Beneath the Sand

Beneath the Sand It was one of those hot summers when Agha Bozorg took us to Bushehr. I don’t remember why we went, or how many days we stayed. All I remember is one afternoon, and one sentence. He parked the car above the beach. The sea glittered below, and before anyone could say a word, I threw my sandals into the car and ran. I barely noticed the first three steps. On the fourth, it felt as though I’d stepped onto a frying pan. I screamed and hopped onto my other foot. That one burned too. I began hopping about, one foot, then the other, and everywhere I stepped was fire. The sea was far away, and now the car was far away too. I was stranded in all that sand, close to tears. Agha Bozorg came over slowly. His trousers were rolled up to his knees. He was barefoot, and seemed quite untroubled. “Grandpa, my feet are burning!” “I know. But don’t run.” “But it burns!” “That’s why I’m telling you not to run. The more you run, the more you burn. Stand still.” Standing still on that sand seemed mad to me, but there was something in his voice you could trust. So I stopped. The soles of my feet were screaming. “Now push your foot into the sand,” he said. “Don’t be afraid, son. Further. Up to your ankle.” I pushed my foot down. At first it grew hotter. Then, suddenly, it was cool: cool and damp, like the floor of the basement in Agha Bozorg’s house in the height of summer. I buried my other foot too. Tears were still on my face, and I was laughing. Agha Bozorg stood beside me and buried his feet in the sand as I had. “Do you know where this coolness comes from?” I shook my head. No. He nodded toward the sea. “From the sea. Do you think the sea exists only over there, where the waves are? No, son. It lies beneath this whole beach. On top, there’s the sun; underneath, the sea. The sun belongs to today. The sea belongs to always.” Then he looked up at the sky and laughed. “It isn’t the sun’s fault. The sun in this country has always been hot. Our ancestors put this very sun on our flag. Have you seen the lion? He carries the sun on his back and stands his ground. You’ve never seen him run.” And then he said something I didn’t understand that day. “Anyone who runs across this sand knows only its heat. He spends his whole life thinking this beach is nothing but fire. But the one who stands still…” He left the sentence unfinished. He bent down, scooped a handful of sand from underneath, dark and wet, and placed it in my palm. I don’t remember the rest of that day. Perhaps we swam. Perhaps we ate watermelon. But I never forgot that handful of wet sand. Years later, on a night when the news would not stop, I remembered that afternoon. For weeks I had been hopping about like that nine-year-old boy: from one news item to another, from one video to another, from anger to despair and from despair back to anger. Everywhere I stepped was hot: the names, the photographs, the lies on their television. And the faster I ran, the more I burned. That night, with my phone in my hand, I wondered whether the answer was to leave: to keep running until there was no more sand. That was when I heard his voice. Don’t run. Stand still. And at last I understood what he had meant that day. My compatriot, my dear one, my friend, a part of my own flesh… This land is that same beach. On its surface lies the sun of these years, and sand made hot by lies. Lies are always on the surface: loud, searing, and renewed each day. Anyone who lives only on this layer knows only its heat, and imagines that this is Iran: this fire, these forty-odd years. But beneath it lies truth, like that same sea, calm and cool, and no sun has dried it up. Ferdowsi is down there. Cyrus is down there. The immortal names of this land are down there. And all those who stood before us and did not surrender. The coolness does not come from standing still. Standing still is only the way to reach it. The coolness comes from depth, from the sea that has always been beneath our feet, even when all we could see was sand. And now, after all these years, I finish his unfinished sentence myself: when your hope runs deep, your heart grows cool, like that handful of sand within the beach. That night I put my phone aside. I pressed my feet firmly against the ground, and stayed. It was hot. It still is. But now I know what lies underneath. Long live Iran. Long live the Shah.