Dardedel by Manoucher Parvin

Author:Manoucher Parvin
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781504024792
Publisher: The Permanent Press

BOOK THREE:

Love of All Loves

11 West Side Stories, East Side Stories

The sun-sprinkled rain drips off the curbs, trickles into the streets,

Hums into the treads of spinning tires,

Soaks into the leather soles of fashionable shoes.

It is summer again.

All winter, all spring, Hafez drove Mitra home,

And each day told her how much he loved her:

During their stolen moments in Central Park,

While holding hands in the city’s quiet museums,

While holding each other inside the telephone’s mystical wires

Where longings travel beyond the reach of eyes or fingertips.

Yet while he opened his heart to her,

Saying to her so many times, “Mitra Jaan, I die for you,”

He still could not tell her the truth about himself,

That he is not only a young cabbie named Hafez,

That this is not his first bumpy ride through mortal life,

That he is the real Hafez, the poet Hafez,

The Hafez who lived and who died centuries ago,

Before there was a New York City,

Before there were yellow automobiles with magic meters

That could spin time and space into gold,

Before there was a young woman with

Intermingling Persian and American blood,

Named Mitra.

Hafez knows he must tell her the truth, and soon,

Lest their lovers’ dardedel be false and hollow.

Each day he reminds himself, “Today I will tell her my secret.”

Yet each day passes with the secret left a secret.

Each day he warns himself that, “She will fear you,

Run from you, hide from you, and curse you for your deceit.”

But now it is summer, and all things are possible in summer,

When temperatures rise, flowers open, and fruits ripen irresistibly.

So he will tell her today, perhaps,

And let his truth test the truth of their love.

Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow.

Today is a Saturday, the Saturday after the Saturday that

Mitra, wearing her white gown and funny flat hat, graduated.

She had wept and wept, not in joy, but in sadness,

Because her father was too far away to attend.

But the week has fled and the tears have dried,

And now Mitra asks Hafez to meet her at Times Square.

“I have a secret for you,” she says on the phone.

Hafez races in his cab, hoping her secret is no worse than his,

That she will not confess that she is not really Mitra,

But the incarnated beguiling god of light,

Who long ago slew the sacred bull and gave life to life,

And now comes to New York to toy with love.

Mitra spots him and jumps into the front seat of his cab, saying,

“I have tickets, Hafez Jaan! Tickets!”

“And so do I,” laments Hafez, popping his glove compartment.

“Speeding tickets and parking tickets,

Tickets for making U’s and tickets for going the wrong way,

More tickets than I can begin to pay!”

“My tickets are free,” Mitra says,

“A gift of guilt from my mother for being on business

When she should be here for my birthday.

One of my parents is always missing on special days.

They take turns disappointing me, then shower me with gifts.

It is a lucrative but lonely life I live, Hafez Jaan.”

“Today is your birthday? You should have told me, Mitra Jaan!

I would have brought you a present!”

Mitra grins with a trace of wicked enjoyment at the tips of her lips.

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