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War Reflections: 1943/2003

Lyn Halper

New York
March, 2003

     I wander the house moved by a feeling of unsettling events coming closer. Unthinkable that we should be on the brink of war. There's a stillness in the rooms, the air, dry; here in the attic it's so dark I can barely see. Purple shadows and a glint of moonlight from the one high window. Dust. Cobwebs. Sheila's wedding gown hanging like a silvery apparition from the ceiling beams. Coffee Urn. Copper bowl with a few crumbling sticks of incense: myrrh and sage -- a hint of aroma, even now. In the corner is Grandma's white painted dresser with its attached mirror and I'm startled by the reflection of my own face -- luridly gleaming. The old mahogany bookcase with its collection of cracked and yellowing photos of relatives long gone -- like you, father. Father, like you.
     Handsome you were with your uniform and Ronald Coleman mustache, leaning against the pillar of a mosque, faraway look in your eyes. And here, the silver cigarette case you sent Mother from Persia, across its surface camels etched in black, frozen in their trek across the desert; nearby, a stack of letters that begin, To My Beautiful wife, Althea. . . .
     The War. Unsettling. You, shipped off to places unfamiliar and unimaginable: Bandar, Anzali, Nashar and the islands of Minoo, Sirri, and Kharg -- Lake Seestan alive with date palms and wild fowl, silk beaches melding with the blue of the Caspian. I see you sitting at a sun-faded desk. . . .

Tehran
September, 1943

I walked the Persian shore this morning, desperate to be away from the hospital, the sound of sirens, my patients. The vista and the air revived me. There's a barren beauty here: limestone cliffs, the crackling music of cicadas, and later, wind ransacking the beach sending swirls of fine dust into the sea. A sea that sulks along the shore. Haze over the Euphrates Delta.

Sand. Dust. Rubble.
We took an army jeep to Mashad where the people go pearling at dawn and conjure red ochre from islands in the south. Linden, plum, and mulberry trees arc against a copper sky; scent of oleander. On the road, a mirage of Shraz hung inverted in the air as though painted in a wash of pastel. A Persian woman was bathing herself in the sea -- how surprising to see her emerge like Botticelli's Venus, but this Venus was dark. Primal. Exotic. We startled her and she tried to hide by collapsing back into the foam. That image etched itself into my mind -- captured it with a click and a hiss of the camera's eye. Everything here is a pastiche, neither wholly imagined nor wholly real.
     White phosphorescent heat. The desert is luminous and trembling. A young soldier came in with a fever. I gave him quinine and held his hand. At forty I'm the old man here. I miss my child bride. At noon the city was quiet. Everything seems on the verge of crumbling and like a lost civilization will be reconfigured from shards of pottery, pieces of bone, and fragments of a smiling altar god. I walk to town and inhale the harsh smoke and pungent aroma of cooking. Ghalib, the owner of the seedy Tehran Town Restaurant was stirring a huge vat of couscous and sucking on a fat joint. His eyes twinkle when he sees us, but I wonder what he is thinking. The children in the streets are ragamuffins and seem always to be covered with a layer of sand. The sand, the desert, encroaches on everything -- there seems no way to hold it back. Stick-thin, the kids are here, waving and calling for us to throw chocolate bars and pennies. Would do almost anything for a coin, I think. There's one who looks after me with mournful eyes… if he turned out to be an orphan I would be tempted to take him home. To our home where he could eat food from the A & P, wear clean clothes, run riot through Macy's toy department -- I can almost see him grasping a red tricycle and refusing to let go. So, that is my rescue fantasy. The other men think about the kids too . . . but I see those eyes in my dreams, black as olives, silent and yearning. I saw myself today, as one catches sight of an image in a mirror, a reflection. Ephemeral. Transient.

Sirens. We barely notice and go on with our rounds. A stillness after the All Clear. Late afternoon we went exploring the narrow back streets of the Aban district when a young girl grabbed my hand and led us to her home. Regulations say to avoid this sort of thing. My buddies stood outside -- watchful, confident, as I ducked under the low beam of the door. Her family, faces drawn with worry, stood around a bed where a young child lay. I moved toward him but the father wouldn't let me touch the boy and all I could do was empty my pockets of sulphur and aspirin. The mother kissed my hand and I left. Tonight I look out from my small balcony at moon-silvered buildings against a dark sky and feel wedged within a sliver of time that is closing in on itself. The moments where I can be of help are thinning out and the vision of home getting stronger. In two weeks I will be shipped to a hospital base in Algiers. Then, three months more and I'll be with you. At last, we can resume our life together. When I get back we'll start our family. It will be a girl, a daughter . . .
Father, I see you . . .
She will have your eyes, your fair skin…
Father, last night one thousand paratroopers descended on limestone cliffs under the cover of darkness from a moonless sky . . .
Save my letters, she will look back . . .
I see you, Father --
You, and the stark beauty of the Arabian night . . .
and the desert.

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