for self-reflection.”

“Why don’t you paint the arrival?”

“There is no shade on my palate that could help me prophesize. It is impossible to paint that which doesn’t hold me. I cannot paint certainty.”

Nothing would be worse than a political discord that generations wriggle against and wither away with. There was a land of valleys up in the Himalayas believed to be of saints and demons. In “Abduction,” painted in the year 2005, a demon carries away a piece of a mountain — that led to a series “Whose Kashmir?” This strife is neither ahistorical nor sacred. Yet there are stories in the beginning when there was no time. The water that filled up the valley was emptied so the demon could be trapped and killed to end the conflict forever. Demon was driven away yet the water in the lake remained. Troops after troops were washed away ashore on the land. The journey through mountains in search of permanence and certitude continues.

“Who owns the strength of character to resolve the strife?”

“Theories nurture cults. At times resolutions are created only to morph imagination into images that speak something beyond any resolution. Landscape is not a passive player. The harder it gets to paint, the easier it is to be consumed with nostalgia. To paint a landscape has become an agony.”

“Artista, you mix up everything to get confused. These are not days to stay confused leisurely.”

“Who has lost count of days? I, who is incapacitated, either to grieve the loss or to bear the burden of not feeling forgetfulness can’t be more astute, clear-sighted, and regimented than this. I live on that street in the city, which is openly exposed to the dogmatic gaze however isn’t threatened with what I do. I paint the banal and possibly could survive in the worst of the conditions, which is boredom. My remorse will anyway kill me soon. Yes, I mix. I mix colors to grasp the shade that discloses the anatomy of illusions.”

“Artista, is it you alone for whom illusions bespeak of truth or is it me who sees confusion not separate from illusions. Illusions lure you into believing that you can’t grieve over the loss and the disappearances. It’s been a while now that we are living in a state of deception and absolute vulgarity.”

“Well then, this is not the first time that the enforcer has tuned in to portray the nakedness of its presence vulgarly. Everything is equipped. How must one imagine a landscape bereft of fatigue figures marching up and down every day? Interestingly, the landscape has turned those prowlers significant for the game that was shaped, of late, seven decades before.”

“And do those prowlers know anything about the determination to choose for the self? Over the years, such will is invalidated. How then must we understand the desire to be emancipated? Have you got any map to look at, to paint a landscape?”

“When I was summoned to prove my being, oddly I forgot my address. I was numbered as an incorrigible reprobate. All efforts to paint a landscape were labeled as a ploy that possibly could threaten the syntax of the sovereign self. When I was executed, that bored wound was stamped as the void. And as I survived after throwing up the clot, my discharge from confinement was realized only after I agreed to sign an undertaking that I shall be a regular reporter of my case. It was called detoxicating progress. You see, the stamp out stink takes a lifetime to go.”

“Now that the autumn is approaching, you might pack up your color and brushes to paint the landscape of this wailing vale in all possible shades. I remember you painted landscapes earlier with much pleasure and ease.”

“I have lost the temperament to paint!”

“Don’t forget that your hallucinatory will could turn the upheaval inside you into spite.”

“The Final Landscape,” by Gowhar Yaqoob and originally published by Mountain Ink, which describes itself as “an online and monthly print of narrative journalism with an avant-garde attitude to art, culture, literature and politics.” Reprinted with permission.

At the Gallery

Original art by Pedro Gomes

After “En La Galleria” (1991) by Santiago Carbonell

Finally at the gallery, the couple (all fiction of them),
she in that white bustier, he with the cutout
look of a dandy, his fedora as if caught in dreams
of another century; she with that thick black
belt made to hold the waist in, the one that will
grow with the truth, and the red corduroy, and her
body doing that thing, you know, one hip going up
and the other down, to look alluring. When the viewer
is the art and the art is me or my tribe, this is how
we blacks are framed, lurking in charcoal lines
and untidily fragmented, the lines random,
and the work to reflect reality undermined by
the shifting forces of our century. This is not art,
this is the slightly open curtain, the window looking
out to a dark wet night, and I am filled with the burden
of sorrow of the kind that a man has no words for, no words
to describe the inexplicable fear that his love has changed
her mind and chosen to place every single one
of his canvasses in the cellar. Her lurid walls
are now covered with the random art she’s picked up
at yard sales; and she gives no explanations for this,
though he asks and asks in so many different ways.
It is not you and me standing together before the wall —
those are fictions as I said before. Of course, it is
us in the way that we colonize art, and for every crack
curving down the wall I see a loose strap of a dress
dangling delicately and nakedly from your shoulder.
We live in a world of stains, a world of broad
strokes and thin lines, and the masks of despondence.

Paper Hummingbirds

Illustration by Anne Le Guern

I’m afraid of what’s beyond the dishes
we wash in retrieved lake water. The knowledge
that pines keep private. The sap you hide

in urns over skin is the world I seek.
The way it knows itself.
The way it sustains despite the unsustainable.

I tell you of the hummingbirds enslaved
people in an enslaved country kept in cages.
Outside they dart from feeder to feeder.

They protect the feeders they claim.
Intruders are pierced       chased            left to die alone
as chairs without people rock on the porch.

All of the clean dishes could
fall       pieces on the pine floor.
I’m looking at the paper hummingbirds

stuck to the spice shelf. They are
blue     creased       strange beneath
coriander       cardamom       cumin.

The girl who made them is now a woman
afraid of hummingbirds: their blueness           wild
wings      what they know.

You ask             what is broken?
I walk to the porch.
I walk to the lake.

I walk.
I walk.
I walk.

A Little Love

Photo by Jeswin Thomas via Pexels

When his first child was born, Anjan Sundaram was torn between the new world of fatherhood and the old world of work — more specifically, conflict journalism. As his wife nursed their daughter, Sundaram pored through research about the Central African Republic, where a war had turned into a coup, and the insecurity thus unleashed was hardening into something even scarier. Sundaram couldn’t shake the call to cover a conflict few in the world had even heard of, but when he did, he couldn’t shake home. Sometimes, it buoyed him; other times, it haunted him.

For “The Cutting Room,” where authors share pieces they loved but ultimately had to cut from their latest books, Sundaram offers the original first chapter of his book Breakup: A Marriage in Wartime. By turns more raw and more melancholy, it calls forward his daughter as a leading character in his journey far away from her, one that ultimately cost him.

— Jina Moore Ngarambe for Guernica

My dear child,

This is your father. I have waited for this moment. I have found a way to speak to you and make a connection that is intimate, that is our own, that involves just us two.

I am in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. My knees are against my chest — this is where it hurts, in the chest, and most often in the mornings. As soon as I wake up, I feel dread, and in a moment the fear takes over my mind. I woke up this morning and was unable to stay in my bed, so I moved to the floor. I try to run away from myself, and a lack of space somehow brings me comfort.

The director of our television crew knocks on my door and calls through its wood. Are you ready, Anjan? We have a morning of interviews lined up for a documentary about religion. The director says the interviewees are waiting. I do not answer him. Yesterday he showed me footage of how I walked, looking lost. He wants me to be present, engaged, and enthusiastic. But my mornings have become frightening, and because of this, so are the moments when I go to bed.

I feel estranged. It is a wrenching thing to lose a part of yourself. I rise and run across the room — making a flailing sort of run, past the bed and to the cupboard — and find my recorder. I turn it on and speak into it. The calm in my voice takes me by surprise. It is there, I know, because I am speaking to you. I turn off my recorder and dance in my room, making a fairy dance. I jump from one corner to the other, feeling that I am indestructible.

I wonder how long the joy will last. I dread its departure and wait for the moment of anguish to return. I move deliberately, like a runner taking position for a sprint, until my knees touch my chest. The director knocks on my door. But I cannot respond. My mind has all but combusted. I am desperate to feel some connection, to lose my loneliness. From the depth of my feeling of loss, lying on the cold, I want to speak to you.

I close my eyes and listen the hum of my air conditioner and, beyond that, the shouted words of people on the street. Their words carry an urgent purpose. I pause my recording and open my eyes. I sense I could be anywhere.

After months of silence, what should I tell you? I must choose my words. Talking to you now brings a sweet relief. Should I teach you how to be good and what is right and wrong, or tell you something about myself?

I watch a silverfish feel its way with its long antennae across a strip of grime where the ceiling meets the wall. I feel an anxiety build within my mind.

I decide to tell you about a journey, and how everything changed during my three weeks in the Central African Republic, a distant country a lot of people have not heard of. Your mother said that it was during that journey that everything we had built together began to collapse. I need to remember so I can understand what happened.

I’m aware that the stories I’ve told you so far have been different: about girls, boys, and animals — some clever, some cunning, some silly. They were small stories whose characters did small things. Now, partly because I think you should know and partly because I need to tell you, partly because it was an experience for me of love and emotion and fear, partly because I need to speak to you and this is what I cannot stop thinking about, partly because this place is a piece of your history, and partly because I want you to know me and I need to feel a connection with you, I want to tell you this story. Can you sit for a little bit? You don’t have to be quiet. Just be here.

This story might seem complicated, but it really isn’t, and I’ll explain as we go along. I’m comfortable on my floor, and I worry that if I stop speaking, my pain will return. So without wasting any more time, I will tell you what happened.

I have discovered something distressing about our bodies: they need food and water to live, but not love. I feel dead, but my body in some grotesque way carries on. It still feels hunger, thirst, and all the other human urges.

We were living, in 2013, in a small Canadian town called Shippagan, on the Atlantic coast, where your mother grew up and where, a few months earlier, you had been born. I was soon leaving for Kigali, and it was on this final journey to Rwanda that I decided to also travel, for reporting, to the Central African Republic, where a rebellion brewed. After that journey I returned to Canada to discover a conflict at home. And one year later your mother and I split.

It was a time of such immense calm that I can hardly bear to think of it. I sat beside you on a bright morning and read about the successful coup d’état in the Central African Republic. No one knew exactly how many people had been killed in its war because no one had counted the dead. A million people had fled after no longer feeling safe in their homes. Two million were hungry.

I didn’t want to leave. Here in Shippagan, it was serene. I was with you. I took pleasure in taking you to the local aquarium. We watched the jellyfish, a baby seal, and a blue crab that you liked to touch — we weren’t allowed to touch it, but I allowed you. The seal swam in circles, twisting like a torpedo; it was trapped in the tank. The people of Shippagan, a town of three thousand people, grew excited about naming this seal. They launched a local contest, and many sent in names, each hoping that theirs would be chosen. But soon afterward, the seal died, and people forgot about it. I took you for walks in the woods. You slept against my chest in a carrier — like in a kangaroo’s pocket.

My memories of those early days as a father are fading. You see, my memories suddenly stopped accumulating, after the shock. My mind did not know whether to keep the joy of those moments or remember the pain in which they ended. So I stopped evoking those memories, and some of them were inevitably lost. I suspect the moments fullest with love were the first to go. Love and pain became intertwined. I will see if I can conjure up another memory from that period.

The memories that arrive first are difficult ones. At that time — I had forgotten this, but now I remember — we slept in the same room. After an evening of work — you would already be asleep — I entered our bedroom, full of the smell of your breath. I checked that you had not kicked off your blanket or twisted your arms, and I fell asleep to the sounds of your wheezes and the smacking of your lips. You woke silently in the mornings, so when I opened my eyes, sometimes I found you watching me.

In bewilderment at my fatherhood, I tried to come at it in my own way. A friend gifted me a book that spoke about the strength of infants’ grips. Babies had evolved to be able to grab branches and carry their own weight should they slip. So I tested your grip on my fingers. This author, a primatologist, also wrote that infants like to feel strong. It’s why you enjoyed balloons — they appeared imposing, but you thrashed them about.

No one in Shippagan spoke about the Central African Republic. Many had never heard about the country. The Central African Republic felt unnecessary to our existence. I could forget about it, banish it from my life and pass the days never reminded of it.

But it bloomed in my mind like a pigment that enters water, with tentacles that reached into my dreams. I woke up thinking about the place, dwelling on the rumors I had received. On the internet, I read that the conflict was growing. It grew disconcerting, how easily I could ignore this news. So I began to try to remind myself.

I enjoyed the smallness of my existence in Shippagan. I could consume the world in controllable portions that could be switched off or folded up when they became overwhelming. There was also a great deal to explore. A once-burgeoning fishing industry had made Shippagan one of Canada’s wealthiest towns, before the recent years of decline. I grew curious about Shippagan’s Francophone community: In the early twentieth century, the English-speaking rulers of Canada, representatives of the Queen of England, had banned French in local schools. But the propaganda had worked; the Queen was now a celebrity in Shippagan, even among those who had been prohibited from speaking their native French. Magazines about the royal family were bestsellers in the supermarkets. Half an hour from Shippagan, there was a place called Miscou, where one could stand at the tip of the peninsula. It felt like the end of the earth.

Strange as it may sound, from that remote place, the Central African Republic did not seem so distant. Around you, I felt a new sense of connection to things.

In our house, while you were asleep one day, I spent an afternoon looking at the wind rustling the leaves in swirls. The giant green garbage collection truck came, making a terrific noise, and it left, leaving the street in silence.

Before going to bed that night, I couldn’t get a nursery rhyme out of my head: Three blind mice, three blind mice. / See how they run! See how they run! The rhyme has entered my mind at the worst moment. I used to sing it to you, and now it haunts me. Something is working away in my mind’s recesses, I think. For now, all I want is for this rhyme to go away.

We are all creatures of sadness. Even if we think we are happy, and even if we feel we are happy, we are nursing sadness somewhere, perhaps buried deep. A banging starts on the pipes outside, and I am grateful: the three blind mice are gone. I start to wonder from where they came, and one thought leads to the next. I should have let them go. My mind is playing tricks. The anxiety has returned. Are you still listening to me?

Anjan Sundaram’s book, Breakup: A Marriage in Wartime, is out this month from Catapult.

From Guerrilla Blooms

Illustration by Anne Le Guern

Spanish

English

I look in the mirror

I look at the Indian women

I look at the colonizer

I spread my legs

and shove

              flowers
              cactus
              animal
              god

the cosmos inside me

I explain to the god

with a female bird’s face

that I have nothing inside

that it’s just a creator’s fantasy

that in me no one can be born

because nothing survives

***

exiled

              illiterate

                           errant

                                        b o r d e r l i n e

I want to be

gold     india      morena

Una india

who makes them

forget my history

and a part of yours

Bird doesn’t want to be god

or to have the face of a bird

She has existential attacks

and would like to read anything

other than a calendar

She wants to dance this night

of skulls without flags

to smoke on buds in bloom

between seas

cactus and desert

between jungle and dew

***

To lie outstretched beneath heavenly bodies

of ancient gods

and reject her forefathers

             I called her

Ngünechen & Quetzalcoatl

Negrita     Ñaña     Compa

We speak in tongues

of sad days

and of hunger

a hunger that can only

be spoken

when you are hungry

She didn’t want to be an ancestor

I tell her that I didn’t either

And so we say our goodbyes

listening to songs

on this old wurlitzer

that snuffs the glow of war

             in this final dance.

Spell Me

Image by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

name (noun):

1 a: a word or phrase that constitutes the distinctive designation of a person or thing

Say my name, say my name suggests movement. Say my name, say my name a summon. Say. If you call me everything to get my affections, my response to you is just echous phantom acknowledgment to someone I don’t resonate with. From mouth to speak, mouth, speak — hope that it reaches me. My name. Hope that it reaches me.

Surmise this an etymology. My mother had twins and I was conceived before my technical “younger” brother in the most fraternal sense. But my mother thought of the boy she wanted first and miscarried years before and named him for a man she wanted to be our father and wasn’t. His name is full and subsequent too, Bruce Carlane Bivens. Easy. Me? It’s bree-YAWH-nuh, b-r-e-APOSTROPHE-capital AYEE-n-n-a, don’t let them white teachers say yo name any type of way. I went to primary school casting my name spell, spelling out, correcting substitutes, correcting snickering classmates, new friends, who wanted so badly to drawl Texan my perfect YAWH to ANNE, mistake my lone e for i, forget my A is exalted, that my apostrophe is high cast right before. Scrawling neatly punctuation teachers didn’t think a kindergartener could pronounce, let alone utilize properly in context. My name means noble, virtuous, strong, high, exalted.

name (noun)

5: appearance as opposed to reality

In high school me and my twin brother learned that our names were only partially right. Some government entity mailed my mama and told her that our last names were incorrect and needed to be our biological father’s. We tried out the politically correct Robinson. Bruce Carlane Robinson, Bre’Anna Sade’ Robinson, and thought we sounded too much like wind too much like going too much like where? And decided we’d rather be called for a man we never met than for a man that was ours but never there.

Graduating high school my principals told me, after confirming the spelling of my name for my diploma, that it was wrong. I said something like excuse me? my name is bree-YAWH-nuh, b-r-e-APOSTROPHE-capital AYEE-n-n-a. I asked if it was a discrepancy of special characters because I’ve been saying apostrophe since I was in the kindergarten and I know that sometimes computer programs make a fuss about adding special characters in names that are more than letters but this is my name. The copy of my birth certificate they possessed said, well contrary dear. Your name here is Breanna Sade Bivens. And this is the name that’ll be on your diploma unless you get a new birth certificate.

For the record, the Texas Department of State Health Services Vital Statistics Unit says that I am a true and correct reproduction of the original recorded in that office. After waiting months for this affirmation in 2016, under the authority of Section 191.051, Health and Safety Code, I’ve been amended and corrected. When I crossed the stage in a crowd of hundreds, my principal announced the name that meant noble, virtuous, strong, high, exalted. But I felt like myth. too Much like wind. Too much like going.

name (verb)

1: to give a name: to call

I wondered what an essay like this was doing in a chapbook about space and allowance. In our introductory special workshop during one of my MFA school’s residencies, Gabrielle Civil told my cohort of six to find a place on our yoga mats in the dance studio where we would fodder for the next five days and call to ourselves in the space like we were trying to get our own attention. We could be right in front of ourselves, floating in a ceiling corner, in the reflection of the studio’s mirrors. We just needed to captivate ourselves. I asked, like a mantra? Yes, it was a sort of summoning, and she would bring us back to the practice because Ms. Civil said we could go strange places during this exercise. I sat on my pink yoga mat barefoot in front of the mirror, breathed deep and cross-legged, and when she said so, we all started calling our names:

Bre’Anna Bre’Anna Bre’Anna Bre’Anna Bre’Anna BREEEE! brEEeEeEeE TOOT SCOOT tooterwooter Tootie! Annie Bre’ Bre’Anna! Bre’Bre’ bee BB HoneyBun Bambi BreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeYAAAAAAAAWHNUH BRE’ANNA SADE’ BIVENS Bre’Anna? Sade’? Sadé! I know you hear me girl! Can you hear me? Bre’Anna?

I called my name short of the apostrophe people wanted so badly to be a hyphen, called my name full, called myself names nobody calls me anymore, the names my entire family calls me. I called myself the name I think I wish I was called and only felt myself floating from the discursive rambling of the name I’ve been so called and could not become a thing reached.

Ms. Civil told us to wrap up our calling, to come back to the circle and introduce ourselves and possibly share where we went during that exercise. If we were able to get our own attention. On my turn I told everyone my name was, Bree-yawh-nuh, but that they could call me Bre’ like they could hear the apostrophe. I told my peers that I haven’t liked my name in a while, and every time I called myself everyone I’ve ever been I felt all those whiles and saw myself hovering above the corner of the studio I was sitting in with a mocking grin. Ms. Civil asked me if there was something else I’d like to be called and I told her I would have to think about it. Because I’ve been Breanna Sade Bivens and Bre’Anna Sade’ Bivens and even though I’ve given everyone the shorthand on account of me being so tired of fighting for a name I thought was mine, and then wasn’t and then was? I just don’t feel like any one of them.

A name suggests movement toward a person and indicates proximity, like when you say my name I can turn towards you and not grimace, feel high like an apostrophe and exalted capital letters. But when you call me, when you say my name, it don’t reach me; it’s stray cat looking to be chosen but I don’t reach.

I even tried to employ the measures I should take in my sentence forging by being grammatically correct the way all my teachers taught me. But writing this essay with indentions, capital first letters felt too much like mockery of the authority and definition I lack in my own structure.

name (noun)

1: a vision of ownership, authority

They used to call her Bre’Anna. Long for Bre’, she could never make sense of her name sounding butter sweet graceful. In the mouths of the barely knowing she almost sounded palatable. Their inflections almost made her hopeful she could live up her apostrophed-nobility. But with her own enunciation, what she’s called died on her tongue. Phonetic chunky gruel couldn’t convince her that people needed her name to claim her. Phantom calling that old spell simply summoned someone indifferent. Who you think you talking to? this is an elegy.

Call her first instead for The Sweetest Taboo, Nigerian-British singer of her lyrical musings. Like she strategically sows syntax solivagantly so some sorrow soul, or somebody someday see’s finally that she’s sun sophisticated solar systems. Call her second for the writer whose weapon she’s learning is her word. The small-winged one colored of the earth who’s mocked for how close she is to the ground but simultaneously rivaled for the only difference between her and heaven being a touch. She’s still contemplating the too indoctrinated complicit masculinity of her last name and what it means to inexorably be her father but you can almost hear her summoning now: say my name Shaw-Day Ah-Fruh; S-a-d-acuteE A-f-r-a.

Amali Tower: What Climate Justice Takes

Photo by George Desipris via Pexels

Over the past few years, flood, fire, and drought have forced more people to flee their homes than conflict or violence. Yet our existing refugee laws were written to protect people from harm inflicted by other humans, not by rising sea levels or drought. We lack the language and legal framework to protect these millions of people as refugees, which leaves them with limited options to turn to for safety.

When climate change forces people across borders, many find that their struggles don’t tick the right legal boxes. Often, they are turned back — with nothing to go back to. Those who don’t make it across an international border find themselves the “mere” internally displaced, with fewer avenues for support, food and housing.

Some of this is beginning to change. Countries and regions are signing agreements on how to address these increasing needs. Individual cases are establishing new precedents that gradually expand the options available for those who come after. And globally, the needle is moving, if slowly: during last year’s COP27 summit in Egypt, high-carbon-emitting countries agreed to compensate countries most impacted by climate change through a loss and damage fund, which will be established within the next three years. But it can be difficult to see the impact of these high-level changes on the lives of people displaced by climate change.

Amali Tower founded Climate Refugees with the goal of securing the same rights and recognition for people displaced by climate disaster as for other refugees. She has extensive experience working on the ground with displaced people and in the complex arena of international law and policy. We talked about how refugee policy is experienced on a human level, and how narrative can shape the global response to the climate crisis.

–Emma Hardy for Guernica

Guernica: What is a climate refugee?

Amali Tower: The problem is, the term “climate refugee” doesn’t actually exist. We’re talking about people who are moving as a result of climate change, but we don’t have a legal term for that. “Climate migrant,” or “environmental migrant,” are probably what people are most comfortable using. But “migrant” does not have a legal definition, unlike “refugee,” and implies voluntary movement.

Climate change leads to immobility in some cases, and forced migration in others. It’s also leading to displacement. I use the term “climate refugee” to bring to light that this is forced movement.

Guernica: Without a deep understanding of international law, it can be difficult to keep track of where change is taking place, and where it is meaningful. Can you update us on some of the recent advancements for climate refugees?

Tower: The advancement we’re seeing — or, for a more all-encompassing word, movement — is problematic in that it’s very ad hoc and it’s very patchwork. Some movement is happening in the human rights community. It’s happening in bilateral agreements between states. It’s even happening in regional agreements between entire continents or their subsections. This collaboration is extremely positive. But where state cooperations are happening, they’re tending to happen in places that are already on the front lines of the crisis.

In 2020, there was a pretty significant case in New Zealand in which the United Nations Human Rights Commission found that returning people facing life-threatening climate change conditions [to] their home country would be a human rights violation. That was an incredible landmark and an important finding, but these precedents are happening on a case-by-case basis. I don’t know what to call these things yet: they’re helpful, they’re steps in the right direction, but they’re slow. And this is unfortunately how the law works.

Guernica: And last week, the United Nations voted on an initiative from Vanuatu, asking for a permission of sorts for the International Court of Justice to give an advisory opinion on whether its people have a right to be protected from climate change.

Tower: The resolution paves the way for the world’s highest court to advise on climate change and human rights, specifically how existing international laws can be applied to strengthen states’ climate change actions. This means, for example, the court can weigh in on what states must do to ensure we meet the terms of previous climate agreements — and on the terms of states’ obligations and responsibilities to protect people and the planet.

The UN General Assembly resolution being adopted by consensus is historic: I believe it’s unprecedented. It signifies the importance and weight of the issue felt by not only the majority of UN members, but also the public. Now that resolution has been referred to the ICJ to answer those state obligations questions and weigh in with a legal opinion from the world’s highest court, which could very influential in terms of what obligations historic emitters – essentially Global North countries – have towards vulnerable Global South countries. ICJ opinions are non-binding, but they have the authority to look at existing international law – human rights, environmental, state agreements, and the like – and weigh in on what are states’ obligations to their own citizens and to each other.

Guernica: Why are wealthier countries not providing the same support as affected countries? What factors do you think they’re refusing to recognize or respond to?

Tower: I don’t think it’s a failure to recognize the problem so much as a failure to recognize the nuanced ways that climate change intersects with forces that drive migration. Sure, climate change itself can be a driver, but oftentimes the ways that climate change influences migration are less direct. Take what the climate community calls “sudden onset events” that result from the negative effects of climate change. These could be a disaster, like a cyclone or storm, for example. But there are other adverse impacts of climate change too, which are slow-onset events. We’re talking about rising sea levels, drought, and dwindling crops. These events also contribute to loss of livelihood, to food insecurity, and ultimately to migration.

A good example of this is the Central American Dry Corridor, which has experienced six to eight years of drought. Now, this is a region where there is a highly rural population of Indigenous groups who are already marginalized. They’ve experienced gross human rights abuses, and many communities there coexist with multinational corporations that are highly extractive. Yet when governments hear someone say, “Well, I’m a farmer. I’ve come from the Central America Dry Corridor, I’m an Indigenous person,” that’s often misunderstood as, “I’m an economic migrant.” But it’s more complex than that. Economic insecurity doesn’t stem from nothing.

Guernica: International law recognizes a refugee as someone fleeing persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership within a particular social group. Do you think this definition needs to be expanded?

Tower: It’s not that the definition needs to be expanded. It’s recognizing that the definitions as they currently exist in international law can apply to climate refugees already.

Let me give you an example. When I was in Tijuana, I met a woman who had just been turned back from the US border. She was originally from Guatemala. Her family were farmers in the Dry Corridor, which as I mentioned has suffered from extreme drought. Then, when Hurricane Eta devastated the region in 2020, she lost her entire family. She was left with just her grandfather. Two weeks later, a second hurricane hit, and her grandfather was killed. So she was completely alone. She was living as a young, single woman without the protection of her family, a community, or, most importantly, a man, in a very volatile region. She came under threat from gangs in what was essentially gender-based violence. That’s what led her to actually leave Guatemala and come to the United States, at which point she wasn’t even able to get in.

Asylum judges need to understand the nuanced ways that climate events can lead to persecution. When they hear of someone fleeing disaster, they also need to understand the compounding impacts of that disaster. And those impacts often fall under the existing refugee convention. So when I mention this woman from Guatemala, there are likely protections she could turn to already. She should be able to seek protection in the United States on the basis of being a woman who was vulnerable in those circumstances or her status as an Indigenous person. But nations need to understand the nuance first.

Guernica: Isn’t refusing to understand that nuance a question of political will?

Tower: What we’re seeing, really, is a lack of empathy. I think this lack of empathy underpins our lack of understanding, and our lack of imaginative and cooperative responses.

The way we talk about migration tends to be in very dehumanizing language. We also have different policies for different parts of the world, which tend to divide into the Global North and Global South. These policies tend to be quite racist. You only need to look at the immediate response to Ukraine as the most visceral and recent example of how the European Union — which failed to craft a coordinated migration policy when Syrians, Afghans, and Eritreans were risking their lives to get to Europe — was able to find one very quickly when the migration was coming from war-torn Ukraine. Meanwhile, certain countries were perfectly fine with opening one border to Ukraine and closing another to Afghans, to Iraqis.

How do you justify having a policy whose application depends on where people are coming from? There’s no caveat in the convention for which country a person comes from. That’s not what human rights are.

Guernica: The majority of people who are displaced due to climate are displaced within their home countries. How does internal displacement factor into your thinking?

Tower: Crisis isn’t triggered the minute somebody crosses a border; it’s triggered because it’s happening to them right now. It’s not a matter of whether displacement occurs within or across a border. It’s displacement, and that should trigger a response.

Let me tell you about the people from the Lake Chad Basin, where the lake is shrinking. The people I spoke with there had to move multiple times — even several times a year — to keep pace with the lake, which is their only source of water. There are only one or two schools in the area. As they moved closer to the lake, those schools were too far away to access. So people were forced to choose between giving their children an education or having access to water. That’s how slow-onset climate change works.

Guernica: And this is also a part of the world where there’s active conflict, too?

Tower: Yes. Lake Chad shrinking had a direct impact on the ability of Boko Haram, an insurgent group from northern Nigeria that’s destabilizing the region, to reach and attack lake residents. The shrinking lake exposed land, creating spontaneous roads that allowed direct access to villages and opportunities for the armed group to attack, raid, kill, forcibly displace, and seize property and land as their base of operation.

What’s interesting is that most of the people I met who had crossed a border spoke of being displaced by conflict and the lake shrinking. Once they had crossed an international border, they had already moved several times. They’d been dealing with food shortages and displacement for thirty years. They didn’t see their displacement as an issue of crossing an international boundary. It was a problem that existed long before conflict forced them to do that.

Guernica: When we look at it from their perspective, it doesn’t make sense that crossing a border triggers a humanitarian response when decades of forced movement didn’t. Once they cross the border into, say, Nigeria, to escape conflict, there’s infrastructure in place to help — refugee camps, food rations, healthcare for kids; all support that’s paid for primarily by the Global North, which is to say, polluting countries. But what you’re saying — and what these people are saying — is, what’s the difference?

Tower: Unless there’s been an identified humanitarian disaster or conflict, these are people who fall between the cracks. When people are internally displaced, especially in countries on the front lines of the climate crisis, they are moving within countries whose governments have fewer and fewer resources with which to respond. I mean, if everything’s on fire, what am I gonna put it out with? So internal displacement requires international support, cooperation and funding.

Guernica: Last year, COP27 in Egypt ended with an agreement to create a loss and damage fund. Can you give us some context for this fund? Where has it come from? What is it intended to do?

Tower: Vanuatu put forth the expression of loss and damage over thirty years ago, but it didn’t go very far beyond a conversation piece. Eight years ago, at the climate summit in Paris, countries in the Global North accepted that they needed to help developing countries adapt to the negative effects of climate change, and they also had to take steps to ensure their actions didn’t contribute to irreversible losses for vulnerable countries. Basically, in theory, they accepted that even with money to adapt, there would still be climate effects that are irreversible: loss and damages.

For a long time, the US and other polluting countries obstructed the loss and damage agreement, arguing that it could open the door for almost limitless liability. But pressure from developing countries ended the stalemate. Now it’s just a question of mechanisms: How to administer the fund? Who gets what, when and under what circumstances? Which countries should be considered developing? I mean, you can imagine that this is going to be incredibly difficult. It’s unprecedented.

Guernica: Do you think this is just another way for wealthy nations to avoid responsibility and throw money at the problem without enacting any real change?

Tower: That’s certainly the fear. Promises are made year after year, but they’re also always broken. We’re gonna help. We gotta tackle this together. Those words start to wear very thin. What I hear from people in the Global South, whether they’re elected leaders or Indigenous farmers, is “I don’t trust that someone has my back.” And I think that that’s really heartbreaking.

Still, it’s not useful for me to be cynical. I’d rather fight to make sure that what’s created is representative of people’s needs, and accessible to the people who need it. This fund is very much an instrument of justice in my mind. Money is not going to solve all of this — you’re not gonna ever make it right — but, well, this is how you compensate.

People are trapped in vulnerable situations because of a lack of options; this fund would be one more positive tool in an arsenal that doesn’t yet exist. So thinking back to that woman who lost her family in Guatemala, if the government had access immediately to funds after that disaster, that would have created one more option for her to turn to before she ended up at the US border.

My Friend Juniper

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko via Pexels

Back then, it felt like everyone who knew Juniper had the same fascination with her. We’d attended the same experimental liberal arts university on the southernmost point of the beach island Sentosa, a school that seemed promising but wound up shuttering after just six years. It was the kind of place most Singaporean kids dreamed of: a small, intimate student body; professors imported from America and Europe; life cloistered in a refurbished Beaux-Arts building. I was part of the second cohort and couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have been admitted. Every other day, there was some kind of university social event ripped straight from the imagination of someone who’d grown up reading English boarding school novels — a paint-and-sip night, a jazz listening party, a philosophy club salon — and at the center of all these events was Juniper, a radiant, entouraged sophomore who always stayed late to mingle with us freshmen, never giving off the impression that she had somewhere better to be.

She and I spoke for the first time at a party thrown by the theater students, who were fundraising for a production of Hamlet to be held over the December break. One of them had managed to get their parents to sponsor unlimited box wine and crackers for the mixer, which pretty much guaranteed a full house, though I had other reasons to consider the seven-dollar entry fee a bargain. I’d been trying very hard to believe that the sustained flirtation between me and Sebastian, one of the supporting cast members, would eventually morph into a relationship. We had four classes together and saw each other all the time, but it was hard to tell where I stood with him. Our interactions had consisted of my recommending nineteenth-century literature and hoping that the longing in Austen would make my intentions clear. I had two titles out on loan with him and was waiting for the epiphany to hit.

Sebastian seemed happy enough to see me at the mixer. I found him engaged in an imaginary sword fight with some of the other actors and drew him away to the second-floor windows, where we stood chatting about classes and his thespian-y ambitions until the theater club’s president, who had until recently been the events manager for an Early Starts enrichment center, clinked his fork against a musical triangle and proposed a toast.

“Thank you all,” he said, signaling for the music to be turned down, “for gracing the Fall Soiree with your presence. What a privilege to be here, at Singapore’s first-ever liberal arts college, with some of the finest thinkers and artists of our generation. How long we” — and here he gestured broadly at the few local faculty members dotting the room — “have dreamed of this. Know that you are part of a historic moment.” The president looked quite overcome with emotion. It felt as if he might say a bit more about freedom from capitalist key performance indicators, the chance to nurture meaningful artistic discourse, et cetera — the stuff that’d been expounded to death in the application brochures — but he visibly restrained himself and concluded: “To the beginning of Fall.”

We raised our Dixie cups. “To Fall.”

The party resumed its roar, and Sebastian escaped to refill his drink. I turned and stared out at the sea so it wouldn’t look like I was waiting around. The sun had recently set, and the beach was phosphorescent with pink-and-purple lights affixed to the bases of various palm trees. In the distance, across a short strip of water, cable cars floated to and from mainland Singapore. My cheeks were warm from the pure, simple bliss of cheap wine and conversation; for a couple of minutes, I made a game of letting my eyes go unfocused so the cable cars’ blinking lights would blur and glitter pleasantly. I felt strongly that I had never been this happy before. Then something moved in the window’s reflection. I turned and was startled to find Juniper standing there.

Juniper was one of those supremely self-possessed people who also had the grace to not be a bitch. An intoxicating combination. I’d often see her holding court on the giant stone steps outside campus like some kind of Chinese Kate Middleton, taking lunch out of her Sailor Moon tin while surrounded by a mist of laughter, a ring of admirers who wanted to be close to her and didn’t mind saying so. It was rare to catch her alone, yet here she was, staring at me so intently amidst the din of bodies and chatter that I thought she had me mistaken for someone else. But then she opened her mouth and spoke in a voice so soft that I had to lean in to hear her properly.

“Emaline,” she said as the party swelled around us, “are you in love?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Yes.”

I flushed. I couldn’t believe Juniper knew my name, let alone my desires. I glanced around to see if anyone had noticed us talking, or if Sebastian was coming back. Juniper reached out to touch my cheek.

“Do you mind if I offer a word of advice?”

I glowed. “Please.”

Her voice dipped even more. “Sebastian is being very irresponsible. He’s seeing someone else. Her name is Tammy, and she’s on exchange in Norwich for a semester. They’re in a long-distance relationship.”

Humiliated, I began to apologize.

But Juniper wasn’t having it. “No,” she said, her eyes bright and fierce. “Don’t ever apologize for being in love. To feel so deeply is a privilege.”

Most of the other students were taking full advantage of the unlimited wine and were well on their way to bad hangovers, but not Juniper. I knew — everybody knew — that Juniper didn’t drink due to an alcohol allergy. So she wasn’t drunk, though she had the exuberant intensity of someone who might be. I’d seen her nibbling on a saltine cracker at the start of the night. That was all.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, burning under the kindness in her gaze. “I appreciate it.”

I turned to go, but Juniper reached out again, this time touching my shoulder.

“Emaline,” she said, her voice warm and full, “I meant it. What you’re going through is precious. It’s worthy in and of itself. Don’t be embarrassed.”

Sebastian was surprised the next day when I slid into the seat beside him and asked about his long-distance girlfriend. We were in the back of the lecture hall, and a few students turned around to shush us, but Sebastian didn’t seem to notice. He happily furnished me with everything I wanted to know. There was an air of bemusement in his voice, as if this were information he’d assumed I already had. Of course he had a girlfriend he spoke to every night on the phone. Of course she knew about me; she knew everything about his life.

“Tammy and I have no secrets,” he said, pulling out his iPhone. His Find My Friends app was open, and on it the icon of a stunning Chindian girl with straight, glossy hair blinked at me, pinned somewhere in the middle of Norwich, England. It was 6:00 a.m. where she was, Sebastian told me lovingly. She would be waking up soon.

His transparency hurt me. “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend,” I said again, ignoring impatient glares from the other students.

“Oh. Well, I do.”

Juniper found me later, visibly moping in the school’s open-air car park. She looked like she was on her way to class, but when she saw me squatting in between a green Lexus and a scooter, she squeezed in beside me. Her presence made things worse. The conversation we’d had at the party came flooding back, and in the sober light of day, it seemed a million times more humiliating. I burst into tears.

After I calmed down, she pulled out a bag of sour gummy worms and offered me one.

“I was impressed,” she said, “by your readily admitting to being in love. Most folk our age defer to infatuation or attraction, as if they might protect themselves from the vulnerability of emotion by doing so. There’s something quite old fashioned about the word love.”

Even through my tears, I was dazzled and slightly cowed by Juniper’s presence, by her deliberate way of talking. My heart drummed as I tried to come up with an intelligent response. I didn’t point out that she was the one who’d used the word love at the party; all I’d done was agree. In my silence, a peopled buzz became apparent. A class had just let out. Soon, students would pour out of the building, cutting across the car park to get to the dorms or hopping into cars and taking their lives elsewhere. That Juniper and I’d had two moments alone was more than I could have hoped for. I glanced at the first of the students streaming down the school steps. Juniper stood up to leave.

“Thank you,” I said hurriedly, wanting to prolong the moment.

She smiled at me, folding the packet of gummy worms back into her bag.

“Don’t be a stranger, Emaline,” she said, and was gone.

Though Juniper was a year ahead of me in school, we were the same age. I don’t think she remembered, but the university wasn’t where we’d first met. We’d actually attended the same obscure neighborhood school in Yishun, one that most Singaporeans wouldn’t have even heard of. Though she was quite different back then. She’d been a quiet child, frequently picked on for the Mills & Boon romance novels she carried everywhere, with their hackneyed covers featuring European-looking couples in various states of passionate embrace. The school was big enough that we never spoke, though I remember seeing her cry a lot on the school bus home. Then, in the middle of primary two, she vanished.

Families in our neighborhood were constantly trying to change postal codes and get their kids into better schools; I assumed that was what had happened with her. But when I encountered her again at the university, it came out that she’d bypassed our education system completely and transferred abroad, following her father’s new job in Ireland. The Juniper I met at eighteen spoke in gently modulated tones, knew not to drown her perfectly creased eyelids with makeup, and always sat with her back yoga straight.

I was shocked by the completeness of her transformation: how collected she was, how assuredly and gracefully she moved through campus society. Everything about her was different now — better. The intervening decade hadn’t been as kind to me. Puberty had not catalyzed the beauty I’d hoped for. All it’d done was slap me with a growth spurt and leave me to flounder. At nearly five foot nine, I towered gracelessly over most of my peers, hovering at the fringes, trying to find a way in but somehow always saying the wrong thing.

I tried my best to correct this — see: pursuing Sebastian, desperately scraping together the fees to apply to the university, even joining my local Toastmasters club to seem more interesting — but it didn’t make a difference. I wasn’t an outcast, but you wouldn’t find a single peer who claimed to love me. I’d once believed that social acceptance was just beyond my grasp, that if I could reach out and push through a secret door, I’d fall into the graces of those who understood me, and be warmly embraced for who I was. But the opportunity to prove myself never arose. By the time I’d made it to university, the hope that I’d outgrow my awkwardness had shrunk to the size of a pea.

Running into Juniper again changed that. It took me a while to place her, radiant as she was amidst the second-years during orientation. But when I did, I was surprised that there seemed to be nothing left of the sniveling child I’d known. I watched her from afar, and not once did flashes of her old self break through. It was not transformation, then, but evolution, and if she could do it, so could I. The secret of her past — that she hadn’t always been this precocious, queenly girl — would die with me: a silent offering she never needed to be aware of. I did not expect anything in return, least of all friendship. And so when it bloomed, unexpectedly and fully, I wasn’t ready.

The next time I saw her on the school steps, carefully parsing through her Sailor Moon tin while the girls around her chattered away, I didn’t slow down. I was embarrassed that she’d seen me at my worst. I didn’t want to make eye contact with her and perceive pity in her gaze.

But she called out to me: “Emaline.”

The other girls stopped blabbering at once, their gazes darting from me to her, from her to me.

“I like your socks,” she continued. One girl, sitting at Juniper’s feet, actually had her mouth open.

I looked down. The fluorescent-pink strawberries dotting my crew socks winked at me. I’d gotten them for a dollar at a pasar malam some years back and liked them so much that I’d actually bought a pajama set with a matching print. “Thanks,” I said. “Strawberries are actually a great source of antioxidants.” Then, thinking I’d better quit while I was ahead, I added: “I’m late for class.”

“Bye,” she called. As I left, the conversation picked up around her again.

That week, I became aware of a shift in attitudes toward me, a kind of watching and waiting that I was unaccustomed to. But I was still preoccupied with the fallout of the Sebastian situation; I wanted my books back. The worst thing in the world that could happen was him reading Pride and Prejudice and drawing conclusions between the novel and my own overuse of the word ardently. What was it I’d said when I declared myself to him that night at the mixer, still operating under the impression that we were engaged in a mutual flirtation? I’d called myself a “rational creature.” Oh God.

I cornered him one day after class. “Are you done with my books?”

Sebastian looked wounded. “No,” he said. “I’ve been in rehearsals every day; you know that.”

I began to sweat. “I need them back for something.”

“I thought you really wanted me to read them.”

“I’ll lend them to you again when I’m done.”

“All right,” he said, looking uncertain. “I don’t mean to, well — ”

“What is it?”

Sebastian paused, then said: “You’re being super weird. Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I choked, and fled, leaving him standing outside the classroom, alone.

He returned the books to me a few days later, with a thin strip of shiny card paper sticking out of one of them. A lone ticket to the play.

“I realize I haven’t been as present a friend as you’d like me to be,” he explained. “Anyway, I hope you’ll understand why I’ve been so busy when you see it. It’s very complex.”

I’d already bought my ticket from him — weeks ago. But I turned this one over in my hands and thanked him. My traitorous heart hopped in my chest. “What about Tammy?”

“What about her?”

“She won’t be upset?”

Sebastian’s sweet, blank face looked genuinely confused. “Why would she be?” Then he added: “Her semester ends earlier than ours; she’ll be back by then. You guys can finally meet.”

Later that evening, while I was cramming in the library, a girl approached me. I recognized her as one of Juniper’s groupies. “We’re over there,” she said.

I looked up and saw Juniper sitting with four other girls, their bags occupying a large table at the end of the library. I gathered my books and followed her.

“Emaline,” she said, and beamed. I felt myself defrosting; after that interaction with Sebastian, I thought I’d never feel again. “What are you working on?”

I showed her my exam schedule. The girls at the table pored over it together, their attention solidified by Juniper’s interest. One girl, Naomi, whose brilliant smile I recognized from the “Welcome New Students!” posters around school, was an English major as well. She gave me study tips, the most valuable being that a certain professor who frequented the beach clubs on the tourist end of Sentosa had drunkenly declared an ideological stance against examinations and emailed the final’s questions to a student in exchange for a bottle of Hibiki 17.

The email had, of course, been widely disseminated. This professor taught the same course every semester, Naomi explained as she tapped at her laptop, forwarding the message to me. So far, he’d repeated the questions word for word: Which of Defoe’s satirical works led to arrest and why? Using any given text from the semester, explain how choices in point of view can systematically establish the delusion of freedom. And so on and so forth. Given that I was barely passing the class, I gushed my thanks, but she waved me off.

“Let me buy you coffee,” I insisted. “You have no idea what this means to me.”

Naomi gave me a little pat on the shoulder. “Calm down, girl, you’ll be fine.”

Juniper unwrapped a Chupa Chups. Even though she majored in sociology, not English, she spoke up.

“Examinations are exercises in futility,” she said. “But if they’re going to make you play the game, you might as well play it well.”

None of the other girls in the group reacted. It seemed this sentiment was regular fare for them.

“What?” I said.

“It doesn’t matter if you pass or fail,” Juniper explained, popping the lollipop in her mouth. “Not in the real world. Philosophy, literature, even linguistics” — she waved her hand — “the true point of university is granting us a buffer zone in our youth. It’s the last frontier of equality before the world batters us with its preconceived notions of who we are.”

According to her, it was only at university where your gender, race, class, and sexuality didn’t matter, just what made it down onto the page in the examination hall. And what kind of standard was that? How could a person’s essence be distilled from their ability for rote memorization? It was our great duty to recognize and resist such easy categorization. To be easily judged was to be easily dismissed.

I thought about Sebastian’s Tammy, her long, expensively trimmed hair, her — let’s face it — traditionally beautiful face: the kind of person who could afford to take on a sixteen-thousand-dollar semester abroad in the name of life experience. None of that mattered? Really?

“Okay,” I said. “But I still need to do well. This school is crazy expensive. I can’t afford to lose my scholarship. My parents will actually kill me if my GPA drops below a second upper.”

Naomi laughed.

“I get that,” Juniper said, slurping loudly. Her lollipop was almost gone. The librarian walked over to shush us half-heartedly. It was late, and we were some of the last students left. “We all have different games to play.”

Finals came and went. Naomi’s tip was spot on, but the other papers were hard. I endured them in a haze of sleep-deprived panic, and when they were finally over, I found that I had become habituated to waking in spurts throughout the night, which meant that even without the looming pressure of finals, I couldn’t truly rest. On and on this blank exhaustion went. When I next saw Juniper, walking ahead of me in the canteen, I grabbed her.

“Essence?” I asked. “What did you mean by distilling a person into their essence?”

Campus was quieter over the December break. Those who could afford to had left immediately after finals for holidays in seasonal countries, like Japan and the States. Plenty of students had taken the monorail back to mainland Singapore, but my parents had sublet my room to an Indonesian scholar, so besides the occasional weekend dinner back home, I stayed in the dormitories. The air of the ghost town contributed to the feeling that I was perpetually sleepwalking.

Juniper looked pleased to see me. “When I saw you at that theater mixer,” she said, “I immediately liked you. I knew you were someone who had the rare quality of living an unfiltered life. People are too self-conscious, but you haven’t been polluted by all that yet.”

“I’m self-conscious,” I confessed. “I care about what people think.”

“But you ultimately honor your feelings,” she insisted, “by the way you choose to live.”

I started to feel like I was still swimming in bed. “What are you talking about?”

“None of this matters, Emaline.” She seemed sad that I couldn’t understand what she was saying. “If none of this matters, then isn’t it better to live as sincerely as possible?”

Was she talking about Sebastian? I thought back to the thrall of anticipation that had accompanied my long months of unrequited love. Getting up early to steep my hair in fruity conditioner on the mornings we had classes together. Daydreaming about the depths of character Sebastian might read into each cursively annotated book of mine. It all seemed so stupid now. I could feel Juniper taking me under her wing, trying to pull me along with her, and I wanted desperately to follow. I wanted to be that person who could smile sagely in the face of hurt. But I couldn’t.

“Heartbreak is precious too,” Juniper said, gently.

I shook my head. My heart wasn’t broken. My ego was hurt. “I’d rather not have known.”

Her smile dipped. For a second, she wasn’t just the Juniper who stood before me today but the version I’d known as a child. I took my wallet out of my backpack.

“What are you doing next week?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“Do you want to come to the school play with me? I have an extra ticket.”

I gave her my original ticket. Juniper examined it happily.

“See,” she said, cheering up again. “Heartbreak isn’t the end. You’re still indulging in love.”

Naomi hadn’t gone anywhere for the holidays either, though it wasn’t because she couldn’t afford to. She was volunteering in the art department for the play. When I lingered outside the school hall, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sebastian at rehearsals, I saw her lugging a giant wooden cutout of a crescent moon to the car park. She laid it flat and arranged her spray paints on the gravel. I walked over and introduced myself.

“I remember you,” she said. “Juniper’s friend.” Then: “I can’t get the eyes on this fucking moon right.”

The face on the moon was frowning at us, the space where its eyes should have been creepily blank. “I’m coming with Juniper to the play,” I said.

“Oh? I told her I’d sneak her in, but she said she had something else going on. Guess she changed her mind.” Naomi squatted on the grass, using a pencil to trace the moon’s eyeballs. “She’s a funny one, that Juniper.”

I felt awkward standing over Naomi, so I joined her on the grass. She didn’t seem to mind, which was encouraging. “How did you guys meet?”

“We had classes together our first semester. She seemed cool, and she’s super smart. I introduced her to the rest — we were friends from before — and now I guess we all hang out.”

I hoped Naomi would continue, but she subsided into silence, studying the moon.

“She is cool,” I offered. “I like her a lot.”

Naomi squinted at me. “That’s cute.” Then she picked up the can of white spray paint and shook it vigorously. “Well,” she said, “if I fuck this up” — she angled the nozzle and closed one eye — “wish me luck.” Her phone bleeped loudly just as she was about to press down, and we both started. “Fuck,” she said. She put the can down and reached into her back pocket.

“Tam Tam,” she said, fondly, “you asshole. You almost caused me to fuck up the moon.”

I could hear the squiggly voice on the other end of the line, laughing. That voice tinkled beautifully, like glass shards.

Naomi glanced in my direction and continued: “Just a heads up. Juniper is coming to the play too. Yes, I know. Just sit on the other end. Jesus.” She hung up and looked at me. “Pretend you didn’t hear that.”

“Is that Tam Tam, as in Sebastian’s girlfriend?”

Naomi snorted. “Don’t get me started.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just kept quiet. I hadn’t realized there was anything to get started on.

Naomi looked at me, calculating, then sighed. “Fine. But you didn’t hear this from me. In our first semester, it was a whole thing. Tammy, Juniper, Sebastian. It looked like Sebastian was going to go with Juniper — they were basically inseparable — but then Tam got drunk and publicly declared her love for Sebastian in this long, elaborate speech, and I guess he decided that was more touching or whatever. Juniper was very gracious about stepping back, but Tam’s never gotten over how close they were. Won’t go to a single party if Juniper is going to be there. Can’t stand her accent and clothes. Even the way Juniper walks, you know, with that slight trot? It’s all very silly.”

What?

“I’d hoped the semester abroad would help Tam get over it, but she’s always been mad petty, so, well, I don’t know.” She pursed her lips. “But don’t let me put you off. Tam has a good heart. She just doesn’t get that there’s such a thing as wearing it too much on your sleeve.”

I was still struggling to catch up. Juniper and —

“Sebastian?”

Naomi rolled her eyes. “Don’t look at me. I don’t see the appeal either.” She turned to the moon again, took aim, and pressed down.

The night of the play, I spent a long time getting ready. Every surface in my dorm room was covered with the regurgitated contents of my closet. I ironed all my best clothes and tried them on so many times that they began to rewrinkle. Finally, I settled on a pair of tailored black jeans and an electric-blue tank top. This sort of casual chic was out of character for me, though I was learning. I debated the pink strawberry socks for a long time too, even putting them on, but now their fluorescence pained me. At the last minute, I tore them off and tossed them in the trash.

What was it Juniper had said? Don’t be embarrassed.

For the rest of my life: Juniper conjured before me, every single time I closed my eyes. Saying: To feel so deeply is a privilege, over and over again.

As a final touch, I went to the campus salon and paid for a blowout. Even though it was already late afternoon, I was the first customer that day. The hairdresser, glad to have something to do, gave me all the extras: conditioner, shine treatment, hot tongs, the works.

He complained the entire time I was in that chair. Business was shit. During the semester it was alright, but the school wasn’t even at the good end of Sentosa. There was nothing except the university and a restored World War II fort that occasionally attracted tourists. Not enough students sticking around either. Every day, the grocer complained about the swaths of meat and fruit going bad, but the university’s contract mandated that these on-campus retailers stay open through the break — to give their stakeholders the impression of being busy, alive.

“Why?” I asked, and the hairdresser shrugged. Damned if he knew.

I left the salon looking incredible. Nothing at all like my usual self. When I tried to pay the hairdresser for the extras, he batted my wallet away. “Good luck,” he said.

“With what?”

“I’ve been in this line long enough to know that no one comes in to do their hair like that unless they’re going to battle,” he said, surveying his handiwork. “Or trying to impress a man.”

“Thanks.”

“So which is it?”

When he saw that I wasn’t about to answer, he smiled. “Alright, then. Must be nice to be so young.”

The play was objectively mediocre, though it was obvious that the actors were trying their best. Hearts broke throughout the auditorium every time Sebastian stepped into the spotlight, emoting for all he was worth, yet conjuring only sweat. During curtain call, we all leaped up and applauded hard. Even from our shitty seats way in the back, I could see tear tracks running down Sebastian’s rapturous face, leaving shining streaks through his foundation. When the house lights went up, everyone filtered outside onto the beach, where the theater kids had set up foldable tables with celebratory wine and charcuterie. They’d even hired students to suit up and walk around with little square trays, handing plastic glasses out.

Sebastian was standing under a palm tree with the rest of the cast and crew, which included Naomi and a bunch of people I didn’t recognize. He was still crying, clinging to Tammy, overwhelmed from the high of performance while she struggled to keep her heels from sinking into the sand. I would go over and say hi, I thought. What did it matter now?

The last thing Juniper said to me as we left the theater was, “You look amazing.” What she meant was that I had succumbed. I looked exactly like the other girls, studied and stylish. Her voice was thick with disappointment, but not suspicion.

I grabbed her hand. Calluses, I remember thinking. The same as mine. “Let’s go congratulate the cast.”

When Tammy saw us, her face twisted.

Juniper was oblivious. “Tabitha,” she said, her voice bright and charming. The crowd cleaved as we approached. She smiled at Naomi too, and Sebastian, who was looking especially dapper, despite the tears and red nose. “How was England?”

“Great, thanks.”

“I enjoyed my time there,” Juniper said. “The people are so gentle. I don’t miss the weather, though. It made my skin very dry.”

Up close, Tammy was almost alienating in her beauty. What had I gotten myself into? I felt a surge of panic and stepped closer to Juniper, immediately hating myself for falling back into her orbit so cleanly when faced with uncertainty.

“Hello,” I cut in. “Nice to meet you. My name’s Emaline.”

Everyone ignored me.

“I’d be glad,” Juniper continued, “to give you a moisturizer recommendation.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

For a moment, it seemed like that would be it. But Juniper refused to move, still smiling benevolently in Tammy’s direction. People began to stare. For Tammy to back down would be to admit weakness. Her eyes narrowed.

“When were you there again, exactly?”

“I visited one summer, years ago.”

“Which part of the UK?”

“London. I’ve never been to Norwich, unfortunately, though I hear it’s adorable.”

“It is adorable.” Tammy smiled, her perfect white teeth showing. “And how long were you in Ireland?”

I decided that was enough. “Let’s go,” I whispered, tugging at Juniper’s sleeve. To no avail.

She waved her hand in a vague manner. “Just until I finished high school.” But her breath hitched slightly and held. I’d caught her misstep, and judging by expression, so had Tammy. She cocked her head to one side.

“Did you mean sixth form?” Tammy slipped her arm through Sebastian’s, pressing up against him. “Remember, darling, when your friend here gave me shit for pronouncing her name wrong at your birthday last year? Ju-nai-per, she said, not Ju-nee-per.”

Juniper didn’t flicker. “I apologize if correcting your pronunciation made you feel bad.”

“I didn’t feel bad,” Tammy said, clocking the curious glances around her, enjoying herself now. “So which was it? High school or sixth form? Did you spend some time in America too, then? Or did you get your grading systems mixed up, Mary?”

Sebastian looked between the girls like a big uncomprehending Saint Bernard, knowing something had happened without being able to discern exactly what. “Who’s Mary?”

Tammy pinched him playfully but kept her eyes on Juniper. “I saw your old primary school yearbook photo. How different you looked! Where’d you get those double eyelids done? A recent development, aren’t they?”

When Juniper stayed silent, she went on. “In fact, your fucking name’s not even Juniper, is it?”

Somebody gasped unironically. Tammy, gratified, turned to address the rapt crowd. “I did some asking around. Everything about her is fake. She didn’t go to school abroad, so God knows where that accent is from. Probably YouTube. All of her bullshit about living true and she’s not who she says she is. And who knows if that alcohol allergy is even real or some quirk she invented to seem more interesting?”

My hand tensed around Juniper’s arm. “Why would I lie about something like that?” she asked.

Tammy shot back. “Why’d you lie about anything?”

Juniper, to her credit, held steady. “I didn’t.”

But I alone felt her tremble.

I should have realized then that the situation was spiraling out of control. What had I been thinking when I dragged her over? That life can’t be lived without consequences. That people’s feelings were real, not just things to be played with. Even if you believed that none of this would matter in the long run. Especially if.

“Prove it, then.” Tammy grabbed a plastic champagne flute from a passing server and held it out. “Drink up.”

By the time the ambulance came, Juniper’s status as the school martyr had been solidified. Tammy’s fall from grace was so quick, so permanent, that for years after, people called her a bully in whispers loud enough for her to hear. Juniper shouldn’t have lied to begin with, Tammy argued, over and over. How was I supposed to know? She wasn’t wrong; it seemed reasonable to equate Juniper’s alcohol abstinence with her wanting to avoid some kind of drunken slipup. But it was hard to take the side of someone who’d cornered another person into anaphylactic shock. Hard, too, to think about that split second of pure, electric terror that’d shot through the crowd when Juniper abruptly crumpled. Nothing in the years since has quite come close. That Sebastian and Tammy split shortly after wasn’t a surprise, but even Naomi disavowed Tammy. That was uncalled for, Tam Tam, she’d said. Seriously. She could have died.

When Juniper returned to the dormitories, some of us wept in relief. After that, we continued addressing her as Juniper, not Mary. What about the accent, the whole bit about living in the UK? Juniper herself joked about that invented Irish phase. She’d always been a daydreamer, but yes, making up a whole season abroad when all she did was transfer to yet another obscure neighborhood school was a bit much. That was on her. She charmed everyone with her contrition; it was masterfully done. Even more people gathered around her on the school steps as she took her lunch out of that Sailor Moon tin. Still, no matter how popular she got, she’d call out to me when she saw me booking it to class. Hey, Emaline, she’d say, raising a hand. Hey.

I could never figure out if, or what, she knew. Did I go too far? Did she?

Years later, long after the university had consistently failed to make any world ranking lists and shut down, I ran into Tammy in the feminine care aisle of a Watsons. She was a successful lawyer by then and wore her exhaustion in a very chic way. I didn’t expect her to recognize me, and as we queued to pay, we didn’t exchange a word. But when I ran into her again outside the mall, rolling a cigarette, she nodded at me.

I stopped and accepted one, even though I didn’t smoke. “Did you hear that the university is going to be turned into a museum?” she asked.

I had. The Singapore Tourism Board had bought up the Beaux-Arts building after the university folded. Apparently, its architecture was too beautiful to be demolished.

“A Madame Tussauds,” Tammy scoffed, lighting her cigarette, then mine. “That whole place was a joke.”

We mulled this over. It suddenly occurred to me that there was absolutely no reason for me to be standing here with Tammy, that it had been a long time since I’d felt the compulsion to pant after the slightest sign of interest. I was a full-time mother now and, with whatever free time I had, volunteered as a parish nurse at our neighborhood church. I’d left that other life, a shimmering mirage of girls and chatter, so far behind that at times I had trouble believing any of it had happened, least of all to me.

I didn’t need this, I decided. I’d paid my dues. Just as I was about to make up an excuse to leave, Tammy took a long drag and demanded: “Why do you think she did it?”

I paused, caught out. “Did what?” I asked, reluctantly.

“If she knew she was allergic, why’d she take the drink?”

“I don’t know,” I said, even though I did. “She’s a funny one, that Juniper.”

Tammy shot me a look. “You stayed friends with Naomi, didn’t you?” When I didn’t reply, she tossed her cigarette on the ground and said, “Forget it. It’s so long ago now.” She stomped out the butt. “You take care, Emaline.”

Back in the theater, right after the show was over, under the cover of raucous applause, I had turned to Juniper. She was standing straight, her shoulders lifted, the curve of her lower back pronounced under a sleek black dress, the twin moons of her eyes lined in bright gold. Her hair was falling over her left shoulder in effortless waves, copious and glossy, but up close I could see that she’d meticulously crimped the underlayer to give it more body.

“Do you really think all this is a farce?” I asked. “That nothing that happens in school matters?”

Juniper kept her gaze trained on the stage, at the actors bowing and holding their hands up in the air. Someone shouted for an encore, which was inappropriate because the final scene had been one of simulated murder. Others laughed. A childish rage flared. Look at me, I felt like saying. I’m not just one of your chess pieces to be moved around. I’m learning to play the game too.

By then I had already returned to my parents’ home and dug up evidence of her fraud. The entire time I tore through the storeroom, nursing my hurt, looking for that yearbook, I thought: I’m honoring my feelings. While dialing Naomi and summoning up the tone of confidences, I told myself: I’m only doing what Juniper would do.

But still, even after the stage had been set, I wanted absolution. I wanted Juniper to admit that she bought into her own bullshit just as much as I had.

A long time passed. I thought that perhaps she hadn’t heard me, but then she said: “At this age, things feel more important than they really are. But in five, ten years, the only thing we’ll remember is the experiences we’ve had. The most important thing is to feel.”

“Feel what?”

“Everything.”

“Do you really believe that?”

When she finally turned to me, I saw that her face was shining. “I do, Emaline,” she said, beaming. “I really do.”

The End of Ice

Photo by Amy Sacka, taken at Perchville in Tawas, Michigan, in February 2023.

The expanding ice has its own language. It sounds like a sea creature, warbling and reverberating with an otherworldly howl. The first time I heard it in 2017, I thought, oh no, this is it; I checked my feet to make sure I was still standing on something. “Ice earthquake,” a nearby angler said to me when he saw the fear flickering in my eyes. Seconds later he was back to jigging his line. He was already fluent in the language of the ice. I was just learning it.

For six years, I’ve been photographing the Great Lakes’ ice, or what’s left of it. As of February 15, 2023, ice coverage across all five of the Great Lakes was at 6.6 percent, the lowest since satellite records began in 1973. Some years I’ve had to drive hundreds of miles across Michigan just to find it. I scan the water’s edge for ice fingers extending to the horizon.

Some of my earliest memories are of my father, a fifty-year Michigan ice fisherman, leaving the house in the muddy black of winter mornings, armed with a bucket, spud, and ice auger, and a desire to catch the limit before sunrise. Sometimes he would sit for hours on a white down-turned bucket just to snag a single palm-sized perch. I remember December afternoons when he would fry up his catch for the family, the house filling with scents and sounds that signaled he’d had a productive morning.

But those days don’t happen as much as they used to. “I can’t remember the last time I was able to ice fish before Christmas,” he says to me almost every year come winter.

Now I drive the lakes’ edges, and search for those who know the ice as well as my dad does. I’ve sat with countless Midwestern anglers like my father, peering for hours into eight-inch holes chiseled into the ice, waiting for fish to come. I’ve documented winter ice festivals, snowmobile drag races, broom ice hockey matches, and ice boat meet-ups. I’ve met kids who glide across the lake on hand-me-down skates their parents used when the ice was reliable. I’ve seen a man soaring above the ice in a flying go-cart, pedaling into the air, wild with excitement.

I’ve photographed countless crazy Michiganders, like the woman in the picture above, who plunge through the ice just for fun. For the past five years, I’ve driven up from my home in Detroit to photograph the plunge at Perchville, a festival in Tawas, Michigan. Many plungers participate year after year after year. The tradition, less about what they do and more about who they are, is the culture they inhabit.

Some years fans gather on the ice to hoot and holler at their favorite plungers. This year, we’re asked to watch from the shore. The ice is so thin, it can’t support a crowd. A few years back there was no ice. Participants ran into the water from the beach. It looked like summer.

Like countless other winter enthusiasts in Michigan, I watch the weather intently for signs of warming and melting conditions. I look at the statistics; I think of my father peering out on the lake’s expanse in winter. Will it or will it not? I think of his heavy winter fishing boots unlaced on the hardwood floor, his bright orange camouflage snowsuit hanging in the garage. I cross my fingers for more ice, any ice, and rarely see signs of it.

The cultural fabric of Michigan is knitted together by single-digit temperatures, all of us shivering to the bone together. We don’t need to talk much, because the ice speaks for us. What happens when it melts?

A Girl Can Dream — 

Photo by Mir Rajjak via Pexels

A girl can dream—

hold her breath through the fire
run past the cutthroats and gossips
and thorns. The villains that would
touch her hair, the husbands that
would break everything gold in her.
Her muddy face in the river its own
terrible consolation, her body on
its last penance. Half of her goddess
forest-frayed. The other, threadbare
shaped by ash. Her dreams, all bristle
and bark, small as they need to be.
You must be a god to survive this world.

The Goddess Born Stubborn

I set my jaw against your prayers,
showed you where the wounds
left stardust on my skin, where
the bones broke into branches.

I buried my wildness under
the heavy swamp of heartbeat.
Let spite stiffen my spine, seal
my girl-lips against the chanting.

Then I’d make sure no one
missed me. Then, I’d wish
all between us had burned.

Vandana Khanna’s book, Burning Like Her Own Planet, is out this month from Alice James Books.

The April Issue

Guernica, I often tell people, grew up with the Internet. We’ve been an online magazine since 2004, and we’ve seen online conversation grow and change a lot in those nineteen years. We’ve changed too — adding, some years back, a daily blog, then moving to daily publishing entirely.

These days, the daily Internet feels like a conveyor belt of the disposable; hot takes, provocations, and easy outrage roll over us faster than we can consume them. Thought is the commodity; words are merely the packaging.

Obviously, that’s not how we work. Guernica publishes writers who resist the reactive, who shake the very foundations of conventional thinking, who provoke new ways of seeing. In short, we do a different thing — and it needs to be done differently.

Starting this month, we’re publishing a digital monthly — just as much fiction, nonfiction, and poetry every month, but “bound” by our redesigned homepage. We hope this sharpens your view of our editorial vision, the curative work of our stellar team of editors, and the political imagination that brings our community together.

We lead with “The Invisible War,” a genre-pushing piece of nonfiction from Iranian writer Nargol Aran. Aran, who lives in Tehran, immerses in the lives of health workers and interrogates the economic effects of sanctions, in a piece that builds from the intimate details of individual lives into emphatic resistance to the hypothesis that sanctions are a peaceful form of politics. Thanks to the prodigious talents of Farnaz Haeri, who translated from Aran’s original English, we also offer the piece in Persian.

Kashmiri writer Gowhar Yaqoob calls us to attend to another endless, undeclared war in “The Final Landscape,” this month’s fiction selection for our Guernica Global Spotlights series. On the eve of setting out to look deeply at a war seemingly no one but its survivors had noticed, journalist Anjan Sundaram writes a letter to his newborn daughter — a letter he earlier envisioned as the first chapter of his latest book, and which we publish in The Cutting Room, our department for work that writers loved but had to cut from their new books.

And this month, we inaugurate “Wish You’d Been Here,” a series of postcards from the climate apocalypse. Every month, we’ll bring you original photography and meditative writing that captures the disappearing rituals of our rapidly warming world. From festivals to sacred rites to types of labor and forms of leisure, we appreciate and mourn what we’re losing. Michigan photographer Amy Sacka leads the series with a reflection on the shrinking ice of her homeland.

In conjunction with our new climate series, Emma Hardy talks to Amali Tower, a leading voice in the fight for rights of people displaced by climate change, about recent progress, and ongoing struggles, in the quest for climate justice. In Back Draft, Ben Purkert talks with Javier Zamora about revising points of view in trauma writing.

And you’ll find more stellar fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from Kwame Dawes, Jemimah Wei, Daniela Catrileo, Rumena Bužarovska, Bre’Anna Bivens, Myronn Hardy, and Vandana Khanna.

We’re so grateful you’re here.

جنگ پنهانی

Illustration by Anne Le Guern

تا پا می‌گذارم توی میدان راه‌آهن که شلوغ‌ترین ایستگاه‌ قطار تهران است، باد سردی به صورتم سیلی می‌زند. روی چمن، کنار استخری مستطیلی‌شکل قدم می‌زنم؛ نمای ساختمان ایستگاه قطار از مرمر است و پنجره‌های قدی‌ دارد که بی‌شباهت به چند ردیف چشم نیستند، چشم‌هایی که از آن سوی فضای سبز به من زل زده‌اند. در ایام بچگی در دوران جنگ دیگری- جنگ ایران و عراق که از 1359 تا 1367 طول کشید- تابستان‌ها منزل اقوام در تهران می‌ماندیم و آخر تابستان سفر خانواده‌ی ما به سوی خانه از همین‌جا شروع می‌شد. یک کیسه دستم بود پر از ساندویچ‌ الویه و می‌دویدیم تا به قطاری که راهی جنوب بود برسیم و برگردیم شهرمان. جنگ در همان مرزهای جنوبی در جریان بود. امروز از کنار یک زباله‌گرد گذشتم که هنوز بچه بود، شاید سیزده ساله و داشت خودش را از توی سطل زباله بیرون می‌کشید. زنی کنار خیابان نشسته و بچه‌ای روی پایش است، روسری سرمه‌ای رنگش را کشیده روی صورتش و دستش را برای گدایی دراز کرده.

دی ماه 1399 است و موج سوم کرونا تازه در ایران راه افتاده. الآن ماه‌هاست تقلا می‌کنم چیزی بنویسم و از کشوری بگویم که علاوه بر همه‌گیری کرونا با تحریم‌های آمریکا هم دست و پنجه نرم می‌کند. کل عمرم جنگی نامرئی علیه کشورم در جریان بوده. بعد این مرض همه‌گیر شد. در حالی برای حفظ جان‌مان از این همه‌گیری می‌جنگیم که جنگ نادیده‌ی دیگری نابودمان کرده. دو بحران در هم ادغام شده‌اند.

دنبال کسانی‌ می‌گردم که در خط مقدم‌اند. امروز آمده‌ام راه‌آهن تا خانم علیزاده را ببینم، تکنیسین چهل و چهار ساله‌ی بخش مراقبت از نوزادان در بیمارستانی همان حوالی.
همدیگر را می‌بینیم و از پشت ماسک سلام و احوال‌پرسی می‌کنیم. صورتش مهتابی است و چشمان بادامی دارد. روسری گلدار سبزی زیر چادر سیاهش به سر دارد. قبلاً در بیمارستان او را دیده‌ام و می‌دانم ده سالی‌ست که نقل مکان کرده به تهران؛ قبلاً در روستایی در فاصله‌ی پنج‌ساعتیِ تهران زندگی می‌کرد.

تنها فرزندش که دوساله بود، شوهرش دچار بیماری مزمنی شد و همان بیماری خانه‌نشینش کرد و خانم علیزاده شد تنها نان‌آور خانه. یادش می‌آید، «یک روزهایی جز نان خشک و آب چیزی برای خوردن نداشتیم.» علیزاده باید زود راهکاری می‌یافت تا از گرسنگی نجات پیدا کنند. در بیمارستان دنبال کار گشت و اول به عنوان نظافتچی مشغول کار شد. کار یدیِ سنگینی بود ولی لااقل خرج سه‌تایی‌شان درمی‌آمد. می‌گوید، «پولم برکت داشت. کفاف خرج‌مان را می‌داد.»

اما اوضاع عوض شده. هنوز یک سال از اجرایی شدن تحریم‌های آمریکا علیه ایران در سال 1397 نگذشته بود که قیمت مواد غذایی افزایش سرسام‌آوری یافت. علیزاده ناچار شد مصرف گوشت در ماه را به یک کیلوگرم کاهش دهد. گوشت‌ها را اندازه‌ی نخود خرد می‌کرد و توی خورش می‌ریخت. علیزاده خودش از آب خورش می‌خورد و گوشت را به شوهر و بچه‌اش می‌داد که به قول خودش «بیشتر به مواد مغذی احتیاج دارند.»

آنها مشغول تجربه‌ی چیزی بودند که تحلیل‌گر اقتصادی، یار باتمانقلیچ، آن را «تبدیل تورم به اسلحه» خوانده – تورمی که به کشورهای تحت محدودیت‌های اقتصادی تحمیل می شود. تحریم‌ها منابع درآمد دولت ایران را خشکاند، ارزش پول‌مان را پایین آورد و نَفَس اقتصادمان را به شماره انداخت. اولین تأثیری که در خیابان مشهود بود، سیر صعودی قیمت‌ها بود.

در همین دوران، علیزاده «درد مفاصل و بدن‌درد» به جانش افتاد، «انگار تنم پوک شده بود و هر آن ممکن بود نقش زمین بشوم.» راه رفتن برایش دشوار شد و نفسش بالا نمی‌آمد. بعد از این دکتر-آن دکتر رفتن و آزمایش‌های متعدد، سر از مطب آنکولوژیستی درآورد که تشخیص داد سرطان دارد. شیمی‌درمانی که اغلب تجویز می‌شد امکان‌پذیر نبود: داروهای شیمی‌درمانی در اتحادیه‌ی اروپا تولید می‌شد و به خاطر تحریم‌های آمریکا، واردات قانونی به کلی متوقف شده و به همین دلیل از پوشش شرکت‌های بیمه هم خارج شده بود. تحریم‌های ایران فرا-مرزی‌ست، چون شرکت‌های غیرآمریکایی هم از انجام تجارت با ایران منع شده‌اند و نسخه‌ی علیزاده متاعی بود که فقط در بازار سیاه یافت می‌شد و یک دوز دارویش معادل چندین سال حقوقش بود. هفته‌ها با این فکر کلنجار می‌رفت که به خاطر عدم دسترسی به شیمی‌‍درمانی، آن بیماری او را از پا در خواهد آورد. اما شرکت‌های دارویی ایرانی اغلب جایگزین‌هایی برای داروهای خارجی تولید می‌کنند. دکترِ علیزاده جایگزینی پیدا کرد که تحت پوشش بیمه هم بود. علیزاده آسوده شد – اما نه برای مدتی طولانی.

بعد از این قضایا، اسفندماه 1398 فرارسید. پرستاری بیست‌ونُه ساله در بیمارستان از بیماری ناشناخته و مرموزی درگذشت. علیزاده می‌خواست جانش را بردارد و پا به فرار بگذارد، چون می‌دانست اگر مبتلا شود تنها فرزندش بی‌سرپرست می‌شود و از طرفی احتمال ابتلا هم بالا بود: برای اینکه خودش را به محل کارش برساند، باید دو ساعت تمام در مترو و اتوبوس‌های شلوغ سر می‌کرد و بیمارستان هم جز تهیه‌ی معدودی دستکش لاتکس و ماسک جراحی چیز دیگری در اختیار کارکنانش نگذاشته بود. احتمال داشت شغلش به کشتن بدهدش ولی بدون آن شغل هم بی‌شک نابود می‌شدند.

پس به تعلیم مادران در بیمارستان ادامه داد و یادشان داد چطور به نوزادشان شیر بدهند، حتی اگر مادری منتظر نتیجه‌ی تست پی‌سی‌آر بود. باید ماسک‌ها را اتو می‌زد و دوباره استفاده می‌کرد. در طول روز بارها به آزمایشگاه می‌رفت و از کنار بیمارانی می‌گذشت که منتظر نتیجه‌ی تست کووید بودند.

پرسیدم چطور دوام آورد. می‌گوید به باوری رسیده: «خواست خداست که این بچه را بزرگ کنم.»

چیزی به شروع شیفت علیزاده نمانده و به همین خاطر راه می‌افتیم سمت بیمارستان. از کنار زنان و مردان و بچه‌هایی می‌گذریم که گدایی می‌کنند. علیزاده مکثی می‌کند تا به زنی که بچه‌هایش فال می‌فروشند پولی بدهد. با اینکه درآمدش اندک است، هر هفته به نیازمندان کمک می‌کند و آن هزینه را جزو خرج‌های ماهانه حساب می‌کند و در دفتر حساب‌‌وکتابش می‌نویسد. «یادم می‌آید یک وقتی یک نفر گدا هم توی این محل پیدا نمی‌شد. به خاطر همین کمک می‌کنم. بین صورت را با سیلی سرخ نگه داشتن و آواره‌ی خیابان‌ها شدن یک مو فاصله است.» این حرف‌ها را که می‌زند، غم در نگاهش موج می‌زند و لب‌هایش منقبض می‌شود.

دم ورودی بیمارستان دعوتم می‌کند به چای- چای معطر به هل و پولکی زعفرانی که تویش خرده‌های لیمو عمانی دارد. سالن از مرمر سفید است و ما پشت میزی کنار چهار پرستار دیگر می‌نشینیم که در مورد مادری معتاد به تریاک در حال گفتگو هستند. ما زن‌ها یعنی من و علیزاده و پرستارها روبروی انکوباتور نوزادان نشسته‌ایم، نسل جدیدی که وسط این جنگ به دنیا آمده‌اند.

تمام زن‌های حاضر در این اتاق تا الآن دو جنگ را چشیده‌اند. یکی جنگ ایران و عراق که از سال 1359 تا 1367 به طول انجامید و پس‌زمینه‌ی دوران کودکی‌مان بود و دیگری این جنگی که احتمالاً ادامه‌ی همان جنگ است و اسمی ندارد. من اسمش را گذاشته‌ام جنگی به رهبری آمریکا علیه ایران. برای اینکه روشن‌تان کنم باید به عقب برگردم، به دورانی که خودم هم به دنیا نیامده بودم، به سال 1357 یعنی همان سالی که جنبش انقلابی، آخرین پادشاه ایران را سرنگون کرد.

کشور شاه، روابط دوستانه‌ای با آمریکا داشت و به آن متکی بود و افسران نظامی آمریکایی از مصونیت سیاسی بهره می‌بردند. هنری کیسینجر قلیان می‌کشید و رقاصی دور و برش عربی می‌رقصید و لورن هاتن با موهای بور و چشمان آبی‌اش جلوی ستون‌های کهن پرسپولیس می‌خرامید و برای مجله ی ووگ ژست می‌گرفت. در سال 1357 ایران تولد دوباره‌ای یافت و به ملتی بدل شد که از بازیچه‌ بودن خشمگین بود. انقلاب ایران شاه را سرنگون کرد و وقتی دولت آمریکا به شاه پناه داد، در تهران آمریکایی‌ها را گروگان گرفتند.

کاریکاتوری از رهبر ایران روی جلد مجله‌ی تایم منتشر شد به شکل روحانی شیطان‌صفتی با چشمان خبیث و قرمز. در یکی از کمیک‌های بتمن، جوکر شد نماینده‌ی ایران در سازمان ملل. قیام ایران به سرعت تبدیل شد به دشمن شرور آمریکا. تحریم‌ها- محدودیت‌های جهانی اقتصادی- به مهم‌ترین اسلحه‌ی آمریکا علیه ما تبدیل شد.

منو کروکا تحریم‌ها را «محاصره‌ی جنگی امپریالیستی» می‌نامد. این جنگ اقتصادی به دست قدرت‌های بزرگ اقتصادی و نظامی دنیا علیه کشورهای ضعیف برپا شده است. استدلال دیویس و انگرمن این است که اقتصاد کشور تحریم‌کننده چهارصد برابر بزرگ‌تر از اقتصاد کشور هدف است. به نظر می‌رسد تحریم‌ها علاوه بر مختل کردنِ معیشت ملتی که تحریم‌ها بر آنها تحمیل شده، هیچ عواقبی برای طرفِ تحمیل‌کننده ندارد. نیکلاس مولدر می‌نویسد تحریم‌ها «کشورها را در مسیر ویرانی اجتماعی قرار می‌دهد». در ایرانِ پس از انقلاب، بارِ این محاصره‌ی بدوی بر دوش مردم ایران افتاده است.

خانم علیزاده در دوران ترامپ برای نجات جانش جنگید، یعنی در دورانی که خفگیِ اقتصاد ایران به دستِ لجام‌گسیخته‌ترین دولت آمریکا رهبری می‌شد. ترامپ توافق هسته‌ای را زیرپا گذاشت، توافقی که ایران را از بعضی تحریم‌ها معاف کرده بود، و همزمان تحریم‌های گذشته را احیا کرد و موارد جدیدی به آن افزود و قول داد فروش «نفت ایران را به صفر برساند». منبع اصلی درآمد دولت ایران صادرات نفت است؛ فروش نفت از دو میلیون بشکه در روز در سال 2016 میلادی (1394) به دویست‌هزار بشکه در روز در سال 2019 (1397) سقوط کرد. مایک پمپئو، وزیر امور خارجه‌ی ترامپ در خاطراتش با افتخار نوشته، «از سال 2017 (1395) تا 2020 (1398) تولید ناخالص داخلی ایران از 445 میلیارد دلار به 192 میلیارد دلار سقوط کرد.» طبقه‌ی کارگر ایران، کسانی مثل علیزاده، همواره اولین کسانی هستند که ضربه‌ی هر تحریمی را حس می‌کنند: رکود، تورم، کمبود و همه‌ همزمان با هم.

رئیس‌جمهور آمریکا محاصره‌ی اقتصادی را با توییت‌هایی درباره‌ی کشتار و تهدیدهای نظامی دوچندان کرد. تحریم‌ها و جنگ روانی در هم تنیدند. وسعت محاصره‌ی اقتصادی با تهدیدهای نظامی که ممکن بود کشور را درگیر جنگی تمام‌عیار کند گسترش پیدا کرد. یک روز پس از دستور قتلِ فرمانده‌ی سپاه ایران، ترامپ توییت کرد، «ایران در چشم‌بر‌هم زدنی شکست سختی خواهد خورد.»

رییس‌جمهورهای پیشین آمریکا نیز چنین شرایطی را به ما تحمیل کرده بودند- منجمله باراک اوباما. او نیز «تمام گزینه‌ها» را منجمله حمله‌ی نظامی روی میز گذاشته بود. در سال 1390، پس از اولین دوره‌ی ریاست‌جمهوری، اوباما با افتخار در حساب توییتری‌اش نوشت «فلج‌کننده‌ترین تحریم‌ها در طول تاریخِ اجرای تحریم‌ها». و ریچارد نفیو مسئول توسعه و اجرای تحریم‌های آمریکا علیه ایران در دولت اوباما تحریم‌ها را به «دردی» تشبیه کرد که به «تاندون‌ها، رباط‌ها و مفاصل بدنه‌ی اقتصاد ایران» وارد شده است.

در بدن بیمار، مثل بدن پدرم که در سال 1391 تشخیص دادند سرطان دارد، جنگ اوباما و نفیو لحظه به لحظه حس می‌شد. شیمی‌درمانی‌اش به دلیل مقررات جدیدِ داروخانه‌های مرکزی از فهرست داروهای قابل عرضه و تحت بیمه خارج شد. من و مادر و برادرم برای گرفتن هر کدام از نسخه‌هایش ساعت‌ها در صف می‌ایستادیم، مردمی از سراسر ایران می‌دیدیم که در انتظار دارو بودند. اگر دوز مصرفی شیمی‌درمانی پدرم یافت نمی‌شد، دنبال داروهای جایگزین یا درمان‌های دیگری می‌رفتیم و مدام بین مطب دکتر و داروخانه سرگردان بودیم. می‌شد کل روزی را پای تلفن یا در دفاتر بیمه بگذرانیم و سر سهم پرداختیِ بیمه‌گذار و بیمار چانه بزنیم که آن هم نتیجه‌ی افزایش قیمت‌ها بود. بیمارستان کمبود پرستار داشت. علاوه بر آن ساختمان بیمارستان فرسوده بود و برادرم مجبور بود پدرم را در حمام پرسنلِ بخش نفرولوژی حمام دهد.

پدرم زمانی فوت کرد که کشورش تحت محاصره‌ی اقتصادی بود. تأثیر تحریم‌ها در سال‌های آتی رو به وخامت گذاشت، یعنی وقتی تحریم‌ها با شیوع بیماری کووید همراه شد. جواد صالحی، اقتصاددان، نوشته، همه‌گیری «زمانی به ایران رسید که کشور در ضعیف‌ترین وضعیت اقتصادی پس از دوران جنگ با عراق قرار داشت، سی سال پس از جنگ مذکور.» وی صراحتاً ابراز کرده اگر اقتصاد در نتیجه‌ی تحریم‌ها تضعیف نشده بود، تعداد تلفات بیماری کووید هزاران نفر کمتر بود.

فاطمه نصرآبادی، از محققان انستیتو تحقیقات تغذیه‌ای باز موضوعِ بدن را پیش می‌کشد. به من می‌گوید، تحریم‌ها باعث شده ایرانی‌ها بیش از گذشته بیمار شوند و دلیلش «افزایش سوءتغذیه و محدودیت دسترسی به خدمات پزشکی» است. «همه‌گیری شرایط را بدتر هم کرده. منتها نه در ایران و نه در هیچ کشور دیگری سیستمی تعبیه نشده که بشود با آن تلفات ناشی از تحریم را اندازه‌گیری کرد.»

پس این کار بر دوش ایرانی‌هایی مثل نصرآبادی می‌افتد که این تصویر تکه‌تکه را کنار هم بگذارند. طبق گزارش روزنامه‌ی دنیای اقتصاد، در سال 1398 از هر سه ایرانی یک نفر زیر خط فقر زندگی می‌کرد، یعنی یک سال پس از احیای تحریم‌ها. در این گزارش علت این اتفاق نرخ بالای تورم اعلام شده است. حجازی و امام‌قلی‌پور، محققانی بودند که دریافتند فقر غذایی بین سال‌های 1395 و 1397 در مناطق شهری و روستایی به شدت افزایش یافت و آن را نتیجه‌ی تزلزل اقتصادیِ ناشی از تحریم‌ها دانستند. از سال 1397، مصرف گوشت و میوه نصف شد؛ نخود که در طول تاریخ غذای اصلی دهقانان بود، فقط در سال 1399 صد و دوازده درصد افزایش قیمت داشت.

خدمه‌ی پزشکی در ایران شاهدان اصلی تأثیرِ همزمانِ گرسنگی و کمبود دارو و کووید بودند. از سال 1396، زمانی که تحریم‌ها بحران دارویی جدیدی رقم زدند، مصائب آنها را در بیمارستان دنبال کرده‌ام. ناگهان تمام اقوام و دوستان بنا کردند به تماس گرفتن با آشناهای خود در داروخانه‌ها تا دارو پیدا کنند. توییت‌هایی مبنی بر تقاضای دارو صدها بار ریتوییت شدند. در سال 1399، بحران دارویی به بحران پرستاری بدل شد- بحرانی که بیماران و پرستاران را می‌بلعید.

به محض اینکه اولین مورد مشکوک به کووید اعلام شد، دکتر فروغی، پزشک داخلی، داوطلب شد تا در تیمِ خدمه‌ی پرستاری در بخش کووید مشغول شود. از آنجا که همسرش دچار ضعفِ دستگاه ایمنی بود و در آغاز دوران همه‌گیری، دو فرزندش چهار و شش ساله بودند، برای جلوگیری از ابتلای آنها به کووید مقیم بیمارستان شد.

در سال 1399 با هم گفتگو می‌کنیم؛ از او می‌پرسم آیا در آن روزهای اول از مرگ و ترکِ خانواده‌اش وحشت نداشت؟ می‌گوید نه خودش و نه همسرش ترسی به دل راه ندادند؛ آخر بدون حمایت او که نمی‌توانست چنین تصمیمی بگیرد؛ هر دو حس می‌کردند پای میهن‌پرستی در میان است. می‌گوید، «فرصتی بود که یک بار در زندگی نصیب آدم می‌شود تا در خط مقدم برای میهنش ایستادگی کند و به زندگی‌اش معنا ببخشد.» وی خودش را با داوطلبان جنگ ایران و عراق مقایسه می‌کند. ولی بر این باور بود که این بار کشورش در برابر دشمنی «پنهان» ایستاده- یعنی خودِ ویروس و البته فشار جهانی که پیش از شروع همه‌گیری کووید شدت یافته بود و او شاهد بود که نظام سلامت را بی‌اندازه به خطر انداخت.

می‌گوید، «به کمبود دارو عادت کرده بودیم، اما بعد از دوران ترامپ کمبودها دوچندان شد.» تأکید می‌کند، نه فقط کمبود دارو، بلکه خود بیمارستان، آجر و ملاط بین آجر و تجهیزاتش ذره ذره داشت نابود می‌شد. تعمیر یک دستگاه سی‌تی‌اسکن یا ام‌آر‌آی ماه‌ها طول می‌کشید و آزمایش و درمان را عقب می‌انداخت. اما برای او کمبود لوازم و تجهیزات به اندازه‌ی به خطر افتادن زندگی نیروهای خدمات پزشکی ناراحت‌کننده نبود. به من می‌گوید، تحریم اینطوری بنیه‌ی نظام سلامت را می‌مکد، «چطور می‌شود از پرستار یا تکنسینی که گرسنه است توقع داشت کارش را انجام دهد؟»

سارا کریمی*، هد-نرسِ بخش مراقبت‌های ویژه، شاهد از هم پاشیدنِ نیروی خدمات پزشکی است. در اسفند ماه 1399 برای بار دوم به خانه‌اش می‌روم. چهارزانو کف آشپزخانه نشسته، تی‌شرت آستین‌بلند و دامن بلند گلداری به تن دارد و سبزی پلویی پاک می‌کند. می‌خواهد برای همکارانش سبزی‌پلو با کاری گوشت درست کند. همانطور که چند تکه ران گوسفندِ صورتی و براق را می‌شوید تا خونابه‌اش برود، به کیسه‌ی خرید گوشت اشاره می‌کند که مقداری مرغ و میگو هم در آن هست. می‌گوید، «یک میلیون و پانصد هزار تومان (پنجاه دلار) پای اینها پول داده‌ام. حقوقم ماهی هشت میلیون تومان است.» که در آن مقطع معادل سیصد دلار بود. پدرش ساختمان‌ساز است و کمکش می‌کند؛ ولی باز هم! در چشمان هشیار و سیاه‌رنگش می‌شود برق محبت و خشم را همزمان دید.

کریمی دوازده سال سابقه‌ی کار دارد. وقتی شروع به کار کرد، همکارانش جزو طبقه‌ی متوسط محسوب می‌شدند و از رفاه عمومی متوسطی برخوردار بودند. می‌گوید، در سال‌های اخیر، «حتی پیش از شیوع کووید،» اوضاع عوض شد. از او می‌خواهم برایم شرح دهد سر کار چه تجربه کرده است، حرف کمبودها را پیش می‌کشد، نه فقط کمبود دارو که کمبود سرم و هپارین و تجهیزات پزشکی که نیاز به تعمیر پیدا می‌کنند و تأخیر در پرداخت حقوق‌‌ها.

کریمی می‌گوید «در سال‌های اخیر» همکارانش غذای بیمارستان را که موقع شیفت‌شان رایگان در اختیارشان قرار می‌گیرد به خانه می‌برند، چون بودجه‌شان برای خرید مواد غذایی محدود است. به مناطق جنوبی‌تر یا غربی‌تر شهر نقل مکان کرده‌اند چون استطاعت پرداخت اجاره در جاهای دیگر را ندارند و از این رو هر روز سه-چهار ساعتی را در راه بین محل کار و خانه هستند. تصریح می‌کند هم از دیگران شنیده و هم خودش شاهد بوده که همکارانش روز به روز فقیرتر می‌شوند. او هم مانند علیزاده اذعان دارد که از سال 1397 اوضاع رو به وخامت گذاشت.

معلم‌ها و پاکبان‌های پارک‌ها و رانندگان تاکسی هم در همین سراشیبی اجتماعی-اقتصادی افتاده بودند. ولی خدمه‌ی بیمارستان خیلی بیشتر در معرض ابتلا به کووید قرار داشتند. کریمی می‌گوید، «مردم دسته دسته جلوی چشم‌مان می‌مردند.» او برادر و چندتا از همکاران نزدیکش را در همین دوران به دلیل ابتلا به کووید از دست داد.

می‌گوید پرستارها دارند فرار می‌کنند- مهاجرت می‌کنند. کشورهای نیمکره‌ی شمالی و کشورهای حاشیه‌ی خلیج فارس به دلیل شیوع کرونا نیاز مبرمی به پرستار دارند. پرستاری را می‌شناسد که در سه بیمارستان کار می‌کند تا زندگی‌اش را تأمین کند و زیر فشار کار دارد خودش را از بین می‌برد. می‌گوید، «به نقطه‌ای رسیده که دیگر برایش فرقی نمی‌کند چه کسی زنده بماند و که بمیرد؛ مرده‌ها فقط عددند.» بعد توضیح می‌دهد که پرستارها برای مراقبت از بیماران بخش آی‌سی‌یو باید شش دانگ حواس‌شان را جمع کنند. می‌گوید، «خستگی ناامیدی و رخوت می‌آورد. برای اینکه تعداد بیشتری را در هر شیفت زنده نگه داری باید حسابی بجنگی.»

کریمی کووید و طبقه‌ی حاکم را مقصرِ مشکلات پرستارها می‌داند. می‌گوید، «داروغه‌ی سرکوبگر سرمان شیره مالیده.» او از فساد طبقه‌ی حاکم حرف می‌زند که اسمشان را گذاشته داروغه. از بازار سیاهِ دارو می‌گوید که روز به روز بزرگ‌تر هم می‌شود؛ از امتیازات ویژه‌ای که پزشکان با لابی سیاسی به‌دست می‌آورند و خوشگذرانی‌های فرزندان مقامات ایرانی در گوشه و کنار دنیا می‌گوید که تصاویرش در اینستاگرام منتشر می‌شود.

از کریمی می‌پرسم به نظرش تحریم‌ها روی کارش اثر گذاشته یا نه. به من می‌گوید که این عنوانِ تحریم آدرس غلط می‌دهد. «با این کلمه می‌خواهند روی بی‌کفایتی‌شان سرپوش بگذارند.»

کلمه‌ی تحریم ریشه‌ی عربی دارد و به معنای حرام کردن است. به گزارشِ هفته‌نامه‌ی اقتصادیِ تجارت فردا تحریم‌ها باعث می‌شود اقتصاد غیررسمی قدرت بگیرد و فساد اقتصادی افزایش یابد. برایان ارلی و دورسون پکشن استدلال می‌کنند که تحریم باعث توسعه‌ی اقتصاد در سایه می‌شود و جیل جرمانو نوشته که تحریم منجر به «فساد بومی» می‌شود. وقتی برای دوام آوردن ناچار باید از شفافیت پرهیز کرد، بخش اعظم اقتصاد زیرزمینی می‌شود. قاچاق دور از دید رونق می‌یابد. اقتصاد را از فروپاشی کامل نجات می‌دهد، ولی کارکردش مثل چاقوی دولبه است.

هم در سطح بومی از طریق کسانی که می‌شناسیم و هم در سطح نخبگان سیاسی شاهد این قضیه بوده‌ایم. تحریم همراه با تورم و کمبود باعث نابودی نهاد‌هایی می‌شود که زمانی سرپا و قدرتمند بودند، مثلاً یک بیمارستان، و این در حالی است که منشأ بی‌ثباتی همچنان محلِ مجادله است.

زمانی در مقام یک کشور می‌دانستیم در برابر چه قدرتی باید از خودمان دفاع کنیم، مثلاً موقع حمله‌ی هوایی که تنگ هم در پناهگاه می‌نشستیم. اما این بار، نمی‌دانیم اسم اسلحه‌ای که ما را نشانه گرفته چیست. در توییتی این پرسش مطرح شده بود که آیا کمبود دارو نتیجه‌ی تحریم است یا خیر و حدود چهارصد کامنت زیر آن نوشته شده بود. کسان دیگری را هم از خدمه‌ی پزشکی دیدم که مثل سارا کریمی معتقد بودند کمبود دارو نتیجه‌ی تحریم نیست. آنها بر این باور بودند که «فساد داخلی» ما را به وضعیت کنونی‌مان رسانده است.

احسان مصطفوی، اپیدمولوژیستِ انستیتو پاستور تهران می‌گوید بعضی ایرانی‌ها بر این باورند که این فساد داخلی عامل تمام مشکلات کشور است چون خیال می‌کنند کالاهای ضروری منجمله دارو تحریم نیستند. استدلال وی این است که آنها که تحریم را بر ایران تحمیل کرده‌اند، به عمد هزینه‌ی انسانی را کمتر از آنچه هست نشان می‌دهند.

مکانیسم‌هایی که به واسطه‌ی آنها، تحریم، تن و بدن ایرانی‌ها را مورد حمله قرار می‌دهد، برای اغلب ما نامرئی‌ست، ولی نه برای مصطفوی که در سال 1398 متوجه شد سیستم چطور کار می‌کند، چون در آن دوره مستقیماً دست‌اندرکار خرید واکسن آنفولانزا برای ایران بود. می‌گوید، «بانک‌هایی که در آنها حساب داریم مایل به آزاد کردن پول نیستند.» و اگر هم آزاد کنند، آن‌وقت برای که؟ «بانک‌ها پول ایران را نمی‌گیرند و شرکت‌های دارویی تمایلی به کار کردن با ما ندارند و حتی ایمیل‌های ما را جواب نمی‌دهند.» موقع صحبت انگشت اشاره‌اش را دایره‌وار تکان می‌دهد تا نشان دهد در دور باطلی گیر افتاده‌ایم. هدف اصلی تحریم‌ها این است که ایران را منفور کنند تا هیچ نهادی، هیچ بانک و شرکت و کمپانی‌ای، تمایلی به معامله با ما نداشته باشد. توضیح می‌دهد که بدین شیوه دچار کمبود دارو شده‌ایم و بازار سیاه گسترش یافته است.

اما ادبیات تحریم به هیچ‌وجه با رنجی که برای مردم ایجاد می‌کند همخوانی ندارد. حتی وقتی ریئس‌جمهورهای ایالات متحده بر طبل جنگ می‌کوبند، اظهار می‌کنند هوادار مردم هستند. «ما در کنار مردمی می‌ایستیم که به دنبال آزادی، رفاه، صداقت و دولت کارآمد هستند،» جرج بوش وقتی این حرف‌ها را زد که مشغولِ نابود کردنِ تصور ما از آن چیزها بود. ادعا می‌کنند تحریم‌ها فقط نقطه‌ای را هدف قرار می‌گیرد که وضعیت دشمن را تضعیف کند، بی‌اینکه سرسوزنی بر مردم اثر بگذارد. ولی چنین نقطه‌ای اصلاً وجود خارجی ندارد. تحریم‌ها دولت را با تضعیفِ نهادها و در عین حال آسیب رساندن به مردم نابود می‌کند.

در برحه‌هایی مقامات آمریکایی پذیرفته‌اند غیرنظامیان مستقیماً هدفِ آسیبِ تحریم‌ها قرار گرفته‌اند. مایک پمپئو اظهار کرده امیدوار است سیاست آمریکا در قبال ایران به تغییر رژیم منتهی شود. «تغییر رژیم» را باید اینطور معنا کرد که بحران داخلی ایران منجر به فروپاشی اجتماعی ‌شود. در ادبیات تحریم، عبارت جنگ داخلی، تصفیه شده و نامش را خیزش مردم گذاشته‌اند. ریچارد نفیو که تحلیل کرده بود تحریم‌ها به تاندون‌ها و رباط‌ها و مفاصل ما فشار می‌آورد، نوشته دولت آمریکا اطلاعات ملی ایران را تجزیه و تحلیل می‌کند تا ببیند چطور می‌شود مردم را تحریک کرد تا «ناآرامی مدنی، یا دست‌کم ناخشنودی مدنی» ایجاد شود. در جای دیگری نوشته تحریکات او و دیگر مقامات مسئولِ تحریم، باعث تورم و بحران ارزی شده تا «فشار بر دولت ایران را از منابع داخلی افزایش دهند» و «بین دولت و ملت جدایی بیندازند.» منظور وی از «منابع داخلی» و «ملت» مردم ایران است.

جوی جردن، محقق علم اخلاق، که عواقب تحریم‌ها بر ایران و عراق را مورد بررسی قرار داده است، تحریم‌ها را جنگ ناپیدا نامیده- جنگی پنهان پشت کلماتی که به عمد «تعدیل شده و مبهم»‌اند. روی چیزی ناپیدا اسم گذاشتن دشوار است. اینطور ادعا می‌شود که تأثیرات مخرب تحریم‌ها بر مردم کمتر از تأثیرات حمله‌ی نظامی است. یک قدرت اقتصادی نیز، همچون همتای نظامی‌اش، چنین القا کرده که هیچ‌کس خشمگین نمی‌شود و اعتراضی نمی‌کند. از این رو دنیا هم به نظاره می‌نشیند و اعتراضی نمی‌کند و چشمش را به روی تلفات انسانی می‌بندد.

حتی سازوکار اجرای آن هم ناپیدا است. خوان زراتی، قائم‌مقام مشاور امنیت ملی در دولت بوش، با افتخار اذعان کرد که این جنگ به دستِ مقامات خزانه‌داری، «شورشیان اداری و چریک‌های کت‌وشلوارپوش تداوم یافته است.» این جنگ را آن دسته از مشاوران سیاست‌های اقتصادی راه انداخته‌اند که هم می‌دانند چرخ اقتصاد جهانی چطور می‌چرخد و هم بلدند چطور شاهرگ حیاتی کشوری را قطع کنند. درست است که ارتش آمریکا پشتوانه‌ی تحریم‌ها است، اما افراد غیرارتشی‌ای هیزم به آتش جنگ می‌اندازند که از ادبیات اقتصاد و قانون برای استناد به مشروعیت و بی‌طرفی بهره می‌برند. با از بین بردنِ وجه تمایزِ سیاست دوران جنگ و صلح، می‌توانند بی‌تقلا و بدون اینکه هزینه‌ی گزافی به رأی دهندگانشان تحمیل کنند، «دشمن» را نابود کنند.

ولی آیا ایران به گستردگی اسلحه‌ای که آن را نشانه گرفته توجه دارد یا پاسخی درخور می‌دهد؟ سراغ هانیه سجادی، استاد سیاست سلامت در دانشگاه تهران رفتم تا در اسفند 1399 همین سئوال را از او بپرسم. سجادی از معدود استادان دانشگاهی است که بر مسئله‌ی تحریم و سلامت ایرانیان تمرکز کرده است. با مانتوی سورمه‌ای و مقنعه‌ی مشکی شق‌ورق جلو رویم می‌نشیند. به خاطر ماسک از صورتش فقط ابروهای پیوسته‌ی مشکی و مژه‌های پرپشتش پیداست. مثل سخنرانی صحبت می‌کند که می‌خواهد ضرورت مسئله را نشان دهد- مکرراً صدایش تیز می‌شود. باور دارد که فرصتی نمانده. در سال 1397، سجادی و همکارانش در مجله‌ی پزشکی لانست مطلبی منتشر کردند و اعلام کردند که شش میلیون نفر ایرانی به دلیل تحریم‌ها از خدمات ضروری پزشکی محروم مانده‌اند.

سجادی به من می‌گوید، مسئله فقط این نیست که این تحریم‌ها چهار دهه تداوم یافته‌اند، بلکه مسئله این است که با مشکلات دیگری ادغام می‌شوند. از نظر سجادی سیستم سلامتِ ایرانِ پس از انقلاب نمونه‌ای است بارز که مسئله‌ی مذکور را نشان می‌دهد. ایران زمانی در اصلاح بهداشت عمومی بسیار موفق بود، ولی در سال‌های اخیر با مرگ و میر مادران در استان‌های محروم مواجه است که نتیجه‌ی گسترش بیماری‌های غیر‌مسری و کمبود روزافزون دسترسی به مراقبت‌های پزشکی است. تورم یعنی دسترسی کمتر به خدمات بهداشت.

باز از او می‌پرسم آیا ایران برای مقابله اقدامات کافی انجام داده است؟

می‌گوید وقتی شهروندان با آلات نظامی مورد حمله قرار می‌گیرند، واکنش‌شان یکی است و برای ادامه‌ی حیات دور هم جمع می‌شوند و گروهی عمل می‌کنند. ولی تحریم‌ها واکنش همانندی در افراد برنمی‌انگیزند چون منشأ آن به کلی پنهان از دیده‌هاست. استتار آن به واسطه‌‍‌ی مرور زمان است و همچنین «ادبیات مبهمی» که به قول سجادی «ادعا دارد نگران زندگی انسان‌هاست. درست مثل موریانه‌هایی که به ساختمان زده باشند ولی کسی آنها را ندیده باشد، بی‌صدا و هدفمند انسجام جامعه را ذره‌ذره می‌بلعند.»

می‌گوید اینکه سال‌های سال «دست تحریم‌ آسیبی به ما نرسانده بود، نتیجه‌ی استراتژی‌ِ مقابله با این جنگ بود.» در دو دهه‌ی اول انقلاب، با اینکه ایران تحت تحریم بود، دسترسی به خدمات عمومی همچون بهداشت، آموزش، برق و آب آشامیدنی بهبود پیدا کرد. می‌گوید، «تصور بر این بود که همواره می‌شود از عهده‌ی محدودیت‌ها برآمد.» تحریم‌ها شدت پیدا کردند، ولی رهبر وقت ایران این تغییر را جدی تلقی نکرد. محمود احمدی‌نژاد که بین سال‌های 1384 تا 1392 ریاست‌جمهوری را بر عهده داشت، تحریم‌ها را «مشتی کاغذ‌پاره‌ی بی‌ارزش» خواند. سجادی چنین برخوردی را «از دست دادن زمان» می‌داند.

در سال 1392، حسن روحانی، که زمانی مذاکره‌کننده‌ی اصلی با غرب بود، نامزد ریاست‌جمهوری شد و با وعده‌ی از بین بردنِ تحریم‌ها و تهدید حمله‌ی نظامی به ایران به پیروزی چشمگیری دست یافت. دیپلماتِ اولش، جواد ظریف، وزیر امور خارجه، مذاکرات ایران بر سر قرارداد موسوم به برجام را با ایالات متحده، آلمان، فرانسه، انگلستان، چین و روسیه پیش برد. ایران توافق کرد که برنامه‌ی غنی‌سازی اورانیوم را محدود کند تا به عوضش از تحریم‌ها خلاص شود؛ چون توجیه قدرت‌های آمریکا و اروپا برای افزایش محدودیت‌ها، غنی‌سازی اورانیوم توسط ایران بود.

ظریف تحریم‌ها را نه مشتی کاغذپاره‌ی بی‌‌ارزش که «تروریسم اقتصادی» خواند. بر آن ابزار جنگی اسمی گذاشت و از مقامات بهداشت و دانشگاهیان خواست تا تأثیر تحریم بر سلامت ایرانیان را مستند کنند. سجادی معتقد است فتحِ بابِ دیپلماتیک ظریف، پیشرفت مهمی بوده است نه فقط برای به حداقل رساندن آسیبِ تحریم‌ها بلکه برای جلب توجه‌ ایرانیان به تأثیرات مخرب آنها. ولی این کافی نبود.

ایران آنطور که تعهد شده بود از تحریم‌ها فارغ نشد، ترامپ عهدشکنی کرد و مجدداً تحریم‌های دوران اوباما را تحمیل کرد و کوتاه نیامد. دولت فعلی آمریکا، کناره‌گیریِ ترامپ از توافق‌نامه‌ی برجام را «اشتباهی اسفبار» خواند- هرچند به تحمیل تمامی آن تحریم‌ها ادامه می‌دهد. دغدغه‌ی آمریکا مبنی بر دشمن‌انگاری ایران و ضربه زدن به آن از بین نرفته است، از آن گذشته، این دشمن‌انگاری هیچ ارتباطی با وضعیت توافق‌نامه‌ی هسته‌ای ندارد.

امروز، شاید که رهبری سیاسی ایران بیش از پیش تمایل داشته باشد با غرب مراوده کند تا تحریم‌ها تقلیل یابند ولي در عین حال واقف است که امکان «خلاصی کامل از تحریم‌ها» نیز وجود ندارد، یعنی همان ادعایی که حسن روحانی پس از عقد توافقنامه ابراز کرده بود. یک به یکِ چرخ‌دنده‌ها‌ی تحریم – يعني بانک‌ها و مؤسسات مالی ایرانی، توانایی راهبری معاملات بین‌المللی و نقل و انتقال پول، اندوخته‌های ایران در کشورهای دیگر و صادرات نفت و محصولات دیگر – همگی از کار افتاده‌اند. تحریم به عمد چون هزارتویی بغرنج طراحی شده است تا خلاصی از آن امکان‌پذیر نباشد.

سجادی می‌گوید چندین دهه تحریم از همین حالا به نسل های بعدی این کشور نیز آسیب زده‌ است. رنج گروهی- تنبیه جمعی- اساس تحریم است که بی‌شک به پایانی غیرقابل پیش‌بینی اما مهلک منتهی می‌شود. زندگی ایرانیان با افزایش نارضایتی‌ داخلی روز به روز دشوارتر می‌شود. تهدیدهای نظامی گاه و بی‌گاه حس نابودی را تقویت می‌کند. سرنوشت ما در دست ضد-روایتی است که خودمان ابداع می کنیم – همان قصه‌ی جنگی که خودمان برای خودمان تعریف می‌کنیم. ما باید به این کشمکشی که به شکل رشدِ فساد و بی‌ثباتی، و مقاومت در برابر سقوط اجتماعی تجلی پیدا کرده، واکنش مؤثری نشان دهیم. سجادی می‌گوید، «ما باید چشم‌مان را باز کنیم و جنگ و آنها را که به ما آسیب می‌رسانند، ببینیم. جنگی که تأثیرات مخربی بر نسل‌های متعددی گذاشته نیازمند فداکاری چندین نسل است.»

نتیجه‌ی مذاکرات ایران و غرب هرچه که از آب درآید، ایرانِ پس از انقلاب، قربانی محاصره‌ی جنگی به حساب می‌آید. امروزه، دانشگاهیان و سیاست‌گذاران آمریکایی، برای نشان دادن متدولوژی و تأثیرات تحریم، ایران را به عنوان الگو مثال می‌زنند. ایرانی‌ها برای اینکه در مقاله‌ای ژورنالیستی پانویس شوند یا در توییتر به آنها اشاره شود، از جانشان مایه گذاشته‌اند.

کورش علیانی، نویسنده و ویراستار، بر این باور است که ایران تنها با دیپلماسی قادر به مقابله در این جنگ نیست. به قول او در این «جنگ بی‌حد و مرز»، تحریم‌ فقط یک جنبه است؛ باقی جنبه‌ها شامل کشتن دانشمندان هسته‌ای ایرانی و فرماندهان نظامی، عملیات مخفی و تلاش برای بی‌ثبات کردن و تهدید نظامیِ مداوم‌ است. «ما به زبانی نو و استعاراتی جدید نیاز داریم تا درباره‌‌ی نوع جدیدی از جنگ حرف بزنیم- جنگ ناپیدا.» علیانی که تحصیلاتش در حوزه‌ی زبانشناسی است، این حرف‌ها را در فضای باز کافه‌ای در مرکز شهر به من می‌گوید. با اینکه علیانی ریش جوگندمی دارد و آرام و یکنواخت صحبت می‌کند، از پشت عینکش چنان چشم‌هایش را تنگ می‌کند که نشانی از اضطرار در آنها دیده می‌شود، یا شاید هم خشم.

علیانی می‌گوید این جنگ ناپیداست چون معلوم نیست چه کسی ضربه می‌زند- لاپوشانی‌ای در سطوح مختلف. در صحنه‌ی دنیا، چشم به روی ایرانی‌ها بسته‌اند. یک بار وزیر امور خارجه‌ی آمریکا گفته است که مرگ پانصدهزار کودک عراقی در نتیجه‌ی تحریم‌ها «می‌ارزید»- اظهارنظری که نشان می‌دهد اهداف سیاسی خارجی آمریکا وسیله را توجیه می‌کند یعنی رنجی که بر مردم تحمیل می‌کنند.

لاپوشانی داخلی هم هست. در این جنگی که ایران درگیر آن است، رنج جمعی بر مردم ایران تحمیل شده است. اما ناامیدی آنها که امتیاز و استطاعت مأیوس شدن را دارند- به قول علیانی «آنها که صدایی دارند»- مرکز توجه قرار گرفته است. آنها که گلایه‌شان افزایش قیمت ران بره و مدارس خصوصی و تعطیلات اروپاست. در مقابل او از دورانی می‌گوید که همان اواخر بستری شده بود و ناخواسته حرف‌های پرستار بیماری را شنیده بود که قدرت خرید دارویش را هم نداشته. «همان دوران که در بیمارستان بستری بودم، پرستارها پاداشی گرفتند و این پرستار خیلی خوشحال شد-» علیانی مکث می‌کند- «چون می‌توانست پول داروهایش را بالاخره بدهد. معضل زندگی‌اش این بود. ولی چه کسی از او حرف می‌زند؟»

ایرانِ امروز عصبانی‌تر و شکست‌خورده‌تر از زمانی است که در آن به دنیا آمدم. به نظر می‌رسد دستگاه حاکم ناکارآمدتر است؛ هرگز ندیده بودم خشونت خیابانی و فقر تا این اندازه اوج گرفته باشد. پرستارها، معلمان و بازنشستگان گاه و بی‌گاه به حقوق‌های اندک یا تأخیر در پرداخت حقوق‌شان اعتراض می‌کنند. یأس شیوع پیدا کرده است.

از علیانی می‌پرسم، اگر انسجام تضعیف شده، اگر قادر به دیدن بزرگترین زخم‌هایمان نیستیم، یعنی روحیه‌مان را باخته‌ایم؟ که خب در آن صورت شکست‌مان حتمی است.

در جوابم شعری از سعدی می‌خواند: «سیاهی لشکر نیاید به کار، یکی مرد جنگی به از صدهزار.» تا الآن که دوام آورده‌ایم؛ ایران زخمی‌ست اما هنوز سرپاست. به فرماندهان دوران جنگ ایران و عراق اشاره می‌کند که از میان خیلِ نیروهای داوطلب سربرآوردند که در خاطر ایرانیان به عنوان شهدای مقدس حک شده‌اند. و با پرسش دیگری نتیجه‌گیری می‌کند. «فکر می‌کنی ایرانی‌ها دیگر پیروز نخواهند شد؟»

در کتاب درباره‌ی جنگ، کلاوزویتس نوشته هدف غایی حریف این است که «توان مقاومت طرف مقابل» را درهم شکند. شکست در زمان و مکانی اتفاق می‌افتد که مقاومت در جنگ از بین برود. به خاطرم می‌آید که بارها بسیاری از دانشمندان، پزشکان و پرستارهایی که با آنها برای نوشتن این مطلب گفتگو کرده‌ام، خود را با قهرمان‌های جنگ ایران و عراق مقایسه کرده‌اند. آنها گفته‌اند که برای نجات هموطنان‌شان حاضر به از جان‌گذشتگی هستند. اگر هنوز حاضر باشیم سختی‌ها را به جان بخریم یا حتی از جان‌مان بگذریم، می‌توانیم به پیروزی در جنگ امیدوار باشیم. تا وقتی ایرانی‌ها قصد نجات کشورشان را داشته باشند، می‌توان به نجات ایران امید داشت.

روستای زادگاه نرجس خانعلی‌زاده در شمال ایران واقع است و زیر درختان نارنج کنار دریای خزر از نظرها دور مانده. بار اولی که به دیدنش رفتم، پیش از پیدا کردن اسم روستا، عکسش را روی بیلبوردی در ابتدای جاده‌ی روستایشان دیدم. از ماشین پیاده می‌شوم و از راه‌باریکه‌ی سرسبزی پُرسان‌پُرسان می‌روم. هوا بوی نارنج و چوب سوخته می‌دهد. پیرمردی سوار بر دوچرخه به من آدرس می‌دهد که «مستقیم برو تا مسجد را پیدا کنی.» از کنار خانه‌های چوبی با سقف‌های هرم-مانندِ کندوج می‌گذرم. گورستان سرسبز را که انگار لانه‌ی پرنده‌ای باشد بین مسجد و چند خانه‌ی دیگر پیدا می‌کنم. نرجس هم همانجا آرمیده.

نرجس، پرستاری بود که به عنوان یکی از اولین شهدای دفاع از سلامت، شهرتی پیدا کرد- آنها که در راه مبارزه با کووید 19 جان باختند. نرجس در دوران شیوع بیماری فوت کرد یعنی دورانی که خدمه‌ی پزشکی در سراسر دنیا جان خود را از دست می‌دادند، اما این عنوان شهید یادآور جنگ ایران و عراق است. او را کنار قطعه‌ی شهدا به خاک سپرده‌اند.

مادرش، آسیه، هر روز پیش از طلوع آفتاب مزارش را می‌شوید، گل‌های سر مزارش را آب می‌دهد و دعا می‌خواند. قبول کرده همانجا با من دیدار کند. آسیه می‌گوید، «نرجس چند هفته پیش از فوتش، حس بویایی‌اش را به کلی از دست داد.» بعد سردردها شروع شد، اشتهایش را از دست داد و خستگی از تنش بیرون نرفت. گفت، «ولی اینجا هنوز کسی نمی‌دانست کرونا چیست.» نرجس می‌رفت بیمارستان و حتی وقتی برف راه‌ها را مسدود می‌کرد، همانجا می‌ماند. «می‌توانست مرخصی بگیرد، ولی نمی‌دانم چرا نگرفت. هفته‌های آخر بود که اورژانس آمد و او را برد که تحت مراقبت قرار گیرد.» آسیه این را می‌گوید و اشک‌ها را از گونه‌هایش پاک می‌کند.

اول اسفند 1398 نرجس با تب بالا در بیمارستان غش کرد. ششم اسفند در بیست و پنج سالگی از دنیا رفت. در عرض چند روز عکس‌هایش در فضای مجازی وایرال شد که خیلی از آنها را به آسیه هم نشان داده‌اند: نرجس با چشمان قهوه‌ای و لبان صورتی در سبزه‌زاری در زادگاهش یا با لباس فرمِ بیمارستان. حلقه‌های مواج موهای بلندش از زیر روسری‌اش پیداست.

اولین موارد ابتلا به کووید 19 در ایران یک ماه پیش از آن تأیید شده بود، اما مرگ نرجس بود که زنگ خطرِ شیوع کووید و خطرش برای خدمه‌ی پزشکی را به صدا درآورد. بدن بی‌جان نرجس اولین موردی در استان محل سکونتش، گیلان، بود که مورد تست کرونا قرار گرفت. آسیه می‌گوید، «درست یادم نمی‌آید. فقط یادم هست پدرم با لباس ایمنی پزشکی مشغول کندن قبر بود.» در آن زمان آسیه به خاطر ابتلا به کووید به مدت بیست روز قرنطینه شد.

در یکی از دیدارهایم آسیه مرا سر مزارهایی می‌برد که دورش نرده دارد، درست پشت جایی که نرجس به خاک سپرده شده. قطعه‌ی ده شهید روستاست، بعضی‌هاشان سرباز وظیفه بودند و بعضی داوطلب، مردان جوانی که در دوران جنگ ایران و عراق جان باخته‌اند. چهارتا از آنها فامیل و همسایه‌ی آسیه بوده‌اند. بعضی قبرها خالی‌اند چون جنازه هرگز به خانه‌شان نرسید. آسیه می‌گوید، «هیچ فکر نمی‌کردم روزی دخترم اینجا بخوابد و ملکه‌ی شهدای ایران شود.» به من می‌گوید، همه‌شان «جان‌شان را برای وطنِ در حال جنگ‌شان داده‌اند.»

هربار که به روستایشان سری زدم، دیدم سر مزار نرجس چیزهای جدیدی جوانه زده، یک بار سایه‌بان فلزی هلالی‌شکل، بار دیگر دیدم روی سنگ‌قبرش شیشه انداخته‌اند، بعد هم دیدم باریکه پارچه‌های سبز به آن بسته‌اند و دعا و نشانه‌های نظامی. آنجا شده زیارتگاهی برای کهنه‌سربازان جنگ ایران و عراق و بعضی خدمه‌ی پزشکی که برای ادای احترام به آنجا سر می‌زنند. گمان می‌کنم در آینده‌ی نزدیک آنجا آرامگاهی از خاک سربربیاورد.

ایران تا الآن دوام یافته نه فقط به این دلیل که مردمش مایل‌اند از آن دفاع کنند، بلکه به خاطر فرهنگی که آنها را جاویدان می‌کند. هر بار از سر مزار نرجس به تهران برمی‌گردم، کهنه‌سربازان جنگ ایران و عراق که مرا به آسیه معرفی کرده‌اند می‌گویند، «زیارت قبول.»- مزار شهید جای مقدسی است که باید آنها را برای نسل‌های آتی بگذاریم. در دوران جنگ، مرگ پایان نیست بلکه فرصتی است برای آینده‌ی خودمان.

*نام هر فرد در این مقاله نام مستعار است

Back Draft: Javier Zamora

Every book consists of a kind of migration. It begins in one place and ends in another. Prior to publication, it also undergoes a journey of revision: the text must travel from its initial form to its finished state.

Javier Zamora’s memoir, Solito, tells the story of his journey from El Salvador to the United States when he was nine years old. In a harrowing account, he describes vividly the dangers that waited at each border crossing, from the barbed wire and cacti and La Migra to the brutal sun that beat down from above.

In the course of revising Solito, Zamora switched the perspective from third person to first person. He went from writing about that nine-year-old boy to becoming that boy again. I asked him if this change was more of an editorial decision or a therapeutic step in the processing of his trauma. His answer rang loud and clear: “It was both.”

— Ben Purkert for Guernica

Guernica: So you originally wrote your memoir in third person and then you switched it to first person, correct?

Zamora: Yes. And the reason has a lot to do with therapy.

I spent so long trying to hold this story in. I didn’t want to write this book. I was on a fellowship at Radcliffe and I was supposed to be writing poems. But the poems weren’t coming, so I was frustrated. And this was in 2018, when every single headline was about the caravan, about Central American children at the border, about unaccompanied children who were incarcerated. It was very intense to take in. I would drink heavily and run my body down. Then, near the end of the fellowship, I decided to try prose. I had to. I was tired of reading nonimmigrants writing about immigration. I needed to put my voice in the ring. But I was still cloaking myself. I was distancing myself from my own story. That’s where the third person came in.

Guernica: What compelled you to switch? Was it more of an editorial decision or a therapeutic one?

Zamora: It was both. One happened before the other.

Guernica: How so?

Zamora: I started writing this book in April of 2018. I had never written prose before. It was a marathon! I was used to sprinting with poetry. But this was a different kind of discipline, a more physical labor. And I was spending hours typing away, which was therapeutic in a way. I was remembering. But I wasn’t reliving it yet.

Then the fellowship ends, and I’m still writing it in the third person. I meet my agent, and he tells me to keep writing. So I do. Then I start writing the boat scene, and that scene is predominantly present-tense in the first person. And my agent gets back to me and says, “These are the best pages you’ve written. Can you do more like that?”

At first I reject his suggestion. I’m thinking, “Fuck no.” I have to protect my artistic vision, and all that stuff. But then I have a chance meeting with a therapist. It was a Monday or a Tuesday at noon, and I’m sitting at a bar on my third martini with my computer out, attempting to write. But I’m not writing shit. And this therapist approaches me out of the blue and asks if I’m doing okay. Finally, she gives me her card and says, “I think I know someone who can help you.”

That’s how I met the therapist who changed my life. During our second or third meeting, she asked a question that had a huge impact on me, and on the book. She said, “What would it look like if you really talked to that nine-year-old kid? What would happen if you welcomed him into the room?” It shifted the whole project. I revised everything into first person after that.

Guernica: That’s so powerful. I wonder if this happens often — if memoirists often start in the third person when writing about trauma and then, through processing, move into the first.

Zamora: After you survive something, your brain does everything possible to keep it hidden. And hiding oneself in the third person, that’s one of the strategies I used.

Guernica: Comparing the two drafts above, I’m interested, not just in the perspective shift, but in the details you’ve added. You refer to fish as the “day’s catch,” and you mention the flood risk, which isn’t included in the first draft. It’s like your word choice is hinting at the treacherous journey to follow.

Zamora: That’s so interesting. I hadn’t thought of it that way. The flooding is something about home that I genuinely miss. Every time it rained, my town would flood. As a little kid, I’d want to get my feet wet, and my grandma wouldn’t let me for fear of fungus or some other disease. Those rainy days were epic.

Guernica: Speaking of your home town, it’s interesting to me that your book devotes so many pages to situating the reader in El Salvador before the migration journey begins. It’s such a contrast with the abruptness of the book’s ending.

Zamora: Thank you for noticing that. I’ll begin with the abruptness. I wanted the reader to feel the same thing that many immigrants feel, that sense of having strained for so long to cross a border and suddenly once you arrive, you’re like, “Wait, this is it? Was it really worth it?” I needed the reader to experience a similar shock.

Had I been older when I came, maybe thirteen or fourteen, the book would be remembered very differently. But because I was nine, I was still in a hopeful state. Everything around me was beauty. Going back to El Salvador now, I’m still struck by how beautiful it is. The mot-mot, that’s our national bird. We had those in my backyard. And we had aracaris, which are a type of toucan. Two types of green parakeets. Five types of hummingbirds. Anyway, I wanted the reader to see some of that, and appreciate what I was leaving behind. Obviously, I wanted to come and be with my parents, but I was terrified of leaving my grandparents, my community, my friends, and the beauty too.

Guernica: What were the hardest parts of Solito to write?

Zamora: Funnily enough, not the trauma chapters. It was the beginning. If I were to be unhappy with a section, it would be chapter one. But the border crossings — my brain remembered that so vividly, so it was easier to write. All those details, whether the dust or even a particular lizard. I remember all that. For some earlier parts, it was hard to recall. For example, for the Guadalajara section, I had to look back at the weather reports and soccer schedules in order to write those scenes. It’s fuzzier.

Guernica: The book blends Spanish and Caliche (Salvadoran slang) in with English. How did you decide which language was best suited to which part?

Zamora: Writing a book of poems helped me with this. It made me really purposeful about which language I use and when.

We’re at a moment in the United States where we need to recognize that are a lot of fucking Salvadorans in this country. We are the second biggest immigrant group outside of Mexicans. We just passed Puerto Ricans, I think. And yet there isn’t much Caliche out in the world — or at least not when I started writing the book.

When I switch into Caliche, it’s because I need a word that only exists in El Salvador. And secondly, there were things told to me by my parents, by my pseudo-family, by coyotes, and these things only ring true in the language they were spoken or felt. Translating them would do a disservice to the emotional truth of those things.

Guernica: Given that you wrote the memoir from the perspective of a nine-year-old boy, you’re somewhat limited in how you discuss certain subjects. Was it challenging not to delve more deeply into the political history of El Salvador, and specifically the US involvement in the civil war there?

Zamora: That’s a great question. Nobody has asked that.

The immigration machine, the monster, has changed from the time I immigrated in 1999 to now. In the present day, I would have to represent myself as a nine-year-old. There are currently detained one-year-olds and two-year-olds in the immigration court who are asked to represent themselves. As a kid, I didn’t even understand what politics was. And in that regard, the book is political in and of itself. I never knew about the civil war until I was 18. In my country, there is war denial to this day.

Guernica: In the US, it seems like meaningful progress on immigration remains more elusive than ever. Do you think your book has the potential to change minds, and maybe change policy?

Zamora: Hopefully. But I’m not confident. [Laughs] I’ll tell you an anecdote that will maybe get me in trouble.

I had something lined up with The New York Times, and it was scheduled to run after the November midterms. In hindsight, I think what happened was that the Times editors thought there was going to be a red wave, and immigration was going to become a hot topic.

Anyway, a few days after the midterms, the editors told my publicist, “We don’t think immigration is as important anymore.” Or something like that. And this is what infuriates me, because we need to stop treating immigrants as a story [and start treating them] as human beings. Until people in power — and I’m not only talking about politicians but also people in publishing, in journalism, in media — stop looking at immigration as an opportunity for clicks and advertising, and look at it as a truly humanitarian crisis, then shit won’t change.

Guernica: Right.

Zamora: Ultimately though, I didn’t write this book to change politics. I needed to write this book for myself. We have that cliché about walking in other people’s shoes. I needed to walk in my own shoes. I had to relive my past, just in order to heal. And, as a result of that process, my readers get to see that trauma, because I’m inviting them in.

But I do think the political potential is there, because the book is written from a child’s perspective, you know what I mean? It’s much easier to dismiss an adult than a child. That’s why the US immigration system is so obsessed with children. We only ever want to save the children. Maybe that will be an entryway into someone’s mind or heart. I don’t know.

Guernica: Your book has a blurb from Sandra Cisneros on the cover that reads, “I have waited decades for a memoir like Solito.” It’s such a powerful endorsement, and it also implies a great deal of pressure. In the process of writing this book, did you feel like you were carrying a mantle of sorts?

Zamora: Again, I’d say that publishing my poetry book, Unaccompanied, helped me to cope with that. When that book came out, I still thought it was possible to control a book once it’s out of your hands. I told myself, “I’m going to represent us. I’m going to represent everything about us!” But then I worried about throwing my government under the bus. Was the US government going to come after me because I’m still undocumented and I’m talking shit about them?

Now I think I handle it differently. I understand that, once a book is out, it’s on its own train tracks. I just bought the subway ticket. And now it’s on its way.

Guernica: You’ve mentioned your poetry book a few times, and I’m curious if you could speak to this trend of poets publishing in prose. What do you think is motivating this move across genres?

Zamora: I’ll give you two answers. One answer is the academic answer and the other is the ratchet answer. The ratchet answer is that we want to eat. The current economic framework for poets isn’t working. It’s not feasible. I’m not saying prose is much better, but it does pay more.

The academic answer is that, as poets, we are naturally skeptical of genre and see that those divisions are mostly bullshit. Why be tied down to one genre for the rest of my life? It makes no sense. If you look at Latin American writers, it’s rare when a writer only does one thing. You either start off as a poet or a journalist. Then you write your novel and your short stories. Maybe you eventually come back to poetry or journalism. But you do it all. You’re allowed to do it all.