140
PARTISAN REVIEW
craft gun barrels sticking up out of wheat fields that the peasants
were harvesting. I saw. I saw my country . I saw the camp where
there were a thousand , two thousand or more of us. All we had for
uniforms were the neckerchiefs the soldiers gave us . Gray. Two
knots, at the front. And left hanging. I had the only gun in the sec–
tion. We had all fired , once. The ones with dislocated shoulders
weren't at evening call. We slept by sections, on the ground, on the
earth, like pencils. For five days, around the barracks , they trained
us for combat with wooden guns. Not even that. With pieces of
wood . But it was somewhere else. It was the country. I'd have done
anything. I would stare at the soldiers . None of them was my father.
I would have recognized him, by his eyes . By that look when he
came home from the forests , waited while we made a circle and knelt
in the middle of us. The bowls would pass from hand to hand, the
nine bowls of the Tofigh family . Even Reza , a baby, we would feed
him with our fingers. My father would look at us and give the signal
to eat.
It
is that look, unique, that I looked for. The soldiers used to
say, "It won't be long now." They laughed .
"The war is being pursued and we will pursue it to victory ."
That's what we learned to sing all together as we marched. Like a
religious song, chanted . On the ninth day the soldiers seemed proud
of us. I even got the impression I was considered one of them, quite
special. Some gave us cigarettes. Others made us write letters to our
parents. For my mother's address , I made a drawing of the corner of
the wall and, with a dotted line, the exact way to go so that someone
from the barracks back there could take the message and not mistake
the branches. In the letter this is about what I said : "Dear Reza. It is
to you, the head of the family, that I entrust this message. Tofigh is
all right. He has the section's rifle . And responsibilities. Soon I will be
able to send you an allowance. This morning at training I fell , my
forehead against the ground . It bled. I have a bandage . But I am not
hurt. It did not hurt me because it was the ground, and that's the im–
portant thing. Kiss our mother and take good care of our sisters.
If
I
am a soldier, we will marry them off better. As soon as I can I will
brag about your strength and you will join us . Here, at Pol-e-Zohab,
everything is abandoned. A soldier gave me an Iraqi pilot's insignia .
I am keeping it awhile longer. I will send it to you in the next mail.
Above all do not sell it. I want to keep it all my life. So even if you
are all hungry, you hide it, promise? Tomorrow we leave for Kasr-e–
Cherine . The colonel said the city had been entirely destroyed by ex–
plosives, and the Iraqi had evacuated it. All we have to do is go in ,
