The Age of Orphans - Hardcover

Laleh Khadivi was born in Iran in 1977, but fled with her family to the United States in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution. She has taught, and worked as a documentary film maker, and currently lives in Atlanta, where she is Fiction Fellow at Emory University.

Book I
SOUTHERN ZAGROS MOUNTAINS, COURDESTAN–1921
The roof is made of thick mud, straw and woven sticks. Each morning the boy climbs a small mound of stones to reach the window ledge and then the roof’s lip and finally hoist himself to this top spot that affords a glimpse of endless horizon, the fan of a more ardent wind. Look, Maman! Look! Legs shrink and stretch to send the body of the boy, at four and five and finally six years, up, over and out for a moment’s flight; a swift reconnaissance of air and cloud and sky quick enough to blur the eyes and bate the breath. Mountains fold into the earth and the heavens round their blue nimbus over everything, and in this instant the boy ascends. His bones are thin and brittle, arms flung out and lax and his lungs open evenly to shout. Maaaaaaman! Looooook! No one calls back to him; no one comes; no aunts or cousins make mention or mind of the boy who every morning jumps and jumps again. He is but a boy, they say. Let the mountain air fill his lungs and the flashes of sky pulse through his head. The enthusiasms of a child are easily exhausted.

In the end, breathless and sore, the boy cannot fly and instead must run to his maman to sit in the crisscross of her legs, where he comforts himself with the sweet taste of her milk and the steady sound of heartbeat until the bird in him is sated and calm. After the love and the drink he is ready again to walk about the village and take in the sights that repeat every day: his uncle hanging the skinned carcasses of goats and geese on the posts behind his house, messily slicing open their bellies as he smiles at the boy; older cousins stuck in games of stick fight and rock fight and fistfight turn to tease the boy with their spilled blood and swollen faces; girl cousins and aunts arguing and singing at the lip of the fountain, their arms sunk elbow-deep into the water to wash last night’s rice pots and this morning’s bread pans, keep him away with a simple tsk and nod of the head. At his own house the boy tiptoes to peer into the divan, where the men recline, take the pipe and keep each other company through the hottest part of the day. It is a room of rugs and whispers and smoke, and he is careful to see and not be seen, staying just long enough to catch sight of his baba’s eyes, blue and far and empty of any recognition for the boy’s little head that peeks just above the rim of the window and slowly floats past.

He is just a boy, young, useless and kept from the tasks and play, the chiming world of women and the dark room of men. And every afternoon he takes to the periphery of the village in search of birds to watch and want to be, birds without limitations of mamans and babas, yes and no, mountain and fence.

In the groves he marks the spry stares of sparrows and warblers for just a minute; they are too quick and low and fickle to carry the boy’s interest. He does not care for the inky crows that keep company with the sheep in the pens, or the finches that peck alongside the chickens and march out to the fields. Here he keeps his gaze fixed upward, to the ceiling of the sky, for the family of peregrines that circles high, indomitable and unsurpassed. When he spots them the boy lets loose to follow their flight with body and eyes and heart and spins about in their circle pattern until he grows tipsy and top-heavy. Stumbling, he wonders how his world would appear from that branch or that rocky escarpment or that particular patch of sky, and aches to fly from rooftop to mountaintop, to unfasten himself from the limits of the ground and soar in the enormous embrace of sky.

But he is just a boy. Joined to the earth by bare feet and gravity, much like all the boys who came before, he walks over the dirt and stone of the land and will turn into an old man and then a dead man and finally dirt and stone. He is a simple son in a line of simple sons, born of a maman who sings only sad songs and a baba sharp faced and proud who reminds him, with a rough tug to the ear, that he is a lucky boy to be tied to the land by this tight knot of aunt and uncle and cousin that will protect him from the forever fierce beat of the sun, the jagged circles of mountains and the dry deserts all around.

Still, the fascinations come first. At dusk he cannot help but run to his favorite rooftop, where he jumps and jumps until the earth and sky are a swirl and there is no up or down, no close or far. When he is tired and giddy and done, the boy lies on the roof and counts the stars as they shine out from the dusty dome, one and one and one. Each evening spreads over him like a satin blanket, immense and entire and yielding, to convince the boy that he too can belong to heaven and earth all at once.