need more,” he said putting them down on the rug, “there is more.” He left the room whistling a happy tune. No matter how hard she thought, Pooran could not remember the last time the old man had whistled.
* * *
—
A WEEK BEFORE THE WEDDING, Ahmad took off his fedora and followed Homa on board a long-nosed bus that coughed out black clouds as it clanked its way toward the village of Tajrish. He watched from the dusty window the dirt road he had taken to Tehran eight years before with his mother. Buildings had sprouted where there used to be trees, walled-off orchards with overhanging branches, or sprawling, barren land. Midway there, Ahmad tapped Homa on the shoulder and pointed toward the front of the bus. Through the windshield, Agha’s tree was visible in the distance, on the lower mountainside, towering high over the greenery and roofs. They got off at a wooden bench and a sign marking a bus stop where there used to be nothing. They started toward the village, Homa panting as she caught up with Ahmad who strode quickly up the steep alleys to avoid familiar faces that had put on eight years of wrinkles. He raised a hand in response to the occasional greeting.
With half of its leaves fallen, the other half brown and orange and yellow, but still consoling and strong, gently swaying in the breeze, the giant plane tree stood taller than everything in the village, a beacon that showed them the way. The wooden door to the Orchard was ajar. Ahmad pushed it open. Homa was catching her breath, but she was fascinated to see where Ahmad had grown up, walking past dead trees and trying to bring them back to life in her head, to bring out imaginary fruit from their branches and to shrink Ahmad in front of her to a five-year-old boy—let him play to see what he did, where he went, and what his voice sounded like. They made their way through waist-high weeds, Ahmad agile, as if his feet instinctively found the right place to land, and Homa pushing through behind him. Ahmad knew nothing would grow on those trees ever again, but the only tree that mattered to him then was the one that never bore anything to eat.
The same drape covered the opening to Agha’s tree, the same worn and weathered tarp. “Who’s there?” called Agha’s voice. He had heard footsteps. “Mulla, is it you?” At that moment the drape was pushed aside and Agha’s head emerged from inside the tree, jutting out of his old but clean, red turtleneck. He had not changed; the same perpetual smile was on his lips, but beneath that facade Ahmad could see irritation. On all fours, his eyes darted from Ahmad to Homa for some time. “You don’t live here anymore,” he said with an affected petulance and pulled back in. The tarp swung back to its place, stiff from years of exposure to sun and rain.
Before he jumped on his horse for Tehran, Khan had made arrangements with his stable boy: he was to stay and look after Agha, and in return, he would receive rights to use the Orchard. Three days after Khan’s departure, the boy had rolled up five of the finest rugs in the house, tied them tight on the back of a mule, and before anyone got wind of it, he had sold out all he could in Tehran and vanished from the village. When the villagers went to Agha’s tree, they pinched their noses first, then saw the small piles of feces right at the entrance. Mohammad the Carpenter had dripped water into the old man’s mouth and Mullah Ali took up the responsibilities of taking care of Agha.
Ahmad went in. It took his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the relative dark and see the jumble of things. Without a family to tend to Agha, Mulla Ali had moved all the old man needed inside the tree. Inevitable as a mast on a boat, the samovar stood on the low, wooden table, under which Agha’s shaving box sat by some china plates and bowls and the tea tray. A jacket and a coat hung on separate nails on the tree walls, the rest of the clothes piled on the pegs of a short hatstand and by the foot of it, his chamber pot. In his constricted tree room, Agha sat on the mattress that was his bed at night.