Mohammadreza Fayaz
The Grey Giant
She was used to that look that the middle-aged man gave her, examining her carefully in a couple of seconds. He took a cursory glance at her half a page resume and dropped it into a box.
“I will contact you.”
He wouldn’t. They never did. And she was pretty sure that it had barely anything to do with her not having any retail experience. It was about her appearance. Seeing her scrawny face and dark circles under her eyes were enough to reject her right away. As soon as they lay an eye on her, a voice in their head would say, hiring a drug addict? You got to be kidding me.
Stepping back into her studio apartment a strong stench overwhelmed her. All she needed to do about it was wait until she got used to it and not feel it anymore. The source could be the mixture of rotten vegetables and food, damp mold or the sweat from the dirty clothes piling up in the corner of the room. She found the past due rent notice near the door. It was the third one. This time the landlord warned her if she did not pay by the end of the week, he would file an eviction case. She already maxed out her credit card. Two hundred and twenty-six dollars was the whole available funds in her bank account. Would she become one of those homeless people with a cart standing in the streets? Panic made two cliché solutions quickly pass across her mind: sleeping with the landlord or killing herself. And both options seemed evenly doable to her. She just needed to close her eyes and let the grey mist consume her. Then it would be easy to pick up the knife and cut her wrist or to surrender her body to anybody. She sat on the broken chair and opened the window to let freezing air blow on her face. She lit a cigarette, took a long drag, and while holding her breath, saw a mouse scurrying across the kitchen floor before quickly disappearing.
The grey giant stood right beside her. He always reminded her of the Native Canadian man she had seen in a historic book about Canada. He had the same sad expression on his face; the look of a man who had lost his family, his past and his future; a man with no identity. The only difference was that this giant consisted of a grey fog.
She heard the knock on the door. After a minuet or two, Virgil cautiously opened the door and put his shaven head in. Craving to see those worried eyes, worrying for her, was the reason to not open the door herself.
“Great! You invited a guest and now don’t even bother to open the door for him.”
He had that reassuring smile on his oval swarthy face. When she had met him for the first time, that smile reminded her how it felt to like a man after a very long time. He had recently moved to the unit beside hers and, to her disappointment, he was gay. It was so hard to comment on Virgil’s ethnicity at the first glance, but his strong British accent made her guess he had a South Asian background.
He had brought a box full of assorted colorful doughnuts, the smell of which reminded her she had not eaten since she had woken up in the morning.
“Looks like you forgot to brew coffee.”
When he walked to the kitchen a grimace appeared on his face:
“Ew…!”
He found the coffee grounds and brewed it.
“Do you have a cup other than this chewed foam one?”
She smiled and raised the glass pint, half-filled with dark water and dancing cigarette butts.
“Oh, my goodness! It means only the one who washes this filthy glass deserves to drink coffee.”
He brought his coffee and sat in front of her.
“It’s too bitter for me! Do you have soy milk? Organic?”
Shirin could not believe that that big guffaw just came from her and as soon as she became conscious of it the laugh was gone.
“Ok I won again. You laughed! Now tell me how you have been,” Virgil said.
Shirin just kept staring at him.
“Each time I see you, you become more like a piece of stone. All I am saying is that if you don’t want to talk to a doctor or friend, at least talk to yourself. I know what I am asking you to do seems so tough and painful. Believe me, if you don’t expose yourself to the past this mood will slowly swamp you. Sit, dare to think and write!” Virgil said.
She tried to assemble some relevant words together to say but her mind was totally blank.
“I have been at this point before. If not because of Jim’s love, I would have killed myself a long time ago.”
And when she did not reply again, he continued.
“This is getting worse, Shirin. This is the first time I haven’t heard a word from you.”
He stood up. His dull face without that familiar smile made him look like a stranger.
“Ok. This is my last time to be here. I can’t see you doing this to yourself.”
She ran to the door and grabbed his hand. He hugged her and she inhaled his strong perfume while weeping. Days later she remembered that memory as a good example of pure affection between a man and woman, with no trace of desire attached.
* * *
She put out the half-smoked cigarette in the glass and took a deep breathe. Then she turned to the grey giant. He nodded his head. Shirin grabbed the pen and began to write on a piece of torn paper:
Six months ago
She had lost her family on a Friday night six months before. That night Mansoor, her ex-husband, had invited the two new Iranian professors who had recently joined the department he was in; recruiting two new minions to join his gathering group. If Shirin was to attend this party or any other parties, she would just sit somewhere silently and occasionally smile only after hearing people laughing.
A week before that night Mansoor had asked her to sit and discuss it.
“I know you won’t feel comfortable. You can just stay in the bedroom. I will take care of everything. I already told them you are travelling to Iran. Sound good?”
From the bedroom she heard the guest talk indistinctly. Sometimes they fell silent and then suddenly burst into laughter. At some point, Mansoor started playing Setar and singing. Yes. He was not only a distinguished professor in engineering. He was also an artist – someone who had read a lot of books in psychology and history. That vast knowledge gave him the power to comment on everything, provided he had a documented reference.
The door was closed, the light was off and she lay on the bed, looking out the window at the snowflakes falling under the streetlight. She felt the need to go to washroom. But she could hold herself for another hour or so. The hypnotic effect of staring at those moving specks took her into a trance. She could no longer hear those mumblings from living room. The numbness throughout her whole body made the pang in her bladder felt much more intense. For a moment she envisioned the number of occasions she would have to hold herself for a seemed-to-be reasonable reason for the rest of her life. “It would be plenty, wouldn’t it?” somebody whispered in her head.
The stark truth was powerful enough to get her on her feet. She took in a deep breath, held it for a moment and finally opened the door. A sudden, intense light met her – something that made her flinch like a vampire.
Mansoor had cooked several dishes and set a colorful table. The two young couples immediately stood up when seeing her. For some reason she enjoyed seeing their surprised faces scrutinizing her dishevelled hair and ragged nightgown. She knew that frown and squinted eyes on Mansoor’s face very well. He had that face only when something went terribly wrong and he was trying to analyze the logical reason behind it. She had been seeing this face more and more since they had married. But this time, she let the usual embarrassment at such moments turn into anger.
“What?”
And when he did not reply, she shrieked:
“Whaaaaaaaat?!”
Her voice reminded her of the voice of a woman in a movie, whose nails were being pulled out during torture.
Her son, Matin, ran to his father’s arms. He looked at her with his father’s face, only downsized to a child’s.
It was over.
Nobody needed to say it.
* * *
One year ago
She had read almost the entirety of the IELTS book since morning. Then, on her way to drink some water, she remembered she had no idea what she had read so far. When she looked at the first page, she realized that she was supposed to read volume two and what she had been reading since morning was volume one. But she had read volume one yesterday and this meant she read the volume one twice and still had no idea about the content. She sat behind her desk, closed her eyes, and tried to force herself to remember a coherent overview, a single message about reading and speaking techniques. Her mind failed. She was a failure. And she would probably get a low grade again after five times taking the exam.
Mansoor was standing in front of her. It was dark. She had been sitting there for three hours, sometimes weeping, sometimes staring at the grey giant.
Mansoor gently stroked his son’s head.
“She doesn’t talk to me. She sits there all the time. I don’t like her. She doesn’t like me,” Matin said while weeping. Sometimes she wondered if she genuinely loved that little informant.
“That is not true Baba. Of course, she likes you. Now go and set up your Xbox and I’ll join you.”
He wore a long face after Matin left the room. Shirin did not doubt that he believed what Matin had just said.
“Ok Shirin. You know that Matin hasn’t had anything since morning?…What is the deal again?”
Mansoor’s voice was always low, especially during serious discussions. If he was not happy, he only spoke faster.
“You cannot do this to us. To your child. Is this exam what we really need now?”
When he raised the book and loosely moved it while talking. She felt her back trembling.
He was right. Perhaps not now…
* * *
Three years ago
She had applied for almost two hundred jobs and got a couple of interviews. But she had been rejected in all because she did not have a Canadian degree or Canadian work experience. When she mentioned to Mansoor that she was going to start an MSc program he said; “It was what I told you a long time ago remember? You never listen to me.”
He had one of those triumphant smiles on his lips, emphasizing that he had always been thinking far ahead of her.
Those days she still applied for jobs – her last efforts before completely giving in. She closed the resume file after reviewing it for ten times and attached it to her job profile. Before sending the application, her cell phone rang. It was her uncle. He was trying his best to use small talk before telling her the main message. But sadly, she was too smart for such tricks and within a few seconds realized her father had died. Now she had to patiently suffer till he finally finished telling her that her healthy father had died of a heart attack. When she hung up, she wished she had imagined the world without him at least once before. She had no practice at this. It wasn’t fair. At least it could be a stroke followed by paralysis. Or a strange ailment that would slowly kill him, so she could gradually get prepared for it. Now there was no firm ground for her to stand, or at least hope to stand; neither thousands of miles away in Iran at his father’s house nor in another galaxy.
She felt light as if she were thrown into space. When she revived, she found herself lying on the bedroom floor. In front of her, the grey giant sat; his size had quadrupled. He looked like the Buddha statue in the middle of a deep meditation.
* * *
Five years ago
Shirin had thought she would be much more excited about having a baby. But after having it, she realized that she had simply hoped to be excited about having a baby. But, even then, Mansoor’s words about having a baby still made sense to her:
“You agree with me that this is the optimal time for you to have a healthy baby. Don’t you? Just think about the risk of delaying it, the risk for you and the baby… you will thank me.”
“Of course, I will help you with that; you will not be alone handling it.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to work or study later.”
She just did not have energy to put up with her son’s high-pitched crying over days and nights. Sometimes she cried with Matin out of desperation. But it only happened when Mansoor was not around.
She loved to see that surprising look on Mansoor’s face, “How did you know about this pacifying trick?” It was because, even before Matin’s birth, she had done a lot of research about how to handle a newborn, how to feed him or put him to sleep, and what each kind of baby crying meant at specific time of day or night. She tried her best to leave no room for Mansoor to comment on her, on how she had to take care of things with her baby. And her efforts were successful.
She saw the grey giant for the first time a few days after Matin was born.
* * *
Seven years ago
When she kissed her dad goodbye, she read the question on his face: Are you sure this is what you want?
When she arrived in Ottawa airport, she found Mansoor with some of his Iranian friends and students, whom she found later, were all members of Mansoor’s minions club. It seemed like a small cult and Mansoor was the guru, giving informal lectures about his philosophy of life in their weekly gatherings while keeping his pupils in awe with his “totally novel way of thinking about the world and us,” as he put it.
Mansoor had brought a large flower bouquet. He hugged Shirin so tightly for more than ten seconds. Then there was a long kiss which made her embarrassed, as kissing in public was not customary in Iran. This was the only time she saw tears in his eyes. She also saw tears in the eyes of a couple of minions. She heard them say “Aww…”
“She is so beautiful, dear Mansoor,” the prettiest girl amongst them said.
“That’s what I told you,” Mansoor said proudly.
On their way home she thought about how to subtly remark to him that she hated the show he had arranged to receive her. She had already told him that she was frank and wanted to be frank with him in their married life. But perhaps it was not the right time to be frank, and as it turned out, a right time to candidly discuss anything like that with him would never come.
“I wish you’d worn a bit more makeup,” he told her with a kind smile.
“What do you mean?”
And when she kept fixing her surprised look on him, he added, “I mean, this way they could have better seen that I have the most beautiful wife in the world.”
Sadly, she liked that. She should have thought a bit more and repeated her question, she later thought.
Mansoor was so excited to show her a luxury apartment he had been renting.
“It has a gym and pool, but it is too late to go there. And this is only temporary. As soon as I get my tenure, I will buy our own house.”
The first Thursday after her arrival, she stayed up all night so she could talk with her friends attending their monthly party they had over Skype. When she started weeping, they booed her,
“People are killing themselves to get there, you moron,” Mahshid, Shirin’s closest friend, said.
She knew that these virtual participations could go on only for a couple of times. Then time would pass and they would gradually begin to forget her. They would get engaged and married; they would have children; and she would not be able to celebrate any of those events with them. Sometimes, she desperately wished she was less addicted to seeing her friends and laughing with them regularly.
She hated the cold. Winter was the wrong season to come to Canada. A few times the long snow falls evoked the obsessive thought in her, What if it never stops? Snow could bury her and all along with her memories. Each time this thought brought a deep sorrow to her which sometimes lasted for days.
Mahshid told her she had to force herself to get out and explore the city. But she felt even worse after doing so. There was nothing in strolling around those exotic modern places. The fancy coffeeshops and lustrous shopping malls only reminded her how far she was from where she used to live. Looking at the people passing by her only brought her the suffocating feeling of loneliness in her chest. She could not help thinking about the time it would take to build a meaningful friendship with any of those people coming from a variety of cultures. How long it would take for her and one of them to come to the point where looking at something would recall a common memory and make them burst into a loud laughter?
She preferred to stay at home and watch Breaking Bad episodes back-to-back while daydreaming about the future. It was the first time in her life that she did not have any clear idea about what the future would look like. All she knew was that she wanted to work in the same field she used to work in Iran. But it seemed that there was a lot of work she needed to do to catch up and she did not even know where to start. Having realized and admitted that she would not be able to start working anytime soon, she had nothing to do but her routine household chores. Cleaning was a doable job, but cooking wasn’t.
She remembered the first time she tried to cook Mansoor’s favorite dish, gheimeh cuisine. She could never forget how the smile slowly disappeared from his face the moment he put the first full spoon into his mouth.
“How is that?” Shirin asked.
“It is all right. Just you should have cooked it more slowly.”
After a few seconds, he continued: “You see how the split peas are separated from the water?”
And when he stopped eating, he said, “Also, adding spices always makes a miracle.”
Shirin could read the rest of what he did not say in his eyes, “You didn’t even know this?!”
Mansoor believed that food was the most crucial element of life quality. After a few months, each time when she failed to meet his standards, he stopped eating it and cooked for himself. He always did that silently – no nagging, no reprimanding. And each time he cooked, she had to admit that what he cooked was far tastier than her version. This justified all his silent protests.
* * *
Eight years ago
They were at a party, and both were drunk. Mahshid took Shirin to an empty room to talk about his brother’s friend, Mansoor.
“Ok. Let’s talk about it after I break up with that tall skinny babe flirting with me since the beginning of the party.” Shirin said.
“Shirin I am serious here! He has chosen you over the fifty girls he has met so far. I just showed him your picture and that’s it…”
“So, he likes plump girls?” Shirin laughed. “Classic Iranian man! Will his mom also come to present his son or not? Also make sure to ask him how many babies he’d like me to bring.”
And she broke into laughter again as the idea of marriage was so absurd to her, let alone in a traditional way that that imbecile tried to approach.
That night Mahshid took advantage of Shirin being wasted and set up a meeting with Mansoor.
There was something about looking at those hazel eyes. When he was looking at her while talking, she wanted time to slow down. That persuasiveness in his wordings and tone made her fully attentive to all he said.
“I think if you know exactly what you are looking for, you will find it. You just need to be patient. Believe it or not, I’ve always had a clear picture of what my dream girl would look like... and I’ve been waiting for her ever since.”
“I don’t believe in God. I believe in a hidden rational harmony in the world. The only way to achieve salvation is obeying our logic and the norms our ancestors left for us. This will eventually connect us to that harmony. It takes time and everybody should try his or her best.”
When he left their house, she felt all her energy was drained out. It was the first time, she noticed, that she had ever fallen in love by hearing someone’s thoughts.
She could not forget her father’s face that night. There was both happiness and sadness dwelling in his eyes. He was clearly happy she finally decided to stop dating random boys and was thinking about having a family, but he was upset for her choice – a smug man, fifteen years older than her. She was sure he had warned her about her choice. It must have been so indirectly that she could hardly remember anything about it.
Her father was always proud of his upbringing style and would mention it every time she reached a new milestone, like getting admitted to civil engineering at the best technical university, receiving promotions in her job, and starting her own company, “I proved to anyone that you can raise a girl in a way that could compete with men, even in a country like Iran.”
* * *
Virgil was right about the magical effect of writing. That night she slept deeply for the first time in a long while and the day after she found herself starving and desperately looking for something to eat.
She waited until nightfall for Virgil to reply to her text and when she called him his cell phone was off. She left a voice message, inviting him for a coffee. She promised him she would have two clean cups. But Virgil showed up two days later with a big bruise under his left eye. He stayed there for about two hours and to Shirin’s surprise, he did not smile even once.
It took an hour for Shirin to go over her notes. When she finished Virgil said,
“Well, that’s great! I believe that confrontation is the toughest step,” He paused for a few seconds, as though he was trying to quench something inside, and then continued, “I am so happy for you.”
“But I am not happy to see you like this! I told you my whole life story and now it is your turn,” Shirin replied.
She totally forgot about that she took this tone when talking with her culprit employees.
“What happened to your eyes?”
It was his boyfriend. He eventually confessed.
In the middle of talking about him, he momentarily paused and said, “The problem is that… I can’t stop loving him…”
He burst into tears.
* * *
Shirin could not help but love the sudden excitement coming right after pulling pranks on people. It did not matter where she was or who was the subject; if the situation was done right, the prank was planned and executed spontaneously, she only worried about the possible consequences after it had already happened.
Once a client of her father called in the middle of night. She was an old woman whose young fiancé betrayed her and was in the process of taking all her assets. She called Shirin’s father, the old woman’s lawyer, to ask him not to be so hard on him in the court tomorrow, because she suddenly came to believe that she still loved him. Shirin replied to her that her father had found some strong evidence that her fiancé planned to kill her. The old woman paused for a second and hung up the phone. The next day, her father raised his voice to her for the first time in her life.
Another time, it cost her a job. It was when she poured the diarrhea powder into her boss’s teacup. She and her friend could not stop laughing at seeing his body wriggling in the meeting until he pooped in his pants while leaving the room.
But her favorite one was the one she pulled on her classmate. He was one of those typical tall muscular rich boys who were always in demand by the girls. Sometimes Shirin thought he was infatuated with her because she was the only one, among her friends, that had no feeling towards him at all. Shirin was someone who always wanted to choose, not to be chosen, and he was too voluminous to be her choice. Still, he never missed an opportunity to flirt with her and he was very bad at it – something to repel Shirin even more. The prank idea came to her when he proudly said that he had Nyctophobia. He likely thought it would be an impressive thing to say. In fact, that really impressed Shirin. The next time they met, she asked him, “Why don’t we take our friendship to another level?”
She set the rendezvous in the desolate underground storage room with no windows at the university; a place that used to be used as an air raid shelter during the Iran-Iraq war. While he was waiting for her to come, she managed to lock him up and listened to him yelling as though he was burning alive.
Mansoor was the subject of her last prank. He loved the innovative procedure he had come up with to do his daily exercise. First he put on “the most comfortable shirt” of his – a shirt, with a big “N” printed on the front. Then he randomly chose one of six routes around their place to run. Using a program that he had written, every night he randomly selected a couple of songs from a big folder on his laptop containing his favorite songs. He had two playlists, each lasting twenty minutes — one for his jog out and the other for the way back.
That day, the moment he left home to run, she regretted what she did. When he returned, the sudden sound of the key rapidly turning in the door lock increased her heartbeats. Sweat droplets were dripping from his forehead. There were several wet patches on his “N” t-shirt. Anger had turned his panting into snorting, “Did you do this?”
“Do what?” Shirin said, her voice faltering.
“You added more songs to my playlists. What was that? A joke? Is it supposed to be funny? Tell me, what part of this appealed to you?”
When he saw Shirin was struggling to find something to say, he added, “There’s no need to answer me, answer to yourself. Just think about it…to me your behavior isn’t normal. Not normal at all.”
She thought about it right away. All the pranks she had pulled before seemed so stupid and silly to her in a millisecond. Shame felt like melted wax running in her veins.
Then he took her right hand and pressed the iPod on her palm. She felt severe pain beginning to grow from that spot, propagating throughout her body.
“Remove those tracks and bring this back to me.”
* * *
That day she went to the same store she tried to apply for a job and bought the “N” t-shirt. X-large seemed right to her.
Every day around 5 pm she heard Virgil’s partner whistling while walking past her apartment. That day she stayed alert, waiting until he was there. When she suddenly opened the door he winced.
“Oh Sorry… I am desperately in need of help…”
She said there was a mouse in the kitchen that scared her to death. Jim made a face when coming to the house. He had never liked her – she could always read it on his face whenever they passed each other in the building.
When he squatted to inspect the recess beside the fridge, she raised the wooden bar she had found in the trash bin, carefully looked at the back of his head and hit. He pressed his hand against the wall and slowly turned back to look at her with his eyes squinted. Then… he fell. She immediately took his pulse. He was still alive.
Putting a shirt on an unconscious man was far tougher than she thought. After that she brought the black plastic bag and covered his head. She stepped back and looked at the “N” on the t-shirt. Then she took a deep breath and aimed at the “N” and began to kick. While doing so, she heard the voice of Grey Giant running around the room. He was shrieking loudly as though he were in the middle of a traditional ritual. The harder she hit the faster he ran, the smaller he became and the louder he yelled.
At some point she only heard Jim faintly groaning. The Grey Giant had disappeared. Shirin checked his breathing and pulse again. She preferred to not think about what would happen next. Instead, she tried to concentrate on the amazing feeling of lightness and carefreeness. She felt a strong craving for a cup of coffee. While washing the coffee machine cup, she felt her head becoming clouded with a dense mist. There he was. Shrunk but still alive, the Grey Giant squat at the corner of the living room.
He seemed to be staring out into eternity.
