For three thousand years, a people has stood waiting

An anonymous manuscript has unsettled the orderly life Adura has built in Tehran. When its elusive author finally telephones, she goes to meet the eccentric scholar she has imagined. The man waiting for her is nothing like him.

***

An Excerpt from Only the Arrow Does Not Die, a novel by Arash Hejazi

Adura was drying her hands on a towel when the telephone rang. She picked it up, expecting Ilia. He was due back any day now.

But a man’s hoarse voice came down the line.

‘Hello. I’m sorry. Do you know who I am? My name is Za’ir.’

For a moment, Adura could neither breathe nor speak.

The man went on. ‘It seems there’s been a mistake. Sorry to bother you.’

With an effort, almost by force, Adura found her voice.

‘Don’t hang up.’

She took a deep breath.

‘I was the one who brought you the flowers.’

Again there was silence. Then the man’s voice returned.

‘If I give you an address, will you come and pick me up?’

Adura snatched a pen and a piece of paper from the telephone table.

***

Adura told the taxi driver to wait and got out. They had arranged to meet in front of a derelict site. She was wearing her pale pistachio suit and a little make-up. She had not asked what the man looked like or what he would be wearing. He had not asked anything about her either.

She had never arranged to meet a strange man in the street before. Even so, she had pictured the author of that booklet: tall and thin, with a high forehead, fine-rimmed glasses and the cultivated untidiness of a scholar. Because of the operation, he might be thinner than usual, more drawn. She did not really know what kind of operation it had been.

It was ten in the morning, and the street was crowded. Everyone was moving. She had to look for someone standing still, someone glancing around. Everyone else was on their way somewhere. She needed to cross the road and reach the derelict site wedged between two five-storey buildings. But no one was waiting there.

No one except a homeless man sitting at the edge of the derelict site, scratching at his scalp.

She looked around again. They had not fixed an exact time. He had given her only the address and said, ‘I’ll wait for you there.’ He had not even let Adura explain who she was or why she had come looking for him.

Perhaps he had grown tired of waiting and left. Adura had spent too long getting ready. Slowly, she walked over to the beggar and, searching her pocket for change, said, ‘Excuse me, did you see anyone waiting here, by the derelict site?’

The homeless man raised his head. Through the long hair and thick beard, his large black eyes fixed on Adura. Then he said, ‘For three thousand years, a people has stood waiting before a ruin.’

Adura started and stepped back several paces. Her heart lurched into her throat. She could not believe this tattered beggar was the remarkable writer. He was an exceptionally large man, with a grey, tangled beard and moustache, and long hair frizzed into a wild halo around his head. His green overcoat and the clothes beneath it looked as though they should have been burnt long ago with the rest of the rubbish. And his eyes… his eyes held nothing but grief. So much grief that if she looked into them for more than a few seconds, it would undo her.

Adura lowered her eyes and tried to say something polite, but not a single suitable word came to her.

At last, the man broke the silence. With one hand braced against his lower back, he struggled to his feet.

‘If you don’t already regret coming to get me,’ he said, ‘let’s go.’

Adura closed her eyes. Something about this homeless man, beneath the homelessness, reminded her of Bahman.

‘Go where?’

The man stood before her. He was at least half a metre taller than she was. Her nose barely reached his chest. He gave a dry, choked laugh.

‘I don’t know. Somewhere I can have a shower and sleep for a while.’

Who is Za’ir, and how could a homeless man have written a manuscript containing knowledge lost for centuries?

Continue the story in Only the Arrow Does Not Die
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