Letter #3

Translated from the Persian original.

My dear, toward the end of winter I wasn't doing well, like every year around that time. Sometimes I think that because I was born at the start of winter, near its end a feeling of death comes over me, and the freshness of early spring is probably the sweet experience of life after death.

I went shopping for the holidays. On a store shelf I saw an insecticide with a strange name. There was something full of rage in that product's name. It was obvious they'd named it with a commercial aim, to draw in customers, and they'd succeeded, too. I was angry in those days, I think that's why I bought the can. But I also sensed something else the insecticide and I had in common, though I didn't quite know what it was.

I came back home and was putting the bags away on the shelves. When I went to take some of the groceries to the pantry, I noticed a fly that had probably been trapped there a long time, maybe a whole season or more, though a kitchen pantry wouldn't seem to be the worst place in the world for an insect. I picked up the insecticide, sprayed a lot of it into the pantry and shut the pantry door.

The next day, when I opened the pantry door, I saw lots of dead ants on the white pantry floor, around the fly's corpse. At first I thought the ants had been poisoned by the insecticide, but why around the fly's corpse? Clearly the fly had died well before the ants, and they'd had plenty of time to attack its carcass, and maybe they'd even been contaminated by eating the fly's remains. Anyway, I was busy cleaning the floor and wondering whether I was to blame for this unintended mass killing. And if I was, linearly or nonlinearly? And this while I didn't even know why flies and cockroaches are called noxious insects and ants industrious. My dear, you know I always think less about the main subject than the side one. Somewhere in my unconscious I was feeling guilt, or remorse, or maybe just responsibility, when I noticed an ant wandering slowly and aimlessly back and forth along the edge of the little room. I slowly moved my hand toward the ant and placed it in its path, lifted it up and looked at it. My dear, if I could have, I'd have called you and told you this story, I wouldn't have needed to answer it and talk to it at all. The ant said, let me go. I said, don't worry, I just want to make sure you haven't been poisoned. It said, I'm fine, please leave me alone. I sensed it was upset. I said, don't be afraid, I won't hurt you, and I'll let you go, but tell me how you came out of this alive. My dear, when you're around I don't talk to other creatures. The ant answered, I was that fly's only friend, and it used to tell me all sorts of things about flying and the faraway world, and that's why, when it fell, I was so sad I couldn't attack it like the rest of my family, and that's why I wasn't poisoned. I asked, you mean a fly's corpse is so delicious that, with all this variety of food in here, you ants swarm it? The ant said, no, it's like a custom among us ants, to feed on the corpses of other creatures. I said, that's very strange. We humans think of you as harmless, worthy creatures, the very symbol of effort and diligence, so much so that in our cultural teachings, to soften our children's natures, we stress that they mustn't harm you, or butterflies, of course. I never imagined such devilish, noxious traits existed in you. The ant said, yes, that's how it is. This historical deprivation in us ants, from the beginning of life until today, because of this very physical determinism, our small bodies and our striving nature, has made us very sad, angry creatures, ready to take revenge on the dead of all other creatures. I said, I understand your anger toward the fly, after all it can fly, it's very lazy, it feeds on garbage, and it's also a lustful, ill-mannered creature, and in that respect it's the exact opposite of all your qualities. You have every right to be jealous of it and angry at it. But what great sorrow are you talking about? It said, the sorrow of being trampled underfoot. I laughed and said, that danger isn't just for you. It said, the worry isn't the danger, the worry is that so many of us die under the foot of just one person, in one moment, without them even noticing, and that is very sad. I put the ant down. The way I looked at them had completely changed, but I'd noticed something strange. My dear, bearing anger isn't easy, but it's possible. Bearing sorrow alone isn't easy either, but it can be done. They even say getting angry and being sad can count as pleasures, they say lots of people like getting angry, they enjoy crying. But sorrow and anger repel each other like matching poles. Even feeling both of them together in one body is a hard and painful thing, let alone bearing and controlling it. This repulsion in the nucleus can turn a person into a bomb. My dear, I've been angry at you for a long time, so much that I don't want to see you, and I'm very sad, too, because I can't see you. My dear, I am a sad, angry insecticide, a civilian bomb.

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