Missing Soluch by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

Author:Mahmoud Dowlatabadi [Dowlatabadi, Mahmoud]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61219-180-5
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2012-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

3.

Abbas felt rejuvenated as he left Zabihollah’s house. He felt satisfaction mixed with anxiety. The fatigue had left his body, or was lost inside his body. He grasped the bills of money he had received from Mirza Hassan, knowing just what he intended to do with them. He didn’t want to keep them at hand nearby. He never wanted his money to be in eyeshot. He never wished for his affairs to be out in the open. There was always subterfuge to his plans. He always wanted things to be partially hidden, especially his winnings or losses in gambling. If not all of it, at least a few qerans of money. He loved to keep secrets. Even if the secret was meaningless. The feeling of insecurity and his lack of trust in others had taken such a root in him that he sometimes tried to keep hidden the most obvious of things. Most of his lies were exposed in the light of day, but he didn’t care if others thought of him as a liar, or called him one. What was important to him was that others not know what he was really up to. Put simply, Abbas didn’t want anyone to know what he was doing with even a single qeran of his money, or where he had stashed it. Of course, this inclination was not particular to Abbas but is shared by many others in similar circumstances.

Abbas’ present problem was to figure out how he could cut short the inevitable argument he would have with his mother. He wanted to think of a way to keep a hold of half of the money and to avoid a fight by giving half of it to her for the house. He had just decided to look for a place to hide the other half that he would keep. He entered a deserted and ruined home and undid the tie on his pants. The hem of his pants was the safest spot on him. Shortly, he returned to the alley and tightened the tie on his pants. Now only two bills remained in his hand from what he’d been paid for his portion of the family’s plot in God’s Land. He had just handed over two dang of the six dang that had been Soluch’s plot.

In the alley he encountered Ali Genav’s wife, who was creeping along like a shadow in the dark. She moved very slowly, holding onto the wall with one hand and grasping her walking stick with the other. Her soft moaning sounded like the flutter of a moth’s wings. Abbas was saved from himself for a moment—Raghiyeh distracted him from the troubled thoughts filling his mind.

Although Raghiyeh had spent a few mornings in a town hospital, there was no sign of improvement in her. Day by day, this broken woman deteriorated. It was as if she was melting, as if her bones were shrinking and the skin on her face was drying. She didn’t have the energy

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