Call Me Zebra(30)

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That night I dreamt I was walking through a tunnel illuminated by a garish light. I was thirsty, weary, famished. But I kept putting one foot in front of the other. I was afraid that if I didn’t keep on walking I would vanish into thin air. I persisted, and the tunnel deposited me in front of an ugly building devoid of character, a funereal administrative building constructed of slabs of concrete that were covered in smog stains. The facade was interrupted only by a series of windows, all covered in protective metal bars casting geometric shadows across the glass. I peeled the double doors of the entrance open and stepped into a rectangular waiting room. There were people sitting on wooden benches—all of them dressed in black, as stiff as mannequins—waving forms like fans to circulate the stale air. When I examined their faces more closely, I realized that my forebears, Dalir Abbas Hosseini, Arman Abbas Hosseini, and Shams Abbas Hosseini, were all there, along with my mother and father. I couldn’t believe my eyes. A stain of blood spread across my paper heart. It rolled and flapped as if it were being dragged through the streets and valleys of the world by a violent gale. I lunged forward. I wanted nothing more than to embrace them, but as soon as I arrived at where they had been sitting, they were gone. They had vanished. That sheet of paper, heavy with blood, sank into my void and faded into oblivion.

In their absence, a security guard appeared. He was large and had terrible breath.

“Death certificate?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, as I anxiously scanned the room. There was a wall of windows at the rear of the building, and beyond them, I could see date palms and eucalyptus trees planted in rows; a thin layer of fog had settled over the fertile paths winding between the trees. I thought I heard the Caspian Sea gurgling in the distance.

“Look around all you want,” the security guard said. “There is no one here. We are all alone in our final hour.”

“But I belong with them!” I moaned, looking again at the place where my family had been and then beyond, through the windows, at the trees.

The security guard hooked his plump arm around mine and walked me to a separate room where a secretary sat at her desk. She was wearing orange lipstick, and she moved her mouth like a fish sucking in little puffs of air. She handed me a number and instructed me to sit down. I took a seat.

“Where am I?” I asked the secretary. “Iran?” I protested. “Islamic Republic of Iran? Van? Ankara? Istanbul?”

She told me to keep my mouth shut.

Just then, a set of speakers, which were hanging precariously from wires over our heads, announced my name. “Zebra!” a mechanical voice declared.

I looked at the secretary. She was busy filing her nails.

“Come here,” she hissed, fixing her glassy blue eyes on me. I approached her desk. She informed me that I had to report upstairs.

I went up a flight of stairs and stepped into an elevator. It jerked up. The doors opened onto a dim and drab hallway. There were water stains on the walls. I could see the second door at the end, which the secretary had instructed me to knock on, but it appeared to recede every time I tried to move closer to it. The hallway was elastic; it was extending with my every step, an infinite corridor. Exhausted, I leaned against the wall, drenched in sweat. After some time, a second security guard appeared. He looked like the first one’s twin.

“Visa paperwork,” he demanded.

“But I’m dead.”

“You need a visa in order to get a death certificate,” he said.

“A visa?” I whined with astonishment. Inwardly, I tried to enumerate how many visas and passports we had filed for over the years. A light came on overhead. It didn’t do the security guard any favors. He had a fleshy mouth. I could see the black roots of his fallen teeth, and he had combed a few remaining strands of greasy hair over his balding scalp.

“I’ve had enough of visas!” I intoned fiercely, and watched his confidence retreat.

He stood there motionless, guarding the corridor despite his obviously waning confidence. There was a long interval of silence during which I shuttled up and down the hallway. I felt small and helpless, as though I were walking on a suspension bridge and on either side of me there was a door to nowhere. I was an exile in the cosmic corridors of the universe. I don’t know how much time went by. Years, decades. The security guard grew old. His hair grew white. He slouched down into his chair and fell asleep. Finally, I was able to get past him. But I, too, was older. I walked up to the door and turned the knob.

The door opened onto a network of caves. There were shadows drifting across the stone walls. I walked from hollow to hollow. Each cavity had been assigned a letter—A through Z—as if the caves composed an abecedarium. I wove my way through the alphabet. I came to the letter Z. “Z for Zebra!” I sighed. After Z, there was nothing: the void, pure and simple.

A slender man with round glasses appeared. He was sitting on a rock at the end of the cave. I told him, “I’m here to collect my death certificate.”

The man nodded his head and removed his glasses. His eyes were muddy, bloodshot. They looked like they were about to run down his face.

“What are you doing in this pit of sorrow?” he asked. A thick fog rose around him and obscured his features.

“I need my death certificate! I am the last of the Hosseinis, all of whom are in this building,” I explained, nearly weeping. He ignored my pleas. I spoke again, but my voice, thin and desperate, was barely audible. The man scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to me. I read: Raphèl maì amècche zabì almi. I recognized the line. Spoken with icy breath by Nimrod, the founder of the Tower of Babel, in Dante’s hell. I had never felt more alone or more exhausted. I thought of the origin of different languages, of the confusion and miscommunication that ensued thereafter among humans. I thought to myself, I speak so many languages and yet I am understood by no one. I have been deserted, abandoned. I am companionless despite my ability to operate a plurality of systems. Then the fog grew more viscous.