Don't Become a Dress

Farvardin 1395 · Mar–Apr 2016

Translated from the Persian original.

The woman I learned love from, unlike most people, who take love to be an exchange and a mutual attraction, believed that love doesn't run in a closed, cycle-like system, but was created in tangled, knotted skeins that all have one loose end, and she advised that if you want to have it, never follow any thread along its length, because in the end it leads to a loose end, and that's where you have to put the skein aside, because by then it has turned into neat threads, like everyone else. Unless you play dumb and thrash and struggle among the threads until you're exhausted, because there's still no exchange involved. If, like me, you haven't grown up yet, and no one has straightened out your skein, and your name is still lover and not string and rope, a great danger threatens you: the danger of theft and trafficking of tangled skeins. This crime is never prosecuted, and no one is going to take you anywhere; you get invited to one of the usual parties. The neat, well-organized skeins slowly approach you. You catch the scent of the fresh thread of that woman and man, and you get drunk on it. They praise your complexity, and how attractive this trait is, and if you say you've been in treatment for it, they say this very trait is what makes you special. In your bad weave you feel valuable, then you want to show yourself off, like curly hair that people so often insist on straightening, and you let them touch you a little and undo a few small knots. Then they take you somewhere secluded, a pool of water, and an old woman with two needles in her hands meets you. They've already told you that this woman is the one who supports people with a gift for love and special talents, as if she were the goddess of love herself, grown old. Then they whisper with her, in her ear, so that you can't make it out, and now and then they glance at you and smile. You're sure they're praising you, and that's really how it is, but don't be afraid, they're not selling you to that old woman; it seems they're paying her. From here on I don't remember the story clearly. They asked me to jump into the pool and swim a little. After some hesitating, I did, and I unraveled like silk cocoons. I only remember this much, that the water undid all my threads, and everything was good and soothing. Without noticing any time pass, I found myself somewhere dark, dark and silent. I tried to move and saw that pieces of wood had been pushed into my shoulders, and I had arms, and I seemed to be hanging by my neck. Suddenly I remembered my knots. I saw that the knots were all gone, and my skin was completely smooth, but then why wasn't I the bundle of orderly threads I was supposed to be? In the light shining into the little room I saw other bodies hanging alongside me. The sound of a woman singing came from outside, along with some indistinct music. The voice was familiar. When the wardrobe door opened I recognized her face; it was the woman I had seen at the party. But they hadn't ordered the old woman to knit me a mouth. That man had paid the old woman to turn me into a beautiful dress, and now I didn't belong to myself. After a while in front of the mirror, the woman came and grabbed me by the neck and threw me on the bed, then put me on and looked herself over in the mirror, and then put a coat on over me, so that everything went dark again. From the edge of the coat she sprayed perfume on me and set off. Every time these things happened and she took off the coat, I saw a man, but this man wasn't the man who had paid the old woman for me. Sometimes the men would undo me and toss me aside, and sometimes the woman undid me herself. Each time I saw a lot. Maybe, compared to the skein I had been, I had turned into something more valuable; maybe I even had some fun sometimes. Sometimes, when they were traveling, I lived for long stretches in the dark wardrobe, with no one to talk to and no movement. Sometimes I even missed the woman. Once, the man who had bought me for his wife opened the wardrobe door, and after a moment's pause he smelled me, stuck a small, delicate tag on my zipper, and left. The woman I learned love from was right: every tangled skein has the end of a thread, and there is no circle and no cycle; every twisted rope has a loose end.

Maybe this is only true of thread and rope and strands, but I am a dress that has seen the world, and I tell you love is made of thread; beware of moving along its length.

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