"One Signature Left!" (Part 2)

I was reading, thinking, walking and sometimes drawing in days and worrying at nights when a deep darkness suddenly swallowed everything. Nights in nature differed from nights in cities. At nights, cities could make up their tired and old appearance by colorful lights, blinking signs, people walking or shopping in streets, eating in restaurants or watching movies in movie theaters or homes but in nature, especially in my rifle pit with poor lighting, nights meant a real abrupt ending to a day and they made me face a kind of deep and never experienced before loneliness that looked so horrible in first place, but it helped me explore my inner side gradually within the next months. That horrible darkness that I had no way out but helplessly waiting for that, separated me from the world around me by making a thick wall between me and everything else and dimming other lights and shedding light on my inner side. I had to dare to face that kind of heart-wrenching and painful loneliness. Sometimes my eyes were open the whole night counting every minute to the morning, as desperate passengers of a ship lost in a stormy sea, were hopeful to see a beach. I was beginning to realize what a blessing a morning was. To me, the whole world had become me, darkness and nature right outside my small and dark rifle pit. Every morning, once I opened the door, I welcomed the day and the life outside. I could find no meaningful relationship between such horrible nights and such amazing days. There, they seemed two opposite things, always pushing back each other and when I sat, after walking for a while, on a box of munitions of war, among other boxes, piled up on each other here and there and all a little wet but ready to be used, I found out the same quarrel was going on between life and war as well. I could see some small English letters on the boxes and I could imagine that right now and some kilometers away, an Iraqi soldier might have been sitting on the same box, no matter with English, Russian or German letters on it, ready to receive an order whether to use them or let them remain there and a few kilometers away from both of us, ordinary people were living on both sides of the border, completely unaware of which munitions exactly might terminate their life, if the superpower parties to peace negotiations on the war, might come to a contrary agreement, thousands of kilometers away from our border.

I opened a half empty box of bullets and dipped my fingers into cold bullets, each in a different direction and took one out. Each bullet, now in silence, could end a life or deprive a human of a body organ or the rest of his or her life, depending on how strong and dangerous they were produced and how quickly and forcefully they could enter a human body and leave a big whole, on the other side. They partly showed how they could be used to push back the enemy but mostly reflected a kind of hatred and pyromania in the foreign manufacturing companies behind the two countries involved in the war. I was wondering how the R&D departments of such manufacturing companies could come up with new ideas and breakthroughs to surpass their competitors in such a dirty business and save more materials and move on to other human targets faster, for instance, like special bullets for kids and old people with weak bones or bullets with ability to identify crowded locations like schools or the idea of a bullet for a handful of people, not just a single person and I was wondering how such departments could assess their performance through making some field studies and how they celebrated or were promoted or awarded once the reported number of the dead bodies and casualties were satisfactory to them! I threw it back and thought to cease such wars, such bullets must be replaced with pens, papers, and books because they were more effective to persuade the nations at war to put down their guns and live in a permanent peace and true friendship.

The piles of munitions and military equipment around me made me think of how the shah, before the revolution, was whimsically spending the budget on purchasing such huge amounts of munitions that were almost enough to run an 8-year war and why the west was rejecting to sell us even barbed wires now and how they were equipping Saddam Hossein, a leader almost with the same ambitions on the other side, and after all, why we two countries had to go to war with each other, while both of us could live happily with our numerous oilfields and natural resources and more importantly common religious and close cultural roots!

The amazing beauties of the pure nature before my eyes and all those boxes of munitions around me brought different and sometimes contradictory feelings in me. I looked at the sunlight dancing on snowy land, branches of trees, covered with snow, clean air, blue sky and chubby white clouds above the hills and mountains vastly extended as far as eyes could follow them and thought human's main mission was to respect the nature and add something to such beauties and it made me read more books and sometimes take a pen and draw. But hearing bad news about war negotiations and constant threats or sanctions made me so angry and I do remember that one day I had a long wood stick in my hand, trying to scratch and damage the soft face of snowy land when walking and thinking that "This is what human is supposed to do on earth!". But I was ashamed of my dog who was eagerly waiting for me at the top of a hill, for coming to such a stupid conclusion while someone like Saddam had already come up with such conclusion by damaging lives of thousands of innocent people and the nature in a lot bigger scale.

To change the situation and get rid of bad thoughts, sometimes I could change my clothes and go to the city and walk among ordinary people and enjoy life with others. I felt I was safer among empty handed people than being among those munitions that were gathered there to secure safety. To me, ordinary people were as beautiful and innocent as the snowy trees and white clouds in the clear blue sky above all of us.

I liked to walk among them and never missed a chance to talk to a Kurdish man. It was so fun to have tea in small but crowded tea houses or eat delicious Kebab with them in simple restaurants. 

I do remember the day, I had my food in a restaurant there and when I was to pay my bill, to my surprise, the shop owner told me that my bill was paid by the Kurdish man who just left the restaurant! I quickly ran after him. He was a man in his middle age, having some pieces of rugs on his shoulders. It looked he was a sociable man the way people were greeting him. I reached him and said hello to him.

He stopped and welcomed me kindly. I asked him if he was the one who paid my bill.

"Yes, it was me," he said. "But what's wrong with that?"

"That was so kind of you," I said. "But you never mentioned that to me before leaving the restaurant. It was my duty to appreciate your kindness."

"I see." he laughed. "Tehrani people are in the habit of doing such complements in a loud voice. Sorry for that."

"We do it for the ones we know, but you don't know me."

"I knew that you didn't belong to this area and it was my duty to treat you as my guest. Did you ever tell us you were intending to come here to defend us, before leaving your home?"

He kindly answered to the greeting of a Kurdish man passing us.

"So that was what I could do in return for your kindness." he said.

"Thank you very much. But what can I do for you in return?"

"I'm Kaak Karim, a salesman going to different cities, selling rugs. Everyone knows me here. One day you may see me in your city and invite me to have a cup of tea, but it isn't important. What I ask you to remember is that Kurdish people are hardworking, kind and so hospitable people. If you happen to see any Kurdish man in need of a help in the rest of your life, please be kind to him."

He shook my hand and moved on and too soon disappeared among other people.

End of Part 2

Tehran, 31 Jan. 2017

Mansour Rad