Disjecta membra Winner: The Conger Beasley Jr Award for Nonfiction Selected by Jesse Lee Kercheval
Siavash Saadlou “We will visit Behesht-e-Zahra today to honor the martyrs,” the principal said to our classroom one day. We were in middle school, where everyone knew one another, after having spent five years of elementary school together. We all attended schools specifically built for boys whose fathers had died or been maimed in the war, but I wasn’t thinking about martyrs that morning; I was thinking about The Matrix. The movie had come out the year before. Bootleg CDs had only just started circulating in Tehran, but you had to know someone who knew someone to get your hands on the uncensored version. Thanks to my friend Mehdi, I had managed to watch the movie at a low volume on his computer in his bedroom. His parents had no idea; if they did, Mehdi would have been in deep trouble. Mehdi’s dad had lost both legs in the war. Sometimes, as Mehdi and I sat cross-legged on the floor in the living room, watching cartoons on television, his dad’s groaning would be heard from the bedroom. “God, my feet are itching,” he would whimper, “they’re killing me.” Mehdi’s mom would then rush to the bedroom with a pill in hand, whispering in Persian, Dardet be joonam—May your pain be mine to bear. Mehdi would just shake his head and turn up the TV volume. When I asked Mehdi how his dad’s feet could be itching while he had no feet, Mehdi didn’t have an answer. Neither of us knew about phantom pain.