Missing Soluch Read Free

mixed with the grumbling of Moslemeh, clashed against the tenor of Karbalai-Safi’s words.
    When Moslemeh woke up every morning she’d begin to grumble to herself, and her furrowed brow wouldn’t let up for even a second. She’d speak to no one, instead acting as if she were angry with everyone. Some would say, “It’s like telling your own tail, ‘Don’t follow me because you smell!’ She’s so full of herself she can hardly fit in her own skin!”
    The people of Zaminej came to understand Moslemeh’s nature and slowly began to look at her with a more jaundiced eye, as if she were different from everyone else, like a kind of crazy woman. And they found the evidence for this in her brother and father. Moslem, her brother, who was in fact mad. Moslemeh’s father, Hajj Salem, was himself considered to be nearly so by the villagers.
    “Ay! What are you sitting there for, girl?”
    It was Moslemeh. She had a pot in one hand and was standing facing Mergan at the bottom of the steps. Mergan rose from the corner of the yard and said hello. Moslemeh went in the direction of the stable, saying, “Come and help me. Come! Let’s get this calf to take a few pecks at his mother’s teats. Come. The cow won’t give us any milk until she’s licked the tail of her calf. Stingy cow!”
    Mergan followed Moslemeh into the stable. It was still dark inside. The outline of the cow was only barely visible at theother end of the stable. Its glassy eyes glistened; its head was tilted to one side. The cow was at ease, and as the door opened, it took a step forward.
    As their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Moslemeh slid her pot across the smooth and worn floor of the stable and directed Mergan. “Grab its neck and bring it here!”
    Mergan brought the cow over and turned the animal so that the pot was positioned beneath its swollen teats. Moslemeh brought a decrepit stool forward from the edge of the stall. Her shoulder leaning against the cow’s belly, she sat on the stool and began playing with the engorged tips of the cow’s teats. She smacked her lips and began milking.
    “Don’t be stingy, now. Don’t be stingy. Ah, that’s it. Ah … Ah … Ah … Give us a little, stingy! Give us, my dear. Give us some. Ah … Praise God … Give a bit … Give some … Give a bit more.”
    The cow was dry. Teats that size should be pouring milk like a spring shower, and each nipple should be streaming milk like a fountain into the pot. But the cow’s milk wouldn’t come out. Its large head was still tilted and its glassy eyes were looking toward the other end of the stable, at the eyes of its henna-colored calf held behind two pieces of railing. The delicate and beautiful ginger-hued calf was stretching itself over the railing toward its mother and braying softly, a call its mother responded to with her own half moan. Moslemeh was slowly losing her patience.
    “Nothing. You could kill yourself just to get a cup of milk out of her. Let the calf out, so it can come over here and eat me up!”
    Mergan opened the latch on the gate, and the calf brought its head over to the underbelly of the cow, nuzzling at the full teats of the mother. Moslemeh wasted no time putting her fingers to work at milking.
    The cow’s milk was now flowing, and the pot was slowly filling. Moslemeh, who had propped her head against the belly of the cow and was hard at work with her nimble fingers, shouted, “Get it, the bastard! It’s like it’s lapping milk from the spout of a watering can! Grab it! What’s wrong with you!”
    Mergan placed the head of the calf beneath one arm and struggled to detach the calf from its mother’s teats, but the calf wouldn’t let go. Helpless and ashamed, Mergan said, “It’s stronger than me—somehow it’s grabbed a nipple and …”
    “You can’t handle it? Haven’t you been raised on bread? Grab that muzzle from that nail and put it on the calf. It’s there. In the corner. Next to the