Today, after thirty years, I walked through my own city. I have spent more than two-thirds of my life in Ahvaz, yet this is the first time I have thought of it as mine. My fair skin has played its part. Whenever people asked where I was from and I answered Ahvaz, they would say in surprise, “You don’t look like it at all.” Somewhere in my subconscious, I came to believe I must have ended up here by mistake.
Ahvaz is a strange city, too. Walk its streets and their condition will probably make you weep. Apart from one or two comfortable neighbourhoods, much of it is a ruin, scarcely different from a city devastated by war. But that is not the bitterest part. Here, you can hardly find anyone who says, “I am from Ahvaz.” A family may have lived here for four generations and still refuse the name. You can be from Masjed Soleyman, Shushtar or Dezful, or an Arab from Abadan, but never an Ahvazi. You may never even have visited the town you claim as yours, yet you will not accept the supposed shame of belonging to Ahvaz.
Everyone has come here to leave. Nobody has come to stay. Almost everyone admits to being trapped here and says they would move elsewhere if money allowed. That is why so many leave when they retire. Across all the city’s ethnic differences, everyone agrees on one sentence: “Ahvaz is no place to stay.”
Alone in the July heat, I sit in a house with a broken air conditioner, reading Ahmad Mahmoud. When I finish the book, I hear enemy aircraft. I step outside and the humid air hits my nostrils. Along Yousefi Street, fruit sellers have set out their stalls. A price sends my mind straight to Kal Shaban. On Padad Street I buy an ice cream that the seller ought to have kept for his aunt. I am about to deliver a cutting remark when I remember we are still at war. Lost in these thoughts, I am startled by a driver honking to ask for directions. Nobody walks these streets even in winter, let alone summer.
I reach Khatereh Ice Cream and order another. In this city, you can eat all the ice cream you want and enjoy every one. Then I think, “Well, so much for that. This one has let me down too.”
Next comes Baba Shamal’s sandwich shop. I glance sideways at it. If this disappoints me as well, every last nostalgia will be ruined, so I take no chances and keep walking. In my ears are the sounds of Iraqi rocket barrages and Mirage jets. A motorcycle passes. It is Khaled’s engine, and people are running for shelter. I walk on until I reach the park beside the Pars Hotel. I have passed it a thousand times without entering its café. I order a coffee and look at the Karun. Like Ahvaz, it is exhausted and barely alive.
The coffee is not bad, but coffee from a dallah, the traditional Arabic pot, is something else. Further along, a street seller has set up his coffee stall on the ground. He has no disposable cups: in the traditional fashion, everyone drinks from the same one. He does dip it in water for a few seconds. Coronavirus makes me hesitate, but after offering a few affectionate remarks about the immediate families of the Chinese Communist Party, I drink it. When handing back the cup, I give it the customary Arab shake to show I have had enough.
I sit on a bench by the riverside. I know it is a dealers’ meeting place, but I do not care. Experience suggests these places are actually safer. Besides the principle that businesses in a park should not interfere with one another, there is the matter of keeping the police away. A theft brings police into the park, so our esteemed dealers take a special interest in its security. I am absorbed in thought when one calls from a distance. His range is impressive. Even IKEA cannot offer this much variety. He proposes everything from opium to weed. When he will not give up, I ask for cocaine. His eyes widen. “Oh, so you’re playing in the big leagues. You won’t find that here. Do you know what a line costs?” I name the highest figure I can imagine. “Clearly you haven’t had any for a long time. Go hiiiiiiigher!” He stretches the vowel for several seconds while I try to calculate how much that sound adds to the price. Those were the days: every park used to have its specialist. You did not find everything everywhere. Opium in one place, homemade liquor in another. Sadly, everyone is a generalist now.
The smell of sewage from the Karun turns my stomach. I start walking again. The destination does not matter; moving does. I reach the White Bridge, the landmark by which Ahvaz is known. Young men once climbed up on it to impress women, rather like doing wheelies outside a girls’ school. Nobody knows how many romances began that way, but the sacred ritual still makes an occasional appearance. These days nobody gives such displays a second glance, so this ancient custom has also fallen on hard times.
I hear an explosion. The city has been bombed. I head towards Razi Hospital. A crowd has gathered outside. I think of Khaled, of Shahed. How many dead have they brought in? I am about to ask someone where the bombs fell when I remember the war ended years ago. I am no longer inside the story. War and coronavirus have crowded this hospital in equal measure.
I walk beside the river. At the island, I remember the days when it would disappear beneath the water. But the Karun has long since lost the strength of its youth. It is peaceful now, like an old man living out his last days and taking pride in the glories of his younger years.
Slowly, for the first time, I walk through my own city and whisper to myself: “I am an Ahvazi.”
Postscript: The people mentioned are characters from Ahmad Mahmoud’s novel The Scorched Earth. The other names are places in Ahvaz.