Light Hands

Bahman 1394 · Jan–Feb 2016

Translated from the Persian original.

For a lot of people, the first time they see you, your hands matter. They may pretend otherwise; maybe they don't look straight at your hands at all, or they even shake them, but the truth is it matters to them when you last washed your hands, and it takes time before they trust that they aren't contaminated.

For instance, every time I go to a men's hair salon (barbershop) or a restaurant (fast food), I stare into the eyes of the staff and employees, give a smile as wide as our acquaintance, and state my order or request. The truth is, however sure I am of their work, it matters to me how clean their hands are.

Suppose someone comes out of the bathroom with wet hands and a tissue or towel in hand, and, well, one of my afflictions is that somebody in my brain keeps asking them: Did you wash your hands with water? With soap, foam or liquid hand wash? What did you do? How did you wash them? Did you wash them at all?

Of course I have this obsession about myself too. When I want to stroke a child's skin or kiss them, I ask myself how I last cleaned my hands, what food my breath smells of, and what perfume my neck smells of.

How many people have already tried on the clothes you buy, and ramblings like that.

Last night at bedtime a light from the highway, at the edge of the bedroom curtain, kept rising and falling, and its reflection off the ceiling shone into my eyes, and I couldn't fall asleep until, as I did in childhood, I laid the backs of my forearms over my eyes.

With the light problem solved I should have settled down, but my hands weighed terribly on the bowl of my skull. At first I thought, well, since those days of infancy the mass of my body has grown denser, so it's natural. Then I thought that, say, there are a lot of thoughts and words in my head, and the weight of my hand has compressed the pressure of the words even further and is crumpling my skull, grandiose talk of that sort. And then the thought crossed my mind of when I had last cleared my hands, and cleared my accounts with them,

these hands of mine that have grown so heavy.

You know, I've done a lot of things in my life to be a good person, to seem like a good person, and also so that people would remember me well, for the feeling people would get on hearing my name. But I remember one time when I'm sure I did that good deed for no reason at all. That good deed was tidying up a house that hadn't been tidied in a long time. The house belonged to someone I didn't like one bit, and I was only supposed to stay there a few hours, and that night the owner was going to throw a party at the house, one I wasn't among the guests of, and they had no idea I'd found out about the party by chance.

They had two cats, one blind and the other lame. In fact they were one of those people who support animal rights, and in particular they took in injured pets, but, well, it looked more like the owner of the house was the one who needed tending to. With an unnatural greed and eagerness I started cleaning the closets, most of whose space had never been used at all, where the clothes had never even been sorted, and besides, even if it had been my own house and I were having guests that night, the inside of the closets would have been the last priority, and of that, the underwear shelf. The dishes, the floor, in short, by the time the house was tidy it was nearly the hour when I was no longer supposed to be there. I left, and to this day I have never regretted a deed that no one thanked me for but that was needed. Last night the last thing in the memory of my forearm muscles that was soothing and had a scent of freshening was that very pleasure of preparing for a party I was never present at, the pleasure of doing a right thing that is neither your duty, nor expected of you by anyone, and probably not even necessary.

Right deeds fall into two kinds,

The first kind, which one or more people know about, or which brings you some return and achievement, a result and a linear return.

The second kind, of which no one, ever, knows why, when, or how well you did it, and no gratitude will follow.

The second kind makes your hands light.

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